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Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

richardosgood.com

51–60 of 396 posts

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They appear to all be public domain. Even if they weren't, grandparent could've just called out that these are not really banned books instead of being pretentious with the "psyop" thing.

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When should it be reported, then?

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#52

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> likely immersed in the same "banned books" media psyop as other Western News Consoomers all 4 of the books that are checked-in to that repo are old enough that they're in the public domain. I looked at Call of the Wild and it has a title page saying it came from Project Gutenberg, I assume the other 3 likely did too. rather than jumping to conclusions about the author being influenced by a "psyop" I think there's a…

I chose these books as examples precisely because they are out of copyright and available on project Gutenberg. They also had been banned or challenged on the USA in the past. Project Gutenberg has a list of "banned books" on their own website and these are all included.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#53

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I chose books that were out of copyright, available from project Gutenberg, and had been banned or challenged in the USA at some point in the past to use as examples. There weren't many options. It's designed so the user can include whatever books are important to them wherever they may live. They may live somewhere more oppressive where banned books are a common occurrence. I have no idea. It wouldn't be wise to inc…

> It wouldn't be wise to include copyrighted works in a public repository where I live.

If you have a problem with storing illegal books in your "banned book library", you may be working on the wrong project.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#54
post #11

I think calling them "banned" is so disingenuous. There are actual banned books that are illegal to own in the United States. None of these "banned books" come anywhere close to meeting that criteria. Very cool project nonetheless!

It is not disingenuous, maybe a little loose on the 'meaning', but your definition is rather narrow. The Color Purple has been challenged many times in order to be removed from public library circulation and public school curriculums. Annie on my Mind was banned from the Kansas Public School system and subject to book burnings at the federal courthouse. The removal of the book (ban?) was overturned by the court. Ther…

It's rather subjective, though, no?

Having been in prison, I can tell you that being a Blood and having "certain books" in your locker is a "smash on sight" offense. The same could be said for the Aryan Brotherhood/Circle, and I'm sure for many other gangs.

There's a difference between "this one small group: local oklahoma school district/aryan brotherhood/catholic church" decided they don't like a book and the government level you will be imprisoned for owning/sharing this book.

If it's a 'banned' book library, why doesn't it include books banned by a variety of sources? To me, a 'banned' book library would included many thousands of books each tagged by which groups are banning them. That way, were I inclined to do so, I could read texts that were banned by both Jews and Christians, or by both democratic nations and totalitarian regimes, or whatever it was that I was interested in.

This particular compilation is a perfect example. Calling The Call of the Wild, a book that's been made in to several movies (the most recent of which grossing $111.1 million against a production budget of $125–150 million) a "banned book" is kind of ludicrous, no? Clearly many thousands or millions of people have access to it and it's contents, so it is clearly not 'banned' in any meaningful sense of the term, unless you happen to live in some region in which it is banned, but that enforces my claim that any such random small list doesn't really live up to the label.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#55
post #22

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Thank you for pointing this out. That list of “banned books” (that were unbanned long ago, and are now considered great literature) indeed seems more like virtue signaling. There are equivalent books in our own time, and using those instead would make the project feel more like an actual defense of Free Speech and less like a quip of “goodness gracious, people were prudes in the 1920s”, which everyone already agrees…

These are just examples I could legally include in a public github repository to demonstrate the functionality. The alternative would be to include copyrighted works or nothing. The user is free to include any books that are important to them.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#57

Really cool project! I can't wait until it's formalized enough that I can just buy a $20 light bulb, update it wirelessly somehow, and then have my own little "light bulb library" server.

That's exactly what this project is. You can buy the same tasmota bulb I used and flash it over the wifi. No disassembly required.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose books that were out of copyright, available from project Gutenberg, and had been banned or challenged in the USA at some point in the past to use as examples. There weren't many options. It's designed so the user can include whatever books are important to them wherever they may live. They may live somewhere more oppressive where banned books are a common occurrence. I have no idea. It wouldn't be wise to inc…

> It wouldn't be wise to include copyrighted works in a public repository where I live. If you have a problem with storing illegal books in your "banned book library", you may be working on the wrong project.

As it stands it is a great example for others to learn from. If you include copyrighted books it’ll get pulled from GitHub and no one will learn from it.

Re: Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

#60
post #33

Android loves to auto-disconnect you from any Wifi network that doesn't provide Internet. You need to go through a bunch of arcane settings to disable that feature.

This was my thought as well. I think the workaround is to have the device present itself as a captive portal type of thing, like you might encounter at a Starbucks, so that when the user is prompted to "Sign In" they immediately find the dead drop.

However I haven't actually played with this and don't know if that would work, or if the network would require DNS to function properly.

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