Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by tinfoilhatter » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #326

tinfoilhatter wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the argument for distributing it would be that other propaganda is widely distributed without question, so if one wants to arrive at anything even close to an objective account of what transpired during that time in history, all propaganda should be examined and learned about. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle, and we certainly aren't getting to it by blindly accepting one narrative over another.

No, because extremist propaganda does not "average out" to an objective center. If you want to distribute it in a box labeled "extremist propaganda", to study it as such, sure. But if your society has some extremist propaganda in the wild, distributing more, different extremist propaganda will make things strictly worse.

Who defines what is extremist propaganda? The people who win the propaganda war and get to label the other side as extremists is the answer.

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

#342

Post by graemep » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

steviedotboston wrote: post #268

Cool project, except these aren't really "banned" books. thats a misleading term. In most of these cases, the book isn’t actually banned. Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want. What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as…

You are missing the point. This makes it possible to distribute something that is actually banned. The included books are just examples.

It also makes it possible to provide free access to books that libraries decide against.

A project hosted on a public git repo cannot break the law, however adding whatever books you think are required looks easy. The instructions say:

> First, you'll want to put the ebook files in the /library/data/html/books directory.

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

#343

Post by tinfoilhatter » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

p_j_w wrote: post #120

tinfoilhatter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The Bolsheviks certainly were good at it, yet we don't learn about the 23+ million they massacred in US schools. Those of us who paid attention certainly did.

How can you pay attention, as a student, to a historical event that isn't being taught to you in your history class? Please explain.

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

#344

Post by Forgeties79 » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

p-e-w wrote: post #337

Forgeties79 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every time you use hackernews you’re contributing to the climate crisis in some form or other. These kinds of comments are not productive.

There’s a difference between the two. All politics is based on violence because violence is how laws are enforced. Thus by participating in politics (which includes voting), one implicitly endorses violence. By contrast, an online service is not “based on destroying the climate”, that’s at best an unfortunate side effect, and possibly not even that as there are plenty of hosters that are climate neutral now. More imp…

> By contrast, an online service is not “based on destroying the climate”

And my voting is not based on doing violence to others, and I don’t have a reasonable alternative, and we both know the consequences even if it’s not our intention to bring them about. You are drawing your own line in the sand and sorting things into arbitrary categories on either side of the line. This debate is pointless, so I’m moving on. Have a good one mate.

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

#345

Post by some_random » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

Guthwine wrote: post #320

some_random wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're not "not allowed". With very few exceptions the thing people are freaking out about is books being curated out of libraries, usually for very understandable reasons.

'Curated out' not by librarians but by a singular patron challenging the purchase of a certain publication.

If by "singular patron" you mean the administration of the school then I guess so.

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

#346

Post by ShinyLeftPad » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #122

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In oppressive places a CCTV will detect you installing the bulb.

The mitigation here is to make it only turn on after 60 days. most places don't store cctv footage for more than a month, so if you have a dummy period, by the time it's noticed, the footage will be gone

Good point

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

#347

Post by akurtzhs » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

N_Lens wrote: post #34

“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to informatio…

"We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding process--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions."

- Bad'l Ron, Wakener, Morgan Polysoft

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

#348

Post by some_random » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

john_strinlai wrote: post #288

some_random wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're not "not allowed". With very few exceptions the thing people are freaking out about is books being curated out of libraries, usually for very understandable reasons.

> Because they're not "not allowed". ...yes? that is the meaning of "ban", so it seems entirely appropriate to use that word

Sorry to tell you this but you've been lied to about these books being banned, as in they are not being banned, they are still allowed.

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

#349

Post by sfink » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

steviedotboston wrote: post #327

sfink wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be overthinking this. "Banned" in this case means that the usual person or people who choose what books to include are being overridden by a party with more clout. From the perspective of a school librarian, for example, book X has been banned. They no longer have the option of including it. (This is even true in the case where the librarian would not have included it anyway, for their own reasons.) They are…

The FBI is not telling school librarians to not stock copies of To Kill a Mockingbird. I really don't see the issue with local entities like a school board having some say in material that is available in a school. That can differ across the country, and thats fine. That's what our country is supposed to be like. But a library acting like they are doing some brave act of resistance by putting out a stack of books tha…

If it were the FBI, it wouldn't be "To Kill a Mockingbird", it would be "Amateur Forgery, volume XVII: Passports" or something. Well, or something similar that wasn't already illegal.

> I really don't see the issue with local entities like a school board having some say in material that is available in a school.

Then you prefer a low-trust environment. I prefer a high-trust environment. A librarian shouldn't be putting 50 Shades of Grey on a grade school shelf to begin with. If they are, then you should be replacing the librarian, not micromanaging them. Book selection is their job. Let them do their job or don't; don't allow them the authority to only do half their job.

> But a library acting like they are doing some brave act of resistance by putting out a stack of books that are widely available...and saying they are "banned books, this is banned books week, look at all the books that have been banned!" when really they are books that a school board in wisconsin said shouldn't be in an elementary school library because the sex scenes are not appropriate for 7 year olds seems really silly to me.

Again, that's a "replace or reprimand the librarian" problem. It's not meant to be a brave act of resistance, it's information to say "these books have been banned, look at them so you can better understand what books people want to ban and why". And obviously, it's more interesting than "these are books where the 3rd letter in the title is T" and so it garners more attention, but it's no more than that. If they're including one that was banned for dumb reasons as in your example, then that makes it a dumb display (and an inappropriate one if the display is also in a library for 7 year olds.)

Obviously, the OP is not the librarian, and is aiming for an act of resistance, so my argument mostly doesn't apply there. Though the part about choices having the potential of being dumb still does. The set of books that have been banned somewhere or other is quite large, it's not like it would have any meaning to have a display of all or even a random selection of them. That's a strawman. You're going to curate based on some metric.

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

#350

Post by Guthwine » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #345

Guthwine wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Curated out' not by librarians but by a singular patron challenging the purchase of a certain publication.

If by "singular patron" you mean the administration of the school then I guess so.

I doubt that the administration would initiate the removal process with no outside pressure from a parent or maybe some sort of parental group a la the Satanic Panic and BADD [1].

[1] Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons