digital-urbanism
How to Make Flying a Drone Less Boring: Get Distracted
You're sitting in an air-conditioned trailer somewhere in Nevada, one hand clutching a joystick, the other tapping out commands on a keyboard. You're a US Air Force (or CIA) Predator drone pilot. You're about two hours into a 12-hour spy- and kill...
Soon Cops Will Digitally Dust Crime Scenes for Partial Footprints
Generally, my assumption of the ins and outs of crime scene forensics is a mythicism of field detectives performing high-tech feats in order to solve a mystery with some encrusted semen. I'd only expect that investigation units have access to some...
Real-Life Confessional Boards Are Just As Awkward and Gross As Reddit
Walking through an urban college campus can be an extremely claustrophobic experience. With ever-increasing enrollment are one factor, there are the young and eagerly participatory students, destined to have you join a club or support a cause. "Buy a...
Those Craigslist Drug Dealers Should Have Used the Dark Web
Plenty of people have used Craigslist to hunt down and entrust perfectly amicable roommates (check), to sell cars that were worth less than the work they needed (check), to buy $2 seats to Mets games (check, Shea days), and to trade a bunch of other...
Occupy's One-Time Internet Is In A Showdown With Google in Kansas City
The last time we heard from Isaac Wilder, co-founder of the "Free Network Foundation":http://thefnf.org/, he was getting the hell out of New York City. We first met Wilder, whose peer-to-peer, wifi-hotspot driven communications initiative took front...
Motherboard TV Preview: Drone On
They are overhead, far way, buzzing in the distance, doing their thing. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are "cruising over Benghazi":http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/14/us-protests-libya-airport-idUSBRE88D0PJ20120914 in the wake of attack on the...
America's Border-Industrial Complex Can't Get Its Virtual Fences in a Row
Border security will never die. Federal budgets and immigration waves may both be on the wane, but hey, no matter. The U.S-Mexico border-industrial complex continues booming apace, with some even saying there's no end in sight in pushing to build up a...
Booming Chemical Production In Developing Countries Is Killing the World's Poor
Long the bane of poor, misunderstood New Jersey, the chemical industry is increasingly shifting production to developing countries, where production costs are lower. Doing dirty business in the developing world also has the added benefit of fewer...
Apple Will Never Stop These Copycat iPhones
Apple's victory against alleged patent infringer Samsung may help keep Steve Jobs' vicious vision inside Apple, but keeping its treasure hidden away will only work for Apple as long as consumers put a premium on its designs. As things stand, Apple is...
Is Mexico's Hidden Spy Center A Complete Bust?
Nobody has the slightest idea who (what?) has been busy "funneling $350 million worth of whiz-bang drug-bust border spy tech":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/7/nobody-s-sure-who-s-supplying-mexico-with-350-million-worth-of-border-spy-tech to the...
Indiana Drones: Piloting the New Robot Archaeology Over Peruvian Ruins
It may not crack whips and fight Nazis, at least not yet. But it still sounds pretty badass: An interdisciplinary research team out of Vanderbilt University is using a semi-autonomous SUAVe - their very own micro Indiana Drone (sorry) - to map the...
Flying Corpses and Buried Fiber Optics: Two Beautifully Similar Paths
Maybe you've seen this photo that's been spinning around the Internet for a few years purporting to show the uncanny similarity between individual mouse-brain neurons and a model image of the universe. Here it is: !{width:584px}http://www.viceland...