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- Hacker News
- Nice, but:
"Since the device is a light bulb, it would be difficult to detect and likely to go unnoticed."
I doubt it would be any harder to shut down than any other public-access WiFi device, just a bit of experimentation with turning off power / devices would find it.
by incompatible - I'd be interested in the banned book list. A glance at the socials with the biggest one missing suggests there will be no interesting books on it. Just the ones you can find in "banned books" stands at mainstream bookstores. Absolute mediocrity of thought free of meaningful diversity.by unselect5917
- 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.by Dwedit
- I have seen these described as Pirate Boxes before, way back around 2012. The basic idea is a box that throws up a wifi network and web server letting people upload/download files to it, while remaining disconnected from the wider internet. A geographically limited digital sharing library.by Schlagbohrer
- A hidden “book server” like this could be set up in just about any electronic device with a sufficiently powerful microcontroller. But I think there is something delightfully poetic about using a source of light to spread suppressed knowledge.by rootbear
- Years ago there was PirateBox: flash a small Wifi access point with a custom firmware that's a webserver that hosts a forum/filehost. Their website is dead, but here's a mod of the project; https://www.jasongriffey.net/librarybox/
Although, I dread to think what sort of files one would get when user uploads are allowed.
by netsharc - “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 information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, Datalinks
Alpha Centauri pertinent as ever.
by N_Lens - 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 government censorship. Schools and libraries make age-appropriate selection decisions all the time. They don’t carry every book ever published, and not every objectionable book belongs in front of kids just because someone wants to call its removal a “ban.” A single school library deciding not to carry a book because they think it's inappropriate, but that same book being available at the local public library, every book store in town, the internet, etc is not the same as the soviet union literally banning the ownership of books.