summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/ideas/half-baked.page
blob: ad522e5c35051735e03d6473a3d017894ce14057 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132

Half Baked Ideas
===================

The Simulacra-cycle
-------------------------
Bicycling with a light-weight (and functional!) helmet embedded with with 360
fisheye camera coverage. Also collect rotation/acceleration data and
post-process out movements to give a stable 360 video image which can be played
back with 3D goggles (or a basic computer/tablet interface?).

Enhanced version would also record bike vibrations, pedal turns, audio, and
handlebar positions, and this could be played back on an artificial bike.

Solar Autonoma
-----------------
An audio "artifact": a CD jewel case with a photovoltaic panel powering a
generative digital/analog electronic music box which outputs hundreds of years
worth of non-repeating audio to an 1/8" headphone jack.

One crude output algorithm could be the raw position of a turning machine
(probably a busy beaver) tape position over time. Another is interpreting a
meta-stable cellular autonoma's cells as notes; perhaps the combination of
these two ideas? 

Should be engineered to last at least a few decades without repairs, which
means compensating for PV cell degredation. 

Techno-cyption
----------------
Robustly encode arbirary data into techno, similar to image-based stenography
techniques. Should be able to recover the data from audio recorded live at a
concert or rave; perhaps in real-time?

Leads to "verboden" music which is illegal to broadcast and listen to?

Robotic Mouse Cursor
-----------------------
An omni-drive robot encased in a mouse, controlled by a touchstick or touchpad.
Should translate very quickly, so the user feels like they are "mousing" and
selecting over the floor. 

"Nest for Lighting"
---------------------
Auto-dimming lights to react to ambient light levels. Could also do the
opposite and stochastically vary the light level to give cloud-like effect in
window-less rooms. 

Sciduino
----------
Open Hardware LabJack competitor. Compatible with wiring, Lua scripting, full
free GCC toolchain. Support/drivers for Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, UNIX /dev
points, EPICS, ROOT, ROS, RTEMS. "Industrial Quality" for $80-100, "Commercial
Quality" $50. Characterized and well-documented analog interfaces.

General Purpose Laptop CardBus FPGA Interface
-----------------------------------------------
Computational acceleration (compression, codecs, crypto, real-time
modeling/simulation), external digital interfacing (logic analyzer, USB
debugging, HDMI, networking, etc), host debugging (watchdog, timing, console
interface, bus sniffing, peripheral emulation, kernel unit tests). High-density
pins to many different cable types (extra $$$) with logic-level shifters:
"universal digital I/O". $100.

Interforum
-------------

* similar to livejournal, reddit, slashdot
* federated accounts (user@domain.tld) with petnames via contact list
* RSS feeds of new topics started by individuals or for groups
* no concept of "friending" built in, but do have ACL (can view, can comment)
    based on contacts list
* head of thread can be a canonical URI/URL of external content
* abuse/downvote gets reported to thread-hosting domain
* by default all user content is crypto-signed by default
* policy is left to domain servers: moderation of new messages, retainment
    length, max number of users in a given topic, etc

* store-and-forward?
* primary anti-spam: only display stuff signed by people in contact lists
* need a URI scheme for discussion threads
* oauth? kerberos-like?
* domain keys used to vouch for messages and users
* integrated or parallel keyserver stuff?
* cross-domain karma and spamlist sharing?
* built-in GPG encryption, keyring
* notification via XMPP?
* crypto can happen either on server or by the client?
* "profiles" are a seperate issue (webfinger?)
* status updates could go through this, or XMPP or status.net?
* TODO: salmon?

* would need to specify:
*   storyboard of how a post/conversation would go
*   message formats
*   protocols between user-server and server-server
*   ascillary technologies: authentication, notification, encryption, contact
        management
*   interop: HTTP website

Improved Email
-----------------

* "reliable asynchronous user-specific messaging"
* same store-and-forward paradigm; same IMAP-like message archive paradigm
* every core message signed by user and domain; unsigned messages get dropped
* core message headers can be pseudo-shadowed/re-written by extention headers
* user signing can be delegated to domain
* domain maintains public keyserver for all hosted users
* forwarded messages (mailing lists) signed by forwarding domain
* users or domains can brand a user or domain as spam/abusive
* domains maintain a web of trust/karma using announcements, refuse messages
    from blacklisted users/domains
* special abuse@, admin@ "out of band" addresses for resolving blocklist
    issues, not blocked except for severe cases
* attachments signed seperately, referenced by core message
* standardize (via defaults) on compressed UTF-8 message body
    optional safe-subset of HTML
* hook into system-wide cacert/web-of-trust; individual user agents can specify
    fallback policy

Small Electronics Projects
------------------------------

Wireless "Knob": probably bluetooth; a much cheaper clone of the Griffin
PowerMate Bluetooth knob. 3D printed or hand-made case. USB chargable. Could be
encrypted with a USB dongle, or just encrypted in general.

Tiny wireless analog I/O jacks. For sensors; USB charging. I guess this is
pretty much every IoT devkit ever, but lab-oriented (raw voltages/currents,
characterized and buffered I/O).