ReHacked vol. 311: Josephine Cochrane - The forgotten story of the woman who invented the dishwasher, The history of San Francisco's most unforgettable ad and more
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The forgotten story of the woman who invented the dishwasher | Popular Science #history #engineering #longread
Gilded Age socialite Josephine Cochrane transformed the way we clean dishes.
For six months in 1893, Chicago was abuzz. More than 27 million people flocked to the fast-growing metropolis for the event of the century: the World’s Columbian Exposition, aka the World’s Fair. Perhaps the fair’s most pioneering display was found in Machinery Hall, showcasing American inventions like the cotton gin, phonograph, and telegraph. But a more recent innovation was causing an even bigger stir: the Garis-Cochran Dishwashing Machine, the only device in the massive hall invented by a woman. Over 200 dirty dishes could be loaded into the machine’s dish racks, which were then transferred inside a box surrounded by pulleys and gears. Two minutes later, the dishes would emerge sparkling clean. The contraption wasn’t just a display piece either: The fair’s many restaurants used it to clean tens of thousands of dishes each day.
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Our interfaces have lost their senses #ui #ux
Think about how you experience the world - you touch, you hear, you move.
Tesla Autopilot drives into Wile E Coyote fake road wall in camera vs lidar test | Electrek #automotive #safety
Tesla Autopilot drove into Wile E. Coyote-style fake road wall in the middle of the road in a camera versus lidar test.
While most companies developing self-driving technologies have been using a mix of sensors (cameras, radar, lidar, and ultrasonic), Tesla insists on only using cameras.
Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28 - Ars Technica #privacy
Amazon is killing a privacy feature to bolster Alexa+, the new subscription assistant.
Amateur Telescope Making Main Page #astronomy #diy
... today the "average workman" can afford to buy an already made telescope and Dobsonian mountings are very popular. Much is also unchanged - mirror grinding techniques are very similar to those written up by Porter and Ingalls in the 20´s and 30´s. Many amateur astronomers still choose to fabricate their own instruments, for the pride of accomplishment, the gaining of knowledge and the insurance of quality. Telescope making is at the heart of the Springfield Telescope Makers - after all it is two thirds of our club's name - and on these pages we hope to show you that you too can make your own telescope - and it can be an excellent performer!
Bluesky is weighing a proposal that gives users consent over how their data is used for AI | TechCrunch #ai #copyrights #privacy
Speaking at SXSW, Graber explained that the company has engaged with partners to develop a framework for user consent over how they would want their data to be used — or not used — for generative AI.
“We really believe in user choice,” Graber said, saying that users would be able to specify how they want their Bluesky content to be used.
French publishers and authors sue Meta over copyright works used in AI training | AP News #ai #copyrights
French publishers and authors said Wednesday they’re taking Meta to court, accusing the social media company of using their works without permission to train its artificial intelligence model.
Three trade groups said they were launching legal action against Meta in a Paris court over what they said was the company’s “massive use of copyrighted works without authorization” to train its generative AI model.
The National Publishing Union, which represents book publishers, has noted that “numerous works” from its members are turning up in Meta’s data pool, the group’s president, Vincent Montagne, said in a joint statement.
Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook #internet #bigcorp #censorship
Meta has notched an early victory in its attempt to halt a surprise tell-all memoir from a former policy executive turned whistleblower. An arbitrator has sided with the social media company, saying that the book’s author should stop selling and publicizing the book, which went on sale earlier this week.
The drama stems from Careless People, a new book by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy official at Facebook who Meta says was fired in 2017. Described by its publisher as an “explosive insider account,” Wynn-Williams reveals some new details about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to bring Facebook to China a decade ago. She also alleges that Meta's current policy chief, Joel Kaplan, acted inappropriately, and reveals embarrassing details about Zuckerberg’s awkward encounters with world leaders.
Pro Memoria: Mark Klein, AT&T Whistleblower Who Revealed NSA Mass Spying | Electronic Frontier Foundation #promemoria
When the New York Times reported in late 2005 that the NSA was engaging in spying inside the U.S., Mark realized that he had witnessed how it was happening. He also realized that the President was not telling Americans the truth about the program. And, though newly retired, he knew that he had to do something. He showed up at EFF’s front door in early 2006 with a simple question: “Do you folks care about privacy?”
We did. And what Mark told us changed everything. Through his work, Mark had learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) had installed a secret, secure room at AT&T’s central office in San Francisco, called Room 641A. Mark was assigned to connect circuits carrying Internet data to optical “splitters” that sat just outside of the secret NSA room but were hardwired into it. Those splitters—as well as similar ones in cities around the U.S.—made a copy of all data going through those circuits and delivered it into the secret room.
Automation, surveillance strain workers in Bangladesh’s factories - Rest of World #economy
- Automation in Dhaka’s garment factories is leading to job cuts, especially for women.
- Smart surveillance devices monitor workers as factories struggle to compete globally.
- Brands are “pleased” by smart factories that produce efficiently and quickly.
Music labels will regret coming for the Internet Archive, sound historian says - Ars Technica #copyrights
To Seubert and IA fans, there seems to be little evidence that the Great 78 Project is meaningfully diverting streams from labels' preferred platforms. Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" is perhaps the most heavily streamed song in the case, with nearly 550 million streams on Spotify compared to about 15,000 views on the Great 78 Project. Most of the other songs at issue were viewed at most "hundreds of times" on IA, music labels' complaint said.
"The Internet Archive is not hurting the revenue of the recording industry at all," Seubert suggested, while noting that his opinions don't "mean squat" since he's not a lawyer. "It has no impact on their revenue." Instead, he suspects that labels' lawsuit is "somehow vindictive," because the labels perhaps "don't like the Internet Archive's way of pushing the envelope on copyright and fair use."
Mapped: The Most Walkable Cities in the World - Visual Capitalist #urbanism
#infographics
Among the 50 most walkable cities in the World, 45 of them are located in Europe.
'It was chaos': The history of San Francisco's most unforgettable ad #media #history #longread
Although San Francisco has been the setting for plenty of cinematic chase scenes, there had never been any quite like this. Filmed as a British commercial for Sony Bravia TV sets, 250,000 bouncy balls were launched down San Francisco hills in one of the most surreal weeks in the city’s history, resulting in a short film that swept the advertising awards circuit and racked up a cumulative 5 million YouTube views.
You’d think such a spectacle would lean heavily on computer-generated imagery and post-production magic, but after the first ball drop on Filbert Street, the result looked so spectacular that Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig sent the special effects team back to the UK.
“No, we actually did everything in camera,” Fuglsig told SFGATE. “Of course the frog was rigged, but the frog is real.”
Everything in the final cut was shot in-camera, down to that slow-motion frog jump set piece after 1:40, which was staged by production designer Bret Lama by placing a plug in the drainpipe to keep the frog in place until the perfect moment. Then location scout Patrick Ranahan’s son dropped a handful of balls into the pipe from a rooftop as a storm of colorful spheres rushed past. He has kept some of the balls to this day.
The Revolutionary Evolution Of The Camera And Photography #photography #technology #history #longread
The only difference between a camera obscura and a pinhole camera is that a camera obscura uses a lens, while a pinhole camera is a similar device, but with an open hole. This technology picked up steam through the 17th and 18th centuries when artists used these devices to help project drawings they could then trace. The only issue with this system is that, clearly, aside from tracing, there was no way to preserve the images.
That's where the next step on the road to the first photographic camera comes into play.
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