

How to Make and Use a Transparency Grenade - tokenadult
http://transparencygrenade.com/

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zackzackzack
Honestly, if you bring this into a government area, then you will probably get
shot on sight if you are seen by security. To be safer and a little bit more
stealthy, maybe try disguising it as a soda can or a door stop.

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tb
It's an art piece, not a serious piece of espionage equipment, hence its form
reflects its (symbolic) function.

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iamdave
I don't think armed guards see the silhouette of a grenade, a device that can
maim, wound, injure or worse kill a number of people in the terms of
"espionage".

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indiecore
I think you've missed the point

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ShabbyDoo
I have wondered for some time what the effect would be of the following
transparency experiment:

With an experienced investigative journalist as a mentor, "deploy" a handful
of young journalists to report via a blog-esque medium on the politics of some
randomly chosen small city. What would happen if every police incident was
investigated to find out if the powerful were granted special treatment? If
every claim made in a city council meeting was verified? If every motive
behind every vote was examined? How about tracing down budget expenditures to
see who was scheming to defraud taxpayers? Would the city's citizens care
enough to even read the blog? Would this transparency change government for
the better? It certainly would give Americans a baseline for the level of
corruption and inefficiency in local governments.

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jdunck
The act of measuring would change the behavior. In this way, transparency
activism suffers the same phenomenon as security: doing the job right yields
an environment in which there is no apparent need for doing the job right.

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ShabbyDoo
Interesting point. I wonder what graph of oversight level vs. corruption level
looks like. I'm sure the point of diminishing returns occurs at only 1/10th a
dedicated journalist. However, the marginal societal value (cost of corruption
compared to cost of oversight) might continue to be positive for awhile as
investigators are added.

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seclorum
We need the ability to broadcast from our smartphones to be an intrinsic,
built-in feature. To that end, I am currently working on apps for iOS and
Android that will make it very, very easy for people to stream media in
realtime from wherever they are ..

This transparency grenade is definitely a step in the right direction towards
educating people _why_ we need such features in our smartphones. I commend the
artist for using the appropriate level of symbolism to communicate the dire
need for individual abilities such as this.

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furyg3
I wonder how hard it would be to set up a server running Skype, which just
auto-accepts incoming video calls and dumps them to YouTube...

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_delirium
Incidentally, the artist who made this (Julian Oliver) is part of a free
technology workshop series aimed at artists who don't necessarily have a
technical background, which may be interesting if you know any people in
Berlin meeting that description: <http://weise7.org/labor-berlin-8-workshops>

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burgerbrain
The creator, Julian Oliver, is also one of the guys responsible for the
"Newstweek" (<http://newstweek.com/overview>) device that was on hacker news
about a year ago.

Originally presented by a fake news article about one being discovered, it's a
pretty neat device. Basically just a plug computer that you hide near a public
AP which then mitm's all the AP's web traffic and according to a set of rules
rewrites news headlines.

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ComputerGuru
I will argue that there is no need for a 200 dollar Gumstix ARM Cortex A8 in
there. Not even close.

A 16-bit microcontroller (< 5 USD) would pull it off, but you'd need to custom
code most of the software to power that.

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derleth
> A 16-bit microcontroller (< 5 USD) would pull it off, but you'd need to
> custom code most of the software to power that.

So it's an engineering trade-off: You "don't need" something complex, not at
all, nope (but if you use the "simpler" solution, other parts become more
complex as a result).

I've noticed this multiple times before, and it annoys me: "Simpler" is not
always better; in fact, it isn't even always simpler!

I don't mean to jump on you in specific, but this idea does come up again and
again, often in places like Hacker News.

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ComputerGuru
I completely agree - except this is a hobby project, not something serious in
the first place. If you're hand-tooling the metal parts for the grenade, CAD
designing the parts, and machining them or 3D printing them, it would seem
that novelty is the factor.

If you can save 100-150 bucks while increasing the cool factor and having a
more fulfilling rewarding experience (like you said, this _is_ Hacker News,
after all), why not?

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cshesse
$150 does not seem worth whatever effort would be required to custom code most
of the software. Especially for a one-off art piece. I think the goal is to
make it functional and aesthetically pleasing, and that's what makes it a
fulfilling experience for the artist.

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siculars
I think we should deploy a few of these in the editorial meeting rooms of some
of the worlds top media conglomerates and news papers.

But in all seriousness, don't deploy these anywhere. You may get shot on
sight.

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mkramlich
Overall cool idea, and I respect anyone who makes such a thing from a craft
perspective. But the decision to make it look like a grenade was extremely
unwise and arguably dangerously stupid. Walk into a building with a large
number of people who don't know you, and the odds are one of them will see it
and freak out, leading to a police/security encounter or worse.

