

Anonymous Sharing Project Cements USB Drives Into Random New York City Walls - paulnelligan
http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/11/dead-drops/

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phreeza
Some previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1851088>

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paulnelligan
oops, sorry ...

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tjarratt
This seems like a good way to spread some viruses around via usb autoplay.

Seriously, I can't see this becoming a huge hit, if you need to walk to a
physical location to get a file (what if someone has already deleted it, or
there's a queue?), to say nothing of the difficulty of holding a laptop steady
at chest level while connected to a usb drive embedded in a wall.

Is there more to this than a half baked idea at taking a virtual process (file
sharing) and taking it into the real world? Is it more convenient? What value
does having an anonymous drop spot have that bittorrent, or megaupload does
not?

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aperiodic
The aim is not practicality. It seems to me that the artist's hope is that
this will function as a way of connecting people in a specific geographic
region. Unlike bittorrent, there's a nontrivial chance that you could run
into/meet up with someone whose files you found on these dead drops. The
anonymity, combined with the fact that there's going to be at most a couple
thousand people using any one dead drop, makes it less intimidating to share
things like music, writing, or visual art. To top it off, there's a pretty
good chance that it'll be seen by a couple hundred people with more patience
and vested interest than the average internet reader.

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dotBen
For me this story has all the ingredients for a great 'mainstream news' piece
without having any real viability as an actual thing anyone would use.

It's a cute idea, but it's success/interest is a media concoction and nothing
more.

