a repost.
this document will also be available at
http://faustsstudy.blogspot.com/2013/06/sudoroom-perimeter-security.html
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*An Engineer's Diuers Obseruations Concernynge *
*Security *
*Made After Some Contemplation Of** *
*SudoRoom*
*Campus, Disposition, Maintenance, &c,*
*That Are Deserving*
*Of A Most Full *
*&*
*Rapt *
*Attention*
❝
*Crime prevention through environmental …
[View More]design*
*
(CPTED) is a multi-disciplinary approach to deterring criminal behavior
through environmental design. CPTED strategies rely upon the ability to
influence offender decisions that precede criminal acts. As of 2012, most
implementations of CPTED occur solely within the built environment.
Changing the areas we reside in to deter criminals from committing acts in
our communities is the main goal of CPTED. With urban design and the
planning that goes into the creation of new and reformation of older
communities, citizens in these neighborhoods and places of business can
feel safer at all hours.❞ [Read
more<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_environmental_design>
at Wikipedia]
*
*(1)*
*The Overhead Light In The Entryway*
The Landlord MUST replace this light and make sure that its operational.
There should be no hesitation: you ask, he replaces. It should have been
done yesterday.
*(2)*
*The Trees Across The Street*
Get the City of Oakland to trim back the trees (hopefully) just around the
street-lamps across the street. There are three lights up on the building
across the street, meant to light the street: it could be much better
lit. See the double-plus-good discussion on Anti-Blight, below.
*(3)*
*The Parking Deck Next Door*
The building owner may be the owner of the parking deck. If he does,
getting the lights that are busted fixed is as easy as it was in number
(1). He is required to do it. And he should know this, if he has owned
property for more than a month. Because he should know first or secondhand
that if he does not fix it there is a damn good possibility (based on
precedent in case law) that he will be financially liable for damages
resultant from any further criminal activity.
*if he’s not the same owner, then it’s a research question whether a
property owner owes a duty of care to next door neighbors. I guess that
would be why there are blight laws, huh?*
*which means, if he does nothing, SRers may have a case against him for
what has already occurred (?).*
If it’s things like lights in the alley then there are 10 lights. There
were 7 that were spaced at regular intervals as you go down the alley,
mounted 15- 20 feet up on the wall of the parking deck. If they were there
they would be shining light down into that darkness from where they are no
longer mounted about 20 feet up. Only one non-functional one remains. Once
you see it you’ll be able to see where the others were.
Then there are the three lights whose bulbs are burnt out where the bank
drive thru is (was?) down at the other end of the alley.
*(4)*
*The Intersection Of 22nd & Broadway*
Street-lamps each have two super bright bulbs by means of which they light
up the night. This in turn enables people to see other people at a greater
distance than they would otherwise, and avoid interaction if that is
prudent.
At the intersection of 22nd & Broadway one of the streetlight's bulbs is
out. On the SR side of the street. This does in fact make things more
dangerous.
The city has to replace it, and pronto -- same deal -- we need to bug the
fuck out of them until they do it.
*Conclusion*
Three different departments and one council-person; one or two building
owners.
Call them once a day until its done.
it is a principle of sound design that good lighting is essential to a
secure building. building codes are written stemming from, and
reinforcing, this. There are, consequently, social, political, and legal
mechanisms whereby certain actions that prevent and/or counteract blight
can be taken. The point is to do so with the least amount of delay or
opportunity for that action to devolve into inaction, which leads to more
blight, and directly and indirectly may result in harm to people or
property. Which we do not want. Which is the point.
*Further Instruction*
Is it a part of fire code? The fire department requires trees be trimmed
back so that people will not be able to break into other people's houses
without being seen...
*A Note Concerning Insistent Constituents*
Without delving into the ethical underpinnings, that ism, without agreeing
or disagreeing with this social principle, one can see that it is
empirically true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Applying this to
the situation at hand, the axiom becomes: if you keep bugging them, they
will do it.
SR has a landlord, who may or may not be the building owner. It also has a
council-person, and a person who runs the department responsible for the
city's control of urban blight, and a person who runs the department
responsible for the city's trimming of trees. A month of hearing from
someone every daywill probably motivate the necessary action. They are
limited in the resources that they have, including attention. A kindly
daily reminder/report of status will help focus that attention.
as far as organizing the once a day calling
*it’s important to actually reach them*
*[what if you can’t? –ed] [i would be willing to go in person –ed] *
come up with talking points or even specific phrases,
( like republicans do) such as “constituent service”
remind them that there have been “five events in the past month *[accuracy
check, please –ed] *requiring police intervention at SR”* [as i/we
understand it -- i do not have all the details myself –ed]*
*- the pepper spraying incident *
*- the car break-in*
*- the stolen ipad*
*- the being held up at gunpoint*
*- the guy messing with the keypad trying to get in*
maybe give a status report such as X,Y and Z await action; A is scheduled
for <day>,<date>; B is underway; C has been promised, but no date has been
scheduled/estimated/committed to
* a secondhand bit of info, FWIW: where SR is, at the edge of Koreatown
Northgate, or KoNo, there are no beat cops because supposedly Northgate has
the lowest incidence of violent crime -- but this is only because the city
does not count armed robbery as a violent crime. KoNo has the highest
incidence of armed robbery.*
*[fontsize emphasis mine –ed]*
*Notes On Finding Property Owners*
Get APN
zoom in on map (assessors map at http://www.acgov.org/assessor/maps2.htm)
to get the parcel # (APN) then you can get more details here also
take APN and/or other details and feed them in to http://rechart1.acgov.org
I forgotten the exact method of feeding the APN into the link above to
find the current owner, mainly because I can’t remember right now what the
right combo of leading, trailing, and extra middle zeros to trim is, but
we hack right? 3 quick ideas
*1. Brute force – *
try the different combinations of zeroes etc
*2. Use knowledge that you have of a property already – *
and feed it in to retrieve that property’s info to backward engineer the
right format
*3. Go to courthouse – *
and look on their property info computers. They rarely have a queue and
seem to be available for just this kind of use by the public. Unrestricted
access 8:30-2:30 or 4 except for passage through the courthouse entrance:
metal-detector for your person and the x-ray machine for your effects.
*[following are the results of the Speaker's engaging in the above research
technique –ed]*
Parking deck
8-648-16-3
[Owned by “exempt public agency” per Assessor’s,
so very likely city of Oakland]
Parcel of SR building
8-648-1
Parcel facing Broadway at other end of block from SR
8-648-18
Middle of block and alley next to SR building
8-648-17
Having found out that the City of Oakland owns the parking deck next door,
and they’re responsible for its blight makes me both more and less
optimistic about whether they alone will fix the blight depending on my
estimation of their willingness to fix their own problems. OTOH, since they
are responsible to the citizenry in general, and they have geographic
knowledge of problems via mapping crime and they are the landlords of the
blighted property they arguably already have the kind of legal liability
for what has happened recently, the kind that was mentioned above only in
prospect for SR’s landlord. As I understand it, it’s established law that
if a government is performing a function that isn’t unique to government
(the set of which seems to be shrinking), that it has no sovereign immunity
for doing it poorly.
Please forgive the upcoming caps: WARNING: GO TO AN ACTUAL LAWYER IF YOU
WANT A LEGAL OPINION RENDITIONED RENDERED. I only offer my opinion which is
not withheld pending ransom retainer. (Sorry for the caps –CYA.)
The point is court action possibly offers another stick (but it is a blunt
instrument). A carrot might be to offer to help correct the situation, but
that would be poisonous to relations with city unions, probably, even if a
qualified person could be fielded. The greater point you already know well
and practice: to think (sideways or whatever direction) to the extent you
believe the issues are salient. Hope my modest thought offering is helpful.
*see also wikipedia:*
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_prevention_through_environmental_design*
*and its reading list:*
• International CPTED Association
• European Designing Out Crime Association
• Stichting Veilig Ontwerp en Beheer (the Netherlands)
• California Designing Out Crime Association
• Crime prevention and the built environment.
• Washington State University CPTED Annotated Bibliography. Url last
accessed May 6, 2006.
• Oscar Newman, *Creating Defensible Space* (pdf) (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development
and Research, 1996). Url last accessed May 6, 2006.
• CPTED LinkedIn Discussion Group
• SmartCode Module on CPTED
• Secured by Design (UK)
*N.B.: These are the near verbatim notes I took of an impromptu talk. They
have been reviewed and edited by both the Scribe and the Speaker, & unless
bracketed & followed by attribution, (as in "[...in respect of
actionability alone these ideas are robust indeed. –ed.]") represent the
ideas mostly in the exact words of the Speaker.*
*
*
--
*Be seeing you.*
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let's all check out the calendar and ensure that our recurring events are
up to date: http://sudoroom.org/calendar/
if you are the host of a regular event, please ensure that the calendar
entry for your event is up to date. if not, please edit and/or remove it.
it's very sad when people come to events where the organizer is not
present. people who have this experience often don't return to the space.
we've had new people come for events listed on the calendar where the
organizer didn't show up …
[View More]multiple times this week (at least while i was
here), and it made me sad to see them sad and it made me sad to have to say
i didn't know why there was no one facilitating the event.
additionally, if you have to cancel or can't make it to an event, please
email the list (it's ok if it's last minute!), and we can let any
participants know that the event was cancelled at the last minute. even
this is better than having no one show up with no explanation.
you hold in your hands the hearts of the gentle participants of your
events. be respectful of them! :D
- marina
ps - if you need to edit/delete an event you host but don't know how or
don't have access to the wordpress site, please let me know and i will be
happy to help you.
[View Less]
hi everyone,
james from the school factory has offered to have a skype call with us to
talk more about fiscal sponsorship. if you'd be interested in being on a
call with him, please message me offlist so that we can schedule something
that works for everyone.
- marina
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Carlson <j(a)bucketworks.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: fiscal sponsorship status for lolspace?
To: Praveen Sinha <dmhomee(a)gmail.com>
Cc: …
[View More]Marina Kukso <marina.kukso(a)gmail.com>, James Carlson <j(a)bucketworks.org>,
Jen-Mei Wu <veganjenny(a)gmail.com>
Marina, we're still helping new spaces. Does Sudoroom need fiscal
sponsorship? I'm happy to connect on this. Want to grab a slice of time to
connect using http://doodle.com/jamescarlson and we can talk through the
deets?
Cheerfully,
James Carlson
414-215-0215
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:58 AM, Praveen Sinha <dmhomee(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Yo Marina,
>
> We are fiscally sponsored by school factory (in fact I had to miss a
> meeting with them tonight). In so far as taking on new people, I hope they
> are! I have cc'ed the amazing James Carlson who has been working with us
> and I can't say enough good things about. He should be able to let you
> know.
>
> James: Marina is one of the core organizers of Sudoroom, a space in
> downtown oakland. We work with them a lot!
>
> Talk to you guys soon!
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 9:35 PM, Marina Kukso <marina.kukso(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> hey both,
>>
>> we're having a discussion about fiscal sponsorship/nonprofit status at
>> sudo right now and we realized that we weren't sure about lol's current
>> status. are you guys still fiscally sponsored by school factory? (our
>> people had some confusion about whether school factory was still taking on
>> new people).
>>
>> - marina
>>
>
>
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hi everyone,
we have so many computers, but also not enough workstations (most notably,
the computer that was part of the 3D printing station has been fried :C).
i'm afraid that i'm ignorant of which computers in the closet and around
the space are functional (a few are labeled, but most of them aren't).
hilary and i had the pleasure of finding a working computer this weekend,
and we are interested in finding more.
if any of you know which computers are functional and which aren't, we
would …
[View More]love to do an inventory with you.
if no one quite has a handle on this info, would folks be interested in
doing an inventory day? inventory + install day part 2?
- marina
ps - if you'd like to participate in an inventory + install day, please let
us know what date(s)/time(s) would be good for you.
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Sudoers,
Please add to tomorrow's agenda here:
https://pad.riseup.net/p/sudoroommeeting
Also a reminder that we will be paying July rent by the end of this week,
so please bring a check or cash to the meeting, or donate online via the
WePay!
Summer is an especially tough time for hackerspace sustainability, so
anything extra you can pitch in is super appreciated.
Cheers,
Jenny
http://jennyryan.nethttp://thepyre.orghttp://thevirtualcampfire.orghttp://technomadic.tumblr.com
`~`~`~`~`~`…
[View More]~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
"Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories."
-Laurie Anderson
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
-Hannah Arendt
"To define is to kill. To suggest is to create."
-Stéphane Mallarmé
~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
[View Less]
I have a no-longer-working Airport Express and an Apple Bluetooth keyboard (with battery corrosion) if anyone wants them to try to fix/spare parts. (Or if someone wants to show me how to fix them!)
Ping me off-list.
-C
--
Cyrus Farivar
"suh-ROOS FAR-ih-var"
Journalist and radio producer | cyrusfarivar.com (http://cyrusfarivar.com)
Author, "The Internet of Elsewhere" | internetofelsewhere.com (http://internetofelsewhere.com)
US: +1 510 394 5485 (m) | Twitter/Skype: cfarivar
"Being a good …
[View More]writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet."
cfarivar(a)cfarivar.org (mailto:cfarivar@cfarivar.org)
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Folks from AORTA - http://aortacollective.org - gave a great talk on
conflict resolution at Allied Media Conference this past weekend. They
sent along the template for their Conflict Resolution Profile Worksheet
which could be useful for all kinds of organizations/projects dealing w/
conflict.
The idea is that everyone fills out a form listing their communication
preferences before engaging in conflict resolution, so everyone has an idea
of what works and what doesn't work for each person. If …
[View More]communication
preferences clash, hopefully folks can find a way to compromise - adjusting
their communication in a way that doesn't escalate things (but if there's a
big divide, that's a sign that mediation may be helpful).
--mark B.
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https://medium.com/the-web-we-make/1afe8b898455
The Web We Lost
Anil Dash in The Web We Make
6 min read
The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be.
So here's a few glimpses of a web that's …
[View More]mostly faded away:
Five years ago, most social photos were uploaded to Flickr, where they could be tagged by humans or even by apps and services, using machine tags. Images were easily discoverable on the public web using simple RSS feeds. And the photos people uploaded could easily be licensed under permissive licenses like those provided by Creative Commons, allowing remixing and reuse in all manner of creative ways by artists, businesses, and individuals.
A decade ago, Technorati let you search most of the social web in real-time (though the search tended to be awful slow in presenting results), with tags that worked as hashtags do on Twitter today. You could find the sites that had linked to your content with a simple search, and find out who was talking about a topic regardless of what tools or platforms they were using to publish their thoughts. At the time, this was so exciting that when Technorati failed to keep up with the growth of the blogosphere, people were so disappointed that even the usually-circumspect Jason Kottke flamed the site for letting him down. At the first blush of its early success, though, Technorati elicited effusive praise from the likes of John Gruber:
[Y]ou could, in theory, write software to examine the source code of a few hundred thousand weblogs, and create a database of the links between these weblogs. If your software was clever enough, it could refresh its information every few hours, adding new links to the database nearly in real time. This is, in fact, exactly what Dave Sifry has created with his amazing Technorati. At this writing, Technorati is watching over 375,000 weblogs, and has tracked over 38 million links. If you haven’t played with Technorati, you’re missing out.
Ten years ago, you could allow people to post links on your site, or to show a list of links which were driving inbound traffic to your site. Because Google hadn't yet broadly introduced AdWords and AdSense, links weren't about generating revenue, they were just a tool for expression or editorializing. The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse, by corrupting links.
In 2003, if you introduced a single-sign-in service that was run by a company, even if you documented the protocol and encouraged others to clone the service, you'd be described as introducing a tracking system worthy of the PATRIOT act. There was such distrust of consistent authentication services that even Microsoft had to give up on their attempts to create such a sign-in. Though their user experience was not as simple as today's ubiquitous ability to sign in with Facebook or Twitter, the TypeKey service introduced then had much more restrictive terms of service about sharing data. And almost every system which provided identity to users allowed for pseudonyms, respecting the need that people have to not always use their legal names.
In the early part of this century, if you made a service that let users create or share content, the expectation was that they could easily download a full-fidelity copy of their data, or import that data into other competitive services, with no restrictions. Vendors spent years working on interoperability around data exchange purely for the benefit of their users, despite theoretically lowering the barrier to entry for competitors.
In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company's site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.
Five years ago, if you wanted to show content from one site or app on your own site or app, you could use a simple, documented format to do so, without requiring a business-development deal or contractual agreement between the sites. Thus, user experiences weren't subject to the vagaries of the political battles between different companies, but instead were consistently based on the extensible architecture of the web itself.
A dozen years ago, when people wanted to support publishing tools that epitomized all of these traits, they'd crowd-fund the costs of the servers and technology needed to support them, even though things cost a lot more in that era before cloud computing and cheap bandwidth. Their peers in the technology world, though ostensibly competitors, would even contribute to those efforts.
This isn't our web today. We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich.
But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
When you see interesting data mash-ups today, they are often still using Flickr photos because Instagram's meager metadata sucks, and the app is only reluctantly on the web at all. We get excuses about why we can't search for old tweets or our own relevant Facebook content, though we got more comprehensive results from a Technorati search that was cobbled together on the feeble software platforms of its era. We get bullshit turf battles like Tumblr not being able to find your Twitter friends or Facebook not letting Instagram photos show up on Twitter because of giant companies pursuing their agendas instead of collaborating in a way that would serve users. And we get a generation of entrepreneurs encouraged to make more narrow-minded, web-hostile products like these because it continues to make a small number of wealthy people even more wealthy, instead of letting lots of people build innovative new opportunities for themselves on top of the web itself.
We'll fix these things; I don't worry about that. The technology industry, like all industries, follows cycles, and the pendulum is swinging back to the broad, empowering philosophies that underpinned the early social web. But we're going to face a big challenge with re-educating a billion people about what the web means, akin to the years we spent as everyone moved off of AOL a decade ago, teaching them that there was so much more to the experience of the Internet than what they know.
This isn't some standard polemic about "those stupid walled-garden networks are bad!" I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a lot of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more grave fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over users is the best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability of their networks.
The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the people creating the next generation of social applications to learn a little bit of history, to know your shit, whether that's about Twitter's business model or Google's social features or anything else. We have to know what's been tried and failed, what good ideas were simply ahead of their time, and what opportunities have been lost in the current generation of dominant social networks.
[Originally published December 2012.]
Anil Dash
I love NYC, tech & funk. You can see all the things I'm up to at http://anildash.com/ or reach me at anil(a)dashes.com or 646 833-8659.
---
Romy Ilano
romy(a)snowyla.com
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