Well done! What a cool project and impressive write up. As KYC and Age Verification laws continue to gain steam, efforts like this will safeguard humanity's rights to freedom of speech and association.
What follows is not a critique of the author, for he or she is likely immersed in the same "banned books" media psyop as other Western News Consoomers.
As of this reply, the "banned" books in question [0] are:
Jack_London_-_Call_of_the_Wild.epub
Mark_Twain_-_Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn.epub
Mark_Twain_-_The_Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer.epub
Women_in_Love_-_D_H_Lawrence.epub
These books are all available on Amazon for under $10. Further, they are often assigned reading in high school or university literature classes.
A thought experiment by comparison: what if the collection consisted of the following?
- The Camp of the Saints
- Culture of Critique
- The Turner Diaries
Until a recent reprint of the first title (which thanks to The Streisand Effect was one of the top sellers on Amazon), these were all almost impossible to find and / or prohibitively expensive. Note that I don't necessarily agree with the subject matter of these titles, just pointing out collective blindspots so we the people can avoid actual Bans in the not too distant future.
0:
https://codeberg.org/rickoooooo/BannedBookLibrary/src/branch...
Thank you for this!
It's been a while since I used the github gist 'download zip' functionality. Quite handy.
Has anyone heard of similar work done with smart light bulbs but for Meshtastic nodes?
This project and especially one of the closing notes[1] reminds me of a more mature DIY project to make a mesh node using a simple solar lamp[2]. I love the creativity on display here and I especially appreciate all the links to the other blogs and sites that helped you along the way.
1: > I was talking with a friend about this idea and the storage limitation and he thought it would be cool to have these devices form a mesh network
2: https://meshtastic.org/docs/community/enclosures/rak/harbor-...
Years ago there was PirateBox: flash a small Wifi access point with a custom firmware that's a webserver that hosts a forum/filehost. Their website is dead, but here's a mod of the project; https://www.jasongriffey.net/librarybox/
Although, I dread to think what sort of files one would get when user uploads are allowed.
Nice, but:
"Since the device is a light bulb, it would be difficult to detect and likely to go unnoticed."
I doubt it would be any harder to shut down than any other public-access WiFi device, just a bit of experimentation with turning off power / devices would find it.
You people never disapoint... Putting a web server in a light bulb, I mean who the hell even thinks of that?!
oh this is awesome, i've always thought it could be cool to leave always connect hubs around town. ESP32's would be to awkward but a bunch of lightbulbs would blend right in!
Reads like you had fun, keep up the hacking!
P.S main -> mail I think?
sorry specifically this line
> The bulbs showed up in the main a few days later
I'm surprised there are banned books with 1st amendment exists in America? I'm curious as to what these are. I think its rather silly that books can be banned.
You would be correct there are no "banned books" in America.
When people say "banned book" they mean that a certain level of government such as a school board or municipality has "banned" them from being in a public (often school) library.
But the headline "In [state I disagree with] they are banning books that have [ideas I agree with]" makes a lot more headlines and clicks.
Then people run with the phrase "banned books" to make things sound worse than they are.
Really cool project!
I can't wait until it's formalized enough that I can just buy a $20 light bulb, update it wirelessly somehow, and then have my own little "light bulb library" server.
I think calling them "banned" is so disingenuous. There are actual banned books that are illegal to own in the United States. None of these "banned books" come anywhere close to meeting that criteria.
Very cool project nonetheless!
Actual banned books that are illegal to own? Such as?
Zero books are banned by name in the USA. Certain content is: Classified documents (although this is just illegal to share as the one with the original clearance, not to publish/read/possess after), child abuse material, and copyright violations all come to mind.
The majority of "banned books" are books that a random school district/religious school in a conservative part of the country elected not to include in their library at some point. Many of them are required reading in many other school districts and some of the most well known books of the 20th century.
The closer-to-banned ones are generally not included on banned-book-reading-lists and are banned on major retail platforms and long out of print and tend to be racist and/or genuinely subversive to liberal democratic principles. Most of these tend to be some of the most-downloaded-books-on-the-internet, and are also in no way illegal to own in the US - though possession of many is illegal in much of the EU.
An interesting case is United States vs Progressive inc [0] in which the US dropped a lawsuit to prevent a magazine from publishing a how-to guide on building an H bomb and Defense Distributed vs United States Department of State [1] in which the US federal government settled and allowed for the publishing of 3d printed gun files online, previously prevented under arms exports claims.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Progressive,_....
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Distributed_v._United_...
There are other countries outside of United States. And the book curation is up to the user.
It is not disingenuous, maybe a little loose on the 'meaning', but your definition is rather narrow. The Color Purple has been challenged many times in order to be removed from public library circulation and public school curriculums. Annie on my Mind was banned from the Kansas Public School system and subject to book burnings at the federal courthouse. The removal of the book (ban?) was overturned by the court. There are many similar examples of this on banned book lists. Colloquially, the term 'banned' is used often to encompass books that are actually banned, challenged, or illegally removed from public spaces due to a group actively censoring literature for various reasons. I think that general use is fine rather than being pedantic about it considering the social and intellectual costs involved. To call a book that is removed from circulation illegally not banned because there is no law banning it is foolish, since that is a reoccurring tactic among groups applying censorship on communities.