Our Stellar Partnership Grant Program Application

Data Roads Foundation recently applied for the Stellar Partnership Grant  Program with the following project detail entries. Please let us know what you think about this project in the comments.

Briefly describe the proposal using 50 words or less

Nonprofit Co-Op Anchors offering transferrable Donation Promissory Notes (DPN) convertible to charitable class constituency Member Support Tokens (MST), limited Exchanges from eligible fiat (initially $USD only) and In-Kind Donations (IKD) to DPN, and accounting against constituent public ledger holdings for resource pool equity backed Mutual Credit (MC) exchanges between peers. Continue reading “Our Stellar Partnership Grant Program Application”

Should everyone wear camouflage burqas all the time, or just go out naked?

The short answer for your privacy: Yes!

The medium answer: If you care about your comprehensive privacy at all times, then yes you should wear a camouflage burqa all the time. If you don’t, then you might as well go out naked in public.

I hope you’re now curious enough to read the longer answer below.

Camouflage burqas block infrared drone vision.
These burqas camouflage the wearer from infrared drone detection. © 2013 Adam Harvey

Continue reading “Should everyone wear camouflage burqas all the time, or just go out naked?”

Communication Rights Illustrated: Pen Pals Past the Hill

A big reason the Data Roads Foundation needs to exist is that technology and enterprise need to implement and support basic human communication rights, with guidance from regular people. These rights are partially defined in the US Constitution, its First Amendment, Articles 12 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and Articles 17 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). These rights include individual freedom of expression (i.e. a right to public data), a right to privacy (i.e. personal financial and health communications), and a right to anonymity as protection from reprisal (i.e. unpopular public speech and whistleblowing).

These rights are such a fundamental basis of human law and governance that they override laws meant to protect against the harms caused by malicious communications, such as terrorist networks and personal threats. Just governments realize there are better ways to protect our fellow citizens and detect harms than to trample on individual freedoms — public anonymous speech reveals wrongs so they can be corrected, and trustworthy private exchanges deepen civil relationships. Denying these rights for illusory claims of “added security” just make everyone worse off. No government or representative has any monopoly on defining “right” or “wrong” for all humans in all times, so these communication rights are necessary to discuss and refine these definitions among equal peers.

Continue reading “Communication Rights Illustrated: Pen Pals Past the Hill”

Power over DataRoads: Energy competition through microgrids.

Recent developments in small renewable power sources (like solar and small wind), as well as infrastructure destruction during recent tragedies (like Hurricane Katrina), have led some brilliant minds to rethinking the way we distribute and manufacture electrical power. Many of these studies all lead to the same conclusion: data networks allow us to carry enough information about diverse power sources and uses, so that they can be efficiently coordinated at small scale, over a simple grid of neighbor-to-neighbor transmission lines. These small power grids are generally called microgrids. These “smart power” grid networks function at fairly low data bandwidth, so smart grids can be built on top of (or to extend) normal network data lines.

Continue reading “Power over DataRoads: Energy competition through microgrids.”

The Internet as an appliance

Where does your hot water come from?

Most of us have a water heater of some form in the building. The water heater combines cold water, electricity, and sometimes sunlight or gas to produce the hot water on-site. While utility services provide some of the elements needed to obtain the water and heat it, we could not efficiently get any hot water without using an on-site water heating appliance. Subscribing to a hot water delivery service would be very inefficient and expensive by comparison.

Continue reading “The Internet as an appliance”