nedkov

"Vangelis Vasilopoulos is the chief engineer for a company which builds swimming pools in the wealthy..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 04:54:14 -0400

“Vangelis Vasilopoulos is the chief engineer for a company which builds swimming pools in the wealthy northern suburbs of Athens, home to ship-owners and tycoons like Spyros Latsis, one of the richest men in the world, who hosts Prince Charles on his travels to Greece. Industrialist Theodore Angelopoulos and his wife Gianna, who led the organising committee for the Athens Olympic Games (only six years ago, when Greece was heralded a “little nation miracle”) are installed there too, as is Mr Papandreou himself.
Mr Vasilopoulos says his company has been “inundated with calls” from residents of such elite residential neighbourhoods as to how to camouflage their swimming pools. At first blush, the requests seem bizarre.
In fact, they stem from the revelation that the Greek finance ministry is using Google Earth software to track down the owners of the pools, which tax inspectors consider an indicator of wealth, and which have often been built illegally.
“There are therefore two reasons to hide one’s swimming pool,” said a pool-owner who confessed guilt on both counts and, not surprisingly, asked not to be named.
Fortunately for him, however, there is a ingenious solution.
“The formula is simple,” said Mr Vasilopoulos. “All you need is a green-coloured cover and then the pool cannot be spotted from above. But if the water is visible, or the netting or cover is blue, then you’ve had it”.”

- Greek Tax Avoidance 101: Cover Your Swimming Pool With A Tarp, Fool A Satellite | Zero Hedge (via new-aesthetic)
So what do they do with GE’s historical images?

"Instead, the app “seems to broaden who is engaged in civic action, not simply shift the channel of..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:07:30 -0400

“

Instead, the app “seems to broaden who is engaged in civic action, not simply shift the channel of their engagement.”

Just as crucially, Osgood says, “the nature of the mobile app seems to change, for some people, the feeling of the engagement. We’ve heard user feedback that calling a hotline ‘feels like making a complaint’; using Citizens Connect ‘feels like taking action.’”

”

- http://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/citizens-connected-245

"What I worry about are the de facto laws that are being coded in software without public scrutiny."

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:15:48 -0400

““What I worry about are the de facto laws that are being coded in software without public scrutiny.””

- http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/05/18/the-too-smart-city/q87J17qCLwrN90amZ5CoLI/story.html

"Yep. No one told me going into urban design that half my life was going to be designing parking..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:17:17 -0400

“Yep. No one told me going into urban design that half my life was going to be designing parking lots. This is why transit oriented development (where the parking mins are typically flipped to parking maximums) is a GREAT - if not our only - opportunity to design affordable housing development urbanistically. This land use factor is the primary barrier to building densely. As soon as you require a parking structure to pull your development off, you’ve just killed any element of affordability (you definitely tank it putting it underground). So you always need to then subsidize the project somehow if you want urbanism. Then when you find, say, tax credits for the project, it doesn’t help when you’re sacked with the state requirement to provide 1.5 parking spaces per dwelling unit. The net effect is that you simply can’t build above 14 dwelling units per gross acre, at least for affordable housing. Above that you have to heavily subsidize parking.”

- http://www.humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html

jet engine

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:13:36 -0400

jet engine

at Museum Meermanno

Sat, 11 May 2013 06:18:51 -0400

at Museum Meermanno

We found paradise

Sun, 05 May 2013 04:57:28 -0400

We found paradise

"Meanwhile we risk overlooking the much more important story here, the real revolution, which is the..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:36:37 -0400

“Meanwhile we risk overlooking the much more important story here, the real revolution, which is the mass democratisation of the means of access, storage and processing of data. This story isn’t about large organisations running parallel software on tens of thousand of servers, but about more people than ever being able to collaborate effectively around a distributed ecosystem of information, an ecosystem of small data.”

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/apr/25/forget-big-data-small-data-revolution

abandoned-playgrounds: The Buzludzha Monument in Bulgaria. In...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:06:48 -0400

abandoned-playgrounds:

The Buzludzha Monument in Bulgaria.

In 1868 it was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and the Turks.

It was built by the Bulgarian communist regime to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement. It was opened in 1981. No longer maintained by the Bulgarian government, it has fallen into disuse.

Explore the location with these coordinates! 42°44’07.85”N 25°23’39.20”E

photographs courtesy of Stanislav

Black and white icons

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:52:56 -0400

Black and white icons

Urban piggies enjoying the sun

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:44:43 -0400

Urban piggies enjoying the sun

Urban farm (at Uit Je Eigen Stad)

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:56:05 -0400

Urban farm (at Uit Je Eigen Stad)

Code as intellectual transparency

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:12:57 -0400

Code as intellectual transparency

Machine-readable paper map (at Vrije Universiteit - Hoofdgebouw)

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:51:38 -0400

Machine-readable paper map (at Vrije Universiteit - Hoofdgebouw)

A different Palm

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:23:56 -0400

A different Palm

Writing

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:08:26 -0400

Writing

"The challenge therefore remains the quest for some ‘unity’ of conceptual and critical benefit, and..."

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:05:17 -0400

“The challenge therefore remains the quest for some ‘unity’ of conceptual and critical benefit, and social utility, of provocation and practicality, or how to conjugate the sublime and the utilitarian into socially useful as well as delightful digital urban environments”

- Allesandro Aurigi - An agenda for urban-designing the digital city

"I spoke at Ragi Burhum’s Geomeetup yesterday, about my recent work on vector tiles for Mapnik. The..."

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:57:47 -0400

“I spoke at Ragi Burhum’s Geomeetup yesterday, about my recent work on vector tiles for Mapnik. The slides are here in PDF form. One of the subtexts to my OSM work for the past few years has been the ladder-making that Matt describes: a way to make datasets like OSM available to more people who might not otherwise choose to learn the full set of tools needed to work with the raw stuff, but still have important things to say. That includes professional message-makers like journalists but also enthusiasts like Stephanie May or Burrito Justice (on tacos and history). There are commercial answers to this question from companies like Google or Mapbox, but in addition to those it should always be possible to take your message into your own hands, most especially if your message is likely to get under someone’s fingernails. Free software and free data work as one kind of ladder, continually looking back as well as forward, assimilating innovation and passing it down to where it wouldn’t otherwise reach. I’m tempted to call this “trickle down”, but it occurs to me that the pull of gravity is all wrong in that image. Things don’t move from the core to the gap like water flowing downhill, but quite the opposite. Left alone, innovation and capital accrue to where they are already in highest concentration. Collective work and effort are the only forces that can counteract gravity with any regularity.”

- http://mike.teczno.com/notes/weeks/1846-ladders.html

worsethandetroit: transceiverfreq: you ever get the feeling...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:41:05 -0400

worsethandetroit:

transceiverfreq:

you ever get the feeling that if, after an apocalypse scenario, the fact that the bulk of human knowledge exists on hardware that may not be accessible after the event may not be such a good idea?
Yes.

Anticipating first data center in space.

"Wie mensen spreekt die dagelijks met publieke taken in de samenleving in de weer zijn, hoort overal..."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:17:43 -0400

“Wie mensen spreekt die dagelijks met publieke taken in de samenleving in de weer zijn, hoort overal dezelfde mantra: de rijksoverheid staat in de weg, we hebben er last, de staat moet loslaten.”

- http://www.groene.nl/2013/13/de-stad-als-branieschopper