Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

https://www.richardosgood.com/posts/banned-book-library/

by sohkamyung • 1 month ago

586 248 1 month ago

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.

rickoooooo3• 1 month ago

That's exactly what this project is. You can buy the same tasmota bulb I used and flash it over the wifi. No disassembly required.

ipkstef2• 1 month ago

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?

ipkstef2• 1 month ago

sorry specifically this line > The bulbs showed up in the main a few days later

copper-float2• 1 month ago

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!

yreg• 1 month ago

There are other countries outside of United States. And the book curation is up to the user.

K0balt• 1 month ago

Actual banned books that are illegal to own? Such as?

simplyluke2• 1 month ago

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_...

greenavocado• 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...

limit352• 1 month ago

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.

kloop• 1 month ago

It is not disingenuous, maybe a little loose on the 'meaning', but your definition is rather narrow

The thing is that every other country does have what they're describing.

The Color Purple has been challenged many times in order to be removed from public library circulation and public school curriculums.

And yet nobody challenged it to get it removed from US Amazon. Amazon _is_ forbidden from selling certain books in other countries. It's so not the same thing

goodmythical2• 1 month ago

It's rather subjective, though, no?

Having been in prison, I can tell you that being a Blood and having "certain books" in your locker is a "smash on sight" offense. The same could be said for the Aryan Brotherhood/Circle, and I'm sure for many other gangs.

There's a difference between "this one small group: local oklahoma school district/aryan brotherhood/catholic church" decided they don't like a book and the government level you will be imprisoned for owning/sharing this book.

If it's a 'banned' book library, why doesn't it include books banned by a variety of sources? To me, a 'banned' book library would included many thousands of books each tagged by which groups are banning them. That way, were I inclined to do so, I could read texts that were banned by both Jews and Christians, or by both democratic nations and totalitarian regimes, or whatever it was that I was interested in.

This particular compilation is a perfect example. Calling The Call of the Wild, a book that's been made in to several movies (the most recent of which grossing $111.1 million against a production budget of $125–150 million) a "banned book" is kind of ludicrous, no? Clearly many thousands or millions of people have access to it and it's contents, so it is clearly not 'banned' in any meaningful sense of the term, unless you happen to live in some region in which it is banned, but that enforces my claim that any such random small list doesn't really live up to the label.

netsharc• 1 month ago

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.

b3lvedere• 1 month ago

I built a PirateBox with an old Asus access point once. It was a bit of a dissapointing experience. Mostly because people were scared to access an open wifi point. Plus it did not 'give one free internet' so people usually immediately disconnected. Unfortunately the Library Box mod is also no longer an active project.

moebrowne2• 1 month ago

I had the same experience. I ran it on the original Pi zero with a WiFi dongle, in the middle of a busy town. Not a single interaction.

xdrosenheim• 1 month ago

You people never disapoint... Putting a web server in a light bulb, I mean who the hell even thinks of that?!

SpecialistK• 1 month ago

Tasmota on ESP devices have a web server by default for administration.

samtheDamned• 1 month ago

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-...

Schlagbohrer4• 1 month ago

Data transfer is so, so extremely limited over Meshtastic it probably wouldn't be worth it for anything larger than a few dozen kB. There are a lot of documents and books that could fit into such a small size perhaps but no novels.

incompatible• 1 month ago

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.

jagged-chisel• 1 month ago

New device design: battery backup for the computer, light still operates based on external power.

hdgvhicv2• 1 month ago

This would be a massive improvement. I wonder what the largest battery you could fit in would be.

takipsizad• 1 month ago

while true i think it's extremely unlikely to be suspicious of a light bulb. especially if it doesn't seem out of place, like if it's on a light socket why think that it's an wifi access point?

dlcarrier• 1 month ago

Just walk around with a Wi-Fi analyzer on your phone, playing hotter/colder until you find it.

Modern enterprise access points even have built-in functionality to physically locate devices, and automatic warnings for rogue access points. The latter is often ignored or disabled though, because it'll go off every time someone prints or screen casts over Wi-Fi Direct.

fumeux_fume• 1 month ago

So many objects have their own networks now. With a clever SSID and placement in a room full of potential targets, it could be pretty tough for someone to narrow it down to the bulb.

sfink3• 1 month ago

I think the point was that it's difficult to notice in the first place, not that it would be hard to find once you know you're looking for something. You don't have a black WiFi router with antennae dangling down from the ceiling.

If you went the other direction and didn't worry about it being noticeable, it would be kind of a fun project to break up a book into a series of QR codes. A scavenger hunt, with each code's text ending with a clue of where to find the next?

zuzululu• 1 month ago

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.

gustavus• 1 month ago

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.

iberator5• 1 month ago

Each state is part of the USA, and each state DOES ban some books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...

USA is ultra conservative on the average in comparison to just any European state for example.

BuyMyBitcoins• 1 month ago

Whenever I encounter some news article regarding “banned” books I dig a little deeper and typically discover that some library or elementary school simply put an age restriction on those titles.

I’ll grant that some of the restrictions seem overprotective. That being said, a parent could easily check out one of those books for their child.

wiml• 1 month ago

There's a certain amount of censorship of classified information published by (ex-)military, and that kind of thing, but it can be and is challenged in court.

Purely obscene material is also not protected by the 1st, but since the 1970s, the bar for that has been placed very, very high.

The closest I can think of offhand is that for about a year during the pandemic, Twitter suppressed gratuitous COVID misinformation posts, at the request of the government.

mothballed2• 1 month ago

Jordan Derrick (Ashley Dugan) recently had a youtube video on making RDX pulled and criminally charged with "distribution of explosives information to terrorists" for publicly sharing the public domain patented/documented synthesis (going back to a German patent all the way in the 19th century IIRC) of RDX explosives and denied bail for "hate speech" of using the Israeli flag as a doormat (which was actually in the indictment).

carlosjobim3• 1 month ago

It's not different than McDonald's and Burger King being banned in Germany.

The evidence is that they don't serve it for school lunches.

Is that a weird argument? That's the same way people argue that books are "banned" in America.

BigTTYGothGF• 1 month ago

There might not currently be but that hasn't always been the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston and the obscenity laws are still in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_For...

Malic• 1 month ago

Has anyone heard of similar work done with smart light bulbs but for Meshtastic nodes?

baby_souffle• 1 month ago

Why would you put a LoRa radio in consumer-grade household electronics?

LoRa is also sub-optimal for payloads more than a few K in size and most ePub files are at least a meg...

subscribed• 1 month ago

Meshtastic / meshcore at this point look like a dead end of the development.

Take a look at HaLow if you insist, but in general if a bulb has esp32 then you could likely replace the module for one with LoRA capabilities.

rootsudo• 1 month ago

I love this idea, thank you for posting it. It can be used for so many interesting projects.

Dwedit• 1 month ago

Android loves to auto-disconnect you from any Wifi network that doesn't provide Internet. You need to go through a bunch of arcane settings to disable that feature.

stackghost2• 1 month ago

This was my thought as well. I think the workaround is to have the device present itself as a captive portal type of thing, like you might encounter at a Starbucks, so that when the user is prompted to "Sign In" they immediately find the dead drop.

However I haven't actually played with this and don't know if that would work, or if the network would require DNS to function properly.

rickoooooo3• 1 month ago

That's exactly what this project attempts to do. It acts as a captive portal.

Schlagbohrer4• 1 month ago

Wifi Pineapples have a lot of codebase which can be used / reworked to do something like this, throwing up a captive portal on a web server.

petepete• 1 month ago

Settings, Network and Internet, Adaptive Connectivity - if anyone’s looking for it.

sdoering• 1 month ago

Thanks a ton. Now I know why connection to my camera's wifi access point drops on my Android and what to do about it. Thanks a ton!

hdgvhicv2• 1 month ago

You can spoof internet by responding to http gets on any IP. Last I checked phones didn’t require a valid https certificate as part of their portal detection.

N_Lens• 1 month ago

“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”

- Commissioner Pravin Lal, Datalinks

Alpha Centauri pertinent as ever.

godwinson__4-8• 1 month ago

Get off my land, you peacekeeping son-of-a-bitch!

Best 4x game of all time. The 2060 that game envisioned seems closer everyday.

Pxtl4• 1 month ago

The "information wants to be free" discourse of just under 30 years ago feels so charmingly naive now that we've seen how lies are also information and can travel even better using the same flow.

_def• 1 month ago

Truly something we still have to figure out. Attention budget is real and things can get buried. The really big problem of our time.

LudwigNagasena5• 1 month ago

What exactly is this "information wants to be free" discourse? The arguments for and against freedom of speech as a foundational social principle span at least 300 continuous years.

pibaker• 1 month ago

And who shall we appoint at the supreme arbitrator of what is lie and what is knowledge?

Some of us remember when they assured us that the novel virus in china was not to be afraid of.

akimbostrawman2• 1 month ago

Why do you assuming only true information is information. Information can be anything not to mention that the definition of truths and lies can change with time and location.

iberator5• 1 month ago

GREATEST strategy and philosophical game I have witnessed in the past 30 years...

Peak of complexity and maturism in games...

chaostheory2• 1 month ago

I wish they would release a remastered version of the game with updated graphics and movies, with nothing else changed. The game mechanics were great. Beyond Earth was not good in comparison.

chaostheory2• 1 month ago

"Already we have turned all of our critical industries... over to these... things... these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?"

Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent

This game and its ideas are so timeless.

rootlocus2• 1 month ago

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny.

"This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." feels more grounded in reality.

fedeb95• 1 month ago

Not entirely true. Many science is gatekeeped, as well as other types of information. May books require illegal services to be obtained, or money (when available). Information about facts is buried in a lot of misinformation. Free flow is very hard to obtain!

wongarsu• 1 month ago

Peak free information flow was in 2010. When "social" media had its big break through, and nobody had learned how to control it yet. That time gave us the occupy movement, the Arab spring, and lots of hacktivism for the social good (mostly under the Anonymous umbrella).

Then the counter movement happened. And let's just say by 2016 social media was firmly under control and became a force against the people

antman• 1 month ago

We have peak flow of propaganda and disinformation to a cartoonish level.

nephihaha• 1 month ago

We don't. Search engines return a limited number of results from "trusted media" and dissident opinion, whether balanced or batshit crazy, is all lumped together as misinformation and conspiracy theory.

0ckpuppet• 1 month ago

queue Nina Janowicz at the piano

bilekas2• 1 month ago

We have abundant free flow of information today and yet I see a rise of tyranny.

We have an abundance of allowed information today, there is more restriction than ever of the distribution of information. Social media censoring, takedown requests, shadow banning, government censoring.

threetonesun• 1 month ago

Do we, or are a lot of people who may or may not be on the side of tyranny doing a lot of work to control how the information actually flows.

ninalanyon• 1 month ago

Is it really a safeguard?

akurtzhs• 1 month ago

"We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding process--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions."

- Bad'l Ron, Wakener, Morgan Polysoft

mystraline5• 1 month ago

In the USA, the books that are banned are for public schools. They talk about topics like (gasp) LGBTQ and sex things!

Now where the USA censors routinely is financial censorship. If you can afford the thing thats fincially banned, the sure, its not banned. But if you cant afford it, youre screwed.

And, if you work for a company, they can fire you for any/no reason, INCLUDING your speech off work.

In the USA, its "freedom of speech" if youre independently wealthy. If not, hope you dont offend power.

NoMoreNicksLeft4• 1 month ago

In the USA, the books that are banned are for public schools. They talk about topics like (gasp) LGBTQ and sex things!

The book that is commonly at the number one spot on "banned book" lists has what would always be called hardcore pornography in the middle of the book. It depicts fellatio literally (not just implying it). It has no educational value, and is meant, within its context, to be erotic/lewd. I can link directly to it on archive.org, I can link to that exact page even. I do that sometimes in these arguments, and I'm downvoted until my comment is hidden but not before a bunch of jackasses say "and what does it matter"...

Sorry, don't want my 10 yr old looking at it in the school library. No, take that back... I'm not sorry. And you're all awful people for wanting that in the school library. Or dumb for not realizing that it's in the book. What I've come to realize as I've gotten older, is that some people think they have a right to show smut to my young children behind my back and want to call me a Nazi if I object.

bloak2• 1 month ago

Are we talking about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Alaska#Author's_re...

(I've not read it, of course, and don't know whether I'd consider it inappropriate for school libraries. However, it sounds like it was not intended as pornography and therefore isn't pornography according to some narrow definitions of that term. In any case, school libraries have such tiny budgets and there are so many uncontroversial good books in the world I can see why they might want to give this one a miss.)

mystraline5• 1 month ago

Nice strawman you constructed. However, it was burning the moment you put it together.

Its easy to say that pornography and smut are the only things banned in school and public libraries, as your claim. But thats easily demonstrably false.

One only need to look at the American Library Association's banned list

https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

What do we see? Descriptions of sexual acts? Well, some. But we also see horrific accounts of sexual slavery, high schooler life troubles including suicide, a comic called 'Gender Queer', depictions of magic (read: non-abrahamic occult practices).

In general, anything that doesnt fit the puritanical hard right wing christian gets threatened with bans, with great scruitiny on LGBTQ, sexuality, mysticism, suicide, and real troubles of young adults in high school.

But its completely disingenuous to says 'oh its just smut'. No. Its censorship for people who cant vote, and have no power. And the censorship is done by adults who want to pretend that not having a LGBTQ book will make young adults 'not gay' or some bullshit.

What I've come to realize as I've gotten older, is that some people think they have a right to show smut to my young children behind my back and want to call me a Nazi if I object.

'Young children' are like 5 or 6. And no, its not a "right to show smut". Its having these books on the shelf in a age-appropriate way. These christian nationalist types are targeting anything related to anti-christian sentiments, DEI, LGBTQ themes of any sort, and whatever else falls in the sights of these worse-than-nazi folks.

Even a picture book that says a friend has 2 dads (and elementary way to relate) is banned. And those are real situations children will deal with, book or no. Im not saying to an 8 year old to read "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", either. But if they look up basic LGBTQ books cause they feel different, yeah, they should be able to.

Also, I think it would behoove you to learn your history, especially with the original nazies. One of the first libraries they dismantled and burnt was the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen... or a university for sex medical studies. Some of the first trans research was done there. And anyone who wants to destroy knowledge is an enemy of me.

frollogaston6• 1 month ago

Most of these "banned books" articles are 8 paragraphs without actually listing the books, because most readers would form a different opinion if they saw what the author is lamenting being removed from the kids' section. Here's #1 for 2024 supposedly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Boys_Aren%27t_Blue

wizardforhire• 1 month ago

Why stop there? While meshtastic would require additional hardware, tor entry exit nodes would not. Nor would other mesh protocols… also as for hosting ideas… the text files? Def cad and related models… skies the limit with space the only limiting factor.

GreenSalem• 1 month ago

Some books deserve to be banned.

I would put Kevin MacDonald's antisemitic trilogy The Culture of Critique, the Turner Diaries ( which calls for mass extermination of non-white groups in the USA ) and Mein Kampf in the realm of books that should be shunned.

p-e-w• 1 month ago

Some people categorically oppose the death penalty, others oppose the death penalty “except when it’s justified”.

I guess when it comes to Freedom of Speech, you fall into the latter category.

left-struck• 1 month ago

If I, as a person who is firmly opposed to racism, wishes to read the Turner Diaries, why shouldn’t I be allowed to? Do you really think some stupid book by some racist wackjob is going to sway my deepest values? Can you not imagine a legitimate reason why I would want to read such a book? For example, to see what these people are thinking so I can be better prepared to answer their arguments if I’m ever forced to argue with one?

I understand your discomfort with these books, and I actually agree that they deserve to be banned, but banning is not what we should do.

iberator5• 1 month ago

Why would you ban Main Kampf? Have you ever even read it?

Its ultra important for historical/social and linguistic education.

I read it when I was 14, and I'm from Poland.

It is AWFUL and PAINFUL to read due to the horrible styling - which amuses me to this day. :) That's why no need to ban it hehehe

Nowadays books are for intellectuals, not for the masses... That's why I would be ok for any modern teenager to read anything 18+ or anti-whatever books :) It's net positive no matter of content IMO.

ForOldHack2• 1 month ago

When does the movie come out? Totally kidding. Its just propaganda from one of the most murderous regime I can think of, but looks like the USA is going to give it a run for its money.

adrian_b• 1 month ago

"Mein Kampf" is actually a very interesting lecture for any critical mind, like also The Holy Bible is a very interesting lecture for any atheist.

"Mein Kampf" is a good example of well written propaganda.

Like any good propaganda, it starts from true facts, so the first part of the book describes real problems of the society at that time (most of which are again problems of the present society).

The real problems would capture the attention of the readers, who were heavily affected by them in their own real lives.

Also like any good propaganda, from the true premises the book transitions to conclusions that do not result from the premises, but are falsely claimed to do so, and then solutions to the false conclusions are presented as if they will solve the problem described by the true premises (i.e. life is bad => the reason why it is bad is because there exist Jews => eliminate them and life will become good).

The same propaganda scheme from "Mein Kampf" is frequently applied today, but usually the Jews are replaced by China or by legal immigrants or by illegal immigrants or by people supporting another political party, always failing to identify the real culprits for the "life is bad" premises.

I do not agree that any propaganda books must be banned based on the condescending idea that humans are stupid, but I believe that it should be mandatory that any propaganda book should be accompanied by a well-written rebuttal, which should explain where the book in lying and why its conclusions are wrong, for the benefit of those less experienced, who might not notice these facts themselves.

jijji• 1 month ago

have you you checked out "esp32-s3" which costs $7.12 and has wifi and microsd installed on it [0]. Also esp32-cam is another board with similar specifications.

[0] https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ESP32S3-p-5627.html

iberator5• 1 month ago

You should add guest-logbook as in 90" and 00" to it :) Or whole fucking BBS system :) THAT would be cool

xp84• 1 month ago

Such a satisfying read, really enjoyed this, especially since your skills are definitely beyond mine. The mesh network idea would be incredibly cool!

And it's even better that it's for a good cause as well.

unselect59172• 1 month ago

I'd be interested in the banned book list. A glance at the socials with the biggest one missing suggests there will be no interesting books on it. Just the ones you can find in "banned books" stands at mainstream bookstores. Absolute mediocrity of thought free of meaningful diversity.

arrowsmith• 1 month ago

It's here: https://codeberg.org/rickoooooo/BannedBookLibrary/src/branch...

For the curious, the "banned" books are (it's a short list):

  - Call of the Wild - Jack London
  - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
  - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
  - Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence

Stunning and brave.

aarond06233• 1 month ago

This firmware comes pre-loaded with several books that are out of copyright and in the public domain, as an example.

These are just public domain books provided as examples. You can put whatever you want on it.

aarond06233• 1 month ago

Per the article, the bulb only had 4 MB storage and the idea is that each bulb's library would be a reflection of its creator. So there is no one list. Put whatever you want on it.

fnordpiglet2• 1 month ago

Great rabbit hole but the flaw is the bulb might not be obvious but the book would be on a network scan someone suspected electronic dead drops.

Schlagbohrer4• 1 month ago

But it is so spatially limited, only accessible within the wifi range of the bulb, it would be pretty challenging to thoroughly root these out from across a city or region.

fnordpiglet2• 1 month ago

A thumb drive would be even harder but more obvious in its purpose. The bulb is good because it hides in plain sight. But it requires being within sight to be meaningful. But once it is it’ll be broadcasting its existence over standard protocols.

I guess the key is to disguise it further by making it entirely like normal. I’d perhaps give the SSID two passwords. One which is the normal configuration password and the other enables the port for your connection.

Schlagbohrer4• 1 month ago

I have seen these described as Pirate Boxes before, way back around 2012. The basic idea is a box that throws up a wifi network and web server letting people upload/download files to it, while remaining disconnected from the wider internet. A geographically limited digital sharing library.

voidUpdate2• 1 month ago

I'm guessing the website is currently being hugged to death, but the images take a while to load, and I'm on a pretty good connection. Maybe try webp with some decent compression to shrink down the filesize?

rickoooooo3• 1 month ago

Thanks, I've updated the post to use webp images, which did help a ton.

wolfi1• 1 month ago

Fahrenheit 451 anyone?

trelane• 1 month ago

I suppose the bulb could get hot enough to burn the media storing the books.

poulpy123• 1 month ago

I do hope you'll extend you work by making the lamp broacast the book by using light morse code

rldjbpin• 1 month ago

quite interesting to find hackable hardware in commodity looking smart devices.

advice for the op: the images in the page took half a minute to load (on multigigabit internet not being stressed). might be a routing issue between the server and my isp, but the images could use some optimization.

timonoko• 1 month ago

Whatever this is, Tasmota is not the solution.

moebrowne2• 1 month ago

Anyone looking for local-first smart bulbs, plugs, etc with Tasmota or ESPHome I can thoroughly recommend https://www.mylocalbytes.com/ - not affiliated in any way, just a very happy customer.

a96• 1 month ago

UK, shipping rates within one click and they don't look bad. I guess I should take a look at the selection. Thank you.

metalman• 1 month ago

Well written. That it was written at all is a strong comment on the state of our world where we have an improbable amount of data, but nothing to read.

ktzar• 1 month ago

For someone so mindful of efficient software and use of energy, it's showing that images on that post are 5MB PNGs...

towledev• 1 month ago

if anyone's writing a script with a nerd in it, this line would kill

BeepyJoop2• 1 month ago

I'd like to see a show with this kind of writing

okeuro492• 1 month ago

As expected, the book examples given were not "banned".

They're usually school libraries that are removing books from their collection that contain explicit material, usually at the request of parents.

aarond06233• 1 month ago

Almost the entire article is about turning a light bulb into a Wi-Fi hotspot/web server, and your takeaway was, well actually, _The Color Purple_ is not technically banned.

Unless I missed something I only spotted two book examples since that wasn't the focus of the article.

mlrtime• 1 month ago

It's a needed comment since the first word in the title is 'Banned' and in typical online discourse the comments go down-hill into a rant against ideology/politics.

BeepyJoop2• 1 month ago

It's just tech enthusiasts being socially inept. There is literally no discourse to be had from this comment, infact it only serves to detract from the main point of the article

littlecorner• 1 month ago

The cynical side of me wonders if some books might be "banned" on purpose to have the distinction of being a banned book. Probably few books are actually that way, but these days it seems like a shortcut to notoriety

Spooky23• 1 month ago

It definitely gets used as a tool to get attention, but let’s be real, nobody is getting rich selling cheap paperbacks in 2026. If you’ve ever been around a school district targeted by the moms for liberty or whatever, it’s a very real thing.

When I was growing up in the early 90s, a local crazy preacher guy got a bunch of people riled up and angry about Goosebumps, Huckleberry Finn and to Kill a Mockingbird. These were the same types of folks playing metal music backwards to find satanic instructions.

It was a simpler time without the internet to keep stupid people riled up for extended periods. Now idiocy is a social movement.

gspr2• 1 month ago

That seems unlikely.

But on a fun sidenote: When Life of Brian was initially banned in Norway, its distributor in Sweden started marketing it as "a movie so funny it's banned in Norway" :-)

goda90• 1 month ago

What is your definition of banned then?

The book Nineteen Eighty-four contains sexual content. An authoritarian interested in reducing access to such literature about totalitarianism simply needs to get some parents worked up over sex.

gspr2• 1 month ago

As expected, the book examples given were not "banned".
They're usually school libraries that are removing books from their collection that contain explicit material, usually at the request of parents.

So they were banned from certain school libraries then. Something doesn't have to be banned globally to count as being banned.

Argonaut998• 1 month ago

By your logic any book in existence can be banned at any point in time. It's a meaningless designation.

cpburns20092• 1 month ago

Whenever I hear about "banned books" they're usually so banned that Barnes & Noble has a prominent "banned books" display selling them at the store entrance. It's all marketing.

Cthulhu_3• 1 month ago

Which is understandable, but only to a point - the problem was that a lot of banned books were also frequently anti-establishment or critical of the regime.

If it was just explicit material then the bible would also need to be banned. But as always, it was never about protecting the children.

miltonlost3• 1 month ago

So the books are being banned from being in that library? "removing books" and "banning a book in a library" is equivalent.

MeteorMarc• 1 month ago

Nice example how far you can come with little initial knowledge, a clear goal, some passion and an inquisitive mind.

bronlund• 1 month ago

I would suspect that the brown potting stuff, among other things, conducts heat away from the components.

steviedotboston3• 1 month ago

Cool project, except these aren't really "banned" books. thats a misleading term. In most of these cases, the book isn’t actually banned. Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want.

What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as government censorship. Schools and libraries make age-appropriate selection decisions all the time. They don’t carry every book ever published, and not every objectionable book belongs in front of kids just because someone wants to call its removal a “ban.” A single school library deciding not to carry a book because they think it's inappropriate, but that same book being available at the local public library, every book store in town, the internet, etc is not the same as the soviet union literally banning the ownership of books.

john_strinlai7• 1 month ago

What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as government censorship.

except for the cases where the government, not the librarian, is saying "you cannot have that book on your shelf, even if you think it is appropriate and want it".

Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want.

when tomhow/dang "ban" someone from HN, that user doesn't get arrested if they make a new account. they can still visit the site. is it misleading for them to use the word "ban"?

woodrowbarlow• 1 month ago

i agree, with a bit more nuance. it's one thing for a government agency staffed by educational professionals (like a public school district) to issue guidance (or even rules) on how libraries should be stocked -- but what's become widespread is legislative bodies bypassing those existing structures and issuing laws without input from educational professionals.

imgabe3• 1 month ago

Words exist in a context. "User was banned from a site" and "Book is banned" have different connotations. You have to be purposely obtuse to conflate these.

nerdjon2• 1 month ago

The problem is that there isn’t really a better term, and using “banned” gives the correct impression for most people to see the problem.

In many cases these books are not simply being removed at the school level but are being driven by the government and it is politically motivated.

Ignoring the problem won’t lead to them being banned in the sense that having them would be illegal, but it could make it more difficult to get. It would not be hard to imagine states like Florida going further and attacking public libraries or possibly even making it so you have to show an ID to buy these books.

Some public libraries are already being attacked.

“Banned” may not be technically correct but it also properly communicates the seriousness of this and the goals of the people pushing this.

olalonde3• 1 month ago

I find the trend of redefining or twisting terms to serve a specific cause really counterproductive. It eventually devalues the words themselves and makes nuanced discussion nearly impossible. If a problem is really that serious, it shouldn't require misleading language.

steviedotboston3• 1 month ago

This is admitting that its intentionally misleading, which is lying and is bad. You just think that it's an rhetorically effective term. When I walk into a public library and I see a display a books for "banned books week" that includes The Catcher in the Rye and The Color Purple, two of the most best selling books ever which are commonly assigned reading in schools, it's so obvious that the whole thing is a farce.

some_random5• 1 month ago

But the problem is that with very few exception, it's not serious at all. Public libraries already make curation choices with politics in mind, school libraries already make curation choices with content moderation in mind, etc. In order to make it something approaching a real problem you have to invent potential laws that some states like Florida might make in the future.

miltonlost3• 1 month ago

Cool, dude, keep defending books with gay characters being banned in some libraries... I mean, not "curated". A "Ban" doesn't have to be universal for it to still be banned in one spot. A book banned in a Christian high school but available at a public library is still a "Banned book" because it has been banned somewhere.

If you're that bad with semantics, I'd recommend the next book you check out is the dictionary.

1970-01-012• 1 month ago

How is this different from banning alcohol or pets or weapons or any other thing? Whether or not you can buy and have at a different location doesn't mean the word is misleading.

Vaslo• 1 month ago

Maybe something like "not library available" or "lending restricted"?

I understand the point you are trying to make and you have good evidence backing your statement ("alcohol is banned the stadium", etc) but when it comes to books, when people hear ban, they think Fahrenheit 451 or The Khmer Rouge burning books. So I also understand the OPs point.

Unless you're an alcoholic, banning alcohol in schools or stadiums isn't quite the hardship of arresting people for owning To Kill A Mockingbird.

Its connotation has changed in the same way that people calling others "Nazis" and "Fascists" has changed with the constant misuse of them.

zymhan• 1 month ago

Restricting knowledge is fundamentally different.

sfink3• 1 month ago

You may be overthinking this. "Banned" in this case means that the usual person or people who choose what books to include are being overridden by a party with more clout. From the perspective of a school librarian, for example, book X has been banned. They no longer have the option of including it. (This is even true in the case where the librarian would not have included it anyway, for their own reasons.) They are prevented by the school board, an angry mob of parents, the state legislature, the FBI, or whoever. The fact that the public library down the road carries the book does not change whether that librarian has the option of including it in their school library's collection. They can't. They are banned from including it.

steviedotboston3• 1 month ago

The FBI is not telling school librarians to not stock copies of To Kill a Mockingbird. I really don't see the issue with local entities like a school board having some say in material that is available in a school. That can differ across the country, and thats fine. That's what our country is supposed to be like.

But a library acting like they are doing some brave act of resistance by putting out a stack of books that are widely available, have always been widely available, and will always be, and saying they are "banned books, this is banned books week, look at all the books that have been banned!" when really they are books that a school board in wisconsin said shouldn't be in an elementary school library because the sex scenes are not appropriate for 7 year olds seems really silly to me.

havblue2• 1 month ago

I believe that the party with the most clout is the one that controls the frame. So yes, some parents may keep Slaughterhouse Five out of libraries. Meanwhile those same parents become strawmanned villains in mainstream movies like Footloose. So I don't think pulling a book is that effective when it winds up on a "you can't read this" list.

havblue2• 1 month ago

On my news feed today I saw a Newsweek story about how someone found a dvd of Birth of a Nation at Goodwill, not knowing what the plot was.

As far as I can tell the standard for a book being "banned" is just that the librarian or the bookseller is sympathetic to the book's message and thinks it should be more widely read while politicians or parents might think it's inappropriate or they disagree with the message.

If you put the shoe on the other foot and name a book that's out of print because publishers dislike the material or it's problematic in the eyes of librarians, I don't think it fits the standard. Birth of a Nation for example is not a "banned movie" and neither is Song of the South. So the standard is entirely set by teachers, librarians and booksellers.

mothballed2• 1 month ago

I think of stuff like Luty who was challenged in the UK under the terrorism act for sharing books on improvised firearms, Ashley Dugan who was charged with "distributing explosives training to terrorists" and some of his youtube videos pulled for sharing the well known public domain synthesis of RDX explosives.

These are non-sexually-obscene informational speech yet the librarians and teachers don't actually want you looking at these banned media because they could actually be used to challenge the established order and system rather than just shuffling who is in power to possibly the guy the librarian likes.

eudamoniac• 1 month ago

If these were actually banned books people would be a lot less enthusiastic about the endeavor. Pretty much every book that is genuinely banned, in that no publisher or printing house will print it and no bookstore will sell it, is either a racist diatribe, how to make bombs, or similar. These books on the other hand are books that one librarian or school admin somewhere in this vast country decided would no longer be included in their small library. Not very interesting.

graemep2• 1 month ago

You are missing the point. This makes it possible to distribute something that is actually banned. The included books are just examples.

It also makes it possible to provide free access to books that libraries decide against.

A project hosted on a public git repo cannot break the law, however adding whatever books you think are required looks easy. The instructions say:

First, you'll want to put the ebook files in the /library/data/html/books directory.

lanycrost• 1 month ago

So you're the one who can recreate Apollo mission computer :D

rootbear• 1 month ago

A hidden “book server” like this could be set up in just about any electronic device with a sufficiently powerful microcontroller. But I think there is something delightfully poetic about using a source of light to spread suppressed knowledge.

vladak• 1 month ago

Makes me wonder if credential harvesting is a thing when all these smart bulbs and other IoT devices get thrown away with the Wi-Fi credentials stored on them.

tristor• 1 month ago

It'd be great to set this up to return files over Reticulum or another decentralized mesh protocol, so it doesn't rely on the Internet in any way.

geoffwarner• 1 month ago

I can see using this as a form of "geo-caching."

Panda_• 1 month ago

The ending notes about a mesh network remind me of the Reticulum Network Stack[1].

As far as I can tell, RNS is a networking protocol that attempts to provide a mesh network that can run over almost any bidirectional connection (and interconnect different types of connections) without centralisation (basically random addresses using encryption, and announces to make that address reachable).

It's kinda similar to Meshtastic and Meshcore but designed to be more generic for any connection. Compared to Meshcore it's less bandwidth efficient since it uses larger addresses but I like RNS more because it's more generic (it's intended to be fairly bandwidth efficient but at a larger more internet level scale than just kilobytes per second) and less proprietary than the Meshcore official ecosystem. Compared to Meshtastic, RNS is much more efficient since it doesn't use flood routing for every packet.

[1] https://reticulum.network/

clort• 1 month ago

The article did not mention compression at all.. surely it would be worth expending the space for a small decompressor in the web server, so that books stored in the device were sent decompressed and the number of books stored could be 5x or more..

A lzs decompressor is pretty simple ..

joquarky• 1 month ago

A VPN endpoint would also be useful.

ForOldHack2• 1 month ago

Isn't any one interested in the technical? I would love to pay this guy a way to figure out a way to put a 8Gb USB stick in the light bulb, and start to fill it with the stuff from that Minecraft library... in all the languages... I would buy 16 of these light bulbs, and see if I could mesh them, or IPFS them, and start plugging them in in libraries...

Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb

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