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USB 'Dead Drops'

Okian Warrior writes "Aram Bartholl is building a series of USB dead drops in New York City. Billed as 'an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,' he has embedded USB sticks as file cache devices throughout the city. Bartholl says, 'I am "injecting" USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and data.' Current locations (more to come) include: 87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot), Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo), 235 Bowery, NY (New Museum), Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St), and West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)"

29 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cool by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Funny

    5 free usb drives, where's my bike?

    No longer where you left it, since a passerby though 'hey, a free bike'.

  2. Excellent by 427_ci_505 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can think of no security issues that could be introduced by this development.

  3. a new trend by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    For an encore, he'll be setting up "Drop Dead" sites around the city. These will be little knobs mounted to walls, for anonymous people to "share" biological materials by walking up to them and licking them.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  4. Re:Cool by entotre · · Score: 3, Funny

    But then a taxi came by and said 'hey, a free passerby'.
    I invite continuation

  5. Re:Cool by bennomatic · · Score: 4, Funny

    Then a tow truck came by and said, "Hey, free taxi!"

    --
    The CB App. What's your 20?
  6. Re:Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    But then a taxi came by and said 'hey, a free passerby'.

    I invite continuation

    But then Eric Raymond came along and said "Hey, it's confusing to call him free, that passerby is open source'. And something about his tribe and a bazaar too I expect.

  7. In Iran... by FridayBob · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... this concept would not go down well with the government, especially around their nuclear facilities.

  8. Continuing the tradition... by pedantic+bore · · Score: 2, Funny

    There's a long tradition of young folks picking up nasty viruses from anonymous strangers in NYC; now their computers can too.

    --
    Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
  9. Re:Cool by Andy+Smith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Then a tow truck came by and said, "Hey, free taxi!"

    Then Optimus Prime came by and said, "Longarm? Are you free?"

  10. Re:Cool by contra_mundi · · Score: 3, Funny

    And then an analogy came by and said, "Hey, a free metaphor!"

  11. Re:Good way to get your laptop attacked by Arancaytar · · Score: 4, Funny

    What kind of crappy machine is vulnerable to files on an external medium?

    It's not the nineties anymore.

  12. Re:Sounds great! by djdavetrouble · · Score: 5, Funny

    kudos to the person who will find them all and format to ext4 file system.

    awesome post, but since it is almost halloween, why not a killer file system like reiserfs?

    --
    music lover since 1969
  13. Curiosity killed the ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I definitely won't stick someone's hoo-hoo dilly in my laptop's cha-cha.

  14. Re:Cool by AndreR · · Score: 5, Funny

    And then two dozen ./ users came by and said, "Hey, free karma!"

  15. Re:Cool by Xaositecte · · Score: 3, Funny

    Free Willy!

  16. Re:Cool by Oxford_Comma_Lover · · Score: 3, Funny

    One of the signs today at the Rally to Restore Sanity asked "What would Optimus Prime do?"

    --
    -- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
  17. Re:Cool by Haedrian · · Score: 4, Funny

    That could get you on the sex offender's list

  18. Re:Good way to get your laptop attacked by drooling-dog · · Score: 2, Funny

    What kind of crappy machine is vulnerable to files on an external medium?

    The kind of machine that would run an attached executable when you open an e-mail might be expected to do such a thing.

  19. This is just silly by Twinbee · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's a great idea, but why put these things in such easily accessible locations where they could be open to anyone with less than noble intentions? I did the same thing as this guy a couple of years back, but was a little more selective in location, some of which are as follows:

    * Mount Etna (near the mouth)
    * North pole (well 40 ft underground at that point)
    * 3 miles underground at an unknown location. There is a cave entrance though I think (well there was last time I went).
    * In my house
    * Inside the fossilized remains of a dead bird found somewhere in the Sahara Desert.
    * Five are in the ocean too (I'll keep the exact locations secret, but you may have some luck checking out the Atlan... (hint hint) ).

    --
    Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
  20. Directory Listing by Penguinshit · · Score: 4, Funny

    goatse.jpg

    Copy of goatse.jpg

    Copy2 of goatse.jpg

    Copy3 of goatse.jpg

    ...

  21. Problems with killer file systems is that they get by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Problems with killer file systems is that they get sent to chroot for deleting Russian imported libraries.

  22. Re:Sounds great! by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2, Funny

    Stop throwing facts into a fun conversation.

  23. Re:How stupid can you get? by dangitman · · Score: 4, Funny

    They really don't have any standards for art anymore, do they?

    I hear the ISO is considering the issue, but if you want swifter action, I suggest you submit an RFC to the IETF.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  24. Re:Cool by mcneely.mike · · Score: 2, Funny

    Then i came by and pissed on Optimus Prime. "Hey, free urine!"

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  25. Re:Cool by Andy+Smith · · Score: 3, Funny

    Then i came by and pissed on Optimus Prime. "Hey, free urine!"

    You pissed on Optimus? Oooh, "urine" trouble now.

  26. Re:Engineering aspects: by Fumus · · Score: 2, Funny

    Okay, I thought "meh, sandbox the system and disable autorun. Nothing can break then." This certainly made me afraid of random USB connectors sticking out of walls :o

  27. Re:Yeeeahhh by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Funny

    Came here to see a bunch of geeks fail to grok "art project" and go into endless loops over the merits of the technology involved.

    Am leaving satisfied...

    --
    No sig today...
  28. Re:My grading of this idea: by cerberusss · · Score: 4, Funny

    Okay, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah? -- Douglas Adams

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    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  29. Re:It's like the 70's and 80's by Reziac · · Score: 2, Funny

    And then we'll hear, "I went to the dead-drop to swap some files, but I couldn't get near the place because it was hip-deep in copyright cops!"

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?