Digital Commoner


Am not one to obsess over stats, but feedback from the Digital Commons is of special interest to one graduate of geography like myself, as it makes for a snapshot of a kind that prior the internet would barely have been possible.

Looking then at a variety of papers and bearing in mind some have had a head start, it is interesting to note that pictures are still worth a thousand words. Of the half-dozen airframes I may have circulated by which means we might be elevated by super-sized drones, the one appearing here has proven by far the most popular... and the only one downloaded by commercial helicopter (and bizarrely, access platform) manufacturers.

The runner-up meanwhile is a paper describing how people we might recognise might also be used as a means of secure access to computer systems. Yes, we all recognise Ronald McDonald, but would I recognise your grandmother?

The spread around the world reflects our common cultures too. For instance in the US two downloads in San Fran and Mountain View relate to the means of human carriage, whilst at Wharton on the East Coast it's the secure means of access. In the UK there are three dozen downloads local to me, tho' just one (on secure access) in Whitehall... the heart of UK government and its military headquarters.

In Europe one paper that springs out is a personal favourite (but no-one else's) in the form of a self-tilting wing to expand the range of drones. And downloaded where? At Lviv, to the rear of Ukraine's war-zone. And Tel Aviv, the heart of Israel's research into means of war or self-defence depending on your viewpoint? The human-flying drone.

In China, a mix of downloads split between the drone and the secure access system.

In Singapore, however, a royal flush in the form of interest in self-tilting wings, drones for human carriage, secure means of access and the latter specifically intended to sub for conventional numeric key-pads.

Finally from Jakarta exclusive interest in drones in the shape of the above, but also a lone download on what I called a virtual quadcopter... which basically describes how props running in the same direction can be overlapped like a Venn diagram so as to make airframes altogether more compact without nearly the same loss of thrust as that experienced by the common co-axial system.

Post a paper yourself and see how what you consider the ugliest of ducklings amongst your work may be to others a beautiful swan.

(Ed. what bollocks this guy writes...) 

Popular posts from this blog

Indian Takeaway

The Digi Yatra facial ID system is being rolled out at Indian airports and though it does not eliminate a boarding pass as reported by the Financial Times, it does eliminate the need to corroborate identities at the gate prior boarding. Users are required to upload a selfie, yet in one survey 30% of them did so without knowing what they were signing up for... which critics suggest is the means by which they could be tracked everywhere and anywhere by the government. My takeaway from this is that to implement a system that involves recognising other people whom you might know ideally involves uploads of the same kind to assemble a bespoke database. Whether it will happen in my lifetime, or indeed at all, is debatable. Unless.
Read more

AI or Ay Ay?

Image
Without the assistance of AI or good old-fashioned Google Lens, can you tell the two apart? Well they are in fact the same Yin Qi who heads up nascent facial ID company MEGVII: https://global.faceid.com/technology/face-recognition-liveness ... except that the portrait on the left is from Tatler magazine and that on the right the South China Morning Post. No prizes for guessing which features on the company website, however, and a relief knowing the guy is at least thirty-six and not fresh out of high-school. Good though that interest in identity theft (and faces) spans the globe.
Read more