crime
Traced in the summer skies
Yes, it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content. What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day…as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.
Putting the streets to use
Tad Friend writes, if you build “nine hundred miles of sinuous highway and twenty-one thousand miles of tangled surface streets” in one city alone, then you’re going to find at least a few people who want to put those streets to use. This suggests that every city blooms with the kinds of crime most appropriate to its form.
Every heist is a counterdesign
Heists obsess people because of what they reveal about architecture’s peculiar power: the design of new ways of moving through the world. Every heist is thus just a counterdesign—a response to the original architect.
To commune with the space
...having realized long ago that the best way to commune with an architectural space was by breaking into it.
Bandits
A FilmA Burglar's Guide to the City
A Book by Geoff ManaughAuthorisation vs. Consent
An Article by Terence EdenI recently read this interesting, and distressing, story of a man who was drugged and robbed. A form of crime which has been going on for centuries. But the 21st Century twist is that the thieves forced him to transfer large sums of money via his phone's banking apps.
While under the influence, the victim used his usernames, passwords, PINs, and biometrics to send money to the criminal's accounts.
Is there a "technological" way to stop this? His banks initially refused to refund the stolen money. Only once the press stepped in did they relent. One bank, Revolut, said:
This was an unusual case where the payments were authorised by the customer but, as is now clear, without his consent.
Picking locks with audio technology
An ArticleThe series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key penetrates a lock can now be deciphered by signal processing software to reveal the precise shape of the sequence of ridges on the key's shaft. Knowing this, a working copy of it can then be 3D printed.
barnsworthburning.net
- What this site is
- Colophon
- Contact me
- Shortlist of interesting spaces
- Behind the scenes
What this site is
A kind of commonplace book.
A kind of digital garden.
A kind of Zettelkasten.
The front end to a brain.Part research,
part dissertation,
part art project.A kind of essay,
in the sense that it is
an attempt....but at what?
Colophon
airtable stores the majority of the content for the site.
the front-end is written using svelte and its companion toolset, sveltekit.
it is hosted as a digital ocean app.
figma was used for some of the design – the rest was done in code
(as I increasingly believe it should be).
it is typeset with IBM plex sansContact me
You can reach me using this Airtable form – I would love to hear from you. I'm also on LinkedIn.
Shortlist of interesting spaces
Behind the scenes
View the backing database for this site in the Airtable Universe.