Category: Autarky Lab

  • The banality of consumption

    Life in today’s capitalist societies is far from great. It’s full of meaningless bullshit work, full of laws and other constraints, and all of that in the face of multiple ecological crises that ordinary people seem unable to do anything about and elites seem determined to ignore until it is too late. That is exactly […]

  • Against human trafficking in Europe: So much to do

    A friend with a big heart for victims of human trafficking asked me to identify opportunities for helping trafficked women in Europe. As my (initial) results can be useful for others as well, I publish them here. My research focused on work opportunities for English speakers, as opposed to also speaking, say, an Eastern European […]

  • The end of “developing”

    I am back in Germany after four months in Nepal. First impression? Germany is well-organized, super quiet, and populated by zombies. The living dead, you know. (Oh and, Germany is so flat. Very strange. Why u not hilly?) It just does not make sense. If something like Germany is the endpoint of developing areas' development, […]

  • Hiding ham in spam: Deniable communication under total surveillance

    This is an intellectual challenge: how to design a generic, many-to-many communication system that prohibits surveillance entities from proving that you (1) read some website or (2) contributed content to some website, even if they do (1) capture and analyze all traffic on the Internet and (2) can break all encryption that is used for […]

  • EarthOS 0.13 released!

    Has been nearly a year since the last release. But then again, it's just a for-fun project for me at the moment where I put in some spare hour to relax by indulging into creative technological thinking and some systems engineering. Anyway, here we go: The new version 0.13 of the EarthOS document has been published. Access […]

  • Commentary on Dr. Harald Wozniewski’s “mass purchasing power” argument

    This is my commentary on the analysis of monetary inflation and income development by Dr. Harald Wozniewski, as presented on kiwifo.de, especially on page “60 Jahre Währungsreform – 60 Jahre Geldmengenwachstum“. Our task is first to determine the real inflation rate (not by means of a shopping basket, which is hedonically corrected etc.). This is simple: If the inflation […]

  • Hidden Stories

    At DIY Days Gothenburg, I showed the EarthOS project in the experience hall. With this, I collect and integrate open source alternatives for plain everything in life, and showcased things like Makerbot, Bitcoin, Open Source Ecology. What totally surprised me was how DIY Days contributed back: It made me understand that EarthOS is more story […]