Drupal Association Membership Drive

(because there's $ in numbers)

The Drupal Association plays an important part in keeping the community healthy and in keeping Drupal.org up and running. However, lots of people don't know about the Association, or don't realize the extent of the work we do. With this membership campaign, we're raising awareness of the Drupal Association, raising funds for community improvement projects like Community Cultivation Grants, and giving more of the Drupal community a sense of stewardship over Drupal.org and our ecosystem.

Link:

https://assoc.drupal.org/help-grow-our-membership

I buy used laptops on PropertyRoom.com and donate them after installing Linux Mint. The HDDs are wiped. Often I also upgrade the DDRAM and I have to buy an AC power supply. Sometimes I have to replace a battery or DVD drive. The item description will tell you if the HDD or caddy are missing, or there other problems.

They average about $80 total, a pretty fair price for a laptop. My hobby is funded partly through a GoFundMe campaign: Donate Refurbished Laptops

Property Room advertises that they sell items confiscated by law enforcement officials, and that they also sell items being liquidated by government agencies, plus they have a few other partners, like estate jewelers. I once bought a Peavey guitar practice amplifier that arrived with a manila tag with a detective's name and the case number attached.

My latest laptop purchase came with some interesting stickers.

Below the keyboard:

On the lid:

So I did some detective work myself.

We know the laptop has something to do with 6207 Namon Wallace Drive in Cumming, GA, associated with Deputy Sheriff Stephen Roberson, and the property was sold in 2011 for $65K. Ryan Grayson, who started his own agency, International Specialized Investigations A18949, in the San Luis Potosi Area, Mexico shortly after the date on the laptop, may also be involved. JHamilton is possibly John Hamilton, Deputy Sheriff (retired) at Philadelphia county Sheriff's Office, from Dacula, Georgia who collected (?) it on 03/07/2013. Something about the laptop may have brought together law enforcement agents from Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania. It was held somewhere, then the HDD was wiped and it made its way to Property Room for sale last month.

Here's how I found out:

First I searched the address 6207 Namon Wallace Drive. The property is located in Cumming, GA 30028, and sold for $65K on 10/14/2011. I also found a picture of the house:

A search for that address came up with the name Stephen Roberson in Cumming, GA on LocateFamily.com:

A LinkedIn search for Stephen Roberson near zipcode 30028 tells us he is a Deputy Sheriff with a background in IT:

An email explains the super-powers granted to Community role users:

Thanks for being an active user of Drupal.org! Due to your frequent
participation, you’ve been granted a ‘community’ role on Drupal.org.
You are joining thousands of active users who are helping us make this site a
better place for new users.

From now on, you may occasionally see a small ‘confirm’ button on
comments or user profiles of other users on Drupal.org. This means you are
looking at a new user, who hasn’t been confirmed as not a spammer yet, and
who doesn’t currently have full access to the site.

When you see this button, please take another look at what the person posted.
If their content looks valid and not spammy, just click ‘confirm’. By
doing so, you enable the person to fully participate on Drupal.org and
improve their daily experience on the site.

You can read more about Drupal.org user roles at
https://www.drupal.org/about-drupalorg/user-roles and about the community
role specifically at https://www.drupal.org/node/2471925 

Thanks for helping us make Drupal.org a better place!

- Drupal.org Team

Social Networking sites like Twitter are fantastic - but often they #fail in their UI/UX. I collect and report problems on other networks like LinkedIn already. Here are some on Twitter. I am decibelplaces on Twitter, you are welcome to connect with me on all my social accounts, here is my Appearoo profile (formerly XeeMe) with links to them.

My Writers List on Twitter Stopped Working

One of my lists is for writers. I added about 10 people to it. Then I stopped being able to add members. I contacted Twitter, but they didn't help. I created a second list for writers, and copied the members from the original list.

When trying to add someone to the list, I click on the checkbox next to the list name and nothing happens. When trying to modify or delete the bad list, I get an Internal server error message.

"Aliens" Are Probably Robots With Sophisticated AI; Perhaps Humans Will Evolve That Way Too

Neural Implants Enhancing Human Brains Are An Intermediate Step

I have often said that "Web 3.0" will involve a direct neural connection of the brain to the Internet, without tactile devices like mouse and keyboard.

In a research paper and presentation at the NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Symposium, Dr. Susan Schneider (Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, The University of Connecticut, and Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies) proposes that any aliens encountered by humans are likely to be super-intelligent robots. Schneider is particularly interested in BISAs: Biologically-Inspired Superintelligent Agents.

Exo-biologists say one reason human attempts to contact alien life have not produced results is that we are looking for biological life, not "robotic life."

In The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (2010) Paul Davies, chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics, posits that extraterrestrial intelligence might not be interested in the physical world at all and would instead take on the form of a quantum computer.

"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes in The Eerie Silence. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."

“As soon as a civilization invents radio, they’re within fifty years of computers, then, probably, only another fifty to a hundred years from inventing AI. At that point, soft, squishy brains become an outdated model.”

Once a society creates the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are only a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm from biology to AI.