Though we’re pretty sure this was meant for Halloween, we think it would be a perfect addition to your election night party. [marc92] shows us how he built a fog spreader with red or blue lighting. Fog machines generally spit out the fog from a single point, relying on the breeze to spread it around. [marc92] wanted it spread a little more evenly, as well as some nice mood lighting. He built a pipe system that would emit fog from a much larger area. Mounted on the pipe are red and blue LEDs. Mix this with some of the election lighting systems and you’re set for a party. We know this is an extremely simple project, so it should give you plenty of time to get out and vote before the polls close.
posted Nov 4th 2008 12:31pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: news
Instead of the normal head in a window or split screen display used when interviewing remote guests, [Wolf Blitzer] will be interviewing 3d holograms. Supposedly, they will be recording in a way that allows for 360 views to be projected on stage with [Wolf]. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how they plan to pull that off, but our suspicion is that it will be similar to the Gorillaz live performances. Join us after the break to watch one.
[Eric] has put together a simple python script to scrape election results from CNN.com. It uses urllib2 to return the popular and electoral votes for each party and throws an ElectionWon exception when CNN calls the race. He’s planning on hooking this to DMX controlled RGB LED lighting that will shift to either blue or red as the night progresses. It’s a great starting point if you want to pull off something similar.
UCSB researchers demonstrated how disturbingly easy it is to hack into Sequoia’s e-voting systems and delete or add votes with little more than a USB key. Given the fact that recent elections have been very close, and this upcoming national one looks also to be decided by a close margin, it’s absolutely inexcusable that our voting systems could be so easily rigged. Not only that, Sequoia has fought hard against having its equipment tested and verified independently. Can we really afford to be using such insecure machines in democratic elections, when the risk of abuse is so great?
