DATA:
Legend:
- (1st) etc: Voted for by the community and it's placing in the vote
- (Extra Submission): Submissions added in the voting process
- (n/a): Added by me as issue arose while coming up with the details
Priority 0
There is a small, but vocal group of the voters who want me to have a Cobra Ball and since one of them took the liberty of designing a livery for our own Cobra Ball, I think this should be the top priority
My favourite part of the @ACWPodcast Slack is that people know I think the greatest plane flying is the Cobra Ball & they I know I would give both my legs & an arm to be a crew member on one
— Paddy Kerley (@LegendaryPatMan) January 30, 2021
So we joked about buying a scrapped OC-135 for conversion & someone designed a livery pic.twitter.com/RkCbJ8YyJl
If this one is unsuitable, we have a second livery that we can work with, with more Juche! Though it runs the risk of being shot down by North Korea
Oof! That is some terrible resolution... It should look like this! pic.twitter.com/i5jRxd5V8D
— Paddy Kerley (@LegendaryPatMan) January 30, 2021
Quick & Easy Win's
(4th) Create a community curated list of interesting people and project to follow or be aware of that can be odd such as say In-Q-Tel's space imagery blog or Intrusion Truth's cyber blog unmasking Chinese cyber activity via OSINT.
This should be easy as it's mostly a list of people that should be community maintained list, in a google doc or similar and requires essentially zero overhead from anyone byond document creation.
(5th) Create an #ask_a_wonk channel & (Extra Submission) a meme Channel & (n/a) A channel to start discussions on the way forward for some projects since some ideas will need leadership from the community? (Extra Submission) Moar Juche?
Simple. Could be part of a more general clean up and updating of channel names and topics. Someone asked for Moar Juche so... Using a community channel we could find out what they mean by more self reliance? But more generally because I think the community should have a say in what we/they want so a channel to interact with the community for stuff such as this would be the place to go to vote on pod episodes start projects, make future requests etc
(16th) ACWP GitHub Organisation for hosting projets like #tid but also some bots since we have some custom bots written too for say... Bomb yield calculation for Punggye-ri
Since we are going to need to build some bots and maintain some programs for various things that will need many of the features of GitHub, make a pod org where these projects can be owned by the pod so that if anyone leaves or code stops being maintained but we need it maintained, we can continue to own, operate and fix the code.
(18th) Reboot the #bookclub kinda half done?
Since the bookclub was always hard to run with things like books releasing at different times in different places like KJU and the Bomb, maybe move from bookclub or reviews or read alongs? Or discussions more generally of books and as a place you can ask about books on a topic etc. I have been doing an experiment of a read along of Tom Clancy's terrible book, Executive Orders, and it has been quite the ride for the few that have come along for it https://acwpodcast.slack.com/archives/C580L3EFM/p1611243286002000
Longer Term Projects
(27th) Wonk HFGCS network to allow wonks to communicate with HAM Radio's
This is a project some guys want to do who are HAM nuts... I have no idea what this means but I will ask them for the sake of entertaining the idea
(Extra Submission) "It would be cool to help Jeffery work on some projects at CNS for example, Generally interested in how to remove/reduce WMD. So interested in treaty stuff and things that will (may) work longer term."
CNS Volunteer Corps?
Cheap With Recouriong Cost But Valuable
(1st) Set up our own MediaWiki Server where we can host archival data of Slack, guides for various things of note, resources that could be used or write up's of things such as the shootdown of PS752. Sort of an official history of Slack. Could be used for more such as some of the stories people have written as jokes or as a place to host our Wonky Christmas Songs
This is by far and away the most requested thing that people want and I'm down to do it! All that's really needed is to figure out how to pay for it. Hosting isn't an issue and we have people like @tinfoil who host their own MediaWiki's and have written plugins to have access linked to Slack and @bmueller is a Wikipedia editor so we have basically all we need to get it going, minus the recurring cost.
For the administration of the servers, we have TONS of IT guys who know just unbelievable amounts of stuff about hosting and tense and detailed arguments have occurred before about the pros and cons of various things hosting providers have... So we have all we need on that side too, to keep things up and running
(22nd) Text To Speech transcripts of pod episodes
This would make it really easy to use the pod as a research tool, where on the pages of the pod on the ACW website, the full transcript could be searched so that you can easily google using the correct terms for various places, like where the Mianus, Connecticut GMD site should be for example because I had to google that to figure out that it was a real place...
(23rd) Monthly donation to ADS-B Exchange
Awesome site! They deserve the funding! Simple as! Plus comes with API credits so if Jeffery ever asks me to look at a plane again for tracking, it could be figured out real quick
(26th) Pinboard as a place to save useful links to content and also act as a private archival repository of the bookmarks similar to how archive.org works
It would be awesome to have a place to collate all of the useful links we have and archive them so that we will always have access to THAT page before it's changed so that tools like say, SGTS 3.0 isn't lost forever... But not lost to us!
(28th) Hubot for Slack to begin to create an institutional culture for Slack
It's a bot, one guy likes it, people voted for it. Maybe ask them what they want it for?
Expesnive AF Probably
(10th) Access to archived data beyond the 10k Message Monster & (24th) Paid Slack
Paid slack costs $8 per user per month, or $6.67 when paid annually... There are 1044 people on Slack... Monthly that's $8,352 or yearly it's $83,561.76... So you know... Easily sorted...
(3rd) Generally better access imagery for our own projects & specifically (13th) ShadowBreak Intl access
Imagery is something that's been talked about for years but not a whole pile has come about from it... It would awesome if we could finally have some form of regular access to imagery for OSINT projects such as @tinfoil's dive into Saudi uranium milling;
So the CNS crew published 👇 evidence that the WSJ reporting on a Uranium Mill in al-Ula was probably incorrect.
— Tinfoil Globe (@tinfoil_globe) October 8, 2020
I’m a *total ☢️ amateur* but since reading the WSJ story I've become slightly obsessed with Uranium Mills in Saudi Arabia.
Here's a 🧵 about what I've learned. https://t.co/iwWHR98e9P
Someone specifically asked for Shadowbreak so it's there, but I don't think people would be too picky if we just had imagery since we were over the moon with Datayo when it dropped! Just a shame we can't really get imagery like we could when it started...
(14th) NK Pro for Slack & (14th) NK Pro for Slack &
Similar to paid Slack... 1044 people for services that don't have a price tags... Even if you limit it to a small group... How do you choose who gets access and who does not... How do you maintain that the terms of licence are met for these?
(19th) Paid access to MarineTraffic data
MarineTraffic is cool! We use it often and it would be cool to track ships we like easily as well as making a donation towards the upkeep of a service that's used in the community like ADSBX is
Projects that Require Other Projects
(11th) Welcome guide/bot. Bots for Slack could hosted on Heroku, potentially for free depending on the usage, otherwise an actual guide would need to be hosted on the Wiki or something to that effect
Not that hard. The tech already exists
Iskender Piyale-Sheard
And someone wants to name it JucheBot. As well as this, all we need to do is format some text for it to say what is needed such as
Hey and welcome to Slack from the team here at the Arms Control Wonk Podcast Slack!
Good to have you aboard! If you've never used Slack before, they have a nice
guide to help get you started
https://slack.com/intl/en-ie/resources/using-slack/how-to-use-slack
Since we sometimes do some interesting work here and have run into issues,
you should take a read of our Terms of Service
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fv89IldiyhpBHXLPORIuxoXOa6pBtTd70SprdDWD8H8/edit?usp=sharing
You should also be aware that while you will see a number of channels on the
left, we do have some that are not displayed, but you may be interested in
such as #nerdery, #kim_jong_un_and_the_bomb_bookclub or #arms_control_wok to name a few.
Feel free to say hi and introduce yourself in the #intros_and_announces
channel and if you have questions you can pop them in the #ask_a_wonk channel
or if you have any issues, you can DM the mods like @nathan, @markjsmccall or
@matthew.parent
Finally, we welcome one and all to contribute or lurk as you choose
(12th) Host old pods on Google Drive or other storage since some appear to be missing from libsyn?
We we know what storage system we're going to use, the old pod episodes can be added to it so they are not lost. I recall someone mentioning that they have the whole set or nearly all of them if some are missing.
(20th) Use our Wiki as a place to merge our knowledge with other sources such as the Swords of Armageddon Wiki or Jamie's stuff?
Community idea that would be taken on by the community
(n/a) Conversation Backups
One of the guys, @USSJoin wrote a tool to backup conversations from Slack so that stuff isn't lost forever ever and these can be stored offline as a way to backup specific conversations for backup to the wiki. The code is up and running and tested as working
ussjoin
Discussion Needed
(n/a) How to ensure that the pod retains control of the stuff.
So a GitHub org that I set up for the pod's projects should be owned by the pod so that if anything where to happen that would mean I am no longer in the community or I can't be in the community, there will always be access to the org rather than relying on me. Or where @bmueller owns the acwpedia.org domain where we could host the Wiki but the pod has no control over it.
We could get our own domain and have something like acwp.org for a public forum or NextCloud or other projects etc, but ultimate ownership should not be in my hands or Ben's hands. This kinda goes on and on and on with the various ideas...
And if you guys still want the more hands off approach, how do I and anyone else involved in a given project then use the pod's ownership to set up various things that are needed or ensure that approved spending is paid from pod funds? Maybe a board is needed so that slack has freedom of movement but ultimate ownership of domains etc is owned by the pod? Like say for example we use AWS for hosting, how do we login? What email do we use? Does it have password that might need to be shared with others? How is this maintained?
(n/a) Not voted for but already approved. The amplify Women's and/or Minorities and/or New Voices in OSINT, Arms Control etc project.
It will be done
(n/a) Link Patreon and Slack via API so that new Patron's are added to Slack Automagically
To make Scott's life easier. In theory, it's not that hard. Zapier might be able to do it automagically even. If not, there's a pile of people that could easily write some python etc for the pod to make it work
(2nd) Pod related Merch. Patches, challenge coins etc.
Another great use of the community channel! We can talk to them about what is wanted/needed in terms of merch, even if some things are mentioned, as a whole there may be some specific ideas of what people want
Automation is key as I'm gona guess none of us wants to get into the drop shipping business... The Bulletin has their own Threadless store where they sell a load of stuff and the whole thing is managed and run by Threadless, so that might be an option
Etsy is another option with greater flexibility but we're probably gona have to find someone who has done this properly to try and get things sorted since I have zero idea of what the best way is to get this off the ground, especially when there are so many disparate ideas that would require different suppliers... And in some cases, we may not have a choice but to have one of us do drop shipping...
(6th) Our own OSINT Team
The CNS Volunteer Corps?
(7th) A series on Brilliant Pebbles or the main pod on the "Hard Stuff" of Arms Control and OSINT such as "such as missile physics, the nuclear fuel cycle and weaponization of nuclear fuel, or the proliferation of risk components to make weapons easier to make"
A source for those that want the deeper dive into an issue or idea. Not exactly sure on the exact content that is wanted...
(9th) A series on Brilliant Pebbles or the main pod or a resource guide that is an introduction to Arms Control such as Jamie's Learn WMD Guide https://learnwmd.wixsite.com/learnwmd/the-spreadsheet but structured for total beginners such as say, me when I started in Slack
An introduction to wonkery, provided in a convenient way. I don't know how I would introduce any of this since I learned by interacting with people on Slack...
(8th) Clean up the Google Drive to that it's useful to members since things are hard to find OR set up our own Nextcloud instance with a pile of storage behind it and host what we need there.
Exactly what it says. The Google Drive link is hard to find at the best of times, let alone having to consider finding anything you want to find on it... It needs to be cleaned up. Simple as.
Along with the cleaning up the Drive, I don't know if we have enough storage on it if we start getting and sharing imagery etc so it might be worth considering setting up NextCloud or similar? Plugins could also be used to convert everything to a PDF and OCR the PDF's automagically so that all documents are text searchable
Storage has been offered if we need it from @USSJoin and @ArsenioDev . Though storage for stuff like documents is pretty easy to come by. Imagery would be the larger issue.
(16th) Missile DATCOM for Slack
Or other alternative. Just how we do avoid ITAR violations since like... I think it's illegal for me to be provided with the software while in Ireland?
(21st) Rewards for Slack Members who make amazing contributions to Slack, OSINT etc
There was a semi serious joke about setting up a fake military order called The Order of the Cobra Ball and getting fake medals and ribbons made as well as something like the Jeffrey Lewis Award for OSINT or the Beatrice Fihn Award for Disarmament.
(25th) Public Forum for Slack
A way for Slack to show off our OSINT work in a more public forum. @Alex Axthelm had the idea of having a site in the style of Write The Docs where there is a newsletter that is published every month-ish and it can be viewed as an email to keep in contact what we are doing, as well as serving as a blog that can view viewed like a standard webpage
Write the Docs Team
This was something that was mentioned as essential if we were to start using a tool like Cesium as Jeffery mentioned last year?