Space Invaders: A Burglar’s Guide to the City | Hacker News Reader

Space Invaders: A Burglar’s Guide to the City

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69 pointsallthebest17 comments

I never studied literature and so never became desensitized to its particular brand of ridiculousness, which can be fascinating in small doses.

Between the original author and the reviewer, "reshape our understanding of the built environment" "burglary activates a different awareness of space" "interrogations of urban design and architecture" "alternative form of architectural criticism" ...etc. (stops skimming)

I was never much good at papers in school because I can't bullshit (plus I somewhat don't fall for it well, making it somewhat hard to believe others will eat it up). To the outsider, it seems ... ermmm... inventive in a way, like something you wouldn't have thought to say yourself, but probably if you have the humanities degree it starts to look like a well-worn set of mix-and-match cliches like the commonly used primitives in any field.

I spent a second or two thinking about the quotes you used, and I disagree. They're all true and expressing abstract concepts that I find hard to simplify. That last one is definitely pushing it though.

"interrogations of urban design and architecture"

this.

it'd take me paragraph(s?) to convey the concept of design systems having personality (be it of a single designer, or the relationship/history of the city/building/whatever-scale) and questioning "facts" and probing various things. some things push back, some things give; sometimes you peel back layered patchworks of systems.

when traveling, i love walking around and intentionally getting lost and trying to "listen" [1] when visiting a new town/city -- i've always considered this my "greeting" or "polite conversation" with a city.

if the above is a conversation, then something more brutal or invasive is an interrogation. i've done enough construction/renovation work that i have a solid grasp of residential building codes and their changes over past 20 years, and a more corse understanding for past 50+ years. when starting a project, there's a "slightly invasive" probing that takes place to understand what era(s) of building codes you're dealing with and what you can exploit or what may be an obstacle.

so, yeah, i find "interrogations of urban design an architecture" to be a extremely efficient and dense encoding of knowledge.

[1] smaller or older cities, walkable.

Ken Hite describes it as "Patchily edited and occasionally drifting into the faux-lyrical", but there's a ton of fascinating information in the book, if you ignore some of the faintly silly metaphysical musings.

http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/ken-and-r...

I never studied programming and so never became desensitized to its particular brand of ridiculousness. "virtual machine" "programming language" "UI framework"

It's just an advertisement for the book (with a bit of content mixed in to keep you reading). The descriptions are inventive, but it's just marketing tripe, and I think that's what you're recognizing.

I never studied literature ... and thus don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm going to talk authoritatively on the subject anyway, with the casual assumption that I'm right, even though I am fully aware that I don't know what I'm talking about.

In this particular case, every statement you quote is meaningful and coherent.

A Burglar’s Guide to the City is a good read. I have recommended it to a number of people. Two weeks ago while visiting San Fran I went to a security meetup and mentioned the book. One of the individuals pulled out the book and said he was reading it. Then he turned to a page that mentioned his name and noted his contribution to the book. Small world. One of my favorite subjects in the book is Nakatomi Space[1].

[1] http://www.bldgblog.com/2010/01/nakatomi-space/

The technique goes quite a way back--it was used extensively in the urban fighting in WW II, and I believe that the US troops used it in Buena Vista during the Mexican War.

He talks about a game called "Super Bad", but I believe he meant Super Hot. http://superhotgame.com/

Also interesting that he neglected to mention GTA V which has several heist missions that seem inspired by a few real life LA heists (including the hole through the vault floor via sewer caper).

Yes, Superbad is something entirely different: http://superbad.com/1/trunk/trunk.html

I read the book two weeks ago. It was decent I guess made me more aware of some things I've been thinking about peripherally anyway.

Pretty light overall though. If anyone wants I can mail them my copy for cost of shipping.

I would like to read it please. My address is 5620 jackson farms drive nw, lilburn ga 30047

> Or consider Bill Mason, an ex-burglar Manaugh profiles, who became so adept at deciphering municipal building codes that he could mentally construct the layout of an apartment simply by scanning the placement of exterior fire escapes.

My weird hobby as a kid was looking at the windows of our apartment building and figuring out which ones belonged to which apartments. I wonder if I narrowly escaped a life of crime.

I thought for a moment this was about the french artist "Invader".

http://www.space-invaders.com/home/

Isn't this something that some MIT students do to their campus?

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