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2012-05-10

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In this episode a left-over from the last episode, where gmc and okkie looked ahead to the upcoming hacker-camp and con season. From London we have on the phone Jonty Wareing, one of the prime suspects behind EMFcamp. This hackercamp will take place on August 31st - September 2nd, and is the first such camp in the UK.

Next up is Dmitry Kleiner, venture kommunist and part of the Telekommunisten collective. He explains about thimbl, an artistic example of the decentralized nature of the early internet which is taken as a startingpoint to discuss how today capitalism requires centralized solutions and thus take away freedom.

Finally, gmc is reporting from the filmset on location in Amsterdam where a team is shooting footage for the upcoming open-content movie (Project Mango) produced by the Blender Institute. The 3d modelling and rendering software and its motion tracking features are used in this movie to tell the story of Amsterdam being destroyed by robots. Ton Roosendaal, producer, explains how the movie is financed. Gmc briefly spoke to a very busy director, Ian Hubert. Jeremy Davidson shares his love for robots and the open-source Blender software, and Sebastian Koenig explains a bit about motion tracking. Developer Campbel Barton tells us how it is to work with artists on this project.

Tracks played:

2012-04-12

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After the introductions and news (featuring the recent DARPA funding discussion, Jack Tramel's passing away and the raspberry pi) this edition kicks off a look-ahead at upcoming hacker cons and camps with Emmanuel Goldstein. From New York City the founder of 2600 talks about the history of HOPE, the bi-yearly conference in New York City. A bit of history about the location, the Penn Hotel, as well as a look-ahead to the content of this conference.

Next up, we discuss the Amsterdam edition of the Hack in the Box conference with fish__. An action-packed quad-trak conference with side-dishes such as a browser security programming challenge, a hackerspace challenge, the commsec village for the ITsec community and more.

Finally, we talk with David Raison about a small-scale yet very stimulating outdoor hacker camp in Dudelange, Luxembourg. With hill-side campfires and workshops on technology, society and even 'health & beauty', this is a must visit this summer.

Links:

Tracks played:

2012-01-19

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This edition of /dev/random kicks off with the Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG), a distributed ground station system being built by an international team gravitating around hackerspace Shackspace in Stuttgart, Germany. Hadez, one of the prime suspects, explains about this modular and affordable system offering high accuracy timing for various receiver / data gathering modules). Discussed is their collaboration with Constellation, a number-crunching project set up to calculate trajectories of amateur satellites.

Next, on the phone are Sjors Gielen and Mark van Cuick, two of the three initiators of a community-based mobile telephony provider Limesco aiming to bring transparancy and innovation to the Dutch mobile communication landscape. Limesco does not have customers but members, who are united in the Limesco association. This gives the users of the network a great deal of influence into the future of the network. The provider has a very conscious approach to issues such as data-retention, lawful interception, privacy and net-neutrality.

Finally, gmc looks back at the queer geeks panel discussion that was broadcast live from 28c3 in December 2011. Excerpts from the show give an impression of the subjects touched upon, as discussed by Mitch Altman, Jimmie Rodgers, gmc, socialhack, tomate, willow, lisa and Rubin. The full recording is available in the Signal archives.

HGG links:

Other links:

  • Limesco
  • Queer geeks panel (ogg)
  • Queer geeks panel (mp3)

    • Tracks played:

    2011-12-22

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    Live from studio RevSpace, gmc single-handedly hosts the last episode of /dev/random of 2011. The first item is about the Low Tech Magazine, a blog by freelance journalist Kris de Decker about now obsolete technology presented in well-researched articles that highlight the merits of technology decades or sometimes centuries old. Many of these technologies translate quite well to the modern age, where the danger of resources becoming scarce is looming.

    Next up is the LAOS laser project. Jaap Vermaas, from ASCII and mobile fablab truck fame, explains how this project aims to make lasercutters easier to use with software of your own choice instead of whatever the manufacturer has whipped up. By repurposing cheap chinese lasercutters and replacing the controller board with an open design alternative, these machines can be leveraged to great heights. The basic premis is that you can use any cutter (either manufactured or self-built) and use the hardware and software from the LAOS project.

    And finally, gmc shamelessly talks for about 10 minutes (in dialog with @toba from Pumping Station One) about one of his own brainchilds: the SpaceAPI. This minimal specification defines how spaces can publish useful information (such as: we are open) in JSON. Next to an android app using this information to provide space status as a home screen widget, applications include a globa showing red and green beams and widgets for on websites. They also discuss lidless, the software @toba wrote to give an indication of how active a room covered by a camera is being used and a nifty indicator with lights to connect activity in IRC to a physical space.

    Tracks played:

    Bonus track:

    2011-11-24

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    Live from studio RevSpace, gmc and okkie bring another edition of /dev/random. They start with the news, followed by an interview with Wilco about spacenet. Together with the team from bitlair he built a roaming wifi network that spans multiple spaces. Users can use the login credentials from their home space to log in to the wifi network of all participating spaces.

    Next up is Schemaverse, a multi-player role playing game with a space theme. Players use raw SQL to move ships and command armadda's. Clever players can hack the game by implementing AI in PostgreSQL stored procedures (pl/pgsql) or possibly find weaknesses in the system or the underlyin PostgreSQL cluster and hack their way to any of the trophies.

    Finally, we talk to Jan Klopper about the upcoming eth0 winter event, taking place january 13th/14th/15th somewhere in the east of The Netherlands. The event will focus on censorship and censorship prevention technology, as well as provide a hardware hacking area and of course a cozy hangout.

    Tracks played:

    Bonus track:

    2011-10-27

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    Because gmc is busy doing horrible horrible work, this episode is not live but recorded. Instead of the usual interviews gmc shares some of his favourite chiptunes. Tracks played are:

    2011-09-29

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    A full studio on a hot indian summer night in The Hague. The show starts off with an interview with Erwin van Eijk, one of the hackers at the Digital Technology department of the Dutch Forensics Institute (Nederlands Forensisch Instituut). We talk about the skills needed to track down digital evidence, and the kind of challenges one gets when working for this government organisation. Reverse engineering, data-mining and collecting old and new equipment are some of the daily tasks they carry out.

    Next up we talk with ins3ct3d, a Dutch hacker who rather not have his real identity revealed. He is a white-hat hacker, but found out that organisations (such as municipalities, governmental departments and commercial entities) are not always happy to be told their systems are broken. Legal threats and psychological warfare are some of the consequences he has had to deal with as a result of disclosing shockingly simple but huge leaks giving access to personal data stored in databases.

    We continue along this thread with investigative journalist Brenno de Winter, who often works with hackers like ins3ct3d. As a journalist he has less to fear. We discuss a recent idea of labour-politicaion Heijnen to have a special status for hackers who act in good faith and report leaks to improve security of their and our personal data stored in unsafe systems. Supported by a large majority of the Dutch parliament, this unique law is expected to become reality in mere months.

    At the end, we quickly go through some upcoming events and close of with some more minimal techno from lijnenspel's Frack set. The playlist:

    Other links related to this episode:

    2011-09-01

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    The show, hosted by gmc and co-host Walter, starts of with hackids. MacFreak from Luxembourg hackerspace Syn2cat explains how this recurring event encourages kids to develop a critical and creative view on the status quo, provide an environment where they can explore the hacker mindset without too much boundaries.

    Next up is the Open Hardware Summit. We talk with Alicia, one of the organizers, about the summit and about open hardware. We dive into the definition of open hardware, and touch upon the legal framework that is being developed (for example, the CERN open hardware license.

    Another upcoming event is SoonCon, the Southern Ontario makers and hackers mini-conference taking place in Toronto. James Arlen tells us all about this event, and a much larger event this summer: SoonCamp. Inspired by the Dutch camps (such as HAR2009) and the German CCC summer events, the Canadian hacker scene is inviting hackers from around the globe to their take on power, ethernet and rain.

    And finally we talk to Ricky NG who is from Canada, lives in Shanghai and is currently visiting Budapest (for the transfabric workshop). He took the initiative of setting up a mailing list to follow up on a recent response to a request for information by DARPA on the 100 year spaceship study. Apart from rockets, this involves closed-circle environments, engineering electronics and mechanics to last for 100 years instead of 5 years and more.

    Playlist: