Noisebridge co-founder Jacob Appelbaum
(Credit: James Martin/CNET )SAN FRANCISCO--About 30 people listened intently on a recent Thursday night to short presentations on linear algebra and beer brewing, watched a demo of an iPhone cyberspace shooter game, and learned how to make a light staff (acrylic rod, LED, resistor, tape, no soldering required).
For the last talk, a speaker billed as "Dr. Baron Mikheil von Burstein, esq." explained how to pull off his interactive public art specialty--swings that hang in the aisles on the underground trains in the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system.
"I installed it publicly, illegally and got away with it," he boasted. He had materials with him to hang four swings, he said, adding "Let's install a swing right now on BART!"
At least half the crowd followed him, officially ending Five Minutes of Fame, an event held the third Thursday of every month at the Noisebridge Hacker Space.
Noisebridge is described on its Web site as a nonprofit "space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning." It was conceived by Jacob Appelbaum and Mitch Altman while they were at a hacker conference in Berlin, Chaos Communication Camp 2007.
"Something clicked there and we both independently came up with the notion that we would make a hacker space happen in San Francisco," Altman, a computer security expert, said in a recent interview. Altman and Appelbaum spread the word to friends, and a group started meeting in cafes on Tuesday nights, until they found their first space. They quickly outgrew that spot, and in October they moved to their current 5,200 square foot space a block or so away in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District.
The large second-floor concrete warehouse space was packed with programmers, artists, writers, lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and urban hipsters with bike messenger bags for the open house party on a Friday night in early October. Electronic music played, people lined up to buy drinks, and a variety of digital toys were on display, including a computer-controlled mill someone was using to etch the Noisebridge logo into metal. A light display with a sign next to it said, "Hack me. I'm proprietary."
In a far back corner, a curious architectural feature stands out--a small room that houses the servers and is accessible only via a ladder and a crawl space near the ceiling. The back story, or at least part of it anyway, was revealed on a subsequent visit.
"This death trap is a response to a political battle," said Appelbaum. "There used to be a door here," he said, pointing to an area obviously boarded up and painted over. "But some people wanted to lock the server room and log access. So, what is the eventual outcome? This wall."
Noisebridge co-founder Mitch Altman shows people how to solder and work with electronics at his weekly Circuit Hacking workshop.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET )Oddities and whimsy abound at Noisebridge. The handles on the door of the refrigerator (which is stocked with the hacker drink of choice, caffeinated Club-Mate) are on the opposite side from where it opens. A red pay phone is rigged up to be a voice over IP phone, allowing calls anywhere for free. And a laptop is precariously perched atop a wall divider that operates a touch panel designed to control the HVAC, lights, and building access.
Noisebridge members take their automation designs seriously. The front door can be opened remotely over the Internet by someone at home. The system also calls the cell phones of certain members the day before the weekly trash pickup, and whoever can respond is automatically connected to a phone at Noisebridge. Whoever picks up is asked to put the trash cans out front.
"It's funny that we have to have that [system] to manage the trash," joked one Noisebridge member.
It's very much a do-it-yourself space, with members building an induction stove, a custom tile countertop decorated with the Noisebridge logo, a dark room and optics lab, and an industrial shop. A cyborg group is working on augmenting reality with artificial senses and creating an anklet that lets the wearer feel which way is north. One person working on a genetically modified bacterium wanted to create a bio-hacking area, but that idea was rejected after some debate, according to one member.
There have been courses on sewing and crafting; workshops for French, German, Mandarin, American Sign Language, cryptography, creme brulee making, and, of course, lock picking. Coming up: a knot-tying workshop, a class on CPR, and an EFF presentation on hacker spaces and the law.
While the world of hacking traditionally is built around mystery and exclusivity, Noisebridge aims for more widespread appeal.
"We'd like to take hacking from the underground, where it's inaccessible, and make it accessible to everyone," Appelbaum said. "It's not just about bits and bytes...it's about the intersection of art and technology and changing the greater world around you."
"Hacker spaces have evolved in a good way," said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of security firm Veracode who was in the L0pht Heavy Industries hacker group in Boston in the 1990s. He visited Noisebridge recently and noted that the group "has more resources, more space and equipment, and it seems like more diversity of people."
While there are about 100 members of Noisebridge (each paying $40 to $80 per month), L0pht typically had 7 or 8 members at any one time, primarily focused on hardware and computer security, according to Wysopal.
Noisebridge has an executive board whose members are elected, but decisions are made by consensus of the entire membership. The group's motto is "Be excellent to each other," a line from the movie "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."
"It's more anarchy than anything else; people getting together to form temporary, smaller, organized groupings to perform a task," said co-founder Altman, who runs a circuit hacking workshop every week and makes the TV-B-Gone device that remotely shuts off TVs.
Members learn from each other and create things, but more importantly, they have a safe space to form a community that they can't get elsewhere, especially not on the Internet, according to Altman.
"A lot of us are introverted geeks who were bullied and even beaten up, like I was," he said. "Now, we can get together and celebrate our unique geekiness, share that with the world, and make the community around us better."
My colleague James Martin created an audio slideshow on Noisebridge:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo may be tough competitors when it comes to Internet software and services, but they are putting their differences aside to build a developer community to tackle bigger picture problems like saving lives in emergencies.
The companies have joined with NASA, the World Bank, and PR agency SecondMuse to organize the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness event, which was held at a warehouse space-cum community center called Hacker Dojo this weekend. For two days, coders worked on ways to use technology to help solve real-world problems, such as how people can get information and find each other during disasters.
Developers gave presentations on their projects at the Random Hacks of Kindness event on Saturday at a space dubbed Hacker Dojo.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)The event came about after representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo attended a Crisis Camp conference for emergency and disaster relief groups in Washington, D.C. in May. The technologists decided that they would join forces to create a community of developers to build tools to help emergency workers.
"We're trying to seed the community," said Jeffery Martin, business product manager for Google Crisis Response. "We're saying, partner with the private sector and we can push technology forward and innovate."
Developers worked on a dozen or so tools that could help disaster and emergency workers in times of crisis. Several tools took advantage of social media sites, like Twitter, and SMS for information sharing. One project envisioned using laptops, routers, mobile devices, USB keys and Wi-Fi to create a mesh network for times when normal networks are down.
Several projects explored the use of maps, including one group that built a widget that allows a user to click on a point in a map to have the coordinates automatically inserted into a message that can then be posted to multiple social networks at once via the HelloTXT service.
The first-place prize went to a group of Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley researchers who also work at NASA. They worked on a mobile notification app that can be used when regular cellular networks are so bogged down people can't make phone calls. Using the "I'm OK" app, people can easily notify friends and family members that they are safe via SMS by clicking one button. The "I'm OK" message is then instantly distributed to everyone a user has designated on a pre-set contact list.
The I'm OK mobile app lets people notify loved ones via SMS that they are safe.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)Separately, NASA coders collaborated with Google on a GeoCam tool that was used by people fighting California fires earlier this year to place photos of burn areas that were taken by GPS-enabled cell phones on maps so workers can see what damage is like in specific locations.
In addition to training AMES Research Center employees to be first responders in disasters, NASA wants to offer developers use of the satellite and other earth science data collected by its space crafts, which comes to about four terabytes per day, said Robert Schingler, a project manager in the office of center director at NASA Ames research center at nearby Moffett Field. NASA also has tools to analyze the data, which provide information about things like sea surface temperatures, ice sheet activity, and aerosols in the upper atmosphere, he said.
"We've got 40 years of data," Schingler said. But, NASA needs a good application programming interface (API) so developers can make better use of it, he said. Meanwhile, the tools developed at Random Hacks of Kindness events could be used by workers at the World Bank and other agencies.
"It's a perfect opportunity to mobilize the technology community to work on issues such as sustainable development and disaster relief," said Emma Phillips, a consultant in disaster risk management and sustainable development at the World Bank. "This is a first step in building community, and bringing together the public and private sectors for a common goal."
The next Random Hacks of Kindness event will be early next year in Washington, D.C.
Gary McKinnon
(Credit: ZDNet UK)A date has been set for a High Court judicial review of NASA hacker Gary McKinnon's case.
The review, set for June 9 and 10, will focus on whether McKinnon's diagnosis with Asperger's syndrome was taken into account during his appeals process.
McKinnon's mother, Janis Sharp, told ZDNet UK about the judicial review date via an e-mail on Friday. Sharp said she had felt "broken" and "beaten up" by a Crown Prosecution Service decision on Thursday not to prosecute McKinnon in the U.K., but that she was now "getting back in fighting mode."
McKinnon has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of "the biggest military hack of all time." The U.S. authorities allege that McKinnon caused $700,000 worth of damage, and disabled systems and military equipment, by hacking into U.S. military computers at the Pentagon, at NASA, and at U.S. military installations in 2001. McKinnon has never denied hacking U.S. systems, but denies causing damage. He claims to have been searching for UFOs.
McKinnon faces up to 70 years in a maximum security prison if found guilty by a U.S. court. He is currently 43 years old.
McKinnon's solicitor, Karen Todner, told ZDNet UK on Friday that she hoped the High Court review would prevent McKinnon's extradition.
"We're hoping the court will say that Gary's Asperger's will prevent his extradition, as to extradite him would be a breach of his human rights," said Todner.
The review will include an appraisal of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's decision not to halt McKinnon's extradition to the U.S. in September. Smith was aware of McKinnon's Asperger's when she turned down the autumn appeal against McKinnon's extradition.
Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.
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