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Crazy Hacker Weekend!

The weekend of Aug 19th and Aug 20th is a crazy busy weekend for Hive76. Between stuff going on at Hive76, and things going on around Philly, there is a lot to do.

MakerBot 3d Printing Intro
Saturday, 1PM to 5 at Hive76 just $25
MakerBot founder Zach is in town, to teach a MakerBot 3d Printing class at Hive76. 3D printers allow people convert their digital designs into real world objects, and MakerBot is one of the most popular 3D printers. Bring your own 3d object designs, or lean how to design things on the spot. Once you’ve taken the class, you’re certified to use the Hive76 MakerBot, and can print things out at Hive at your own schedule. Get a ticket now, we’re almost sold out… More Info

Hackers Dinner
Saturday, 6:30ish to 8sih at Dahlak
Want to hang out with the infamous Nick Farr or the ineffable Zach Smith? Got questions about technology, the future, or making things that you need answered? Then come have dinner with us, and get to know a couple of the folks behind Philly, D.C. and N.Y.C.’s hacker scene. This is also a kind-of celebration of 3 months of Hive76, so come celebrate. RSVP to Hive76@gmail.com by Friday, because this is a dinner, and we need a headcount. More Info

8static (non-Hive76)
Saturday 8PM till ?? at Studio34
8static is a chiptunes show in West Philly, and it’s just blocks from Dahlak. So wander on over after eating and check out what happens when musicians start to reverses engineer their gear. More Info

Nick Farr talks about ’42 Points on the Future of Everything’
(Sunday 12:30 to 2PM) At Hive76. Free coffee and (pay) order-in-brunch
Nick Farr is known world-around for his advocacy for hackerspaces, and for pushing the edge of what spaces do. Because of his travels and experience, he has a unique and deep understanding of spaces, geeks, hackers, and where this whole thing is going. His talk is a recap of a SIGINT talk covering the future of everything. More Info

Guitar Effects Study Group
Monday the 21st, 7:30PM to 10PM at Hive76
The third Monday of every month is Guitar Effects Workshop at Hive76. We will build a simple musical gizmo and discuss how it works. Even if you have never touched a soldering iron (or a guitar), stop by and learn how to build simple musical electronics. More advanced mad scientists are encouraged to come show off their own guitar effect creations. More Info

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Music Night This Monday

On Monday the 21st, we’ll be having our first ever DIY music night. Anyone with an interest in music –whether its assembling analog effect pedals, designing custom MIDI plug-ins, or modding up a fretless bass — is welcome. Come with your own personal secret project, team up with like minds, or get some guidance from our resident experts. There will be copious supplies of common electronic components (no digikey necessary), several computer workstations, and a good deal of geeky comraderie for inspiration and assistance. This study-group/workshop is open to novices and pros alike.

And feel free to bring a guitar/synth/childrens-toy to jam out on!

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Django/Python Hacking Night!

Hello all you Pythonistas.  So someone (cough:Far:cough) accidentally scheduled Python Hacking Night as 7am instead of 7pm on second Mondays, leading to a minor collission, but since the collison was also a Python event of sorts (Django being written purely in Python), I thought maybe we’d go all Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on it…  “you got your Python in my Django!” “No, you got your Django in my Python!”…  and do a joint night, and see how much interest there is in separate nights, related projects and whatnot, whatever…  we’re making this up as we go along!

So if you’re interested in either Python or Django, please come by a week from tonight, Monday the 14th at 7ish, and that’s 7 post meridiem mind you!

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Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Although it’s hard to find info on, Buckmeister Fuller spent some of his best years working out of The Science Center, an incubator system/building/thing near the University of Pennsylvania. Around the time he died, the Buckminster Fuller Institute was founded, to do great projects, and in general make the world more, uhh, Fulleriene. Somewhere along the way, it moved to Stanford, and then to NYC, but something about it’s “We have to do it ourselves, no one else is going to” attitude still says it has some Philly spirit at heart.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge (BFC) is a competition that the institute runs for “Catalyzing the vanguard of a design science revolution” or in English “Make great things, because we’re screwed if we don’t.” BFC is awarding $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a strategy that try to solve and invent our way out of humanity’s most pressing problems.

Continue reading “Buckminster Fuller Challenge”

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Holy petabyte rack Batman


Data storage is expensive, but raw hard drivers are cheap, and with big data centers measuring capacity in petabytes it’s become pretty clear storage is big money and big business. And when something becomes big business or money, some of those customers (who don’t want to pay big money) are going to get into the ‘Open Source The Thing And Make It Cheap For Me’ game. Which is exactly what backblaze has done with petabytes on a budget.

These guys have designed a fracking Rack System with 67 Terabytes of data in 4U for less than a small car. Then, to make sure it’s cheap and stays cheap, they are sharing the design. 45 Drivers in a 4U Rack, with room to spare. Also amazing is that they run their access to the system via HTTPS instead of something like Fibre Channel, SQL, or SCSI. So my main question is: How long till we get one at the hackerspace? For, you know. uuuhhh, Backups?

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September Wrap-up & Announcements

We’ve been busy at Hive (not so much solving the Hive collapse problem, but we like the idea) and have not announced anything since last month. So, lets fix that right now. FIrst off, we just finished our second “Scrum sprint” with some moderate successes. Here’s a brief summary of what we did over the last month:

August Wrap-Up:

We did a ton of awesome things in August. Brendan and Far helped Tory Franklin with her exhibit at FLUXSpace (http://www.thefluxspace.org/pages/current.html), and we also made a Frabjous (or it’s almost done at any rate) http://www.georgehart.com/sculpture/frabjous.html

We built a MakerBot (http://makerbot.com/) and Jordan heroically lead efforts to get it working in only two days (the last two Saturdays), with help from Dan, Brian, Far, Brendan, some Adams, and… anyone else I’m forgetting who also helped.

We attended the Make:Philly BBQ, shot some water rockets, and there was much rejoicing.

Jordan, Brian and many visitors hacked on an iPhone app for ShareUrMeal… that’s almost done. Brian & Far hacked on a Python script to enable Python shell tab completion in multiple operating systems.

We cleaned and reorganized much of the space at the Hive. It’s a little bit less cluttered now.

Here is a quick list of upcoming events at Hive76! Our calendar can be found at http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/hive76%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics or on our website at Hive76.org.

Upcoming Hive Events:
PhillyCocoa iPhone Deviation
+ Thu, September 4, 7pm – 10pm at Hive76
– The local cocoaheads hang out, and build apps for iPhone and Mac. If you want hands on mac devs to work next to, this is the place. This week we’re hoping to finish up our “ShareUrMeal” app!

Python Hacking Night
+Monday, September 14th, 7pm-10pm at HIve76
– We hack on and play with some Python code, and try to get some kind of new functionality
working by the end of the night

Django Hacking Night
+TBD, probably Thu. Sept 17th or Mon. Sept. 28th
– A complement to Python Hacking Night, Django is the web framework “for perfectionists with deadlines,” and is written entirely in Python. Anyone experienced with Django, or looking to get some experience, come on by. Contact Brian w/ interest/questions/date preference. we have one or two experience Django developers lined up to help run the class, but Brian’s organizing it to learn more himself! brian dot glusman (a) gmail dot com

Guitar Effects Workshop
+Mon, September 21, 7:30pm – 10pm
-Come hang out and work on making Pedals and effects! Bring your own.

Makerbot Class
+ Sat, September 19, 1pm – 4pm
– https://hive-76.ticketleap.com/makerbot-class-09-19-2009-13-0 for more info

Makerbot Party
+ Sat, September 19, 7pm – 8pm
-Celebrate the day’s successes with the Hive!

Hive76 Scrum
+ Every Weds 7pm – 7:30 pm at Hive76
– The weekly member check-in and planning. Short and sweet (15 min) time for members to brag about what they’re doing, and talk about the space.

Hive76 Open Hours
+ Every Weds 7:30 pm to ? at Hive76
– The weekly open hours. Anyone can come hang out, and use our space (and some tools, depending on crowd/complexity). Drop in to check us out!

Make things awesome, and Make Awesome Things!
– Hive76

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PLUG Into Hive76 == Success!

Our first official PLUG Into Hive76 was a great success last Thursday! We talked about ideas (including netchacing), Adam Grossman did a mini presentation on the 3D vision project, Elizabeth Krumbach donated a new tome to our library, and then we ate cake. Thanks to everybody who showed up!
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3dPO Lives!

3dPO, our newest robot is alive and well! Yep, these are all playing back at real-time speed. w00t!

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Swiss ‘white’ Trojan programs

To make a short story shorter, Ruben Unteregger is a swiss programmer has spent the last 7 years working for a branch of the Swiss government (Swiss Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (UVEK) ) to create a so-called ‘white’ trogan program to sniff and scan VOIP calls. Since much of VOIP (such as Skype) are encrypted, this means he was was writing a client-side Trojan, which would record calls to mp3 files without the computer owners consent or knowledge.

As usual, if there is a way to break encryption, it will be skipped in favor of grabbing the data before/after encryption happens. Being an awesome human being(tm), Ruben Unteregger released MegaPanzer to the public, and has done a good interview explaining in simple I-have-to-explain-it-to-my-mom language what the whole thing is about. It’s an interesting interview, and worth the read. Other coverage is also here.

Or you can watch the nifty ‘How to take over an e-banking session in 7 easy steps” video if you are lazy.


How to Plunder a Bank Account with Megapanzer 0.1 – I’m not such a fan of this web player……