Pictorial Guide To The Unofficial Electronic Badges Of DEF CON 27

DEF CON has become the de facto showplace of the #Badgelife movement. It’s a pageant for clever tricks that transform traditional green rectangular circuit boards into something beautiful, unique, and often times hacky.

Today I’ve gathered up about three dozen badge designs seen at DC27. It’s a hint of what …read more

Solar System Wars: Walmart Versus Tesla

It seems like hardly a day goes by that doesn’t see some news story splashed across our feeds that has something to do with Elon Musk and one or another of his myriad companies. The news is often spectacular and the coverage deservedly laudatory, as when Space X nails another …read more

Tool Rolls, The Fabric Design Challenge That Can Tidy Up Any Workshop

You’ve designed PCBs. You’ve cut, drilled, Dremeled, and blow-torched various objects into project enclosurehood. You’ve dreamed up some object in three dimensions and marveled as the machine stacked up strings of hot plastic, making that object come to life one line of g-code at a time. But have you ever …read more

What’s In A Name? Tales Of Python, Perl, And The GIMP

In the older days of open source software, major projects tended to have their Benevolent Dictators For Life who made all the final decisions, and some mature projects still operate that way. Guido van Rossum famously called his language “Python” because he liked the British comics of the same name. …read more

Linux Fu: Shell Scripts In C, C++, And Others

At first glance, it might not seem to make sense to write shell scripts in C/C++. After all, the whole point to a shell script is to knock out something quick and dirty. However, there are cases where you might want to write a quick C program to do something …read more

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This Week In Security: Zeroconf Strikes Again, Lastpass Leaks Your Last Password, And All Your Data Is Belong To Us

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By Jonathan Bennett | September 20, 2019

VoIP cameras, DVRs, and other devices running the Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WSDD) protocol are being used in a new type of DDoS attack. This isn’t the first time a zeroconf service has been hijacked as part of a DDoS, as UPnP has also been abused in similar ways.

Feel …read more
3D Printed VirtuScope Is A Raspberry Pi 4 Cyberdeck With A Purpose

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By Tom Nardi | September 20, 2019

William Gibson might have come up with the idea for the cyberdeck in 1984, but it’s only recently that technology like desktop 3D printing and powerful single board computers have enabled hackers and makers to assemble their own functional versions of these classic cyberpunk devices. Often the final product is …read more
British Cops Catch Shooter-Printing Villain

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By Jenny List | September 20, 2019

It’s a perennial of breathless British tabloid scare reporting that 3D printers will unleash a tide of weapons upon the streets. But perhaps it might actually be time for Brits lock up their children, because London’s Metropolitan Police have announced their first prosecution for 3D printing a handgun. The gun …read more
Moon Elevator Could Be Sooner Than You Think

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By Al Williams | September 19, 2019

The big expense in getting people to orbit or the moon or any other space destination is the cost of escaping the Earth’s gravity. One often-proposed solution involves building a giant space elevator from some point on the Earth to orbit. That sounds great, but the reality is the materials …read more
Tiny Vacuum Cleaner Sucks (In A Good Way)

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By Al Williams | September 19, 2019

Sometimes something is remarkable not for its content, but for its size. A ball of yarn isn’t exciting for example, unless it’s a giant ball of yarn. At the other end of the scale writing your name is a quotidian event, but put it on a grain of rice and …read more
Analog Gauges Keep An Eye On Computer Performance

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By Lewin Day | September 19, 2019

Keeping an eye on your computer’s resource utilization can be useful, particularly if you’re regularly doing computationally intensive tasks. While it’s entirely possible to achieve this with software tools, creating a dedicated hardware monitor can be cool too. [Sasa Karanovic] did just that, with a set of old-school analog gauges. …read more
Riding The Nostalgia Train With A 6502 From The Ground Up

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By Dan Maloney | September 19, 2019

In the very early days of the PC revolution the only way to have a computer was to build one, sometimes from a kit but often from scratch. For the young, impoverished hobbyist, leafing through the pages of Popular Electronics was difficult, knowing that the revolution was passing you by. …read more