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I was struck by reading our writeup of the Zenit in Electronics contest – an annual event in the Slovak Republic – that it’s kind of like a decathlon for electronic engineers and/or hardware hackers. It’s a contest, in which students compete presumably initially on a local level, and then up to 32 at the national level. There’s a straight-up knowledge test, a complex problem to solve, and then a practical component where the students must actually fabricate a working device themselves, given a schematic and maybe some help. Reading through the past writeups, you get the feeling that it’s both a showcase for the best of the best, but also an encouragement for those new to the art. It’s full-stack hardware hacking, and it looks like a combination of hard work and a lot of fun.
What’s most amazing is that it’s in its 38th year. Think how much electronics, not to mention geopolitics, has changed in the last 40 years. But yet the Zenit competition still lives on. Since it’s mostly volunteer driven, with strong help from the Slovak electronics industry, it has to be a labor of love. What’s astounding to me is that this love has been kept alive for so long.
I think that part of the secret is that, although it’s a national competition, it’s possible to run it with a small yet dedicated crew. It’s certainly a worthwhile endeavor – I can only imagine how many young students’ lives have been impacted by the exposure to microelectronics hacking through the contest. Indeed, it’s telling that the current chairman of the competition, Daniel Valúch, was a competitor himself back in 1994.
I wonder if the people founding Zenit back in 1984 thought of themselves as creating a perpetual electronic engineering contest, or if they just wanted to try it out and it took on a life of its own? Could you start something like this today?
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In honor of our recently announced 2022 Cyberdeck Contest, we decided to do things a little differently for this week’s Hack Chat. Rather than pick just one host, we looked back through the archive and selected some of the most impressive builds we’ve seen and asked their creators if they’d like to take part in a freewheeling discussion about their creations and the nascent community surrounding these bespoke computing devices.
Despite conflicting time zones and at least one international vacation, we were able to put together an impressive panel to helm this special Cyberdeck Brainstorming Hack Chat:
So what did this accomplished group of cyberdeck builders have to talk about? Well, quite a bit. During a lively conversation, these creators not only swapped stories and details about their own builds, but answered questions from those looking for inspiration and guidance.
bootdsc’s radio-packed VirtuScope
The discussion immediately kicked off with what’s perhaps the most obvious question: why build a cyberdeck if we already have laptops and smartphones — mobile computing form factors which [Io Tenino] admits are likely as close to perfect as we can get with current technology. Most of the builders agreed that a big part of the appeal is artistic, as the design and construction of their personal deck allowed them to show off their creativity.
But what of productivity? Can these custom machines do more than look good on a shelf? There seemed to be consensus that it was difficult to compete with a standard laptop in terms of general purpose computing, but that a cyberdeck tailored to a specific use case could be a powerful tool.
For example, [bootdsc] built a high-power WiFi adapter as well as an RTL-SDR receiver and up-converter into the VirtuScope, while [Io Tenino] says the Joopyter’s integrated printer is occasionally used to run off a grocery list. [H3lix] also mentioned that the trend towards ever-thinner laptops has meant removing ports and expansion options which used to be taken for granted, a potentially frustrating situation for hardware hackers that a cyberdeck can alleviate.
Naturally, the Chat also covered more technical aspects of cyberdeck design. There was quite a bit of discussion about powering these custom machines, and whether or not internal batteries were even a necessary design consideration. In keeping with the survivalist theme, [cyzoonic] included 18650 cells and an integrated charger, while [Io Tenino] is content to use a standard USB battery bank. Ultimately, like most aspects of an individual’s cyberdeck, the answer largely depended on what the user personally wished to accomplish.
[Io Tenino]’s Joopyter comes from a decade that never existed.As you might expect with [Back7] in attendance, there were also several questions about the logistics of using a Pelican case as the enclosure for your build. Different techniques were discussed for mounting hardware within the case without compromising its integrity, such as gluing your fasteners to the inside of the case, or 3D printing an internal framework.
Others wondered if the protection provided by these cases was really necessary given the relatively easy life most of these machines will lead, especially given their considerable cost. Although to that end, we also saw some suggestions for alternative cases which provide a similar look and feel at a more hacker-friendly price point.
Though they are certainly popular, Pelican cases are just one option when planning your own build. Many chose to 3D print their own enclosures, and there’s even the argument to be made that the rise of desktop 3D printing has helped make cyberdeck construction more practical than it has been in the past. Others prefer to use the chassis of an old computer or other piece of consumer electronics as a backbone for their deck, which fits well with the cyberpunk piecemeal aesthetic. That said, the Chat seemed in agreement that care needed to be taken so as not to destroy a rare or valuable piece of vintage hardware in the process.
This Hack Chat was a great chance to get some behind the scenes info about these fantastic builds, but even if you didn’t have a specific question, it was an inspiring discussion to say the least. We’re willing to bet that the design for some of the cyberdecks that get entered into the contest will have been shaped, at least in part, due to this unique exchange of niche ideas and information. Special thanks to [bootdsc], [Back7], [H3lix], [a8ksh4], [Io Tenino], and [cyzoonic] for taking the time to share this glimpse into their fascinating community with us.
The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the transcripts posted to Hackaday.io make sure you don’t miss out.
This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos convened in a secret location to say what we will about the choicest hacks of the past week. We kick things off by discussing the brand new Cyberdeck contest, which is the first of it’s type, but certainly won’t be the last. In other contest news, we recently announced the winners of the Hack it Back Challenge of the Hackaday Prize, which ran the gamut from bodysnatching builds to rad resto-mods and resto-recreations.
IBM’s Linkway, French edition. Très tubulaire, non?
Taking top honors in wow factor this week is [Stuff Made Here]’s jigsaw puzzle-solving robot. This monster can currently tackle small laser-cut puzzles, but is destined to solve an all-white 5000-piece nightmare once all the engineering pieces have come together.
Then we took a field trip to Zip Tie City, where the plastic’s green ♻ and the wiring’s pretty, admired volcano nuts from afar, and briefly considered the idea of a 3D printer with a heating zone of programmable length.
Finally, we take a look at a creatively destructive robot that’s akin to a useless machine, bloviate about books you should read, and dance around the topic of learning by playing.
So you may have gotten a Slack password reset prompt. Something like half a percent of Slack’s userbase had their password hash potentially exposed due to an odd bug. When sending shared invitation links, the password hash was sent to other members of the workspace. It’s a bit hard to work out how this exact problem happened, as password hashes shouldn’t ever be sent to users like this. My guess is that other users got a state update packet when the link was created, and a logic error in the code resulted in too much state information being sent.
The evidence suggests that the first person to catch the bug was a researcher who disclosed the problem mid-July. Slack seems to use a sane password policy, only storing hashed, salted passwords. That may sound like a breakfast recipe, but just means that when you type your password in to log in to slack, the password goes through a one-way cryptographic hash, and the results of the hash are stored. Salting is the addition of extra data, to make a precomputation attack impractical. Slack stated that even if this bug was used to capture these hashes, they cannot be used to directly authenticate as an affected user. The normal advice about turning on 2-factor authentication still applies, as an extra guard against misuse of leaked information. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Breaches, ÆPIC, SQUIP, And Symbols”→
You’ve probably heard about Google Chromebooks. Like Android, Chrome OS is based on some variant of Linux, but it is targeted at the “cloud first” strategy so Chromebooks typically don’t have a huge amount of storage or compute power. If you have a real Chromebook, you can also use it to run certain other kinds of programs via virtualization. However, Google has recently pushed out Chrome OS Flex which is meant to install on a spare laptop you might happen to have hanging around. Seems attractive to take that only Windows 7 laptop and repurpose it to run Chrome OS, especially if you can run Linux apps on it. Unfortunately, Chrome OS Flex has a very different use case and I would only recommend installing it if you meet the exact use case it addresses.
The other option, of course, is to just install Linux on that old hardware. There are several distributions that are made for that purpose and, honestly, even most of the major distributions will work fine on older hardware with a little tweaking to turn off some of the more resource-costly features. That assumes you know how to install, tweak, and maintain Linux.
Wow! We knew that the Hack it Back Challenge round of the Hackaday Prize would bring out the clever repairers among you, but we’re still impressed to see the results! This was a tough round for the judges, but they came up with a short list of ten finalists, and we’re pleased to bring them to you here.
The Hack it Back Challenge aimed to keep old gear from being thrown away by performing a heroic repair, giving it a new purpose in life, or otherwise bringing it back to a useful state. Of course, once you’ve got the box open, you start thinking of how to improve whatever the gadget is, and some of our finalists took that in unexpected directions. Continue reading “2022 Hackaday Prize: Congratulations To The Winners Of The Hack It Back Challenge”→
When William Gibson first described the “cyberspace deck” used by the protagonists in Burning Chrome and Neuromancer, he offered only a few concrete details: they allow the user to explore cyberspace, are generally portable, and more adept owners often modify them to fit their particular needs. Anything else was left to the individual’s imagination, due in no small part to the fact that he author himself didn’t exactly know what the things would look like at the time. Still, not bad for a guy who was hammering it all out on a typewriter at the time.
Build your deck like Gibson is watching, because he is.
Now 40 years later, fact has caught up with fiction. The hacker and maker community have embraced the cyberdeck idea in a big way, and we’ve been blown away by the incredible creativity that goes into these bespoke computing devices.
Which is why we’re happy to announce the first, but very likely not the last, 2022 Cyberdeck Contest. Impress the judges with your Sprawl-ready rig, and you could claim one of three $150 USD Digi-Key shopping sprees to help fund your next cyberpunk masterpiece. You’ve got until Sept. 30, 2022.
So what is a cyberdeck, exactly? That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, but since we’re running a contest here, we’ll have to give it a shot…
It needs to be a computer of some sort, certainly. It should also serve a practical purpose; as impressive as your cosplay prop might be, we’re really looking for functional devices here. Nominally that means it will have a keyboard and some kind of display, but figuring out how it all connects and what form the components will take is where things get interesting.
Above all, it needs to be personal. What would your dream computer look like? What features would it have? There’s no right or wrong answer here — a good cyberdeck should be a reflection of the person who built it, and no two should ever be quite the same.
