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Angel Investor Gives Open Source PnP A Massive Boost

January 4, 2022 by 18 Comments

We love it when an Open Source hardware project grows up and turns into a sustainable business, bootstrapped with nothing but hard work and great ideas, but it’s a really tough prospect to do it using your own money, ploughing the profits from any sales back into development and not taking a dime in wages whilst you do so. People obviously need an income to live off, and that time spent working on a startup is time you can’t spend earning your keep. So it’s with great pleasure that we can bring you the latest news from [Stephen Hawes] and his pick-and-place machine plans. In the year since we last checked in with the project, development has continued at a steady pace, with the guys quickly outgrowing the garage workspace, whilst they prepare PnP machine kits ready for sale.

The big news is that [Joel Spolsky], co-founder of Stack Exchange, creator of Kanban management tool, Trello, and angel investor, has made a sizable ($100K USD) investment in the company which has allowed them to take on a 3,000+ sq. ft office space, and given them the funds for stock and all that boring business overhead stuff. [Stephen] takes time to explain that [Joel] will not have any control of the company, and all hardware and software will remain fully Open Source. For those interested [Joel] implemented his investment as a SAFE note (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and as such, [Joel] will only make a return in the form of a small share allocation, if they hit the big-time in the future. Can’t really say fairer than that!

[Stephen] did recently receive a ‘cease and desist’ notice regarding his use of the ‘Index’ name for the project, since that is already a trademarked term, defended by somebody else, the project will need change name very soon. A minor setback, but it is a bit annoying that a chunk of that investment now has to go to a lawyer to make sure that the name they do eventually choose isn’t already taken and is safe to use.

In terms of the machine itself, it is now is fully operating, with multiple automatic tape feeders, featuring up and down-facing machine vision, and all that OpenPnP goodness. It has even been demonstrated placing parts for its own custom motherboard PCB, reprap style. Nice!

We wish [Stephen] and partner [Lucian] all the success they deserve, and hope they get those kits out there, because there are people around these parts that need an affordable, hackable, desktop PnP machine ASAP, this scribe included!

Here’s the earlier story covering the machine, but it’s not the only Open Source PnP machine we’ve seen – here’s another one from a few years ago.

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Image of an imagined DIY onewheel

Open Source Openwheel

January 3, 2022 by 18 Comments

The story is one we’ve all lived: We see a piece of commercial technology and we want it, but the price tag makes us wonder if it isn’t made with gold pressed latinum. The object of [Zach]’s desire? A single wheel powered skateboard sold by a company called Onewheel. But as you can see in the video below the break, and his excellent website, Zach took the wallet-light but time-heavy approach and built his own prototype he calls the Openwheel.

Starting with a single powered wheel, [Zach] used aluminum, very large 3D printed pieces, and a really slick off the shelf controller package to control the Openwheel. Balance is handled by the controller, while a massive 48 V LiPo battery is fed through a beefy electronic speed controller that allows advanced features like regenerative braking.

We won’t spoil the results, but [Zach]’s Openwheel came out very nice, even exceeding some specifications of the commercial unit. You’ll want to watch his YouTube series about the build to get an idea of all the work that goes into such a device even as a prototype.

If tank track tread is more your jam, check out this tank track skateboard that we featured some time back!

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Getting Back That YouTube Dislike Button

January 2, 2022 by 40 Comments

Ah, Google. Very few companies have mastered the art of creating amazing technology and products, and then so effectively abandoning and mishandling them. Case in point, YouTube. Citing “dislike attacks”, which are coordinated down-voting of particular videos, YouTube opted to hide the dislike counter on all videos. It could be pointed out that dislikes still impact the recommendation algorithm the same way they always have, and that creators still see their dislike counts on their own dashboard.

There might be something to the idea that YouTube doesn’t like the notoriety of their Rewind videos leading the dislike count, with 2018 at nearly 20 million. There may even be validity in the theory that corporate partners don’t like visible dislike numbers on their videos. Regardless, YouTube made the change, and people hate it. Their platform, so nothing you can do about it, right?

“Life, uh, uh, finds a way,” to quote my favorite fictional mathematician. Yes, a hacker, one of us, has figured out a workaround. [Dmitrii Selivanov] has put together the “Return YouTube Dislike” browser extension, which does a couple of things. First, it is pulling archived data about videos, taking advantage of the gap in time between the official announcement, and the removal of the dislike API.

But for new videos? That’s where things are harder. If you install the extension, your video likes and dislikes are tracked, and the combined user data is used to extrapolate an estimated dislike count on any given video. [Dimitrii] is also working on a way to allow individual channels to share their stats with the project, to give more official numbers for their videos.

The extension is open source, and the Chrome web store shows over a million users. Linus Tech Tips, along with a bunch of other channels, have covered this, so check out their videos for more.

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Blackberry Will Run Out Of Juice On January 4th

January 1, 2022 by 47 Comments

Happy New Year, though it may not be for Blackberry fans. The company that has so often had their products compared to a certain addictive substance recently announced that they are ending support for Blackberry OS and Blackberry 10 devices.

What does this mean? While they won’t be bricking phones outright, they might as well be. On January 4th, Blackberry will be shutting off all the key services — data, SMS, phone calls, and 911 support. In official terms, they are ending network provisioning for these older devices, meaning that they won’t be able to join any cellular or WiFi networks.

Unless you’re old enough to remember, it may seem strange that these half-screen, half-keyboard machines once dominated the mobile market. But back then, the people who used them were texting wizards who had broken free from the chains of the T9 keyboard.

Though this news may not mean much except to a select few, it’s still sad to see the Blackberry era come to a true end. We never had one ourselves during the heyday, though we did pick up a cheap used model to carry around as a tiny mobile writing device and calendar. We sure do miss phones with real keyboards though, and would love to see them come back. At least the keyboards themselves get love in the hacker community.

[Main and thumbnail images via Digital Trends]

Facial Recognition For Covid-19 Tracking In Seoul

December 31, 2021 by 32 Comments

The city of Bucheon, population 830,000, is a satellite city southwest of Seoul and part of the greater metropolitan area and the site of a pilot program to apply AI facial recognition and tracking technologies to aid Covid-19 epidemiological investigators. South Korea has been generally praised for its rapid response to coronavirus patient tracking since the beginning of the outbreak. People entering public facilities enter their information on a roster or scan a QR code. Epidemiologists tracking outbreaks use a variety of data available to them, including these logs, electronic transaction data, mobile phone location logs, CCTV footage, and interviews. But the workload can be overwhelming, and there are only a fixed number of workers with the required training available, despite efforts to hire more.

As contract tracing has been done to-date, it takes one investigator up to an hour to trace the movements of one patient. When the system goes online in January, it should be able to trace one patient in less than a minute, handling up to ten traces simultaneously. Project officials say there is no plan for this system to expand to the rest of Seoul, nor nationwide. But with the growing virus caseloads and continued difficulties hiring and training investigators, it’s not unexpected that officials will be turning to these technologies more and more to keep up with the increasing workload.

Like the controversy surrounding the recent facial recognition project at Incheon International Airport, people are becoming concerned about the privacy implications and the specter of a Big Brother government that tracks each and every move of its citizens — a valid fear, given the state of technology today. The project planners note that the data is being legally collected and its usage subject to strict rules. Korean privacy law requires consent for the collecting and storage of biometric data. But there are exceptions for situations such as disease control and prevention.

Even if all the privacy concerns are solves, we wonder just how effective these AI systems will be for tracking people wearing masks. This is not an issue unique to South Korea or even Asia. Many countries around the world are turning to such technologies (see this article from the Columbia School of Law) and are having similar struggles striking the balance between privacy and public health requirements.

[Banner image: “facial-recognition-1” by Electronic_Frontier_Foundation. Thanks for all you do!]

This Week In Security: The Log4j That Won’t Go Away, WebOS, And More

December 31, 2021 by 5 Comments

In the past two weeks, Log4j has continued to drive security news, with more vulnerable platforms being found, and additional CVEs coming out. First up is work done by TrendMicro, looking at electric vehicles and chargers. They found a log4j attack in one of the published charger frameworks, and also managed to observe evidence of vulnerability in the Tesla In-Vehicle Infotainment system. It isn’t a stretch to imagine a piece of malware that could run on both a charger, and an EV. And since those systems talk to each other, they could spread the virus through cars moving from charger to charger.

Log4j is now up to 2.17.1, as there is yet another RCE to fix, CVE-2021-44832. This one is only scored a 6.6 on the CVSS scale, as opposed to the original, which weighed in at a 10. 44832 requires the attacker to first exert control over the Log4j configuration, making exploitation much more difficult. This string of follow-on vulnerabilities demonstrates a well-known pattern, where a high profile vulnerability attracts the attention of researchers, who find other problems in the same code.

There are now reports of Log4j being used in Conti ransomware campaigns. Additionally, a Marai-based worm has been observed. This self-propagating attack seems to be targeting Tomcat servers, among others.

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It’s Printable, It’s Programmable, It’s E. Coli

December 27, 2021 by 11 Comments

Well, whaddya know? It seems that E. coli, the bane of Romaine and spinach everywhere, has at least one practical use. Researchers at Harvard have created a kind of 3D-printable ink that is alive and made entirely of microbes produced by E. coli. Although this is not the first so-called living ink, it does hold the title of the first living ink that doesn’t need any additional polymers to provide structure.

Passing the pillar test up to 16mm. Image via Nature

Because the ink is alive, it is technically programmable in the sense that it can self-assemble proteins into nanofibers, and further assemble those into nanofiber networks that comprise hydrogels.

One of the researchers compared the ink to a seed, which has everything it needs to eventually grow into a glorious tree. In this way, the ink could be used as a renewable building material both on Earth and in space. Though the ink does not continue to grow after being printed, the resulting structure would be a living system that could theoretically heal itself.

The ink creation process begins when the researchers induce genetically-engineered bacteria cultures to grow the ink, which is also made of living cells. The ink is then harvested and becomes gelatin-like, holding its shape well enough to go through a 3D printer. It even passes the bridging test, supporting its own weight between pillars placed up to 16 mm apart. (We’d like to see a Benchie.)

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