The Most Tasteful Of Christmas Sweaters Come With A Trainset

December 25, 2017 by Jenny List 3 Comments

Ah, Christmas, the time of festive good cheer, cherubic carol-singers standing in the crunchy snow, church bells ringing out across the frozen landscape, Santa Claus in his red suit flying down the chimney with a sack of presents, the scent of Christmas meals cooking heavy upon the air, and a Canadian guy wearing a trainset.

Wait a minute, we hear you say, a Canadian guy wearing a trainset? That’s right, not satisfied with the sheer awfulness of his ugly Christmas sweater on its own, [BD594] made it extra-special by incorporating a working Christmas tree trainset into the ensemble. As if the discovery that Christmas tree trainsets are a thing was not enough, we are treated to the spectacle of one on a plywood ring suspended from a particularly obnoxious Christmas-themed garment. Not all hacks are in good taste, and in fairness we have to note that this one is tagged as comedy rather than railroad engineering.

You can view the result in the video below the break. It’s short on technical detail, which is a slight shame as even though there are few mysteries in powering a small trainset it might be interesting to know how the method used to suspend the baseboard. We’d suspect a harness underneath that jumper, as Christmas garments are built for looks rather than strength.

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Hackaday At 34C3

December 24, 2017 by Elliot Williams 19 Comments

It’s that time of year. While the rest of the Christmas-celebrating world sits around and plays with the toys that they got out from under the tree, German nerds head off to the biggest European hacker con: the 34th annual Chaos Communications Congress, running Dec. 27th through 30th.

The CCC is both a grandparent among hacker cons, and the most focused on using technology to improve the world and bringing folks together. (The “communications” in the name is a dead giveaway.) This year’s motto, “tuwat!” is slangy-dialecty for “do something!” and is call to get up off the couch and use your super-powers for good.

If you can’t get over to Leipzig to join us, you’ll be able to read our extensive coverage starting up shortly after the opening ceremonies, and probably stretching well into 2018. And since the CCC media folks manage to stream every talk, hackers all over the world can follow along live. Most talks are in English, so get together with folks in your hackspace and have a video night!

And if you are in Leipzig, be on the lookout for [Elliot] who will be wandering around, attending workshops, and writing down as much as possible. Show me something cool, rave about a particularly good talk, or just say “hi”.

Fairy Dust clipart courtesy [sonoftroll].

Edward Snowden Introduces Baby Monitor For Spies

December 24, 2017 by Tom Nardi 25 Comments

Famed whistleblower [Edward Snowden] has recently taken to YouTube to announce Haven: an Open Source application designed to allow security-conscious users turn old unused Android smartphones and tablets into high-tech monitoring devices for free. While arguably Haven doesn’t do anything that wasn’t already possible with software on the market, the fact that it’s Open Source and designed from the ground up for security does make it a bit more compelling than what’s been available thus far.

Developed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Haven is advertised as something of a role-reversal for the surveillance state. Instead of a smartphone’s microphone and camera spying on its owner, Haven allows the user to use those sensors to perform their own monitoring. It’s not limited to the camera and microphone either, Haven can also pull data from the smartphone’s ambient light sensor and accelerometer to help determine when somebody has moved the device or entered the room. There’s even support for monitoring the device’s power status: so if somebody tries to unplug the device or cut power to the room, the switch over to the battery will trigger the monitoring to go active.

Thanks to the Open Source nature of Haven, it’s hoped that continued development (community and otherwise) will see an expansion of the application’s capabilities. To give an example of a potential enhancement, [Snowden] mentions the possibility of using the smartphone’s barometer to detect the opening of doors and windows.

With most commercially available motion activated monitor systems, such as Nest Cam, the device requires a constant Internet connection and a subscription. Haven, on the other hand, is designed to do everything on the local device without the need for a connection to the Internet, so an intruder can’t just knock out your Wi-Fi to kill all of your monitoring. Once Haven sees or hears something it wants you to know about it can send an alert over standard SMS, or if you’re really security minded, the end-to-end encrypted Signal.

The number of people who need the type of security Haven is advertised as providing is probably pretty low; unless you’re a journalist working on a corruption case or a revolutionary plotting a coup d’etat, you’ll probably be fine with existing solutions. That being said, we’ve covered on our own pages many individuals who’ve spent considerable time and effort rolling their own remote monitoring solutions which seem to overlap the goals of Haven.

So even if your daily life is more John Doe than James Bond, you may want to check out the GitHub page for Haven or even install it on one of the incredibly cheap Android phones that are out there and take it for a spin.

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Rickroll The Masses With A Coin Cell Throwie

December 22, 2017 by Jenny List 17 Comments

If there is one educational institution that features on these pages more than any other, it may be Cornell University. Every year we receive a pile of tips showing us the engineering term projects from [Bruce Land]’s students, and among them are some amazing pieces of work. Outside the walls of those technical departments though, we suspect that cool hacks may have been thin on the ground. English Literature majors for example contain among their ranks some astoundingly clever people, but they are not known for their handiness with a soldering iron or a lathe.

We’re happy to note then that someone at Cornell who is handy with a soldering iron has been spreading the love. In the form of coin cell powered throwies that intermittently Rickroll the inhabitants of the institution’s halls of residence. We have few technical details, but they seem to be a simple affair of a small microcontroller dead-bug soldered to a coin cell and a piezoelectric speaker. If we were embarking on such a project we’d reach for an ATtiny of some description, but similar work could be done with a PIC or any number of other families.

The Cornell Daily Sun write-up is more a work of investigative journalism detailing the perplexed residents searching for the devices than it is one of technical reference. We’re pleased to note that the university authorities have a relaxed attitude to the prank, and that no action will be taken against the perpetrator should they be found.

Thus we’d like to take a moment to reach out to the Cornell prankster, and draw their attention to our Coin Cell Challenge competition. There is still time to enter, and a Rickrolling throwie would definitely qualify. This isn’t the first tiny Rickrolling prank we’ve shown you on these pages.

Thanks [Simon Yorkston] for the tip.

Magic Leap Finally Announced; Remains Mysterious

December 21, 2017 by Mike Szczys 74 Comments

Yesterday Magic Leap announced that it will ship developer edition hardware in 2018. The company is best known for raising a lot of money. That’s only partially a joke, since the teased hardware has remained very mysterious and never been revealed, yet they have managed to raise nearly $2 billion through four rounds of funding (three of them raising more than $500 million each).

The announcement launched Magic Leap One — subtitled the Creator Edition — with a mailing list sign up for “designers, developers and creatives”. The gist is that the first round of hardware will be offered for sale to people who will write applications and create uses for the Magic Leap One.

We’ve gathered some info about the hardware, but we’ll certainly begin the guessing game on the specifics below. The one mystery that has been solved is how this technology is delivered: as a pair of goggles attaching to a dedicated processing unit. How does it stack up to current offerings?

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FCC Fines Drone FPV Maker For Using Radio Spectrum

December 20, 2017 by Al Williams 35 Comments

If you listen to the radio bands in the United States, you might wonder if anyone at the FCC is paying attention, or if they are too busy selling spectrum and regulating the Internet. Apparently however, they are watching some things. The commission just levied a $180,000 fine on a company in Florida for selling audio/visual transmitters that use the ham bands as well as other frequencies.

The FCC charged that Lumenier Holdco LLC (formerly known as FPV Manuals LLC) was marketing uncertified transmitters some of which exceeded the 1-W power limit for ham transmitters used on model craft.

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Copyright Exception May Overrule Ability To Jailbreak 3D Printers

December 20, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 49 Comments

At the end of October, the US Patent and Trademark Office renewed a rule allowing anyone to ‘jailbreak’ a 3D printer to use unapproved filament. For those of you following along from countries that haven’t sent a man to the moon, a printer that requires proprietary filament is DRM, and exceptions to the legal enforceability DRM exist, provided these exceptions do not violate US copyright law. This rule allowing for the jailbreaking of 3D printers contains an exception so broad it may overturn the rule.

A few months ago, the US Copyright Office renewed a rule stating that using unapproved filament in a 3D printer does not violate US Copyright law. The language of this rule includes the wording:

‘The exemption shall not extend to any computer program on a 3D printer that produces goods or materials for use in commerce the physical production of which is subject to legal or regulatory oversight…”

This exception is extraordinarily broad; any 3D printers can produce aircraft parts (subject to FAA approval) and medical devices (subject to FDA approval). In effect, if a 3D printer has the ability to produce objects subject to regulatory oversight, the exception allowing the use of filament not approved by the manufacturer does not apply. Additionally, it should be noted that any object produced on a 3D printer that is subject to regulatory oversight is already regulated — there’s no reason to drag the Copyright Office into the world of 3D printed ventilation masks or turbine blades.

[Michael Weinberg], ‘legal guy’ for Shapeways and President of the Open Source Hardware Association has filed a petition with the US Copyright Office, asking the Office to eliminate this exception to the existing rule surrounding DRM and 3D printers. You are encouraged to submit a comment in support of this petition by March 14th.