Blinkenlights’ Stereoscope Goes Live In Toronto

October 4, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

We’re happy to present this guest post from History Hacker’s [Bre Pettis]. Today [Bre] catches up with the Blinkenlights team, who turn entire buildings into displays. Their current project is Stereoscope which goes live in Toronto, Canada today.

Earlier this week, I posted about the beginnings of the blinkenlights project. It started in 2001 in Berlin, but now Seven years later, in May 2008, blinkenlights is back. The City of Toronto asked the blinkenlights team if they would be interested in joining another Nuit Blanche (as they did in Paris in 2002). Short on time and with a lot of ambition, they decided to redesign and push the envelope on the project to make it wireless for The Toronto City Hall since there would be 960 windows split up in two towers. In the above photo, you can see Stereoscope in all its glory. Continue reading “Blinkenlights’ Stereoscope Goes Live In Toronto” →

Upcoming Events

August 17, 2008 by Eliot 9 Comments

It looks like it’s time to update our event list. Here are some hacking related events happening through the rest of the year.

ToorCon September 26-28 San Diego, CA – In its tenth year, ToorCon has always been one of our favorites. The conference is fairly small, but features great content like last year’s fuzzing talk.
Arse Elektronika (NSFW) September 25-28 San Francisco, CA – Happening the same time as ToorCon, this conference covers the sexual side of human and machine interaction. The device list has gems like The Seismic Dildo, which only turns on if there is seismic activity in the world.
Maker Faire October 18-19 Austin, TX – It’s Maker Faire! In Texas!
Roboexotica December 4-7 Vienna, Austria – The premier festival for cocktail robotics is also back for the tenth time. They’re always looking for more exhibitors. Check out our Hackit for ideas.
25C3 December 27-30 Berlin, Germany I think we pretty much covered all the bases on this incredible conference yesterday.

Did we miss anything?

25C3: Nothing To Hide Announced

August 16, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

Germany’s Chaos Computer Club has announced the theme for their annual Chaos Communication Congress: “Nothing to hide“. Like last year’s “Full steam ahead!“, it’s open to many interpretations. People striking down privacy laws often say citizens shouldn’t mind since they have “Nothing to hide”. The phrase is also connected to the inability to hide data, as the CCC demonstrated this year by publishing the German Home Secretary’s fingerprint. On a more positive side, “Nothing to hide” is also about the free exchange of information that happens at hacker conventions. The Congress is in its 25th year and promises to be as good as ever. At last year’s 24C3, we saw great talks like [Drew Endy]’s biohacking talk and the original MiFare crypto presentation. 25C3 will be held in Berlin December 27th to 30th. The wiki is already up and they’ve published a call for participation, if you’re interested.

Hacking At Random 2009

July 22, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

Hacking At Random 2009 has recently been announced. It’s brought to you by the same people who held the outdoor hacking event What The Hack, which we covered in 2005. Date, location, and many other details are still up in the air. They’re looking to host 3000 attendees and we’re guessing it will be similar in nature to last Fall’s incredible Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin. 2009 will also feature the beta run of outdoor hacker event ToorCamp near Seattle. Two great events we’re certainly looking forward to.

[photo: mark]

25th Chaos Communications Congress

July 2, 2008 by Eliot No comments

The 25th annual Chaos Communications Congress is happening December 27-30th in Berlin, Germany. They’ve just published their official call for papers. Last year’s 24C3 was incredible and we’ll take any chance we get to attend an event held by the fine folks in the CCC. We hope to see you there!

[via BoingBoing]

Hacker Conference Videos

June 25, 2008 by Eliot 2 Comments

Almost every security conference we’ve attended in the last year has uploaded videos from their speaker tracks. Explore the archives below, and you’re bound to find an interesting talk.

[thanks, Dan]
[photo: ario_j]

CRT Blinkenlights

June 6, 2008 by Will O'Brien 4 Comments

[Julien] sent in his group’s twist on the now classic blinkenlights project. Oddly, the writeup is entirely in jpg form, so I can’t know if he’s finished it yet. One of them promised to send it in during our New uses for old CRT monitors HackIt, so it’s nice to hear something about it. While the classic blinkenlights uses building windows as pixels, this version divides CRT displays into four squares.