Category Archives: History

Project Byzantium ported to the Raspberry Pi!

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Project Byzantium logoThe dev team for HacDC’s awesome, incubated Project Byzantium (PB) has ported their “ad-hoc mesh networking for the zombie apocalypse” platform to the Raspberry Pi. As the 1st milestone of their recent ISC grant award, they’ve started a parallel repository for ByzPi, their PB port for ARM, currently for Raspbian:

We opted to use Raspbian because it seems to be the more popular of the two [commonly installed Raspberry Pi Linux distributions]. Also, the packaging process for Debian was better understood than that for Arch Linux by the Project Byzantium team. We’re in a rapid development cycle so we wanted to hit the ground running and accomplish as much as possible in the available time before the first milestone.

Congratulations to The Doctor, Ben the Pyrate, and haxwithaxe!

aaronsw Memorial Hackathon

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On Saturday, February 2, 2013 from 11am – 11pm (planned) HacDC will be hosting one of many, self-organized, global hackathons to memorialize the late computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and Internet activist Aaron Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) (Wikipedia article)

Participants will be asked to advance solutions to issues that were near to Aaron’s heart.

Activities for the day will center on furthering work on his repositories, opening access to information belonging in the public domain, developing or contributing to countermeasures to Internet censorship, and exploring code-driven methods to enhance social justice through access to data.

Among the like-minded participating groups will figure HacDC’s resident Project Byzantium and the organizer and team from the District Commons project.

Those interested in participating should register via our MeetUp event.

Those wanting to arrive after 2pm should make note of our telephone number, 202-556-4225, to gain entry as the building will be locked. More location information on our homepage’s sidebar.

Participants are encouraged to bring food and drink and practice good neighborliness. There are a variety of carry out options available around Columbia Heights though some may suit individuals more than others. There may be a group purchase at some point(s) but nothing has been set as of this writing. We’ll update this post as needed.

Related: An event taking place on Capitol Hill, on Monday, 2/4/13, at 7pm, this event memorializes Aaron Swartz and seeks to raise awareness about the urgent changes that are needed in the CFAA. These changes are part of Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s draft “Aaron’s Law” (PDF here).

HacDC mentioned in Shimon Schocken’s TEDtalk

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During 2012, HacDC hosted a regular study group following Shocken & Nisan’s “The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles.” In October, Shocken gave a TEDtalk about open learning in which he mentions HacDC (beginning at 7’52″).

The TEDtalk description for “The self-organizing computer course,” describes Shocken’s experiment in open learning:

“Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan developed a curriculum for their students to build a computer, piece by piece. When they put the course online — giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks — they were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn, working independently as well as organizing their own classes in the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). A call to forget about grades and tap into the self-motivation to learn…”

We’re closed Monday & Tuesday (at least)

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We're closed Monday and Tuesday (at least)Since we’re battening the hatches for Frankenstorm, we’ll be closed Monday (10/29/12) and Tuesday (10/30/12).

On Wednesday we will reassess and post (if possible!!) our availability for the rest of the week depending on the power situation. As usual, if you are a non-member and stop by unannounced, call 202-556-4225 (HACK) to see if anyone’s around to let you in.

Good luck to us all!

Enigma (and other cool cryptographic machines)

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My family and I recently visted the Historical Electronics Museum (see http://www.hem-usa.org/ ) in Linthicum, Maryland.   Along with an amazing treasure trove of defense electronics is a case containing several very interesting cryptology artifacts from  the World War II era, including an Enigma machine.  Pam thought it was the coolest thing in the museum, and we all spent quite some time admiring it, along with some other contemporary artifacts.

Enigma Machine from the Historical Electronics Museum

Enigma Machine from the Historical Electronics Museum

I you haven’t had the opportunity to vist the HEM, it is certainly worth the trip- it is very near BWI Airport right outside of Baltimore.  It is free and open to the public, but be sure and check the hours carefully on the website, since they are a bit irregular.  If you have kids, there are lots of great hands-on exhibits that explain electronics science and techology, which both my 11-year old and 8-year old daughters really enjoyed.  Given that they wanted to go back again almost immediately, it is certainly a fun place for them.