Eth0:2014 winter talks

Click here for the main Eth0:winter 2014 page

Saturday

14:00 - Mrngm // Limesco

Where are we now (limesco), and what is our path from here.

Limesco is a new mobile phone-netwerk for geeks, IT-specialistS, software-developers and hackers.

Slides available here

15:00 - Sander Venema // Privacy by design

On how to build or adept tools for web-publishing so they take privacy into consideration by design.

This talk is about the conflict that can arise between getting your message out there, and trying to maintain your audience's right to privacy. In the last couple of years, with the dramatic increase in the use of social media, often one of the most effective ways of spreading your message to a large group of people has become to foster a community using existing social networks, like Facebook or Twitter.

The problem with using these services is that, while convenient, they also snoop on your audience’s private data. These companies make their money by creating and selling detailed profiles to marketers, so that they can effectively target their ads. Often these services run their own ad service as well, as is the case with Facebook and Google. Later on, this data can come back to hunt you. Let’s say you’ve been searching on Google for some serious illness or disease. You can imagine what your health insurance company would do, had it access to this information. Up the premiums or deny you insurance altogether.

Sander Venema was asked by Annie Machon to redesign her website in early 2012. We took special care in avoiding common traps that can compromise the security and privacy of the site’s visitors when designing the new site.

In his talk, Sander will talk about the special considerations that come with building websites for whistleblowers with high security & privacy needs, both for the owner/operator, and the visitors of the site; discuss what the problem points are, and how we worked around them to create a website that is both pretty, usable and as safe as possible. He will also talk about domain security and governments claiming jurisdiction over a domain name, even if the actual server is not located in their country and the site isn’t aimed specifically at their citizens. There have been several cases in the past where websites have been brought offline because of this.

16:00 - Walter // Privacy by design

Systems design is typically done without much regard for minimisation of personal data processing, a core concept of privacy laws. In this session we'll discuss the design of a health-care portal and what pitfalls a systems architect typically encounters in this regard. We'll also explore ways of reducing the amount of personal data processed through incorporation of cryptographic methods in the systems design, but also how hard it is to get it really right.

Language: Dutch, unless non-Dutch speakers show up that prefer English.

17:00 - gmc // FPGA's, vhdl and soft-cores

File:20140309 gmc vhdl fpga softcores.pdf // slides

FPGAs can combine logic gates based on a description of a logical circuit written in a HDL. VHDL is one such language. While this may sound abstract, with soft-cores FPGA's become flexible microcontrollers. The internet hosts a number of GPL or BSD licensed IP-cores to make it easy to kickstart developing your own microprocessor. This talk introduces the basic concepts (FPGA's and a cursory view of VHDL) and describes how you can customize an off-the-shelf IP core with custom hardware circuits such as encryption engines, multimedia input and output and specialized I/O.

Among available free cores are the well-known microprocessors 6502, 8088, 6800, ARM, 68000, 8085. This talk will present a very simple microprocessor core: the ZPU. The ZPU is a 32-bit stack-based microprocessor and is a great starting point if you are interested in experimenting with the inner workings of the microprocessor. It comes with a gcc toolchain to compile c into zpu object files.

The talk will also point out freely available tools to get started with VHDL, including simulation and loading a design into an FPGA. One such tool will hopefully be demonstrated, showing a complete trace of all internal signals in the ZPU microprocessor while it is executing a hello world program written in c.

With projects such as opencores, the principles of free software can be applied to hardware as well. Many of the opencores projects are wishbone compliant. Wishbone is a bus specified to promote interoperability between free IP-cores. Wishbone can be used to link I/O-controllers to the microprocessor, but it can also be used as a memory interface. The talk will introduce the wishbone bus and it's various read/write cycles. Wishbone promotes reuse of modules.

18:00 - Juerd // Keyboards!

18:00 Part one: Introduction

Touch screens bring amazing new features, like swiping and... well, that's about it. Anyway, I don't really care. The only really functional method for text entry is still the physical keyboard. Even though they all look roughly the same, there are many variables. Especially if you spend a large part of your life using a keyboard, you should be aware of the options you have.

I present without slides, but I do lookup images and websites during the presentation.

Try to measure your typing speed before this talk: http://typing-speed-test.aoeu.eu/ It takes one minute. Compare your score to others around you.

18:30 Part two: Dvorak workshop

With my Dvorak training course, everyone* can learn to touch type the entire alphabet within ten hours. Many nerds have even done the entire course in less than five. I'll guide you through the first lesson of the online typing course, after some hands-on exercises that'll help to kickstart the "muscle memory" training.

There will be a few keyboards for those who can't bring a laptop, but it works better if the letters you type actually do appear on a screen!

* Except people with dyslexia, really dumb people, and of course people who lack motivation. Sorry about that. :-)

20:00 - Steffan Karger // OpenVPN-NL

Open source VPN for the Dutch government (and others).

OpenVPN-NL is an OpenVPN variant aimed at use by the Dutch government, and has been ceritfied for networks with a classification up to the level 'Departmentaal Vertrouwelijk' (something like 'For Official Use Only').

This talk will be about what we did to get it approved, how we contribute to the community and some of the vulnerabilities we found along the way.

21:00 - Nido // how to fix 1M bugs

The secret to how to fix a million bugs within 6 hours; as well as a quick introduction into a variety of programs used to find bugs and/or issues in source code so you can actually find and fix 1000000 actual bugs which mean something.

21:30 - The Board, Eth0:2014 summer

A discussion on what we are going to do this summer.

22:00 - James Rice // Workshop FiberSplicing

James is going to show us how to use a Fiber Splicer, tell us about the various fibers we use in IT, and will allow participants to make their own splices with the splicer.

Sunday

14:00 - Douwe Schmidt // Privacy Cafe

Discussing tools and solutions for explaining privacy to regular internet users.

15:00 - Failbaitr, Fugu // Flatpackers

Building software to design and cnc-mill houses out of plywood.

This talk centers around the posibilities of creating open source software as a team, which by now is a tried and tested technique, and combining that school of thought with the upcoming tools to macnufacture real-world objects using that code. Both of these have been known to work together pretty good, but most are not reaching for the same size of "real world" applications we are dreaming of.

We would like to present our project, and ideas around bulding full-size buildings using (self build) 3 axis cnc cutters, Sheets of plywood, and code to automatically generate all the requiered building blocks.

16:00 - niekie/nikis // Securing Yourself: Cryptography, how it helps, and how it doesn't

A talk about how cryptography can help you in your every day life, and more importantly, how it can't.

amx109 // Here be dragons // To be determined

Lets talk about the community!

Kids program

A program for kids where all workshops will be accessible for people from the age of 5 (younger people might need some extra support). The main language will be Dutch, however, our presenters will be multi-lingual and English won't be a problem. If you feel like you want to join even if the number on your passport is disputing your kid-status, you're welcome to!

Timetable TBA

Art is I; science is we

A workshop combining chemistry and physics, presented by the lovely Lian.

Oooh! What does THAT button do?

Littlebits are tiny little bits of electronics, snapping together by magnets. Combined they give access to an easy step into the electronics world.

Fall in love with a pigeon

Electronics for kids. Jildou will accompany the group, together we'll solder a print and make LEDs shine!

(This workshop is been given earlier at the kids-wednesday-afternoon at the Library in Leeuwarden)

pics / explanation of the print

Imagination Taking Shape

With polymer clay and/or pottery clay we'll design statues, pendants and miniature object.

or

K'nex

or

Making cookie-cutters with the Ultimaker 3d printer & Doodle3d, then make the cookies. Afterwards we'll of course eat (and share) them!