Chaos Computer Club - archive feed

"Tech companies don't tell you this but you can just repair phones, I've repaired 458 phones"

Building a tech mutual aid from scratch and getting over your fear of failure, a tour of the highs and lows of building a local community, and why it's worth it.

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We go through the last 4 years of badge development, leak the 2020 badge design and give a run-through of the development process of the TiDAL badge

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Is it possible to trick a facial detection algorithm with... yarn? In this talk I will explore the possibilities and process of making a knitted garment to trick facial detection into seeing faces that aren't really there. This talk will go through how these algorithms work (at a high level), and then the process of making an image into a pattern, knitting it, and testing it.

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Stories from the frontline of those trying to redirect the next $3.6 trillion of global investment into demonstrably carbon net-zero outcomes.

This decade is arguably the 'last roll of the dice' when it comes to acting on climate.

We've spent the last two years digging deep into financial and policy systems, working out how to shift money away from fossil fuels and towards things that might not be awful—and that markets might actually do at scale.

Building on the experiences of developing the Open Banking Standard, the Open Data Institute and AMEE, we'll report on how we're progressing to try and deliver a *demonstrably* net-zero future—by unlocking real-world data-flows.

Learn about what companies, countries, markets and governments are doing today: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Learn what you can do, wherever you are, to be an Icebreaker and help all of us address our climate, environmental and biodiversity emergencies. This needs everyone.

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Writing a gameboy emulator is probably the most rewarding hobbyist project I've ever embarked on. Not only is the process educational and enlightening, but it's hard to describe the satisfaction of playing Tetris on an emulator that *you wrote*.

An emulator from scratch is not a small undertaking, but the Gameboy is well documented, and just simple enough that's it's possible for one person to write an emulator on their own. I recommend it to everyone! In this talk I'll show some of the highlights of the journey, and what to expect if you embark on it yourself.

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On the surface of it it seems simple: tech and maker types have skills they enjoy using, and community groups have unmet needs that could be helped by these skills. Why then does it feel so incredibly hard to make these collaborations happen in reality? And why does it feel even harder to do it while meaningfully fighting the Tories, transphobes, racists, and neo-Nazis?

This talk takes it back to the roots of why we are here and what we’re doing to explore why. I will break down how harmful neoliberal methodologies that dominate tech groupthink such as Human Centered Design and Design Thinking fundamentally restrict what can be made whilst presenting a cardboard cutout “ethics” that falls over at the slightest touch.

Instead I introduce Community Technology Partnerships, a methodology developed at Geeks for Social change in collaboration with Manchester School of Architecture, based on “the capability approach”. This is a human development approach used by the UN and WHO developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen that asks what people are able to *be* and *do,* and works to remove blockers to these concrete actions and states. This approach recentres community strengths at the centre of more holistic tech interventions that restore power to the people who need it the most.

Notes for this talk are here: https://gfsc.studio/emf22

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For years I've dreamed of building a scale model of a large railway station in the UK.

I've also want to fully automate that layout, running trains in "real time" because I like a challenge.

A few years ago I discovered that Network Rail provide access to loads of their data for free, and the part of me that loves half-baked ideas said "You could use that to run the model railway instead of coding it all yourself"

In this talk, I'll be talking about my progress so far, what the challenges have been, and where I want to go next with it, as well as talking about how you can do the same using cheap hardware and open-source software.

Now all I need is a large field to build a scale model of Cardiff Central...

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A section of an airliner wing, born in North Wales and brought up in Toulouse, France and operated in South America, now lives in the Aerospace Bristol museum.

This talk shows our experiences with building it into an interactive exhibit explaining how aircraft high lift devices work, and discusses what we've learned about using hobbyist electronics for an installation that has to run 24/7 for visitors. Using videos & photos of the exhibit we also go into an explanation of how the aerodynamics, structures, performance and systems topics make the wing what it is.

For over a century, Bristol has been at the forefront of aeronautical and space technology, breaking boundaries to create the fastest, the biggest and the highest. Aerospace Bristol entertains & informs visitors with stories of human endeavour, individual genius and ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.

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"The Enigma Machine was an electro-mechanical device used in the mid-20th century to encrypt communications. An ingeniously simple and elegant combination of cogs, wires and lamps, all fitting into a portable case, it provided some of the strongest encryption possible at the time. During various Covid-19 lockdowns, I decided to re-enact this important development in the history of computing, through a project to build an Enigma machine at home, using modern components and digital design techniques. The completed project is made out of cheap hobby electronics parts and laser-cut wood, and can be assembled entirely by hand, with no gluing, screwing or soldering. I will reflect on what this process taught me about the challenges of electromechanical computing, security and usability, the changes in modern manufacturing and supply chains, and their impact on computing. This will be followed by a Q&A and a demonstration where you can see the home-made Enigma machine in action and have a go at encrypting and decrypting a message."

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Scratch is a programming environment aimed at children ages 8 to 16. It's simple and easy to learn, but lacks many features that experienced programmers have come to expect, such as version control, bitwise operators, or integers!

This talk provides a high-level overview of authenticated encryption with ChaCha20-Poly1305, and X25519 Elliptic-Curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange (both used in modern protocols), and how we overcame the challenges of implementing them efficiently in Scratch.

The talk is aimed at those with an intermediate background in programming and maths, but not necessarily cryptography. Hopefully I'll make modern cryptography look a bit less inscrutable, while also showing that Scratch is a "real" programming language.

about this event: https://c3voc.de