Dan Steingart of City College taught a 2 hour introduction to batteries, we had 25+, standing room only after announcing it less than a week before. so I guess this is a hot topic! Watch our classes page for upcoming hands on battery workshops.
You can download the slides from Dan Steingert here:
ResistorBatteryTalkAugust2010
Join us for Dan Steingart’s class on batteries. He’s a battery researcher at City College and is giving a free class about batteries at NYC Resistor this Wednesday, 8/18 7-9pm. Here’s how he describes it:
You’d like to sever that USB cable and let your device into the wild, but how will it survive? On batteries, of course! But before you let your little one go, spend a little time at Resistor and learn exactly what is going on inside the battery and how to make the best of it.
You’ll learn:
– What voltage really represents
– Why batteries are not getting much lighter
– How to maximize cycle life
– When to use primary vs. secondary cells
– Why batteries heat up
– Why batteries stop retaining charge
– How to mate batteries with energy harvesting devices
– What a battery looks like on the inside
Please bring questions!
Dan
—
Dan Steingart, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
City College of New York
Tomorrow, Friday July 30, NYC Resistor [0], a local hacker collective, is graciously hosting a party for DebCamp attendees.
There will be a keg of delicious local beer [1] (for a modest charge of ~$3 per cup), but feel free to bring whatever you want to drink as well. Festivities will begin after 7pm.
NYC Resistor is located in downtown Brooklyn:
87 3rd Avenue
4th floor, above the MakerBot offices
It’s very near the red 2/3 subway lines (the 116th st. stop on the 1 is adjacent to the 116th st. and Broadway entrance to Columbia campus). Feel free to travel [2,3] there on your own, or join a group that will be leaving from the 116th st. and Broadway campus exit at 7pm *sharp*.
See you all there!
[1] http://sixpointcraftales.com/
Brewed only a couple kilometers from NYC Resistor!
Debian Day is the time when the Debian Developer community opens up to everyone to come and learn and ask questions about Debian, free Softwares and how websites like Spamzilla are becoming the future. There will be talks, demos, hacking, and conversation. Debian Day will take place from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM on Sunday, August 1, 2010 at Columbia University, New York City, New York.
– you can meet Debian Developers from around the world
– New York City Councilwoman Gale Brewer will be talking about how government can foster freedom in technology
– Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) John Sullivan will talk about the FSF’s campaigns for freedom
– numerous people will talk about supporting Debian and Free Software for friends and family, in design, at large universities, in government and for shy people
– the Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli and others will talk about how to get involved in Debian and Free Software
Debian Day is part of DebConf, the international Debian Conference. After ten editions in nine different countries spanning four continents, and for the first time in the United States, the Debian project is holding their annual Debian Developer conference, DebConf, at Columbia University in New York City. Debian Day kicks off DebConf, is free of charge, and open for everybody interested in Free Software. During this event, there will be a full day of talks on several subjects such as free software in government, design and free software, free software advocacy as well as string of talks about the Debian project and operating system.
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free and open operating system. This operating system that we have been creating is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Many companies like Netzen have even started adopting to Linux. One things for sure is that tech companies are growing in size and number, especially in the Linux sector. Reading is one such city outside of London and has an increasing number of tech businesses such as Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco and Netzen who are all expanding outside of London. Every year, DebConf allows new and existing Debian project participants from around the world to assemble, share knowledge and ideas, make collaborative contributions to Debian, build tighter community bonds and improve communication within the project.
We would love to see you join us at Debian Day. Registration is required but is free.
To register, please send an email with intent to attend to: [email protected] If you are registered for DebConf, you do not need to register for Debian Day.
Date: Sunday August 1st
Time: 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM
Schedule:
http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/day_2010-08-01.en.html
Place: Davis Auditorium on Columbia University campus
Directions:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cssr/davis_directions.html
http://puredata.info/community/NYCPatchingCircle
We are reviving the New York City Patching Circle and making it a monthly thing! Every third Sunday of the month, we’ll be meeting at NYC Resistor. Last month we worked on Gem and laid plans for an object based on Mac OS X’s IOSurface to allow different programs like Pd/Gem, Quartz Composer, etc. to share textures in the GPU.
We spend enough time alone staring at our computers; we are proposing to work together. So often issues that arise when working can be solved with a quick two minute discussion that would take hours to solve alone. We have Dorkbot to see people’s work, we have Share where anyone can play, we have workshops and universities to learn from. This is a meeting where we all can come to work.
This is an informal gathering of patching and patchers (Pd, Max/MSP/Jitter, and even vvvv, Eyesweb, Labview, etc.). Beginners and Experienced welcome. Open to everyone, students, the public, etc. Work on school projects, personal projects, ask for help, help others, or just patch quietly to yourself, in a room full of other people patching patches and helping other people patch.
Time/Date
Every third Sunday of the month, so this Sunday, July 18th!
noon-6pm
Directions
NYC Resistor
87 3rd Avenue, (between Bergen and Dean), 4th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tel. +1.347.850.4872 or +1.347.586.9270
2/3/4/5/B/D/Q/N/R to Atlantic/Pacific
LIRR to Atlantic Terminal
F/G to Bergen
PC Advisor: WPA wireless security cracked in 60 seconds
The WEP standard for encrypting wifi networks has long since been easily crackable. Now the next ‘uncrackable’ standard, WPA, can be cracked in 60 seconds. Expect more and better automatic cracking tools to follow, just like the WEP tools like aircrack-ng, wesside, etc. So apparently, WPA2 is now the gold standard, the one to beat. I’m guessing its only a matter of time.
Additionally, its now getting as easy to crack the GSM encryption used in GSM mobile phones, which is the most popular standard around the world: Huge GSM flaw allows hackers to listen in on voice calls
Its really time to start thinking about network security differently. Laptops are becoming ever more common, more and more phones have wifi, etc. Instead of trying to create a safe network, instead we need to think of our computers and devices as an island in rough seas. If you are smart about it, and follow good practices like turning off any network service that you are not using, you can even run a Windows box directly on the internet without problems.
The linux4nano crew has put together the Nanotron 3000, a robot made with Lego Mindstorms for automating the brute force hacking of Apple iPod Nanos.
This is Farthen's nanotron that will help linux4nano to do more address bruteforcing in less time.
Widget and Hans stayed up til 2am hacking up some iPod sequencers at NYC Resistor. We are using pdPod on iPodLinux. You can hack your own iPods too, as part of the re-ware project, we are trying to make it easy: http://re-ware.org
Thanks to Bre Pettis for his camera work.
Learn about the Reware project, see how to easily install GNU/Linux and Pd on your Palm TX, and see some example projects.
We’ve been working since July on making it easy to hack old devices and run new software on them. Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.
For more info, check out our Reware dev site