Author Archives: Mike Szczys

A Rebel Alliance for Internet of Things Standards

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Back when the original Internet, the digital one, was being brought together there was a vicious standards war. The fallout from the war fundamentally underpins how we use the Internet today, and what’s surprising is that things didn’t work out how everyone expected. The rebel alliance won, and when it comes to standards, it turns out that’s a lot more common than you might think.

Looking back the history of the Internet could have been very different. In the mid eighties the OSI standards were the obvious choice. In 1988 the Department of Commerce issued a mandate that all computers …read more

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Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, Richard Garwin Named for Medal of Freedom

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Somewhat hidden among athletes, actors, and musicians, three giants of technology have been aptly named as 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, and Richard Garwin all made significant contributions to the technology that envelops our lives and embody the quest for knowledge and life-long self learning that we’d like to see in everyone.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper’s legacy lies with the origins of computer science. She wrote the first compiler. In a time when computers were seen more as calculating machines than easily adaptable frameworks she looked to the future and made it happen. She continued …read more

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Bot Wars: A Collateral Gift of the Automation Revolution

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I received an email Wednesday morning from a company launching new features for a bot called Trim which will negotiate a lower cable bill for you. Give it your Comcast login info and it will launch a support-chat window and go to work negotiating rates on your behalf. This could be a lower monthly rate, or one-time credits for slow or intermittent service.

This chatbot is a glimpse into our cat-and-mouse future. If rate-reducing automation is widely adopted by customers, Comcast will have an incentive to spot these chatbots and act accordingly, and they’ll probably want to automate that. This …read more

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Solving Hackaday’s Crypto Challenge

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Although I’ve been to several DEF CONs over the past few years, I’ve never found time to devote to solving the badge. The legendary status of all the puzzles within are somewhat daunting to me. Likewise, I haven’t yet given DefCon DarkNet a try either — a real shame as the solder-your-own-badge nature of that challenge is right up my alley.

But finally, at the Hackaday SuperCon I finally got my feet wet with the crypto challenge created by [Voja Antonic]. He developed a secondary firmware which anyone could easily flash to their conference badge (it enumerates as a USB …read more

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Super-Sizing Leaf Collection; Hackers Doing Yardwork

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For many parts of the world, the great raking has begun as deciduous trees in temperate zones drop their leaves. Of course not everyone can abide the simple yet laborious process of manual raking and so they look to technology. You can buy a handheld leaf vacuum, a pull-behind leaf sweeper, or a mower attachment that lifts leaves into hoppers. [Lou] has the latter, but it’s way too small for his taste so he super-sized his leaf collecting hardware.

The hard part of leaf collection has already been solved for [Lou]. The riding lawnmower lifts the leaves and propels them …read more

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Visual Guide to the Best Hacker T-Shirts

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Head out in the normal “civilian” world and look at the shirts around you. I don’t want to be too nasty about about it, but let’s face facts — the T-shirts you see will be boring and uninventive. Now compare that to your favorite hacker cons. We wear our shirts like they’re oil paintings.

Going into the weekend of SuperCon I had no intention of writing this post. But then I saw a really awesome shirt and already had the camera in my hands so I asked if I could snap a picture. A bit later that day it happened …read more

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Tiny Game Boy (That Plays Witcher 3) and Other Things That Blew My Mind

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For years Spite_TM has be my favorite hacker, and yet he continues to have an uncanny ability to blow my mind with the hacks that he pulls off even thought I’m ready for it. This weekend at the Hackaday SuperConference he threw down an amazing talk on his tiny, scratch-built, full-operational Game Boy. He stole the badge hacking show with a Rick Roll, disassembled the crypto challenge in one hour by cutting right to the final answer, and managed to be everywhere at once. You’re a wizard Harry Sprite!

Here’s what’s crazy: these are the antics of just one person …read more

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Dtto Explorer Modular Robot Wins 2016 Hackaday Prize

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Dtto, a modular robot designed with search and rescue in mind, has just been named the winner of the 2016 Hackaday Prize. In addition to the prestige of the award, Dtto will receive the grand prize of $150,000 and a residency at the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, CA.

This year’s Hackaday Prize saw over 1,000 entires during five challenge rounds which asked people to Build Something that Matters. Let’s take a look at the projects that won the top five prizes. They exemplify the five challenge themes: Assistive Technologies, Automation, Citizen Scientist, Anything Goes, and Design Your Concept.  …read more

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The Fastest Path to SuperCon Badge Firmware Hacking

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Hackaday SuperConference begins tomorrow and every ticketed attendee will get their hands on this sexy piece of hardware which is the conference badge. Yes, it looks fantastic hanging around your neck, you can play a wicked game of Tetris on it, and it runs a crypto challenge. But badge hacking is a thing and this post is the most concise information you’ll find on hacking on the firmware. Whether this is your first time blinking an LED, or you cut your teeth on PIC assembly, you can make this badge do your bidding with minimal effort.

The IDE/compiler:

To run …read more

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The Final 10 Entries of the 2016 Hackaday Prize

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It has been quite a ride this year, watching entries pour in during the five challenges of the 2016 Hackaday Prize. Our yearly engineering initiative is designed to focus the skill, experience, and creativity of the world’s tinkerers, hackers, designers, and fabricators to build something that matters: things that change lives. The final ten entries, from more than 1,000, exemplify this mission.

For a brief overview of these entries, check out the videos below where we spend about ninty seconds recapping each one, along with some thoughts from the Hackaday Prize judges. These recap videos will be shown during the …read more

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