Collaborate Disseminate
Vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins have been the cause of more site hacks than vulnerabilities in WordPress core. One of the reasons why this is happening is lack of resources. Software will always have vulnerabilities, though the WordPress core code… Continue reading Interview with CodeRisk – A Free Source Code Analysis Service For WordPress Plugins
Reverse engineering silicon is a dark art, and when you’re just starting off it’s best to stick to the lesser incantations, curses, and hexes. Hackaday caught up with Ken Shirriff at last year’s Supercon for a chat about the chip decapping and reverse engineering scene. His suggestion is to start with an old friend: the 555 timer.
Ken is well-known for his work photographing the silicon die at the heart of an Integrated Circuit (IC) and mapping out the structures to create a schematic of the circuit. We’re looking forward to Ken’s talk in just a few weeks at the …read more
Continue reading Ken Shirriff Chats About a Whole World of Chip Decapping
This is a fantastic Q&A with Cornell Tech Professor Helen Nissenbaum on data privacy and why it’s wrong to focus on consent. I’m not going to pull a quote, because you should read the whole thing…. Continue reading Helen Nissenbaum on Data Privacy and Consent
If someone suggests you spend time working on boring projects, would you take that advice? In this case, I think Kipp Bradford is spot on. We sat down together at the Hackaday Superconference last fall and talked about medical device engineering, the infrastructure in your home, applying Sci-Fi to engineering, and yes, we spoke about boring projects.
Kipp presented a talk on Devices for Controlling Climates at Supercon last year. It could be argued that this is one of those boring topics, but very quickly you begin to grasp how vitally important it is. Think about how many buildings on …read more
Continue reading Kipp Bradford on the Importance of Boring Projects, Medical Tech, and Sci Fi Novels
We’ve seen FDM printers lay down layers by extruding plastic in a line. We’ve seen printers use sintering and lithography to melt or cure one layer at a time before more print medium moves into place for the next layer. What we’ve never seen before is a printer like this that builds parts from distinct layers of substrate.
At the International Manufacturing Technology Show last week I spoke with Eric Povitz of Impossible Objects. The company is using a “sheet lamination process” that first prints each layer on carbon fiber or fiberglass, then uses a hydraulic press and an oven …read more
Continue reading Industrial 3D Printing Uses Layers Like We’ve Never Seen Before
Every year at Supercon there is a critical mass of awesome people, and last year Sophi Kravitz was able to sneak away from the festivities for this interview with Katherine Scott. Kat was a judge for the 2017 Hackaday Prize. She specializes in computer vision, robotics, and manufacturing and was the image analytics team lead at Planet Labs when this interview was filmed.
You’re going to chuckle at the beginning of the video as Kat and Sophi recount the kind of highjinks going on at the con. In the hardware hacking area there were impromptu experiments in melting aluminum with …read more
Continue reading Katherine Scott: Earth’s Daily Photo Through 200 Cubesat Cameras
Motherboard talks to Paige Williams, author of The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy. Continue reading The Bizarre True Crime Story Surrounding a ‘Big Sexy Dinosaur’
Scotty Allen has a YouTube blog called Strange Parts; maybe you’ve seen his super-popular video about building his own iPhone “from scratch”. It’s a great story, and it’s also a pretext for a slightly deeper dive into the electronics hardware manufacturing, assembly, and repair capital of the world: Shenzhen, China. After his talk at the 2017 Superconference, we got a chance to sit down with Scotty and ask about cellphones and his other travels. Check it out:
Scotty was sitting around with friends, drinking in one of Shenzhen’s night markets, and talking about how …read more
Continue reading Scotty Allen Visits Strange Parts, Builds an iPhone
The Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) doesn’t have the name recognition of big technology conferences like DEF CON or HOPE. It’s not even as well known as smaller more localized conferences like DerbyCon, ShmooCon, or the Hackaday Superconference. In fact, there’s a good chance that most readers have never even heard of TCF. But despite not holding a place in the hacker lexicon, TCF has plenty to boast about. Its played host to technology luminaries from Bill Gates to Richard Stallman, and now in its 43rd year, holds the title as the longest continually running technology festival in the world.
When …read more
Continue reading Evolution of the Worlds Oldest Computer Festival
While down here there’s room for debate about the suitability of 3D printing for anything more serious than rapid prototyping, few would say the same once you’ve slipped the surly bonds of Earth. With 3D printing, astronauts would have the ability to produce objects and tools on-demand from a supply of inert raw building materials. Instead of trying to pack every conceivable spare part for a mission to Mars, replacements (assuming a little forward thinking on the part of the spacecraft designers) can be made to order out of the stock of raw plastic or metal kept on-board. The implications …read more
