Chaos Computer Club - archive feed

A talk about the state of the art with metal 3D printing, and how it can let you make rocket engines much more cheaply and quickly than ever before. I will briefly describe the anatomy of a rocket engine and why the extreme conditions it must endure make designing one hard, and then introduce powder metal 3D printing and how you print an engine. I work for a company in this field, and I will show various images and videos of our engines being fired, as well as the engines themselves so that people can have a look, and some samples with internal cutaways to show the internal structures that 3D printing technology now makes relatively easy. I will also discuss drawbacks and common failure-modes of 3D printing for rocket engines, and talk about where new advances in the field might take us, such as multi-metal prints, hybrid machining, and other exciting technologies. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/131-how-to-3d-print-a-rocket-engine

Most technical people hear about fusion power in the news or see it in games and movies, and are familiar with the joke that it's always 20 years away. Beyond this, it's surprisingly rare to find good information beyond the basic physics and the marketing promise of unlimited, clean energy. As an engineer working in the fusion technology sector, I give a primer on how fusion power works, why its benefits are so incredibly tantalising yet hard to achieve, what the latest exciting developments are, and how the UK is a surprising trailblazer. I outline some of the cutting-edge technologies involved in developing fusion power, including superconducting magnets, plasma control using deep learning methods, and hypersonic fuel injection. The audience is also given facts and figures to get a flavour of the unimaginable scale of what is being done: materials at nearly 0K adjacent to plasmas hotter than the cores of stars, gigawatts of power from teaspoons of fuel, magnetic fields multiple times more powerful than MRI machines, and neutron fluxes strong enough to transmute matter in bulk. Coming away from this presentation, the audience will have learned about the fundamentals of nuclear fusion and appreciate the key issues enough to put the marketing and news reports into context. They might even be excited and enthused about what's to come in this quickly growing technology space. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/471-unlimited-power

The talk takes a deep-dive into the Abbeystead explosion (using pretty much all available sources available on the subject), one of the worst civil engineering disasters in post-war history, through the lens of the HSE investigation. It looks at what the project was for, how it was designed, what went wrong, and why. Swiss cheese is a way of conceptualizing accidents, and the explosion is used so show how this works. Hopefully by the end, everyone will have heard about a facinating case study in bad project management, weird critical infrastructure, and have recieved a safety talk by stealth. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/97-explosion-in-a-tunnel-understanding-swiss-cheese

Robot Wars is a TV show that inspired a generation of engineers to take up the sport of "Robot Combat", but what drove success in the design of those competing? Looking at some famous matches and designs, this talk will break down the rock-paper-scissors of the sport, and try to provide an understanding of how this can help to educate a new generation of engineers today. Should the sport have a Meta, it will mean certain designs always win out over others - however should it not, then it may suggest it is not the design itself that determines success, but rather ones understanding of design. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/134-does-robot-wars-have-a-meta

The British rail industry publishes a lot of open data: there's at least 18 distinct data sources, plus the ones I'm forgetting. This'll be a whirlwind tour of most or all of those sources, with a view at helping people who would be interested in playing with train data but don't know where to start. You'll (hopefully) leave with some ideas for what you could build (if you didn't already have some), know what data sources you'd need, and have enough context to understand those sources' documentation. I will assume software experience (ie there'll be slides with JSON, XML, and various less pleasant things) but not rail experience. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/397-so-you-want-to-hack-on-rail-data-whats-out-there

The canals of the UK have undergone transformation from industry to decay to leisure and in recent years to housing. In this talk, we'll go through some of the history of this modern day shanty town along with lessons for any budding boaters considering life on the cut. We'll cover the fundamentals of boat life including legality, work from home challenges, common pitfalls new boaters can face along with everything you need to know if boat life could work for you! about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/156-living-on-the-canals-of-the-uk-lessons-from-the-water

How do you get several three storey Cornish beam engines, a collection of Grade I listed buildings and a whole network of steam infrastructure on the path towards net zero? This talk is the experience of a volunteer on the practical challenges met whilst helping the London Museum of Water and Steam with several major projects. Expect tales of reverse engineering boiler control system ladder logic, interfacing raspberryPis to 100psi steam lines and working out the water/gas/steam usage to run 200-year old steam water pumps. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/112-steaming-into-sustainability

“Could you crash the Moon into the Earth?” “If the Sun explodes, would we all get vaporized?” “What’s the weather like on Mercury?” Discover the answers to these questions (and many more!) at "Astrophysics for Supervillains"! Facts about space are all well and good but discovering that if you threw someone into a black hole, they would be spaghettified – stretched out long and thin before getting squashed smaller than an atom – is truly, fascinatingly gruesome. This quirky space talk will teach children about the solar system, galaxies, the universe, and, most importantly, the answer to the question “Which planet is entirely populated by robots?”. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/428-astrophysics-for-supervillains

In which the badge team have a natter about the tildagon badge, the hexpansion format, the development process, pitfalls and panics along the way. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/449-badge-talk

"So what do you do?" Everything. ────────── As a kid I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still can't, but over the past twenty years I've turned that into a superpower. In this talk I'll tell you how I hacked the idea of a standard career and managed to combine skills from different fields and specialties, leading to some unique roles and opportunities. If you love learning and constantly adding new tools to your intellectual toolkit, you’ll find that being a 'nerd of all trades' is not just fun—it’s the best way to live. The only downside? When someone asks "so what do you do" at parties, you'll never quite know what to say! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/31-hack-the-plan

Infrastructure Review & Closing of GPN22 about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/PXT8GR/

How does the most complicated machine in the world work? Why should we pay 16 billion euros to keep some physicists happy with a new toy? What has CERN ever done for us? What happens when you lose control of a beam the size of spaghetti with the energy of a full express train? This talk, delivered by a beam instrumentation engineer at CERN, will introduce CERN and it's accelerator complex, and discuss the technology required to deliver one petabyte of cutting-edge science per day to over 170 research facilities in 36 countries. The talk will also cover some of CERN's open source software and hardware contributions to date, and finally explore their science and technology roadmap for the coming years. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/181-cern-technology-following-the-white-rabbit-down-a-27km-hole

Technologists are wizards. Today, we wield the power to effect changes from a tent, a bedroom or an office the likes of which fifty years ago one might need the power of a small nation-state to accomplish. Having seen these systems from all angles - building the tech, researching digital consent academically, and fighting biased public sector algorithms in the media and the courts - I'm confident that we really haven’t adapted to that reality. In the choices we make in technical practice, we find ourselves paving the road to hell with our good intentions. Most of us aren't trained in ethics, policy or politics - so how do we manage the weighty burden of being responsible for people’s safety? What can we do – both as individuals and as a society as a whole – to try and stop algorithmic harms? And, how do we stop our robots from killing us? about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/355-dont-be-evil-by-accident-algorithmic-harms-and-ethics

A presentational workshop with Q&A on getting started in Laser Cutting, diodes vs CO2, water cooling vs RF lasers. What is a Galvo Laser? Where to buy and what to expect? What different controllers are there? Which software exists and which to use for what? Including advice on taking your project from idea to finished item. Combining laser cutting and 3D printing. Materials types and finishing techniques. Laser cutter maintenance and good practice. Laser cutting in a shared workshop with multiple users and access control/issues/good practice What is the difference between an expensive laser cutter (£12k) vs cheaper (£3k). Laser cutting for profit/work. * Interests Disclosure - I service and repair laser cutters for a living and have been a contractor to a related software provider for 4 years. about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/194-getting-started-in-laser-cutting

A lot has happened at the other end of life since the last EMF camp; pregnancy, birth and adjusting to life with a tiny human. I am an engineer, so when two thin blue lines appeared and I found myself thrown into the chaos of pregnancy and parenthood, I discovered that the best way of dealing with it was to use the engineering approach that was already ingrained in me. “An engineer's guide to parenthood” if you will. Some bits worked (some less so!) and that’s what I want to share with you this year, following on from my 2022 talk, "An engineer's guide to grief". Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/60-an-engineer-s-guide-to-parenthood

A look at the history and construction of Scotland's hidden network of remote dams, tunnels, shafts and underground generating stations. Not many are aware of how extensive, ground-breaking, enduring and socially significant the hydro infrastructure hidden under our Lochs and Glens really is. Come and join me for a healthy dose of BIG PIPES! about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/288-big-pipes-a-dive-into-scotlands-hidden-underground

This talk will describe the development process for a digital cartridge to fit any Super 8 home movie camera without any modifications required. There are a huge number of unused 8mm home movie cameras that have been languishing unloved for the last four decades since their owners were seduced by videotape. Many of them are built to a rather high quality, and best of all, they can still be found for not a lot of money. You can still buy the film, and it's a lot of fun shooting a real movie, but it's not cheap. Wouldn't it be great if you could drop in a digital cartridge instead for modern day digital video with a retro feel! This project started in early 2023, and this will be its first outing in front of a live audience. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/431-bringing-any-super-8-camera-into-the-digital-age

Short 10 minute talks on any topic Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/549-lightning-talks-sunday

Der Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) legt Herstellern von Software und auch Open Source Communities strenge Regeln in Bezug auf IT-Sicherheit ihrer Produkte auf. Dieser Vortrag gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die Ziele und Inhalte dieses Gesetzes. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den geforderten technischen und administrativen Regelungen und Verpflichtungen. Es wird erläutert, worauf sich Hersteller, Open Source Communities und Verbraucher einstellen müssen und eingeordnet, wie praktikabel und effektiv die Vorgaben möglicherweise sind. Mit dem CRA hat die EU-Kommission eine Verordnung auf den Weg gebracht, die die IT-Sicherheit von Produkten reguliert, mit der Motivation, die Interessen der Verbraucher zu stärken und die EU insgesamt widerstandsfähiger gegen Cyberangriffe zu machen. Dieses Gesetz legt Anforderungen für "Produkte mit digitalen Elementen" fest. Von Herstellern wird die Erstellung einer Cybersicherheitsrisikobewertung und die Bereitstellung von Sicherheitsupdates verlangt. Bestimmte alltägliche Softwareprodukte, wie Betriebssysteme, Browser und Password-Manager, werden als "wichtige Produkte" eingestuft. Diese werden auf die Einhaltung von grundlegenden IT-Sicherheitsanforderungen überprüft. Auch Open-Source-Software und ihre Communities werden von diesem Gesetz betroffen sein. Es wird gefordert, dass diese eine Cybersicherheitsstrategie vorlegen, welche unter anderem den Umgang mit Schwachstellen regelt. Ein Verstoß gegen die Bestimmungen kann mit bis zu 15 Millionen Euro oder 2,5 % des Weltweiten Jahresumsatzes geahndet werden. Des Weiteren wird die ENISA eine Meldeplattform anbieten, über welche Hersteller Schwachstellen melden. In Hinblick auf die Praktikabilität und Effektivität stellen sich eine Reihe von Fragen, auch sind noch nicht alle Details bekannt, z.B. die Spezifikation von SBOMs. *TL; DR: Neues EU-Gesetz, welches Hersteller verpflichtet (IT-)sicherere Produkte zu entwickeln.* about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/AUEQH7/

Ein wilder Ritt durch die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten Bilder von Menschen zu machen. Kann Spuren von Strahlung enthalten. Moderne Medizin basiert grossteils auch auf neuen Möglichkeiten Dinge sichtbar zu machen und seit der Entdeckung der Röntgenstrahlen 1895 hat sich eine Menge getan. Wir werden Versuchen mit einem Minimum an theoretischem Hintergrundwissen zu klären was diese Ärzte eigentlich meinen wenn sie von Echo oder Kernspin reden, warum "Röhre" nicht gleich "Röhre" ist und welche Vor- bzw Nachteile die einzelnen Verfahren bieten. about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/CUWDYV/

Die Grenzen von Diversity: Ist Kink noch Diversity oder nur eine persönliche Vorliebe? Warum sind eigentlich auf Hackerveranstaltungen so oft Menschen mit Seilen? Welche gemeinsamen Wurzeln verbinden queere, hackende und kinky Menschen und was könnten wir von einander lernen? Wir machen einen Ausflug in die eigentümlichen Regeln, Rituale und Etiketten der Kink-Szene, um herauszufinden, was davon für andere Lebensbereiche hilfreich ist. Egal ob klare Kommunikation, Awareness gegenüber Diskriminierung und Übergriffen oder die Suche nach Konsens: Viele der Herausforderungen begegnen uns auch in Projekten oder am Arbeitsplatz. about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/TMWFJ3/

Resistance, systemic change, and our sustainable future can – and must – be playful! To quote the activism artist group Guerilla Girls: “If you can make someone who disagrees with you laugh, you're in their brain, and you can change minds.” The speaker will begin by sharing her journey in social impact games and its landscape, focusing on activism initiatives in games. She will draw examples primarily from the UN’s Playing for the Planet’s Green Game Jam which includes ustwo games’ Monument Valley 2's The Lost Forest. Surveys from the jam reveal how games can spur positive actions in real life. Then we take action -- through play. In this RPG-lite / communal storytelling experience curated by the speaker, a few volunteers will take on special roles to battle a dragon turned to the darkside. We’ll meet in our imaginary tavern and adventure together to save the world! Let’s play and change the world together. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/411-activism-in-games-plus-a-hopepunk-rpg-role-playing-game

In October 1971, Frieder Nake published an article in Page, the Bulletin of the Computer Arts Society, entitled "There Should Be No Computer Art", making the point that there were more important things for humans to work on together in the late Twentieth Century, than whether or not a computer should be allowed to make "art". In this talk, we'll take a journey together to look at one aspect of computer history - creative technology and art - and the ways in which it has been misunderstood and feared at different points in our shared history and culture. Along the way, you'll also hear about how I accidentally became an artist, after being laid off from my dream job with big tech; the story of building my own pen plotters; and, how you can make your own army of art robots! Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/302-where-is-the-art-pen-plotters

Festooning your clothes or costume with lots of glowy lights is fun. Making the glowy lights survive hours or days on end of dancing in sweaty raves or muddy festivals is harder. In this talk I discuss several ways of being a walking lightshow, the unfortunate lessons I learned over years of trying them out in the real world, and some attempts at avoiding these failures in future. [Specifically I will cover: chemiluminescence, electroluminescence, UV reactive materials, LEDs, things to consider when making light-up clothing, surprise 100v shocks and how to avoid them, and how to cheat at syncing to the music.] Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/416-practicalities-of-being-a-walking-lightshow

A case for choosing alternatives to GitHub for your open-source works. Both practical and philosophical. Our thoughts, creations and relationships online are made possible because of large platforms based in Silicon Valley. Let's talk about GitHub. People use it. I mean, that's where everyone else is. Period. End of story. ... Or is it?! The first part dives deep into the rocky history of SourceForge and BitKeeper, which implicitly led to the creation of Git and GitHub, which in turn came with its own set of problems. How does the past correlate to the present? (Recommended speed: 0.75x) The second part talks about the present: GitHub. It is explained how it makes money by hosting open-source projects for free, and its prevalence among open-source developers and professionals, as well as its increasing gamification, vendor lock-in and the real-world impacts it has on open-source projects. Is it really as popular and reliable as you'd think? The third part is about some of the (contrasting) alternatives and efforts to work around the problems caused by the "GitHub model", and what they do differently, and why we need something different than a monoculture. Fossil, Forgejo and SourceHut (as well as very brief mentions of the Friendly Forge Format, forge federation, hosted alternatives to github.com, as well as tiny tools like Tor's Anon-Ticket!) are talked about. Disclaimer: I am involved with Codeberg and Forgejo as a volunteer; I may be a little tiny bit biased. Some of the facts I mention were before I was born, possible signs of peanuts and mild errors - first talk, therefore I'm allowed to make mistakes. :) about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/WGVZ9W/

Flightgear is an open source flight simulator, We take a look at it, how to get started flying and how to hack on it. Since the release of the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, flight simulation has become a more mainstream genre. What flies past many is the existence of an open source flight simulator with a long standing history and way more flexibility in many regards. We take you on a flight through the world of Flightgear... In the first part we will take a look at the history, where the project is headed in the future and how you can make the first steps in the simulator, helping you get in the air. Now that we have an overview what flightgear is, we go on to the second part where we take a look how to interface the flight sim with your own hacked hardware and other systems. We will show you for example our first PCB design we're working on right now which will be a control interface for the simulator as well as similar projects from the community. about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/KUEALJ/

"Sag mal, du hast doch Informatik studiert - du kannst mir doch sicher sagen, wie ich meine Fotos am besten back-uppe?", fragt mich meine Tante neulich beim Kaffee. Wärend meine Tante mir ihre utopischen Anforderungen erklärt, und ich Erwartungs-Management betreibe, frage ich mich wie ich in diese Situation gekommen bin. Und schließlich frage ich mich als Person mit Lehramtstudium: "Was müsste ich meiner Tante beibringen, damit ich nicht nochmal in eine solche Situation komme und sie diese Entscheidungen selbst treffen kann?" Diese Frage, wie man Schüler:innen (und meine Tante) dazu befähigen kann, in Zukunft Entscheidungen über die Nutzung digitale Systeme selbstständig und informiert zu treffen möchte ich mich in meinem Vortrag diskutieren. Wir treffen jeden Tag Entscheidungen über die Nutzung von Digitalen Systemen, wie zum Beispiel Instant Messenger, Bezahlmethoden oder VPNs. Um eine solche Entscheidung informiert zu treffen, braucht der:die Entscheidende Wissen über die zur Auswahl stehenden digitalen Systeme im Bezug auf seine:ihre persönlichen Werte. Aber welches Wissen ist das? Und welche Werte kann man in Betracht ziehen? Und wie kann man das Schüler:innen beibringen? In meinem Vortrag möchte ich gemeinsam mit dem Publikum über mögliche Antworten und Beispiele diskutieren und in das Thema aus dem Blickwinkel der Informatik Didaktik einführen. Inhaltlich werde ich in meinem Vortrag darüber reden, was informierte Entscheidungen sind - und was informatische Bildung ist. Dabei werde ich auch auf Konzepte aus der Informatikdidaktik wie dem Dagstuhl Dreieck eingehen und diese einführen. Außerdem werde ich über Möglichkeiten zur Vermittlung sprechen. about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/8CWDWS/