UPDATE: Please attend NYTM’s SOS Jan. 18th, 12:30pm-2pm
Outside the Offices of Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand 780 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Please RSVP with NY Tech Meetup: http://nytm.org/sos/

As the saying goes:

Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works

Jan. 24th will be a big vote for the Internet. PIPA, SOPA’s twin will be voted on in the Senate. Here’s what we’re doing to let our Senators know they should reject PIPA on Jan. 24th. We are asking our 2 NY State Senators to have town hall meetings or an in-district meeting with us (you can request them but sometimes the request stuff like faxes). We don’t have a date for a meeting in NYC yet, because the Senators are on recess and it’s difficult to effectively schedule a date with an answering machine. New Yorkers, stay tuned, we’ll announce the date to meet with our Senators. If you’re not in New York – we urge you to contact your Senators for a town hall meeting or in-district meeting in your area before the Jan. 24th vote. Those of us who call the Internet home need to educate Congress on the dangerous nature of this Act, because srsly, do they get how DNS works? Or what xkcd is? We don’t think so.

The following is a citizen packet prepared by Public Knowledge: 

Tell Congress to Reject Internet Censorship Tools in PIPA

On January 24th the United States Senate will be voting on S. 968 the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Your two Senators will have the opportunity to decide whether America will adopt the tools of censorship used to block websites in China or reject them by voting no and standing with Senators Wyden, Moran, Paul, and Cantwell. Ask your two Senators to stand against adopting the tools of censorship in any bill that comes up for a vote.

What you should know about PIPA:

• 83 of Internet’s original creators including Vint Cerf, co-designer of TCP/IP, and Robert W. Taylor, founder of ARPAnet, oppose SOPA and PIPA.
• The government has a poor track record of protecting free speech on the Internet. For example, lawful hip-hop music blog Dajaz1.com was held by the government for anentire year on the accusation of copyright infringement.

• Think tanks, government agencies, and industry associations across the political and social spectrum have said that SOPA and PIPA would undermine freedom of expression
• Top cyber security experts have said that SOPA and PIPA would undermine a 15 year government initiative (DNSSEC) to update Internet security.

• Human rights groups have told Congress that PIPA would help censorship regimes like China and Iran by sacrificing America’s fight for Internet freedom worldwide.

• Congress has yet to allow experts on free speech, network engineering, Internet security, or human rights testify at a hearing on PIPA.

• The content industry has spent $94 million in lobbying Congress to pass their bills in 2011, arguing that if China can censor the Internet the U.S. can also do it.

• Lobbyists have misled Congress by saying the United States already uses censorship tools for malware and child pornography.

Sample Town Hall Questions:

•  Will you stand with Senators Wyden, Moran, Paul and Cantwell and oppose Internet censorship on January 24th?
•  Do you understand what the Domain Name Server (DNS) system is and have you consulted with cybersecurity experts on the effects of the Protect IP Act?
•  Would you still vote for Protect IP if it restricts freedom of speech?
• Have you taken money from the movie and music industry?

Who Opposes SOPA/PIPA’s DNS Filtering Provisions (full list)?

Non-profit organizations and education institutions, including Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and library groups like The American Association of Law Libraries, American College of Research libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Special Libraries Association. Other non-profit organizations opposed to the bill include the Future of Music Coalition, the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, the Internet Society and the Public Interest Registry.

A group of 41 “press freedom and human rights advocates,” including the Center for Media Justice, Free Press, and organizations from the European Union, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Sweden. Additionally, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and Internews all oppose SOPA/PIPA’s filtering provisions.

83 Internet professionals, cybersecurity experts, and Internet engineers including Vint Cerf, the creator of TCP/IP, Paul Vixie, the author of BIND, Esther Dyson, the founding Chairman of ICANN, and Robert Taylor, an early ARPAnet innovator.

Founders of some of the most successful Internet companies: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Michell Baker, co-founder of Firefox, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, Caterina Flake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, Biz Stone, co- founder of Obvious and Twitter, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!.

Think tanks such as the Brookings Institute and CATO Institute as well as consumer groups such as the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and U.S. PIRG: The Federation of State PIRGs, and the Entertainment Consumers Association.

The Sandia National Labs under the Department of Energy and OpenDNS, “the largest DNS and Internet security service in the world.”

130 “entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and executives who have been involved in 283 technology start-ups,” including Chas Edwards of Digg, Chad Dickerson of Etsy, and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare.

55 venture capitalists from firms such as Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and SV Angel.

Thanks Public Knowledge!!

Tonight at 21:00 eastern (02:00 UTC) Make:Live’s Hackerspace roadshow II visits NYC Resistor and other hackerspaces. From NYC Resistor you’ll see Alicia, Catarina and Shelby’s electronic art book, Mimi’s RFID blocking wallets, Charles’ TV-B-Gone gun and other cool projects by NYCR members.
Read more

… and after one small step, two men would stare out across what one of them called “magnificent desolation”. Orbiting overhead another man would keep vigil, as on earth half of a billion people were riveted to television screens receiving broadcasts of events as they unfolded on what had been until that moment a dreamscape. Kings, Tyrants, and Leaders relegated to awestruck spectators. We were there all of us explorers, and to us that grand frontier that has sat elusive in our night sky, forever a source of inspiration and hope, was finally so very close to us. We dared to dream, and we dared to make that dream real.

I hope that I will some day look on as mankind takes it’s first steps onto a planet that is not our own. That would be the greatest.

Some would say it was Engineers, and Scientists that got us to the moon. That’s no more true than saying it was America or John F Kennedy who got us there. So many people have given of themselves down through the centuries, some giving everything. Apollo was everyone’s. This anniversary belongs to all of us. So, enjoy the wonder, the excitement, and the pride all over again. Enjoy it while it lasts, because some day soon we’ll be sitting glued to televisions and lcds as men and women of earth step out onto the vastness of Mars.

PS:

Check it out: here. Not sure who put all the effort into making this, but lord knows it’s amazing. And Hacking the AGC would be a very appropriate way to spend this anniversary at a hackerspace.

Video of our presentation at Hackday:

In the video,

Ben Combee is speaking, Max Henstell is working the stabster’s pneumatics and Mark Tabry is standing by to protect bystanders, and I am off camera to the left looking pretty for the cameras.

Not in the video is Bill Ward, Charles Pax, as well as the original Max.

* Special thanks to my friend Adam from Twilio who provided us with some assistance in the effort.

For the blow by blow of the event check out our time lapse. Trust me it was 24 hours of tedium just as grueling as watching this 2.5 minute clip.

As you can see this was an pretty large effort by NYCR and a hell of a lot more went into this project than is readily apparent. Just getting the equipment there was an event all its own. Max and Charles worked tirelessly to repair Stabby’s pneumatic stabber arm. Max also worked on wiring up the actuators and accompanying arduino code to link up with Ben, Bill, and Marks twilio interface code base. I worked with Mark on a display that showed debug info from the arduinos ( blogarythmic cred ) as well as caller ( aka stabber ) id when stabbing.

We finished up about 5 minutes before time was called… literally. Came down to the wire. Stabby was awarded a runner up award, and supposedly will be on display at Tech Crunch on Wednesday some time during the day.

We had a hell of a lot of fun, and were excited to present a functioning project ( a first for me =P ). Even more exciting was winning a runner up award in a contest that didn’t actually have runner up awards. I guess they were afraid of being stabbed.

Shuttle Atlantis just lifted off on its final voyage. There are 2 shuttle missions left before the end of the shuttle program. I suggest not missing a single launch, and if possible seeing them live. The shuttle program has to be the most inspirational scientific program currently operating. Nothing really makes me more proud to be a human being, or living in the times that we do than watching one of these rather good looking vehicles get launched into the heavens and far beyond.

Really looking forward to another more ambitious space program from anywhere at all, since it seems NASA won’t be pursuing constellation. =(

But let’s look at Atlantis’ rich history. This good ship has flown 32 missions ( 31 of which have completed successfully, with 32 looking beautiful ). She’s been in the shuttle fleet since her flight readiness firing Sept. 5, 1985. 25 years this shuttle has been in service, defying a decision to decommission it in 2008. Atlantis was intended to be relegated to a support role for Endeavor and Discovery, but Atlantis was born to fly and that’s just what she’s doing right now at 2500 mph.

Atlantis made history June 29 of 1995 when she was the first shuttle to dock with the Mir space station as part of STS-71. Before that during STS-30, Atlantis launched the first interplanetary probe launched from a shuttle. The Magellan probe was sent to explore Venus.

Many people have contributed to Atlantis’ successful missions over the years, but Rockwell International has the distinction of having built her. So to the engineers over there, I am sure today’s flight is especially gratifying.

Anyways, Atlantis, from all the folks at NYC Resistor. Thanks for being utterly amazing. Enjoy retirement, I hope you find a really great home.

Fun Fact, Atlantis has traveled 115,770,929 miles ( 186,315,250 km ) and counting…

Four talented hackers from NYU are planning to spend the summer building Diaspora “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”.

This is a particularly timely project in the wake of the recent “open” graph announcements at F8 and the debate about data ownership.

Project Diaspora will be open-source, with a subscription hosted solution. They’re raising money to pay for their time developing the project over the summer.

You can read more about the project and the business plan and pledge your support on their Kickstarter page.

A lot of you folks may not know this but, I went to high school ( and graduated from there ) in Brazil. One of my friends from there currently is living in New Jersey. He’s been running powerlabs.org since high school ( probably earlier ). Sam has also just recently sold his soul to facebook here

Above is a video of him test firing a 100 KiloJoule rail gun. And I cannot stress this enough… THIS IS FREAKING AMAZING. Sam’s fairly famous so some of you may already know of some of his past exploits, but if not… by all means check his stuff out. Sam’s been inspiring me with his insanity for years.

I considered not writing this. I also considered posting a book review of one of the many books of Howard Ziinn’s that I’ve read. But ultimately, I think it’s right to call this guy a world class hacker of history. With his most famous work, A People’s History of the United States, he presented one of the most compelling alternative viewpoints on US history ever produced. His impact on high school and college students throughout the united states has been indelible. And, his passing earlier this week has left me truly saddened. And here’s why…
Read more

My long time friend Seth, and a founding member of the Hacklab.to hackerspace in Toronto is making a run at Board of Directors for (ISC)2. In case you aren’t familiar with what (ISC)2 does, read their “about” page. The short story is, they set the standards for testing and certification requirements in the Information Security arena for large enterprises. The now almost mandatory CISSP certification is one of their creations.

For a long time now there has been considerable dismay in the hacking community with the quality of the CISSP certification. In spite of this, it has become the defacto standard in required education for work in any infosec related field of technology. Which is why it’s time for some reform. Seth is a proven security professional whose academic background is grounded in math and more specifically cryptography. He has presented several times at Black Hat and other prestigious ( and less prestigious) conferences in matters of security and cryptography. He currently is a malware researcher for a major anti-virus company. He’s also a pretty cool guy and doesn’t afraid of anything.

As a former security auditor myself, I’ve seen first hand some of the very real problems with the CISSP and the industry that’s built atop it. Placing Seth in a position to make changes to the way (ISC)2 does business is better for everyone in the long run. Which is why I’ve decided to make this post. If you or someone you know holds a CISSP certification please let them know about Seth’s campaign for a seat on the board of Directors. Only CISSP holders can vote for these positions.

You can read more about the campaign here: sethforisc2board.org

Taken on iPhone generation 1

So a group of artists flying under the banner of “Ad-hoc Art” has renovated a row of empty store fronts around the corner from NYC Resistor. These buildings were bought out for a building project that never happened, and with the economic downturn may never happen. It’s great to see that someone has taken advantage of that and brought us something truly great.

So if you are coming by Resistor for a class, or for our party Saturday. Stop by. These things are amazing, and my iphone camera does not do them justice.

But for those of you far away in distant lands, here’s a flickr set from my iPhone.

Thanks Ad-hoc Art team. Your work is awesome.