Train along the Italian coast, somewhere between Pisa and Genoa

Monday afternoon I caught the train out of Pisa bound for Milan, changing trains in Genoa. The trenitalia computer kiosk had helpfully sold me an impossible itinerary: my first train arrived in Genoa after the train I was supposed to transfer to had already departed. While killing time waiting for the next train, I chanced upon a used bookstore that had a fairly good English-language selection at cheap prices. I went on a bit of a book-buying binge.

I got JD Salinger’s “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters”/”Seymour: An Introduction” (I read this one already and it kind of sucked), “Sons and Lovers” by DH Lawrence, and “One no, many yeses” by Paul Kingsnorth, on the theory that it would be obliquely relevant to my project. I almost bought a fat history of Garibaldi on the basis that it was only €4 for about 1200 pages, but then decided that buying literature on the Costco principle would likely not make for pleasant reading.

I also played around with a machine that claimed to print stickers from various digital camera media. However, all it did with the xD card from my camera was corrupt the partition table, effectively erasing everything on the card. Thanks, Geneoese train station sticker machine. The lesson: be careful what slot you shove your memory sticks into. Luckily, some Linux hacker had already written “PhotoRec,” an absolutely wonderful application designed specifically to recover digital photos from camera media. It took a couple hours, but worked perfectly, recovering all the .jpg’s and even the .mov’s from the corrupted memory card.

Since my flight was early in the morning, I slept at the Milan-Malpensa airport, which was fine except for being very cold.

Boarding the flight was rather interesting. As previously discussed, the Italians don’t really ever see the need for a line. The Germans, on the other hand, are *exceptional* line-standers. Rivaled in Europe only by the British, who treat proper queue ettiqutte with a reverence reserved in most cultures for national war heroes. The flight looked to be about half Germans and half Italians, and except for segmenting the entire passenger manifest into either an A or B group, it was open boarding. The meant that the Germans for the most part lined up orderly along the wall, and the Italians exploited their northern neighbors’ line-standing impulses to merciless advantage, crowding by, cutting, wandering away from the line and then re-entering it. I saw many a stern disapproving look or head-shake, but nobody broke decorum to actually object. As for me, I decided to split the difference; half-cutting, but then courteously letting several old ladies go in front of me.

The big thing that I came to Berlin for is C-base. C-base is amazing. It’s basically the hacker mecca. It’s been in its current location since the late 1980s, which in the computer world is practically an eternity. Unlike many of the other hacklabs I’ve visited which are precariously located in squats, or part of some larger social center, C-base is its own entity. Registered as a non-profit corporation, it collects money monthly from some 400-500 dues-paying members.

C-base is tricky to photograph. If I use a flash, it washes out and does a very poor job of conveying the dark, cyberpunk aesthetic of the place, and it’s too dark to really photograph properly without the flash. At least, for my crappy camera. It looks kind of like the inside of a laser-tag arena, only without the smoke machine; and most of the neon blinking things actually do something. There’s strange aliens, and circuit boards all over the walls. Apparently some of the original founders’ mother/mainboards now adorn the “nerd room” in the basement. This room is off-limits to non-members unless escorted by a member. When I emailed, the C-base guys generously found an American ex-pat member to show me around.

C-base has its own founding myth and mythology. The story goes that there’s a crashed space station buried underneath Berlin. The iconic TV tower in the center of Alexanderplatz is the antenna of this station. C-base is part of the station buried underground. The C-base members are the extraterrestrial inhabitants of the station, and every improvement or expansion of C-base is an attempt to reconstruct the station. Accordingly, non-members are “aliens” to the C-base members, hence the “No Alien” signs noting members-only locations. When entering these restricted areas, my guide yells out, “Alien entering” in German.

On Monday when I was there, they were playing with a homebuilt multitouch computer. Microsoft is developing this concept under the “Microsoft Surface” label. If you’ve never seen one of these, this video gives you some idea. The C-base one is homebuilt with about $6,000 worth of hardware. It uses a webcam mounted in the console to spot where your hands are, a high-res projector reflected off a mirror for display, and a Linux-based interface.

There’s also a robotics team at C-base. When I was there, they were working on trying to build a small robot that would balance itself on only one wheel. They had the basic hardware built, but were having trouble getting the software to interface correctly. Another group at c-base, Friefunk.net is working on constructing a free wireless network for all of Berlin. They’ve been coordinating with churches to install hardware in their steeples to provide maximum coverage from high networks. They also have special router firmware that can be installed on normal consumer hardware to allow your home router to become a part of their mesh network and contribute some of your extra bandwidth to the project.

Tuesday night, they had an open stage night, with several different bands jamming and generally rocking out. It was notable for being the only musical event I’ve been at where having a laptop open in front of you was not only socially acceptable but actually made you cooler. Also, during one performance, the singer concluded a song featuring the lyric “yes we can” with a random shout of “Obama!”

On Saturday, I went to an Ubuntu 8.10 release party at c-base. It was surprisngly well-advertised (I saw advertisements announcing it on the U-bahn throughout the week) and consequently well-attended. There were presentations by members of the Ubuntu Berlin development team about some of the new features in this release of Ubuntu. I’ve actually been running the 8.10 beta on an SD card since Florence, so a lot of it wasn’t new to me, but it was still a really cool environment and neat to be able to see some of the actual developers.

Other notable occurances in Berlin: I went to a couchsurfing Halloween party, hung out with a cool Polish econ student, and later to a “secret” Halloween party in the boiler room of an abandoned building on the outskirts of Berlin.

Also, at the hostel I was staying at, a guy gave me a free ukulele because he was tired of carrying it. So now I just need to learn to play the ukulele. I also met a very friendly Iranian guy who drank tea compulsively (~6 cups a day) and kept trying to get me to match him cup-for-cup. He was in Berlin to work and was staying in the hostel while looking for an apartment. He complained bitterly about the awful bureaucracy of the German government, which is probably true, but I was surprised to hear it compared unfavorably to the ponderous religious/governmental hybrid authority that runs Iran.

No Alien (This means you, Homo sapiens sapiens)

Hardware workshop

Ubuntu Release Party

A while back, my friend Nick introduced me to Project Euler, which is a really cool (well, not really cool, but nerd-cool, which is better anyway) collection of little mathematical puzzles that are best solved through the application of computer programming.

I’ve been looking to learn Python for a while now, so I decided to start working through some of the Project Euler problems as a way to learn Python. I did the first two on the train: summing all natural multiples of 3 or 5 below 1,000, and summing the even Fibonacci numbers below 4 million.

If you care, my code is below:

Somebody told me this code is a bit counter-intuitive and hard to read, which might be true. I tried to use as few variables (two), loops (one) and iterations (only 333 rather than 999) as possible.

j = 0
count = 0
while 3*j < 1000:

if 5*j < 1000 and int(((5*j)/ 3.0)) != ((5*j)/ 3.0):

count = count + 3*j + 5*j

else:

count = count + 3*j

j = j + 1

print “This program sums all the natural numbers below 1,000 that are multiples of 3 or 5:”, count

Same story here, there’s more self-evident ways to code the Fibonacci sequence. One of my friends told me that in Python, you can assign two variables in one line so you could just do “a, b = a+b, a”, but I didn’t know that, so this is what I did. I thought using the transitive property of addition rather than introducing another variable was at least slightly clever:

a = 1
b = 1
total = 0

while b < 4000000:

if int(b/2.0) == b/2.0:

total = total + b

a = a + b
b = a – b

print total

O tannenbaum...

The authentic German Christmas tree, complete with candles and straw ornaments.

Fun Holiday Fact: Germans apparently have both Santa Claus and St. Nicholas. Santa (“Weihnachtsmann” in German, literally, “Christmas man”) comes on Christmas Eve in a flying sleigh with magic reindeer. St. Nicholas comes on the Twelfth Day of Christmas (January 6, the feast of St. Nicholas) in a normal sleigh drawn by a donkey. Since he’s not magic, and can’t come down chimneys, German kids have to leave their shoes outside the front door and St. Nicholas leaves them some small presents inside.

So props to the Germans for keeping St. Nick around and adding Weihnachtsmann for a double your mythical holiday gift-bringing figures bonus. I still feel like St. Nick got the short end of that stick, though.

Things I’ve seen:

1. A little toy RC flying saucer with blinking LEDs and a tendency to crash into (or “attack”) passersby.
2. A guy with a multimeter working on repairing a cold-war era phone that looks like it could be the nuclear hotline.
3. A pretty cool rig using a wiimote to spot points where green laser beams are broken. Imagine a harp with laser beams instead of strings.

There’s a strict no-photos-without-permission policy at the Congress, so I haven’t been taking a lot of photos so far. If I see some cool stuff tomorrow, and people are ok with pictures, I’ll try to post some.

I’m really tired right now, I stayed up late putting off packing, and I didn’t sleep much on the train. They’ve got a gym/flophouse thing where you can crash for €5, so I’ve been waiting for that to open.

Also I’ve been encrypting and tunneling like crazy. I normally err on the side of convenience when it comes to security. I figure I don’t deal with any data that’s really top secret or anything, so, for instance, I don’t encrypt my drives because I figure it’s far more likely that I’ll wind up locking myself out of my data than that I’ll foil a thief. However, the 25C3 website includes a “How to Survive” primer that really put the fear of God in me with regard to security.
Sample reassuring passages:

“Of course there is no reason to get paranoid, even though security and paranoia go hand in hand a bit. But be careful: Just because you’re paranoid, this doesn’t mean that nobody will break into your box or is after you. ” [Translation: don't be paranoid. Well, do be paranoid. Actually, being paranoid won't save you anyway.]

“Another thing worth mentioning: Even when all consoles are locked and the passwords theoretically unguessable, most recent notebooks and desktops are equipped with Firewire, which can be quite a lot of fun as well: http://www.ccc.de/congress/2004/fahrplan/event/14.de.html (German only) And who knows, maybe somewhere in the RAM there’s a clear text copy of the necessary password…? ” [Do everything right and you can still get pwn3d.]

“NO Social hacking (don’t trust anyone)” [And have fun!]

Then, occasionally, they go to German hacker conferences and explain how to do it. Hint for those of you playing along at home: it involves power drills, acid, and paperclips. Sometimes, they show off their method on a special BBC news report and leave a representative from the banking industry spluttering and making excuses.

Money quotes:
@15:15:
“I think the important thing to remember from this piece is that we’re not talking about a break of the chip & PIN security overall.”
“Well I think, according to that, we certainly are.”
@17:10:
“Let’s clarify, the system is not vulnerable. Chip & PIN is very secure. It’s not 100% guaranteed against fraud—”
“So it is vulnerable.”
“No, there’s no guarantee, 100% against fraud.”
“So it’s vulnerable! By definition. If it’s not 100% guaranteed, it’s vulnerable.”
@19:19:
“So despite the fact that new cards have enhanced security, the old cards don’t lack anything by not having it? Are you seriously saying that?”

Note to American newspeople: This is called a real interview. I realize it may look strange and unfamiliar to you. The person on the right is called a journalist, his job is to ask hard questions to his interview subject, and not let her get away with answers that are blatantly absurd or self-contradictory on their face.

Hacker fuel

One of the important elements of a subculture is its tendency to collectively select visible markers of membership in that culture: clothes, hairstyles, preferred products. Hackers as a culture are certainly not immune to this, but as a culture that prides itself on valuing accomplishment over image, the markers of membership in hacker culture tend to be functional outgrowths rather than stylistic flourishes.

Take, for example, the idea of “hacker drinks”. There are several different beverages that are closely associated with hackers (at least by other hackers and computer types). They have in common the property of being highly, highly caffeinated. This is because hackers will frequently stay up all night coding or working nonstop on projects.

In the United States, the two drinks most associated with hackers are Jolt Cola, and Mountain Dew (especially the Code Red variety). Of the two, Jolt is more old-school, while Mountain Dew has supplanted it likely since Jolt has become rarer and harder to find. Mountain Dew is a good example of the hacker community ignoring the marketing hype targeting the extreme sports enthusiast segment, and embracing it for its caffeine content.

In Germany, the drink of choice for hackers is called Club-Mate. Despite the English-looking name, it’s always pronounced as German, “kloob mah-teh”. True to form, Club-Mate is a highly caffeinated soda-like beverage. It’s not very sugary though, and the taste is vaguely like a hard cider, it’s apparently flavored with Peruvian yerba mate extract. According to wikipedia, the drink’s motto translates as “One gets used to it!”

As you might expect, Club-Mate is very popular here at the Congress. I had encountered it earlier, at C-base, and I actually had a really positive reaction the first time I tried it. It wasn’t an acquired taste at all for me. Other people, however have told me that they think it tastes “weird”. In any case, it keeps me awake and doesn’t devastate my stomach the way that coffee does.

Certainly hackers also drink coffee, but it has much less cultural cred. This may be because of coffee’s close association with the normal business world. In brief: coffee is a get-up-and-go-to-work drink while Club-Mate is a stay-up-all-night-coding drink.

Two Dunkin’ Donuts stores near the conference center in Alexanderplatz were simultaneously flashmobbed by hundreds of hackers, temporarily interrupting normal donut delivery. It would appear that the stores did not have adequate caching implemented, although local mirrors were available.

Happy New Year’s, everyone!

Photos and video courtesy the 25C3 wiki:

But what’s the point of having your own blog if you can’t be totally navel-gazing, indulgent and self-centered? This is the time of year when every media outlet on the planet publishes a year-in-review piece. So here goes: this was a sweet year for me—graduating, getting the Watson, all the campaigning paying off with Obama’s election, driving and camping down the Baja peninsula in Mexico for spring break. I hope next year lives up.

Last night, we went out and partied at the Brandenburg Gate . It’s the major outdoor New Year’s celebration; kind of analogous to the Time Square party in NYC. Berlin’s version is much better, however, because a) you’re allowed to have an open container of alcohol anywhere in the city (including on the U-bahn), and b) everyone has tons of crazy fireworks with them and they’re lighting them off.

It’s kind of like combining 4th of July with New Year’s Eve. Only, unlike in America where people set fireworks on the ground, light them, and then retreat to a safe distance, in Berlin the guy next to you has a bunch of bottle rockets strapped to his back like ninja swords and he just sort of pulls one out, points it up and lights it off.

Tomorrow, I’m bugging out of Berlin. At the C-base party on Tuesday, I met some guys from a Swedish hacker crew / dance troupe. I think the dance troupe part is mostly a joke, but they actually did demonstrate some group choreography they had worked out. Anyway, they all drove down from Malmo, Sweden in a big party bus and they’ve invited me to ride back with them if I kick in for gas. We’re leaving tomorrow around noon, stopping in Copenhagen before continuing to Sweden.

Hopefully it will be awesome. I’m a little worried that the crazy-long night and freezing temperature will get to me. I’m already suffering hardcore Club-Mate withdrawal and having trouble staying awake. I have no idea if there’s internet on the bus (it wouldn’t surprise me), so if I’m not posting/replying to emails for a few days, it’s because I’m on the road.

I killed myself getting over from Malmo to Copenhagen to try to catch a bus, and I managed to miss it by 5 minutes! Even more gallingly, I discovered that the same bus actually passes through Malmo on its way to Copenhagen. Epic Brendan Bus Fail.

Luckily, the bus stop was right next to the train station, and there was a train to Berlin for only about €5 more than the bus.

So that’s the unromantic logistics of my life. I also interviewed one of the guys from The Research Department, and I need to write that up for the hackerspaces blog. In Denmark, I hung out a bunch in Freetown Christiania, which is probably the coolest thing I saw in Copenhagen. It’s certainly worthy of its own post, when  I get a chance. Things keep happening, though.

Tonight, I’m supposed to be going to some party/art exhibition thing with one of the girls I met in Ljubljana on the Pirate Bay bus. I guess some of the Pirate Bay/Piratbyrån people are going to be there/presenting an exhibit there. If it sounds like I’m vague on the details, that’s because I am. I’m also hoping to get up early tomorrow to check out the Technical Museum here in Berlin, which I missed last time.