• Monday: 3D Printer / OpenSCAD modeling class where we help people model ideas with OpenSCAD and Illustrator, and then allow them to print it on our 3D printer.
• Tuesday: Combat Robotics Demo: Duke it out with miniature R/C machines in tabletop matches – it’s Robot Wars on a hand-held scale. Choose one from a field of 1-lb robots designed and built by Hive76 to drive and fight in a display of electro-mechanical fisticuffs. Learn the basics of building and strategy, and get a taste of upcoming combat robot classes offered at Hive76.
• Wednesday: Open Hack Night, for anyone who wants to come and build, hack, or program. We’ll also have a Microcontoller session for individuals who want to become more familiar.
• Thursday: Music Night: Come talk to our best music hackers and learn how to build effect pedals, make anything into a speaker and learn about amplifiers.
• Saturday: Hive76 Ultimate Open House and Expo: Hive76 will have everything from the previous week available for display, and to play with.Also available will be Karaoke, Music, Movies, Food and Refreshments.

Unfortunately, their idea of hacking has more to do with unattended Facebook accounts than the hacking we do, and we thought it might be a good time to clear up just what hive is, what our hackers do, and what hacking actually means within the hacking community.

Hive is a hackerspace.  A hackerspace is not full of people who try to break into your computer, steal your bank account info, or send spam.  A hackerspace, or at least THIS hackerspace, is full of people who are trying in very real ways to build, modify, and improve things. Our battle cry is “Make things awesome, make awesome things!” and we take this to heart.  Visit the space on a Wednesday night, and you’ll find people who are excited about the things they are creating both in and out of the hive space, from chocolate chess pieces, to amazing pieces of audio equipment, all the way to organs which could save someone’s life.

The common theme here is that these people that define themselves as hackers are not breaking into your computer.   Some of us write software, to make things work better.  Some of us build things, to make things work better.  And some of us screw around just to see what might be possible, or impossible, just to do it.  Bottom line, this hacking is positive.  What most of the public and the media refers to as hacking, the technical world refers to as cracking, and it rarely is it “as seen on TV.”

So lets hit on a few of the real dangers, and if the media is paying attention, they can feel free to make use of this.   Here are a few things that actually endanger your accounts and computer, which the media often refers to as hacking, but which really are not.

1.) Spammers like to send emails that look real, talking about your phone bill, your bank, or a deposit that needs to be made in your account.  Often these take you to fake sites. Instead of clicking the links in these emails, call the phone company, bank, or other company that claims to be sending the email and verify it that way.  It’s not cracking (or hacking) if you hand over your username and password.

2.) If you use the same password on all your sites, and someone gets that password, they now have access to all of your sites. Likewise, if you use a simple password for your email, and someone gets access to that, it is easy for them to request new passwords for many of your other accounts.   Use more difficult, hard to guess passwords (Good password guidelines), and don’t use the same password for all sites. At the very least, use a different password for your email, a different one for your taxes and other financial matters, and a different one for your online accounts at sites like Facebook. It’s not cracking if someone knows your password, or has access to your email, and gets access to your stuff.

3.)  Don’t leave your account logged on in an unsafe place.  Many accounts get taken simply because someone leaves them logged on in some unsafe place, like a sample machine in a mall store.  It’s not cracking if you’re already logged on and walk away.

None of this is hacking. None of this is cracking. It’s poor security, usually because of a lack of understanding of the technology.  And you know, that’s understandable.  Not everyone is a computer expert or even really a computer beginner, but as long as the media keeps pushing these things as hacking, the public won’t learn. If anyone would like to discuss what this means to Hive76, feel free to e-mail us, or leave a comment below.

Maker History

Zach via spikenzie on Flickr. CC

Zach has been an active part in the development of the RepRap project for many years. In 2007, he was introduced to the concept of Open Source Hardware (OSHW). OSHW is a growing trend in manufacturing where the designers release all of the files needed to replicate the object once it’s up for sale. This allows customers and supporters to build upon the product, and maybe sometime in the future, provide crowd-sourced support. Once he realized the potential OSHW had to revolutionize manufacturing, he thought, “whoa that’s everything.” Since then everything he has worked on has been released onto the web in some form for others to build upon. One of his most successful OSHW designs was the RepRap Generation 3 electronics that eventually controlled the Mendel and MakerBot’s Cupcake CNC. Zach has been making bootstrapped 3D printers, or RepStraps, starting 5 years ago. He says you can comb through old email threads and see his “total n00b” struggles to get a machine going.

At some point after a few startup failures,  he began looking for a few new friends and found them in MB co-founder Bre Pettis and other smart nerds in NYC. They eventually founded the famous hackerspace NYCResistor in Brooklyn. Once they secured a space, Zach brought in his RepStrap stuff to show off and hack on. He also got a RepRap Darwin kit and assembled it at NYCR, but they didn’t function too well. After some successive failures, and fortuitous access to a laser cutter, Zach, Bre and the third co-founder Adam had an idea to make their own RepStrap kit. There are others that have done the history of MB, and none better than Bre himself. MakerBot is now one of the most successful 3D printer companies around today, but for Zach, it “didn’t end on a good note.”

Chinese Vacation

Zach moved to China about a year ago, I assume to help MakerBot’s supply chain. But these days, Zach spends more time running up mountains than running a supply chain. After his break with MakerBot in May, he has been traveling around, exercising and eating well. Zach he got the inspiration for this creative reboot  from Bunnie Huang:

“The coolest piece of hardware you’ll ever own is your body, and if that’s not working well, there’s no hope for anything else. Once I’m done with my aimless wanderings, hopefully I’ll have a better idea of what’s next.”
via MAKE magazine

If he is not feeling the best physically, he won’t be the best mentally for his next big thing. Zach is on a much needed vacation in order to explore a bit and play around with old ideas left on hold. One old project he wants to pick back up are the Keyboard pants. “The world needs keyboard pants” he says.

Falling Out

The story of how Zach left is one that has been told a millions times. It came down to a basic struggle for who’s running the company. In his words, he “got pushed out.” Unfortunately, this happens to a lot of founders. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison are exceptions while the vast majority of founders routinely get displaced. From Inc.com:

“Robert Adelson, a partner at the Boston-based Engel & Schultz law firm who represents entrepreneurs in this situation, says founder succession happens most often when the venture capitalist—who has most likely invested with the company under the stipulation that he or she can remove the founder if necessary—feels the company needs to scale faster.” via Inc.

Zach is quiet on the details, but it could be this push to scale big or the style of development at MB that made the divide. Makerbot has a history of developing new products in secret. The Thing-O-Matic and Replicator were complete surprises to the printing community when they debuted. This is odd behavior in a community that is so accustomed to sharing every tiny development. Whatever MakerBot is working on new will be a surprise too. Zach found this closed development frustrating, when after working on a project for a year and not sharing any details, MB would release it, get some feedback, and Zach would go back into the lab to toil away for another year.

MakerBot also just raised $10M in VC funding and that amount of money changes the work dynamic. The people with the money call the shots. Like I said, Zach did not divulge any details so we can only speculate that this was one of the divisions that led him to leave. When I asked him what different direction he wanted to go in, he couldn’t say, but recalling his parting, Zach said “I thought I was going to be working there for the rest of my life.”

Bright Future in China

Zach’s home for now is Shenzhen, a place he calls a maker paradise. He says it’s incredible living in a different country, especially one that has rapidly industrialized. Shenzhen has grown from nothing to 10 million people in 30 years, and the best part is, they are almost all focused on manufacturing.

The ingredients for anything you want to make come from China, and they are sold by the bucket in SEG electronics market. This building has stalls with suppliers for any component you can think of. There’s even a dedicated LED building. Even though you can get anything you want, there is language barrier to overcome, so Zach is learning mandarin. In the meantime, he has a trick. After all, part numbers are part numbers, so he researches on Digi-Key, finds a few compatible components, then asks around around in the market for parts.

So what’s next for Zach? He’s got a “bajillion ideas” and Shenzhen is place to make them. He describes how amazing it is when you can look up an Alibaba supplier and then go visit them in person. Whatever project he starts next, he wants to be active during development. During his RepRap and early MakerBot years, the process of blogging, getting feedback, and directly engaging the user base was really exciting for him. But is it possible to do product development even more open than it was at MakerBot? Can he go beyond simply publishing a data dump of source code and actually collaborate with the people who will use the design?

When discussing his love of 3D printing, Zach made a comparison to compilers, critical pieces of software design. Well, “3D printers are the compilers of the hardware age.” They actually make the things you think up. But he doesn’t want to stop at plastic parts, which are OK for fancy shapes and toys, he has been eying up the world of CNC mills. When you use a mill and make a part out of metal, you get a high precision part for the small investment of materials, design, and robot time. The possibility of making a useful object is much higher when using a CNC mill.

Also, he has shed some light on the purpose of the RepRap project itself. RepRaps are biological entities in the eyes of RepRap founder Adrian Boyer, and  they are designed to show that with terms like “vitamins” and “self-replicating.” But it’s hard to cram all that self-replication into one machine. You’ll never be able to extrude the metal parts of an extruder. Even making electronics on a RepRap is still tricky.

Keyboard pants via brucesflickr on flickr. CC

But a new way of thinking about biological machines is to consider the whole lab as self replicating,  and the machines as organs, born out of specialization. Each machine could make some part to reproduce another machine. Having a full lab of open source hardware machines is fundamental to the future of makers. Once Zach is refreshed from his well-deserved vacation, maybe we’ll see a new line of maker-friendly CNC mills, all controlled by keyboard pants.

Zen and the art of soldering …

This Friday, we were able to inaugurate our newly completed class space with a most auspicious visitor — Mitch Altman!

PJ, Brendan, Robert et al were working until the wee hours the night before making sure that the space was ready to rock — and it was — literally.

Mitch arrived a bit before the appointed time, snapped a few photos, schmoozed, chowed down some local Chinese food etc. and, while documenting our stash of Elephant Heads,

Even this Diavolino was glad to see Mitch

anointed Hive76 as the most organized hacker space he’s seen. Quartermaster Brendan took appropriate pride in the observation.

Mitch basically talked about the Maker/Hacker movement in general, showed some of the kits that were keeping him company on the train, and weaved it all in a thematic web reminiscent of Arlo Guthrie’s is-this-guy-rambling-no-holy-shit-he’s-a-genius-because-it-all-makes-sense-in-the-end style.

After that, everyone bought a kit or two and lost themselves in the task of soldering.  I don’t know whether it’s the solder fumes or just the act of soldering itself, but I felt pretty good at the end of it all.

The new space is completely awesome and turned out to be nearly perfect for the event. Hats off to Brendan, Robert, PJ and Jordan!

One of our core members, Jordan Miller, has just published a scientific paper using RepRap 3D printing technology to engineer living tissues for regenerative medicine. I’ll give you a rundown of the science and a step-by-step guide of how Jordan got to this great spot in his career. Jordan is quick to point out that this is work that would not have been possible 5 years ago, or without the help of RepRap, Hive76, and this wonderful city of Philadelphia.

There are other labs around the world that are attempting what Jordan and the rest of the team at UPenn and MIT have been working towards. The end goal of regenerative medicine research is engineered tissues and replacement organs for treatment of human disease. As Science news says,

Imagine a world where if your heart or kidneys failed, you wouldn’t have to endure an agonizing, possibly futile wait for a donor whose organ your body might reject. Instead, a doctor would simply take cells from your own body and use them to “grow” you a new organ.

Other lines of research are attempting to 3D print directly with living cells and gel. These so-called “bioprinting” approaches involve loading cells and gel in syringes to be used as feedstock to create a structure from scratch. The problem is that healthy liver cells, for example, usually die of starvation (lack of nutrients) and suffocation (lack of oxygen) while enduring the slow 3D printing process.

Jordan’s 3D printed vasculature approach was inspired by whole organ vascular casts like this one.

Enter Jordan and his innovation: since vasculature provides the lifeblood to resident cells, why not focus on the vasculature first?

Jordan and the rest of the research team at UPenn and MIT have developed a new way to create vasculature for living tissues. This 4 step process involves: 1) 3D printing a network of sugar filaments, 2) surrounding it with living cells in a gel, 3) dissolving away the sugar to leave behind a vascular network for 4) the delivery of nutrients and oxygen. He accomplished this with a custom built 3D printer, extruder and control software.

Here’s a step-by-step of Jordan’s many year process:

1. Get a crazy idea to link sugar and vasculature when comparing the interior of a 3D print to a capillary network.
2. Get a PhD in bioengineering
3. Move to Philadelphia
4. Join a hackerspace
5. Get introduced to 3D printing, MakerBot and RepRap
6. Assemble your first MakerBot
7. Invent a heated build platform to dry your sugar while printing.
8. Add a heater to the Frostruder so you can print molten sugar.
9. Assemble a customized RepRap Mendel that fits your new extruder.
10. Get help from your hackerspace to properly control your pneumatic extrusion.
11. Work for months perfecting recipes and methods for printing vasculature.
12. Write it all up in a research paper and submit!

You can read the Penn press release about this awesome science, an overview from Science News, or the full paper. A more detailed post about the hardware used in this project will follow and soon you’ll be able to make your own sugar extruder. (It prints chocolate too!)

If you haven’t followed Mitch Altman’s career, you probably still know of some of his very cool projects, like his TV-B-Gone remote, or his Brain Machine glasses, and his many cool articles for Make: Magazine. Despite the great commercial success of his inventions, Mitch helped pioneer the Open-Source Hardware movement by publicly refusing to patent his ideas, and continues to inspire the maker community by advocating the free exchange of DIY electronics knowledge.

Come by on Friday, July 6, as Mitch demos his latest inventions and kits, and leads a fun hacking workshop suitable for everyone from total novices to advanced solder-smiths! Its guaranteed to be a great time!

Date: July 6, 2012
Time: 6:00
Location: Hive76 (915 Spring Garden St.)
Price:  ADMISSION IS FREE! (kits for the workshop start around $10)

Come and join in on the fun! Bring a laptop!

The first meeting will be on June 10th, at 6 PM.

See you there!

Tuesday – DIY Music Night

Wednesday – Open House

Thursday – Game Night Featuring Tetris Arm Wrestling Tournament

Friday – PTW Gala demonstration (offsite)

Events at Hive76 Monday through Thursday start at 7pm and 

ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Friday Gala Ticketing information available here.

We are proud to welcome Lea Rosen, Rutgers-Camden law student, researcher, and writer, to Hive76 to present a talk entitled, “Hacking Your Lawyer: A Primer.”

“Ever feel like your questions elicit boring and disappointing answers from lawyers? It happens all the time, and it feels counterintuitive – the stuff you are working on is complex and exciting, and you know the law is complex and kind of interesting. Your gut’s not wrong – your questions are. I’ll explain why we talk the way we do, and how you can learn a couple simple lessons to help frame your questions in a way that will draw out the information you really want. “

In addition to her main presentation, she will also be discussing some of the topics that were brought up on our mailing list, like the legal implications of hacking the things that you own. There happens to be a DMCA Rulemaking Session this year, so she will discuss how the DMCA works and what it takes to get legal protection for hardware hacking. There will be a Q&A section afterwards because I’m sure we’ll have some questions.

A little more about Lea:

Her big motivation is to break down the cultural boundaries between technologists, hackers, lawyers, human rights advocates, activists, and theorists. She provides research assistance for Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion, and Greg Lastowka, Professor at Rutgers School of Law, Camden and author of Virtual Justice[pdf]. She has interned at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and in the Federal District Court in Newark, NJ. She volunteers with the Philadelphia ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild AnoNLG project, and she co-founded of the Rutgers Cyberlaw Society. She has written on the interpretation of software licenses by the 9th Circuit, encryption and border searches, and the privacy and liberty implications of domestic UAV deployment. She also had the opportunity to write an FAQ for the Yes Men! She has her BA in Humanities and will be getting her JD this May from Rutgers-Camden.

See you tonight!

UPDATE: Lea has informed me that Greg Lastowka’s book, Virtual Justice is available for free here[pdf]. It was released under a Creative Commons license! Nice! Hard copy available from Yale University press here.