/tmp/lab

After the BackTrack3 Live SD card for EEE, I continued the distribution exploration with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) operating system on their brand new XO laptops and their slick and simple GUI called Sugar.

Before jumping into “did this, done that”, current advances in SD card and USB memory sticks sizes, bootable distribution and virtualization take computing to a different level.

Remember when you use to insert a MSDOS diskette into your computer to boot it? Each new operating system could be booted on the same old PC by merely changing the diskette and rebooting? Of course, there were not as many OS as now. This is where the fun begin.

Now, a child can have “his own computer” by just possessing a SD-card. All his changes to his environment will be persistent. He will be able to add programs without depending or affecting anyone. 2 Gb SD card are as cheap as 10 euros now. On such a card, you can have OLPC Sugar, Ubuntu or Debian. And guess what, these are not mutually exclusive. For proof is my experiment by Booting my EEE pc with Xubuntu running Sugar GUI borrowed from standard OLPC / XO distribution. These SD or USB storage are bootable even if they are formatted as VFAT, that means, readable on a standard Windows PC.

On top of this, Kevin’s SD card or USB key may also store a Virtual Machine application (Qemu or Virtual Box are free alternatives to VMware) which may enable him to run his own environment without rebooting daddy’s computer. Such freedom may transform PCs into a commodity where you actually boot your own environment.

Speaking of which, I did some test also running OLPC XO Fedora Core-based distribution in VMware Fusion on my MacBook and it runs nicely, without crashes or else.

In the dark quietness of the lab, using a special lens shaped like the leg of a wine drinking glass, a light source, and a piece of cardboard, we saw the Einstein Ring today. In space, these rings and associated shapes appear when light from distant sources is bent by a massive galaxy or group thereof. Our lens bends light exactly the same way a black hole weighting 75% of Earth mass would. This experiment, and the background about this phenomena are described in details in the paper didactical experiment on gravitational lensing

Here is a Tutorial on how to boot your EEE pc with USB-key or SD-card that I wrote coming back from Indonesia.

The cool thing is that you can have as many 1Gb or 2Gb SD-cards for as many distribution you need to work with. Let’s say you need to use Debian for some compile jobs, Nexenta for some Open Solaris testing and Backtrack3 for some security/hacking jobs? Easy, you just install each of these distribution on a different SD-card (10 euro these days for a 2Gb SD-card) and using one is just as easy as changing disks and rebooting it.

As we are also developping the OLPC France initiative, EEE pc provides an interesting alternative to the XO. Being able to test out the distribution in such a way adds to the “technology fluidity” of such platforms. More to come

Conférence en français samedi 16/02, 21h-22h dans le cadre de Economie 0

Philippe Langlois parlera des hackers spaces & des initiatives utilisant l’art et les technologies pour la création hybride dans le domaine de l’information, de l’open source, de l’activisme, des technologies et de l’économie:

“Messages contradictoires, fausses identités, hacking, technologies disruptives. Ce n’est pas seulement le hacking mais tout le domaine de la culture, de la communication et des codes et symboles qui renaissent toujours plus vite avec de nouveaux messages, de nouvelles techniques de communications, et donc leur lot de hacks associés.

Les années 2000 montrent qu’au dela de la mort du hacking technique par son absorption par le domaine de la sécurité, le hack renait par une approche encore plus générale, celle de la culture. Les détournements se multiplient, utilisent des noms différents, emergent et disparaissent de plus en plus vite.

• Comment les hack labs et les initiatives pirates fournissent des alternatives au systême central de pensée?
• Comment modifier et et faire muter le blob général dans lequel les sociétés commerciales géantes et les réseaux de communication, si nous ne faisons rien, réinstalleraient une nouvelle royauté?
• Quels sont les outils pratiques et simples que nous pouvons utiliser pour agir dans notre société?
• Quelle est la situation dans d’autres pays en Europe et dans le monde, notamment dans les pays occidentaux et dans les pays en voie de développement?

Lors de la conférence, des exemples pratiques seront examinés et de nouvelles initiatives révélées.”

Next week, i’ll be visiting Indonesia open source initiatives and meet hackers from all over the place there. Maybe you too? (add comment to make contact)

What’s planned is to meet some of Bellua people, then meet local contacts with Jaromil (see Dyne & co) and continue to Bandung to meet a nice techcrowd there such as for example the people at CommonRoom.

After trip addon:
Gallery pictures of the trip from Jakarta to Bandung to see CommonRoom and ITB people.
Projects follow ups after hacker meeting in Jakarta.

We will be doing a Signal System 7 workshop this thursday at the Lab, so if you are interested, come there ! See the outline below.

It will be taking place as a One Day Blast : a free day during which you can promote your own project and/or participate to any ongoing project. It is free, free of charge and anyone can come !

More informations about :
http://www.OneDayBlast.org

Here is a short outline of the SS7 workshop :
* Setting up a SS7 stack over IP (SIGTRAN)
* Configuration
* More details about SIGTRAN and SS7
* Possibles attacks on SS7 infrastructures

If you wish to come and present another project or just hang around and have some coding time, feel free to come.

Right now, testing Dynagen CISCO emulator. That thing is groovy!

http://www.dynagen.org/tutorial.htm

http://www.dynagen.org/

Let’s party for the opening of /tmp/lab.

This saturday 14th of December, 2007, we’ll party from 10PM to the morning, all night long. Bring along your drinks, your stuff, your friends, your whatever.

Wild dresscode, no dresscode, code.  Bring Your Flask. Don’t Bring Your Laptop.

One of our first project is to get proper sunlight into the basement. We have thus started to work on a SkyLight that will provide us with light similar to the sun (below this thick concrete shelter).

Currently our plans are to use 6000K fluorescent tubes that provides “Daylight” glare, combined with colored lights that will restore a warm atmosphere.

/tmp/lab is physically and virtually started. With over 100 square meters in the suburb of Paris and this server, we’re pleased to open the first hacker space in Paris area.

Please understand hack as creative use of technology, not computer intrusion, and stay tuned for more infos.

/tmp/lab is the first hacklab setup by the lelab.fr initiative. We hope to create and disseminate much more technology and creativity places in the future. Check out www.lelab.fr for a wider look on our plans.