#riga hackerspace

[technariumas]

Internet of Shit hackathon: the hacks and the winners

There were 11 entries at the hackathon -- a lot of brightest minds of our generation working hard to make useless stuff!

[The Dialrhea project, see below]

Here are the projects in order of presentation:

1. “Burning pants”  -- a Neopixel/micro:bit wearable project by the olab.lt team. A nice and safe addition to one’s wardrobe when going to Kaunas Jazz Festival. They won the “Fire Means It’s Working” award!

2. "Baron Munchausen" by v. -- a very smart Raspberry Pi-based extension cord: the RasPi runs an Ethereum node with the Ethereum alarm clock service. The HDD stores 17GB of Ethereum blocks.

When the currency gained from running the service is not covering the electricity costs, the cord switches itself off using a relay. They were vying for the “something something blockchain” award, but at the end were awarded the “most hacker-friendly award (for least secure = most dangerous IoT device)”. Not because of any flaws in IT security (no default passwords here), but for the unshielded 220V wires sticking out of the project, making it the most dangerous IoS device around.

 The “I don’t know” team highlighted the topic of algorithmic prejudice, creating a “Value Gun" -- a racist gun that detects the colour of a person's skin and then shoots. Luckily, it didn’t really worked this way: an RGB-detector bought from China was a proximity sensor instead. Also it was network-connected and all the passwords were the default ones. The won the “This is Likely Illegal” prize (for the USA and LE people, that’s a toy gun, obviously).

The other fine folks from Riga hackerspace teamed up for two very well-received projects:

"Vape bucket" is a connected bucket with a hacked fog machine that lets you vape through it, controlled by Amazon Alexa. That was the idea, at least:  they didn' have a credit card, so voice control didn’t work: one could only chat with Alexa while vaping. The demo started with a leak of some vaping fluid. The default password is "password" in Latvian. It also has a startup on top of it (http://theexpresswaytopleasure.com/)

This foggy uncanny valley of a project won the “Shittiest AI (artificial idiocy) Solution” prize and was a serious contender for the main prize as well.

[pix by Lukas]

@hottiecamera by "Hottiecam", another project by the Riga hackerspace crew, is a hacked smoke detector alarming not the owner, but subscribers to the service when someone’s house is on fire. It tweets. It works even when electricity fails because show must go on. The speaker is disabled because if the owner hears the alarm, they can put the fire out and ruin the party. They were also considering selling those to nuclear power plants. This project, obviously, won the “Least Private On-line Gadget” prize!

"Dialrhea" is a next-gen human-computer interface device from old rotary phone. Pairs with any smart device and has special emoji/gaming modes of operation. Here’s someone playing DOOM on a large screen at the afterparty:

Its authors, being creatives/media people, even made a slick movie advertising this shitty product for shitty people. They won both the least shitty product consolation prize and the public prize!

@emojithinx by @seplute -- a tool to reduce the emotional labour in long-distance work communication. She wrote an emoji Twitter bot. It didn't have the :poop: emoji yet.

Mantas (of Porno Nest fame) collaborated with the best designers around to create an interactive punching bag. Sewing by Kazirka.

@kristina, @mn and Grete presented CNC-machined chocolate buttons which melt on your body, ruin your clothes and disappear. Laced with WD-40, coated with bronze spray paint. They won the Social Courage Award!

The CryptoSpätkauf project by @opit and @miceuz (with a lot of consulting by veox) is a smart contract service providing a means for people to share their liquor stash after hours. As the Lithuanian government tries to save the country from the spectre of alcoholism by introducing a barrage of restrictions and prohibitions, we showed that the street finds its own use for things. Our first Solidity project. Buggy as fuck.

Buttons that do nothing by Aistis and crew were a riff on connected button hype: it’s a panel with 16 touch buttons, shown on a live demo doing exactly nothing. There’s a "classic button", "a button swapped with No. 11", "inactive", "underappreciated", "non-radioactive", "why pay more", "swapped with #3", "harmful for nature", "unmarked" and many other buttons. You can press multiple buttons at the same time and they do nothing! This team won the Artisanal Piece of Shit Grand Prize!

Last but not least, the "Umbrella project" by another Mantas from Kaunas was a WiFi-powered charging umbrella with the latest technology that guys like Elon Musk really like to copy from Tesla inventions. A unicorn- and Kickstarter-material. They won the “Dead Unicorn (the lowest ROI solution)” prize, sponsored by the Brickwall startup decelerator.

That was all -- many thanks to our brave sponsors ADEO WEB, olab.lt, Geležinė Lapė, Catnip Electronics and the robot who ate empty cans from Technarium and spat out some cash. A special thanks to our venerable jury (Marukas, Auguste, goku), Mark Splinter, Povilas and the Riga hackerspace crew for making this event a lot brighter!

[technariumas]

Hack and Tell #28 tonight!

Come to see some hacks from Riga hackerspace, a fresh large project by Technarium crew and, most importantly, show off the stuff you’ve been doing! BYOB.

[technariumas]

Internet of Shit hackathon is back!

Mark the date: let’s celebrate the absurd on December 1-2, 2018!

We shall not start startups, change the world, chase investors or breed unicorns during the Internet of Shit hackathon. Let’s simply turn up the absurd till 11, learn something and have fun. 

[Last year entry from Make Riga hackerspace]

Stay tuned for more info about registration!