Hackers Unite! Help #Sandy Victims. Join #HurricaneHackers on irc.freenode.net and follow @hurricanehackrs on twitter

Hey all,

Sandy is a major storm, previously a hurricane, that has caused  extensive flooding, power and transportation outages, and physical  damage to the US East Coast and Caribbean. More than 100 deaths have  been linked to the storm. You can see an overview of what is going on in NYC here: http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy-nyc

So essentially, over  100,000 people in Lower Manhattan are without power, and will likely  not have it back up for a few days. In order to stay informed as the  situation changes, and to keep in touch with loved ones, they will need  a way to communicate with their laptops  and phones.

We are innovating rapidly to create tools built and deployed using Heroku, Twillio, Human.io, google docs, google maps, crowdmaps -- pretty much anything we can get our hands on. This effort is being  spearheaded by the http://civic.mit.edu/  to help make services and connect tech people with people in need on the ground. A lot of interesting things are happening in the wake of  this natural disaster: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002598/sandy-prompts-louder-calls-free-wi-fi

This  is a unique opportunity to innovate to help people (people before  borders, tech beyond borders) and maybe change the debate on issues like  universal free open wifi). Please volunteer some coding / hacking  time and help some real people in a different part of the world that are  not having a great time right now. This a chance to demonstrate the power of the open, unrestricted internet, and the community that such an internet makes possible.

Come and help us over at #HurricaneHackers! Start here: http://hurricanehackers.com/ | Then read the HH-Projects list here: http://bit.ly/hh-projects-read | lulz: http://brownbag.me:9001/p/sandylulz | tunes: http://turntable.fm/hurricane_jammin | follow us @hurricanehackrs. Also: Join or organize a Sandy CrisisCamp this weekend: http://crisiscommons.org/2012/10/30/sandycrisiscamp/

If you are in NYC are looking for space to work with power, heat, and wifi, check out https://sandycoworking.crowdmap.com/ and the#sandycoworking hashtag on Twitter. Many of NYC's co-working spaces were damaged, so the need for work space is urgent. Updates on the broader NY Tech community response can be found at www.nytechresponds.org.

Please share this post far and wide!

#HurricaneHackers

@hurricanehackrs

Help the #Hurricanehackers ! Get into irc.freenode.net

Dear all, I just wanted to give a shoutout to all engineers, hackers, sysadmins and techies to come and join #hurricanehackers irc.freenode.net (webchat link for those without an IRC client: http://irc.lc/freenode/hurricanehackers) We need good hackers to come solve real engineering and logistical problems for the people of New York who are without power and have been flooded out of their homes so please join the channel and please spread the word.
~samthetechie

#HurricaneHackers

What is happening?

Hurricane #Sandy
http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy
http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy-nyc

Why help?

It is pretty simple: People before borders. Tech beyond borders. We need to help.

How you can help

Dear all I am @samthetechie from London Hackspace. I am the founder of sukey.org and sukey.io

I am an electronic engineer and I have been lurking in #hurricanehackers on irc.freenode.net looking to collaborate with people there. Please come and join me. 

Website

This is all the google docs tidied and copied onto a website- I am actively looking for collaborators, I can add anyone that emails me their github handle, access to push to this repo.

Rapid Project Deployment and Development

• Github https://github.com/HurricaneHackers
• IRC #hurricanehackers
• Linux Box {Apache, PHP, Python, Git, OpenSSH Server}

1. git clone (from the server) git@github.com:HurricaneHackers/hurricanehackers.com.git
2. this will publish to http://www.hurricanehackers.com/
3. thereafter git pull to 'fast forward' to the latest
4. Do not modify files on the server.
5. I would love help with some git post-hook triggers for pushing the repo live auto magically each time.

Twitter

I badly need help to run this, I am really busy with code.  Please get in touch.

https://twitter.com/HurricaneH4x0rs
there is also https://twitter.com/HurricaneHackrs but it appears it is not very active and has 3 posts!I dont have access :(

Github

https://github.com/HurricaneHackers
where I am trying to fork all of the other sandy github projects I can see.

--
Samuel Carlisle BEng (Hons) Dunelm MIET
pgp: 0x54828CAA
twitter: @samthetechie

Cryptoparty Handbook

UPDATE: https://www.cryptoparty.in/documentation/handbook 

I am thrilled about this initiative and the book is going to be great.

Aims

IMHO the first aim of this book should be to aid comprehension of
these tools and how to use them for as many people as possible.

Collaboration

I see the book as having many revisions (probably through rounds of collaboration and calls for contributions via twitter and on the wiki practically) but to a group of programmers this would look more like Git commits. We can just accept that git is not the perfect platform for non programmers but commit to accepting all contributions and trying to work them into the book. So we can push the issues system / bug tracker for this https://github.com/cryptoparty/handbook/issues and I like also the properties of forking and branching as one author may choose to go away and rework substantial portions of the book and then request a review which we can do as a team. Again, git is perfect for this because well as hashing to preserve data integrity it is also a great way to make sure there are no malicious edits that have crept in without being noticed.

Distribution

I have started seeding a torrent: https://cryptoparty.org/wiki/CryptoPartyHandbook#Torrent

Here is an idea for viral distribution of the ebook: https://occupywiki.org.uk/wiki/Projects/DiffusionEbooks

If we use this approach we can then distribute the printing costs and supporting the movement can be a simple act of printing out 5 booklets or maybe even just individual chapters for reading on the train or something and dropping them off somewhere or putting them in a cafe or some
other interesting alternative meetup spaces (for me that is London
hackspace for sure). Maybe people can even just print out individual chapters? 

Virality

I think this level of virality and outreach is really what we need to
keep growing and getting our message and this good information to more
people. It is also nice to be able to give something to people that
attend the parties something to take away in order to help them learn
from home. 

Added to which, git might just be the most non hierarchical and most advanced
collaboration platform that we all have so I think that we should
 give it a shot and we can always switch to another platform if it doesn't work out.

Github

UPDATE: I posted more thoughts about the use of GIT on the Liberation Tech Mailing List

https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2012-October/005172.html

 

I am pleased to say that the book can now be found here: https://github.com/cryptoparty/handbook/

What is Sukey?

People that study technology often fail to remember to study people. Folks get so wrapped up and enamoured with the data, and so alienated from the people doing the work that human practice often gets ignored. Re-inscribing the "human" into technology is extremely important...lest we fall into the trap of "there is no alternative."

The Sukey project speaks to a number of theoretical problems with which we grapple when thinking about technology: the agency of software, the production of space, the possibility of reconfiguring existing capitalist technologies for purposes of resistance, and community organizing through emerging media channels. Sukey is also inherently geographic and does work to expose the often largely invisible tactics of the state to dominate spaces of protest.

So it appears that the Sukey app and our team are sort of a unique case.
When we bemoan and lament technology's role in oppression and governmental regimes, the question we often ask ourselves is, "How could this be done 'differently'?"  Some may ask the same question regarding geoweb technology: "What could be done to make geoweb applications more egalitarian?  You make it sound as though capital domination is a foregone conclusion." The first step toward changing that is imagining a different possibility.

I was recently told by a friend that Sukey is regarded by some as a counter-example to "the corporate-state nexus owns and manipulates social media and other technology" in the geoweb field. Thanks guys!

Source: Adapted from an Email from Josef Eckert

Search Google for Music

So I just saw this on Twitter: http://www.googlemusicsearch.com/
Note: This site is not owned or operated by Google.com. This site uses the Google AJAX Search API to provide a customized subset of Google results.
As far as I can tell it is basically just a filtered google search which is tuned to finding music files. It is amazing. Quite useful really given that the UK government seems so keen to stamp out filesharing and torrenting. I found plenty of music from my favourite band. As far as I can tell it is basically just a filtered google search which is tuned to finding music files. It is amazing. Quite useful really given that the UK government seems so keen to stamp out filesharing and torrenting. I found plenty of music from my favourite band. I wonder if there is a way to express a preference for finding files on servers with nice symmetric fibre to the home vis-a-vis Sweden (this would make streaming practical as the upstream bandwith for most home connections / servers is limited.
You should give it a try, tell me how you find it. @samthetechie

 

 Omnomnomnomnom

If you want to download a whole album or loads of files at once on the same page then use then use the "Down Them All" plugin, it detects media files, pdfs, images etc in a page using filters and lets you quickly queue the downloads rather than clicking them one by one.

We're glad you liked CryptopartyLondon

Thanks to everyone that attended the event, it was a great success. Since it was our main aim that people had fun, we are very glad that so many turned up and had a good time. We have yet to have our organisers post-event debrief but we just wanted to keep in touch in the meantime by spamming you with some links :)
Edit us: https://cryptoparty.org/wiki/London (has the slides)
Like us: https://www.facebook.com/CryptoPartyLondon (so the whole world knows that you want to learn how to hack, joking)
Follow @cryptopartylond

p.s. there is another one planned for 19th October.

p.p.s. we are happy to promote any blog posts or upload user-contributed content related to cryptoparty so please send us any graphics, presentations, slides, pdfs, blog posts or photos. Thanks!

p.p.p.s. http://samthetechie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-quick-retrospective-inaugural.html