Author: Baab

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Meeting #2 was a success!

Last night, Meeting #2 of DC540 was held at the downtown library meeting room.  Four attendees (plus the host) had an interesting time talking about lots of hacker culture topics.

Emery handed out decks of cards and encouraged people to learn and apply the Solitaire cipher (Pontiflex) described in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Cryptonomicon.”  

Here’s a link that describes the usage of the cipher: https://www.schneier.com/academic/solitaire/

Sounds like there’s a consensus for pregaming at a local drinking establishment prior to next month’s meeting.  That will be announced prior to the meeting.

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Working with SMD parts? TWEEZERS are everything.

When I first started taking solder seriously, I used household tweezers when I needed.  That took about ten minutes before I realized they sucked.  So I bought a manicure set, hoping those tweezers would be better.  After one session, the two arms broke apart.

So I bought a generic set of “technical tweezers” from Amazon.  Then I was told by a good friend that you really need to look at “precision tip” tweezers, and he sent me a link to McMaster-Carr’s stainless steel tweezers page.  I ordered a set of Aven Technik tweezers ($33) for comparison.

On the left is the bite of the generic Amazon tweezers, which are clearly simply far lower quality tweezers designed and marketed to look like precision-tip tweezers.  Look how misaligned the bite is, and how little surface area is actually making contact at the bite, compared to the Aven Technik on the right.  When dealing with near-microscopic parts, the Aven will grip the part solidly, while the tweezer on the left is likely to twist it around and send it flying across the room like a clipped fingernail.

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Gift Card Security

Do you use gift cards?  Some people use them to anonymize their purchases, others because financial situations have forced them to.  Take a moment to think about securing them.

Stopped at Wawa on the way home last night, spotted a Vanilla gift card on top of the recycling bin.  Why the owner didn’t put it completely in the trash I don’t know, but because I’m dabbler in magstripe and RFID card security, I always pick up stray cards. 

So I took it home, and was able to log into its account, which had not been secured.  It painted a sad picture.

10/8 2:05PM – bought gift card $100
10/8 9:50PM – “Any Lab Test Now” $40 (going rate for a 5-panel drug test)
10/9 2:05AM – Target, $42.90
10/9 10:48AM – Chick-Fil-A $8.43
10/10 6:11PM – Wawa $8.27

So this person bought (or received) a gift card, paid for his or her drug test, bought something at Target, ate at Chick-Fil-A, then spent his or her last $8.27 on gas, zeroing the card out in two days, and then leaving it in plain sight.  

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The latest Humble Bundle

Can I assume you’ve all seen this already and bought in?  The Make: Electronics Humble Bundle?  For $20 you get over 20 ebooks on a wide range of topics for makers and electronics tinkerers.  

Also, anyone up for a happy hour Tues or Wed?  Hit me up on Twitter @dc540baab or email [email protected]

https://bit.ly/2Pcvdi3
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What evil have you brought upon us?

One of last month’s meeting attendees, bless his heart, and I will hereafter refer to him as HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED, because I haven’t asked his permission… Gave these lovelies out at the meeting.  I finally got around to looking at it, and SAVAGE!  Good thing I got new tweezers.

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DCZIA badge interactions…

So one of the menu options on the DCZIA badge is a BLE scan.  I ran it with all my badges lit up, and it recognized TWO DC26 badges.  I suspect that one of those is the TransIonospheric badge, because that one reported seeing the DCZIA badge…

DCZIA badge closeup
Trans Ionospheric Badge closeup
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Shenzhen IO

What a badass little game.  Found it by accident on Steam.  You’re a hardware hacker/coder taking over for someone who left or got fired, and you have to figure out how to design circuits and write machine code to make them meet specs.  Fun and challenging, and well-designed.  Exactly what I needed right now.