Hackerspaces

Are you a member of any hackerspace? Do you know of any hackerspaces in your area? If you are not a member of a hackerspace,do you at least visit some hackerspaces? Your opinion on hackerspaces in general? FAQ: -What is a hackerspace? http://hackerspaces.org/ -How can I find one near my place? List of all hackerspaces by country: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Category:Country Map of 500 hackerspaces: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces -Is this like a something where you can just hang out with other like minded people and talk about computers, and optionally hack on something? Absolutely yes. -Although I am interested into computers I don't have much technical knowledge, may I still visit? Depends on the hackerspace, but probably yes. As for myself,I was never a member of a hackerspace,but I try to visit them as much as I can,because I consider the concept awesome. Unfortunately I moved to a town where there is no hacker space. But I have joined a non-profit IT organisation and am trying to coerce them into opening a local hackerspace :D If you are a member or visit a hackerspace,why don't you post a picture of your hackerspace here?

I talked to someone in IRC that was into this.

was part of one when "hacker" wasn't a synonym for "webdev" yet. nowadays it seems those places are more and more becoming brony meetups, at least in germany.

Hacker used to mean you typed a lot of code on noisy keyboards...

>>11871 >nowadays it seems those places are more and more becoming brony meetups This. Also: >you can just hang out with other like minded people >minded people Almost everyone in these "hackerspace" are leet's. That's my opinion in general.

>>11875 >Almost everyone in these "hackerspace" are leet's. That's my opinion in general. What is wrong with that?

>>11876 I mean script kiddies...

I'm going to one, but it's really bad. Sometimes I think all the cool people only exist online. >>11871 We need a new term.

No such thing in my area, unfortunately. I'd love to have workshops and get my hands dirty. Which brings me back to.. what happened to DIY group projects?

oh fuarrrk I didn't know that there is a hackerspace in my county! Thanks lainon!

I went by a hackerspace once when in school but I already had access to better resources through the school (and was totally soykaf broke) so I never really got interested. People there built some cool stuff though. There were some people into really high altitude balloons.

>>11885 If its that bad off consider making a donation of cash and materials.

>>11871 fuarrrk, really? I was thinking of visiting the local CCC some time.

fuarrrk yes! There's one literally like down the street from me. Happiest day ever.

>>11906 I might visit a local instance of CCC later this year. Their website sounded pretty nice, maybe a little tryhard web-hipster but it'll be alright adapting to that for me I guess. Also MLP is out of style, even for CCC isn't it?

>>11918 I wouldn't know, I've been shut-in for a while. Just getting back into life, that's why I was thinking of visiting there. Where in Germany are you?

>>11921 roughly Ostwestfalen, thought about joining in Paderborn

Another German here. The only hackerspace around my place is filled with old men who hate on proprietary software all day long. I've tried some smaller local clubs, but everything turned out to be a cringefest.

>>11925 >hate on proprietary software all day long. What's wrong with that?

>>11926 It's obnoxious. https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Attraktor The map linked in the OP had this aditionally to the CCC Hamburg near me, seems really cool. I'll definitely have to check that out.

>>11868 Idea: why don't libraries host hackerspaces during their off-hours? also midwestern hackerspaces are practically nonexistant.

>>11927 If obnoxious is a synonym for proper morals. You can find more clubs on actual country lists.

>>11929 It's not obnoxious to hate proprietary software. It's obnoxious to preach it all day long.

>>11930 Ah,well that is true. You should't be annoying.

the only space that near me is on the other side of the state, i'm not missing out am i?

>>11887 They weren't that badly off, I just had access to some really cool stuff at school because I was on a design team. Also if I had considered a donation it would have come out somewhere between "no," and "here's $10." As I said, I was seriously poor at the time.

there's a space in my area I've been meaning to check out for a while now https://www.hacdc.org/

I love the concept, and there's been hackerspaces/hacklabs I wanted to visit, but they're either too commercial (coworking, drones, and other cool tools) or way too political (occupied buildings, zapatists, and RMS himself) and I get anxious about not fitting in, pic related

There ist one nearby, but I'm too scared to go....

Last Updated2010-01-14

>>11964 >occupied buildings, zapatists, and RMS himself That's so cool, I wish we had these instead of the stupid start-up factories.

I am not. It's unlikely there are any in this soykafhole. >>11871 > nowadays it seems those places are more and more becoming brony meetups, at least in germany. Top kek m8. Is this really true? >>11879 > Sometimes I think all the cool people only exist online. Where else would we be? Where else you can ponder an hour or two before writing your opponent off with a terse precision-f-strike. Where else you can keep an open wiki page containing all the logical fallacies and demagoguery methods. Hey-ho.

>>11964 I wish I could have a copy of his posters. >>11976 Likewise.

Visited one, it was crap. It was mostly people playing with Arduinos, Drones, and Front End Web Development. I wish there was a Linux, Free Software, Comp/Net Sec, type group near me.

>>11989 Are there any 2600 meetings near you? Seems to be what you're looking for http://www.2600.com/meetings/

>>11996 Wuuuuttttt Pleasantly suprised to fins there is one in my neck of the woods, but judging by where they meet, I may have to do some recon....

I remember this when it was called the 2600 meet ups.

>>11996 there is one so close i could even afford going there sometime! interesting thanks

the problem is the people there would probably speak french so that is like kicking dead whales down the beach a bite

>>11996 oh fuarrrk yes the mall in my area has one

>>11996 Dutchfag here, considering going to a 2600 meet next month. Iemand anders ook?

>>12021 Dat 3 juli toch? Dan ben ik er ook.

>>12033 K dan, ik kom ook. 3 July at Utrecht CS, meet up in front of the Burger King.

>>11868 Thanks to these maps I discovered one hackerspace near me which looks like interesting, and two fablabs, but those seems hipster filled mixed with start-up entrepreneurs according to their website. Will check the hackerspace soon. >>11996 >mfw there's one near me I'll definitively go to it this July or August. What's a 2600 meetup looks like ?

>>11947 One of the first spaces in America, you should def check it out. The history of C-Base, the hackerspace that started it all has 3 days left for funding: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/macrone/c-booc-20-years-of-c-base-in-a-book

Yes, in Mexico City we have the Rancho electrónico

>>12287 Great. Now I have the mental image of mexican hackers, dessed in white shirts and pants, riding horses to the event, as house-corrido music sounds faintly on the background.

>>12287 https://youtu.be/0JOAuY5zUzc

>>12289 Now to heal yourself replace those mexican hackers with the hottest long haired mexican you can think of. Who is still a hacker. Or if you prefer tacos over wieners, imagine it's the hotest mexican she hacker you can think of.

I used to, but this new generation of people who come to them don't know anything. I don't mind going out of my way to help someone, but when its something you could easily search up in about 5 seconds... I literally got asked how you install an operating system once, I was completely dumbfounded. I gave up going a few weeks later.

>>12287 I visited there last summer! Everyone was so friendly, they offered to let me sleep on a couch if I needed to, and I bought a really cool RMS t-shirt from when he visited in 2013. lol I really liked how they operate more as a collective and have unified political views... in Texas, the hackerspaces are closer to "makerspaces"... no cooperative values, you just pay for a workspace

I visited my local hackerspace but they are all into electronics and soldering isn't my thing.

>>12308 soldering if fun though

Thanks to this thread I discovered I have one in my town. I'm considering going but I've only just started to learn programming, though I have some great ideas to implement computerized automation in agriculture that I'd like to share. I'm not sure if I should go tomorrow or if I should wait until I get more experience alone.

>>12310 just show up, man. The experience may accelerate your learning process.

There are currently somewhere between three and five hackerspaces in the Houston area, and none of them are software-oriented. Tx/Rx labs originally had some folks interested in computer security, but they were driven off by the machine-using sperglords and ancient engineering-types. Houston Makerspace is really just a giant arts/crafts studio group with shared tools. Creatorspace is smaller, but much better integrated with it's neighbors around NASA. They lost their physical space for a few months, convened in a library while working on it, and now the library has its own little machinespace that's free to the public. If I want to make the drive, I can 3D-print or laser-cut damn near anything at cost. There might be as many as two more spaces in the suburbs around town. There's a space forming to the west and another forming to the northwest. I'm not sure either of them are really stabilized yet.

I've wanted to talk about my hackerspace experience for a little while now. I went to a hackerspace around me to decide if I wanted to join. The way their website explained themselves made me think this was a good place for me to start working on more than just breadboards. The website said I would be given a key after the trial period with the implication that I could just come in and use the tools for my projects. I was expecting the usual unix-beard guys, slender comic-book nerds, that one disheveled man, and maybe a woman or two. I was also expecting a lot of soldering tools, various metal working machines, pcbs lying around, maybe some robots, and perhaps some sort of small pick-and-place machine. When I entered the place I saw a boat and several people working on it. There were a lot of wood-working tools and machines and not much metal working machines nor any soldering benches. I was greeted by two women and a man and they explained that this was a "maker space." I immediately asked if this was the right place because I was looking for a hackerspace. It was the right place and they didn't like calling it a hackerspace because it scared people away. Their main project was building a boat for some boat race. That's cool, but I didn't want to build a boat and I explained that I wanted to do some cool projects of my own, or start one with a couple other people. Their response was pretty much this: "That's our main project right now and we're doing it for the community. All of our tools are for the main project and we don't like people coming in without one of the leaders being here." I introduced myself to everyone. No one I met was the type of person I expected. It was mostly the "I'm so nerdy!" type of women and a few fat guys who had no skills. Normally this isn't a bad thing, but this time it was. I wanted to go to a place of like-minded individuals and work on circuitry, programs, and to shoot-the-soykaf about tech stuff. The final nail in the coffin was when they asked me what kind of stuff I was working on. I pulled out my computer to show off some of my projects and someone in the crowd said offhand, "Oh, that's linux -- this guy's serious" or something like that. Then the rest of the crowd chimmed in with various things like, "we got a hacker here boys" and "oh wow how much does this guy know." The kicker is that I was just in the terminal in some window manager with firefox open in the next window over. It was pretty clear that this wasn't the place for me and I felt lied to -- especially about the "maker space" stupidity. Oh well.

>>12395 pls don't post such sad stories without a warning next time :(

>>12395 You're lucky, that was just one group. This was more or less my expectations + experience with university, joining CS at a Tier 2 STEM focused uni. I thought maybe it's different at Tier 1, ie MIT or Stanford, but for example, a friend at Stanford had built a little list -> outline text converter to help him automate some work and threw it on github. He told me I was the only person he showed it to who didn't simply respond with confusion at the fact he put an app he made online ''for free''. I mean, I get there's the whole startup frenzy there, but they can't seriously be CS & EE undergrads ''at Stanford'' unfamiliar with ''FOSS''.... All I can think to blame it on is fuarrrking normies being normies, and the degeneration of higher education.

>>12430 ignore the attempts at italics

>>12395 That's kind of fuarrrked up. When did normalfags stop seeing linux as the "nerd OS?" I mean, if they're going to project themselves as nerds they should at least pretend to like linux. I'm somewhat scared of going to hackerspaces because of horror stories like this.

>>12430 >All I can think to blame it on is fuarrrking normies being normies, and the degeneration of higher education. what's weird about this statement is typically people who complain about higher education "degenerating" are talking about liberal things like 'the gay agenda' or 'postmodernism' free software and being against startups on the other hand is pretty liberal

>>12434 Here is my understanding of "degeneration of higher education". I will tell you upfront that I didn't go to any high-tier university. I was legitimately angry over my education and still am to some degree. Though I am more apathetic now. I was really, really excited to finally go to university and to learn. My major was computer science and it took me four years of university to finally scratch the surface of what I didn't know (when it came to cs courses). And that's all I got out my degree -- two or three courses showing me what I didn't know and no depth beyond that. Here's what I did know coming into university: a mixture of C & C++ (though I stuck more towards C++ then), PHP as my web language, and some basic assembly. I was comfortable with command-line only environments and ran a basic web server. I thought this was par for the course as a high school student interested in tech and computer stuff. I was completely wrong. The hardest thing for me to accept was that I legitimately knew more than the major-majority of my classmates. I was expert level compared to them, but in reality I was barely a novice and I knew it. Everything about my education was catered to the lowest common-denominator. The level of education I received was on par with stuff I literally learned by myself. Classes I took were easy regurgitations of stuff I had learned in after school after a session of WoW. The most telling experience I had was when I took a senior level course about advanced web servers. The course was designed to talk about load, caching, user handling and all that for a fairly large website. I was ready because it seemed like a good thing to learn and actually pertinent because my experience was limited to my website which got like 20 hits in a month. I was the only one that passed the course out of 30 people and the instructor was actually fired. The class never actually got to any technical stuff because everyone was confused and had a hard time with the first few assignments. You know what the hang up was? Writing valid HTML and mixing it with PHP. Yep, these chuckle heads couldn't write valid HTML in a senior level course. And that's why our education has degenerated -- it's designed to get the most amount of people through quickly with no care for the actual quality of the stuff taught.

>>12434 fuarrrking /pol/ always have to shove their soykafty politics into every single thread on every single site.

>>12395 Where was this? That sounds way too close to the description of a 'maker'space I was thinking of going to.

>>12437 I wouldn't say so. I mean, if you look at lainon's post here: >>12435 12345, noice! All lined up! You can see that they went to a university that was actually fairly soykaf. They may be taking their experience and applying it liberally across the board, though.

sorry if its too political for lainchan I'm just writing from experience >>12435 see my high school compsci class taught me almost as much as it seems like you learned. spoiler alert: my high school compsci class was largely self-study and me + some other free software loving students played a huge role in determining its curriculum I just dislike it when people blame the decline of higher education on soykaf like "cultural degeneracy" because my experience in education has been the exact opposite: my school was very progressive with a focus on kids teaching themselves + each other (would rather there was more teaching each other involved actually) rather than learning straight from regurgitation and its taught me so much more than I would learn otherwise so when I see /pol/ come on and cry about muh degeneracy even though its cuts and spending diverted away from colleges so they have to invest in soykafty businesses, raise tuition and bring in numbers of students they can't handle I get a little flustered >>12440 but >>12345 was also talking about her friend's experience at Stanford.. I heard it was true too, the old MIT style hacker culture is dead

>>12430 >Stanford I love angry bloggers. >Which brings us to the all-important matter of credentials. There are anons, on the Internet. Their personal value is zero. There are people with sound credentials. You may find these in the WoT. There are people with negative credentials. These are people like Nadia above. Stanford does not increase your value, it decreases it. An association with Stanford is not a positive, and it's not even nil. It is a negative, it costs you, it lowers you below the anon derps. >Consequently, given a collection of nobodies and Stanfordites, the question is not whether it sums up to above epsilon or below epsilon. Epsilon is off the table. Zero is off the table. The sum is necessarily negative, and the whole charade can be readily ignored.

>>12442 what is this from?

>>12444 A group of bloggers that make up a kind of bitcoin cult. http://trilema.com/2015/on-how-the-factored-4096-rsa-keys-story-was-handled-and-what-it-means-to-you/ TL;DR Blogger and friend decide to try and factor some RSA keys from a key server with a super duper inefficient method, but it works because some of the keys have ridiculously low factors. Morons from hacker news and so on discredit it by making random soykaf.

>>12290 lol what the hell? >>12289 Hahahaha well, maybe in the north of the country, Mexico City is in the center and most people here hate corridos and that kind of music. We also don't have horses, it a real shame.

There a several a few miles from me. Never would have guessed... >mfw one of them is in Skid Row oh wow