"raspberry pi" entries

The Myth of the Private API

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of Things

A little over a week ago, I wrote about how the authentication model for an unpublished Tesla REST API was architecturally flawed because it failed to take basic precautions against the sharing of credentials with third-parties common to most REST-based services these days. Since its publication, the main criticism of the article centered around the fact that the API is neither a published API nor has it been advertised as being meant for third-party consumption.

The adding of value to devices and services with or without the knowledge/permission of their creators is an integral part of the Internet of Things. These days, people expect an API around their devices. They will discover any APIs and add value to the device/service—even if the task requires a little reverse engineering work. A responsible creator of a device or service in today’s world defined by the Internet of Things must therefore do the following things—always:

  1. Give it a public API
  2. Protect any internal communications so they can’t be reverse engineered
  3. Protect any public communications so that they don’t put end users at risk when they leverage third-party devices and services

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So, You Want to Run a Young Coders Class?

Teaching Future Coders

Ever since PyCon 2013, the interest in the Young Coders class has been intensifying. Practically every Python conference since then has asked about doing one, and several have run their own. Classes outside of conferences have sprung up, as well, from one time workshops to after school clubs.

As more classes happen, more people have been asking about running their own. These classes do take quite a bit of effort to set up, but the payoff is enormous. Also, once you do one, doing subsequent ones gets easier and easier.
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HTML 5 Geolocation, SharePoint Tech, Strangeloop, and More

Tech events you don't want to miss.

Each Monday, we round up upcoming event highlights from the programming and technology spaces. Have an event to share? Send us a note.

Intro to Raspberry Pi : Ed Snajder explains what a Raspberry Pi is, how it differs from an Arduino and shows attendees some cool things you can do with a Raspberry Pi. Register for this free webcast.

Date: 10 a.m. PT, June 25 Location: Online webcast

Graphlab Workshop on Large Scale Machine Learning: This workshop is a meeting place for both academia and industry to discuss upcoming challenges of large scale machine learning and solution methods. The main goal for this year’s workshop is to bring together top researchers from academia as well as top data scientists from the industry, with the special focus of large-scale machine learning on sparse graphs. For more information and to register, visit the event page.

Date: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. PT, July 1 Location: San Francisco, CA

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Rapping about RepRap

OSCON 2013 Speaker Series

Ed Snajder is a 3D-printer aficionado, DBA at Jive Software and OSCON 2013 speaker. We talk about the ins and outs of the new world of 3D printing (a little sneak preview of what Ed will be speaking about at this year’s OSCON). If you are interested in attending to check out Ed’s talk or the many other cool sessions, click over to the OSCON website where you can use the discount code OS13PROG to get 20% your registration fee.

Key highlights include:

  • What is RepRap? [Discussed at 0:20]
  • Hack a printer together from scratch, purchase a kit or get one ready to print (sort of) [Discussed at 3:15]
  • How do you get from 2D to 3D? [Discussed at 5:54]
  • If you smell popcorn and you’re not making it, your 3D printer is burning [Discussed at 9:59]
  • Creating a greener world one object at a time [Discussed at 12:36]
  • 3D printer = Piracy machine? [Discussed at 14:25]

You can view the full interview here:

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Intro to Raspberry Pi, Wharton Web Conference, Agile 2013, and More

Tech events you don't want to miss

Each Monday, we round up upcoming event highlights from the programming and technology spaces. Have an event to share? Send us a note.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised webcast: Jonathan Stark discusses the coming wireless wave and how it will profoundly affect every aspect of society—the iPhone will look like a fax machine compared to what’s coming next. Register for this free webcast.
Date: 10 a.m. PT, June 20 Location: Online webcast

Intro to Raspberry Pi : Ed Snajder explains what a Raspberry Pi is, how it differs from an Arduino and shows attendees some cool things you can do with a Raspberry Pi. Register for this free webcast.
Date: 10 a.m. PT, June 25 Location: Online webcast

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A First Slice of Raspberry Pi

Tips on Getting Started with Simon Monk

Simon Monk @simonmonk2 is a full-time author who focuses his writing talents on open source hardware topics. He is currently writing the Raspberry Pi Cookbook which will be available in early release in July and in final release in the fall. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Simon and we talked about one of the coolest things in open source hardware today, the Raspberry Pi.

Key highlights include:

  • Invest in a Raspberry Pi starter kit [Discussed at 0:29]
  • Python is probably the best bet for beginners [Discussed at 1:25]
  • Raspberry Pi and Arduino are both great but really excel in different ways [Discussed at 3:54]
  • How about when Raspberry Pi and Arduino are used together? [Discussed at 5:14]
  • Save time and avoid common mistakes like hardware compatibility issues [Discussed at 7:23]
  • Overclocking helps performance [Discussed at 8:47]

You can view the full interview here:

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Four short links: 13 June 2013

Four short links: 13 June 2013

The Contract, Fixing Signin, Pi Gaming, and Glitchy Marketing Constructs

  1. The Unengageables (Dan Meyer) — They signed their “didactic contract” years and years ago. They signed it. Their math teachers signed it. The agreement says that the teacher comes into class, tells them what they’re going to learn, and shows them three examples of it. In return, the students take what their teacher showed them and reproduce it twenty times before leaving class. Then they go home with an assignment to reproduce it twenty more times. Then here you come, Ms. I-Just-Got-Back-From-A-Workshop, and you want to change the agreement? Yeah, you’ll hear from their attorney. Applies to management as much as to teaching.
  2. Fixing SigninThe general principle can be stated simply, in two parts: first, give users a trust-worthy way to identify themselves. Second, do so with as little information as possible, because users don’t want to (and simply can’t) remember things like passwords in a secure way. (via Tim Bray)
  3. Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi (Adafruit) — finally, a clear incentive for kids to work through the frustration of setting up their own Linux box.
  4. Mieko Haire — Apple’s fictious demo lady. Or is she fictitious? This is a new aesthetic-esque glitch, but while most glitches are glitches because you see something that doesn’t exist, this is glitchy because the fictions are actual people. Ok, maybe I need to lay off the peyote.
Four short links: 28 May 2013

Four short links: 28 May 2013

Geeky Primer, Visible CSS, Remote Working, and Raspberry Pi Sentiment Server

  1. My Little Geek — children’s primer with a geeky bent. A is for Android, B is for Binary, C is for Caffeine …. They have a Kickstarter for two sequels: numbers and shapes.
  2. Visible CSS RulesEnter a url to see how the css rules interact with that page.
  3. How to Work Remotely — none of this is rocket science, it’s all true and things we had to learn the hard way.
  4. Raspberry Pi Twitter Sentiment Server — step-by-step guide, and github repo for the lazy. (via Jason Bell)
Four Short Links: 7 May 2013

Four Short Links: 7 May 2013

Raspberry Pi MITM, Industrial Robot SDK, Cheap Mill, and Open Source State Replication in Go

  1. Raspberry Pi Wireless Attack ToolkitA collection of pre-configured or automatically-configured tools that automate and ease the process of creating robust Man-in-the-middle attacks. The toolkit allows your to easily select between several attack modes and is specifically designed to be easily extendable with custom payloads, tools, and attacks. The cornerstone of this project is the ability to inject Browser Exploitation Framework Hooks into a web browser without any warnings, alarms, or alerts to the user. We accomplish this objective mainly through wireless attacks, but also have a limpet mine mode with ettercap and a few other tricks.
  2. Industrial Robot with SDK For Researchers (IEEE Spectrum) — $22,000 industrial robot with 7 degrees-of-freedom arms, integrated cameras, sonar, and torque sensors on every joint. […] The Baxter research version is still running a core software system that is proprietary, not open. But on top of that the company built the SDK layer, based on ROS (Robot Operation System), and this layer is open source. In addition, there are also some libraries of low level tasks (such as joint control and positioning) that Rethink made open.
  3. OtherMill (Kickstarter) — An easy to use, affordable, computer controlled mill. Take all your DIY projects further with custom circuits and precision machining. (via Mike Loukides)
  4. go-raft (GitHub) — open source implementation of the Raft distributed consensus protocol, in Go. (via Ian Davis)
Four short links: 16 April 2013

Four short links: 16 April 2013

Email Triage, Pulse Detection, Big Building Data, and Raspberryduino Ardpi

  1. Triage — iPhone app to quickly triage your email in your downtime. See also the backstory. Awesome UI.
  2. Webcam Pulse Detector — I was wondering how long it would take someone to do the Eulerian video magnification in real code. Now I’m wondering how long it will take the patent-inspired takedown…
  3. How Microsoft Quietly Built the City of the FutureThe team now collects 500 million data transactions every 24 hours, and the smart buildings software presents engineers with prioritized lists of misbehaving equipment. Algorithms can balance out the cost of a fix in terms of money and energy being wasted with other factors such as how much impact fixing it will have on employees who work in that building. Because of that kind of analysis, a lower-cost problem in a research lab with critical operations may rank higher priority-wise than a higher-cost fix that directly affects few. Almost half of the issues the system identifies can be corrected in under a minute, Smith says.
  4. UDOO (Kickstarter) — mini PC that could run either Android or Linux, with an Arduino-compatible board embedded. Like faster Raspberry Pi but with Arduino Due-compatible I/O.