Hack This Zine

"The mission of HTZ is to research, create and disseminate information, tools, and tactics that empower people to use technology in a way that is liberating. They support and strengthen local communities through education and action. They strive to learn from each other and focus their skills toward creative goals, to explore and research positive hacktivism, and to defend a free internet and free society."
--.:[packetstorm]:.

#9: The Hacktivist Guide to the Internet

Download for Print: pdf

Download for Reading: pdf

txt file: txt

hackbloc

cross-posted from http://insecuresystem.org

Headed Home from the Anarchist Bookfair

Hey everyone. This is Justin. I have been on the road the past week, touring infoshops, social centers and hackerspaces, as well as taking in lots of lovely events such as Hackblocs Anti-Authoritarian hacker night at Noisebridge in SF, The Anarchist Bookfair, and the BASTARD Conference.

I am in Portland currently and have been checking out the Red and Black Workers Co-op, Black Rose and a place called Free Geek that was very inspiring to me in regards to our Hacklab.

I will be returning home to Riverside very soon with over 45 new zines for the library, a new book rife for pilfering to make new zines, a stack of copies of After the Fall to distribute, several new titles to get for the distro,and about a dozen ideas burning holes in my skull. I can't wait to see you all again and get back to work!

Hacklab Inspiration

Hey all, lots of exciting developments on the horizon! With every week that passes, we become more ambitious, and more certain that we can meet the goals we're setting for ourselves. I thought I'd post some links to some really inspiring projects in the Hacklab vein to show what kind of stuff fellow hackers are up to, and what some of the upper limits of a project like this can reach. And what's great is the Lab will only be one part of what will make the infoshop so invaluable and fun. So here we go:

Noisebridge- A really fun looking lab in San Francisco with all kinds of equipment for experimenting with technology, workshops and classes, and a pretty heavy emphasis on art. They are hosting the yearly Digitial Security for Anti-Authoritarians talk this year to coincide with the bookfair in San Francisco. They also seem pretty ambitious about their projects too.

Freeside Atlanta- A HUGE lab out of Atlanta. They boast a number of classes and have lots of fun equipment. Not to mention that their space is 5500 sq ft!

23b Shop- A lab closer to home, in Fullerton California. Their membership dues are pretty steep, but hey it gets you access to a lathe and tig welding equipment and plenty else.

Create:Space- Create:Space is based out of Seattle, Washington and has a lot of really cool equipment and projects going on and is open 12 hours a day! Hackers and their caffeine.

Alpha One Labs- A really inspiring space out of Brooklyn. it just opened last summer and already hosts a really impressive array of projects and classes.

The Geek Group- Probably the very upper echelon of this sort of space, and probably out of the scope of what we can do with the hacklab sharing a space with the infoshop, but still very inspiring and good to draw ideas from. This lab is based out of Michigan and has been so successful that they're actually trying to expand to an even larger facility as a permanent campus.


Hackerspaces.org also has a fun wiki on Design Patterns for starting a Hacklab. For those of you not geeky enough to know what Design Pattern refers to, read this:

Design Patterns


And while we're daydreaming, why not raise some funds with a couple fun 8-bit dance parties in the space? We could even get the music freely licensed

CLICK

Free and Open Software

Here's a short list of open source software that we'll be using, helping people learn about, and promoting. These were chosen specifically because they all have ported versions for all common operating systems, even though we are strong advocates of Linux, all computer users can benefit from the open source movement.

• Firefox - Open Development web-browser started by the Mozilla foundation, standards compliant and cross platform. It's a more secure web browser than Internet Explorer or Safari, and has a huge number of contributor built plug-ins.

• Open Office - A free and Open alternative to Microsoft Office, provides a powerful word processor, presentation designer, and spreadsheet program. Open Office will read almost any other office system's documents, acting as a sort of universal translator for file formats.

• ClamAV - One of the best AntiVirus programs available on the net. It's unobtrusive, can be set to scheduled scans, and automatically updates. There is a plugin for firefox which triggers ClamAV to scan any file you download for viruses before you open it.

• GIMP - Gnu Image Manipulation Program, It's a very powerful image editor capabale of most of the functions that programs like photoshop provide.

• Pidgin - Universal Instant Message and Chat program, lightweight and accompanied by a host of nifty plugins, including some neat encryption tools.

For more info on FOSS software, checkout:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software
http://www.fsf.org/
http://creativecommons.org/

Putting together a Hacklab...

Being sort of the unofficial techie of the group so far, I'm putting together some info on what we need to build a decent lab when space becomes available. Our best hope at the moment is to put together as many donated machines and spare parts as we can so that the cost can be kept under control, we'll have enough to worry about when paying for some of the network and server side of things.

So here's what we need, any computer parts or entire machines made in the last 6 years. This includes:

• processors, and motherboards which support them, of chip-sets Pentium 4 and better. P3's are just not up to the task I'm afraid. I haven't worked much with AMD processors, but if that's what you've got then we'll do our best to see if we can make it work too.

• Memory, DDR2, any clock speed.. faster is better, but we aren't worried about bleeding edge.

• Hard drives aren't crucial, we actually don't need much storage to start, but they'd be nice. SATA will be more useful that PATA.

• Cases/Power supplies, as many as we can get, any quality.

• Monitors, dido, though Id like to avoid CRTs.. we'll take what we can get.

• Keyboards/mice are cheap, if we get them donated its great, but buying them isn't going to hurt us.

We really don't need cd/dvd/floppy drives, these days usb drives are cheap and effective. If anyone wants to donate usb drives, we would be more than happy to put them to good use.

Obviously, any fully working tower is amazingly appreciated since we don't have to resort to building a Frankenstein machine. However, building machines from spare parts is an awesome way for people to learn about how computers work and to get familiar with the components.

The network side of the lab is going to need lots of Ethernet Cables, or Wireless Cards. We plan on having both a Wired and Wireless network so either option will help keep everything connected. We'll also need a few small routers/switches.. the cheapo netgear/linksys variety will do nicely.

The core/border router, wireless AP, and the server(s) will be the larger price-tag items, and we'll worry about those once there is location to start setting up at.

So, If you have machines, parts, or anything you'd like to donate. Toss an email to the Google group and we'll see about getting a place to start putting everything together and testing equipment.