Archive for July, 2009

Open Source Development Internship – Stages au /tmp/lab

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives on July 31, 2009

Vous voulez avoir un stage intéressant? Travailler sur de l’Open Source? Ne pas bosser pour des prunes pour Google? Bosser avec des gens venant d’horizons variés et possédant une vraie passion et une vraie expertise technique (wow, ca commence a ressembler a une pauvre annonce de RH toute naze hehe), eh bien maintenant c’est possible car on ouvre les stages au /tmp/lab. Contactez nous si ca vous intéresse.

Plus de détail sur les sujets possibles: http://dev.tmplab.org/issues/show/97

ENGLISH:

Want to have a cool internship working on open source software? Don’t want to work for free for Google? Join the /tmp/lab and make your internship into a unique experience. French or English speaking welcome.

More details on possible subjects: http://dev.tmplab.org/issues/show/97

Some of the proposed projects:

Streamster2: Easy to use, Advanced TOR-like network
HostileWRT: Shell, C or Lua code on WiFi, security, audit, embedded platforms.
RubySCTP: Ruby SCTP stack with the same API as pySCTP (based on lksctp / SCTP socket API)
FasterJasperRb: Ruby Jasper Reports accelerated report server (as suggested in http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoIntegrateJasperReports)
Redmine improved interface to manage bugs and edit Wiki
Input engine for Redmine Wiki (to make it accept Trac wiki syntax, Mediawiki syntax, …)
BrokenTV key: Linux-based USB key for journalism in censored/hostile territories
BrokenTV platform: Free and Open source platform for Open / Mutable Web TV broadcasting
Anti-MitM: Detect and block Man in the Middle attacks with forged SSL certificates
…

If you have a project you’d like to propose, please tell us, we are also welcoming outside student/research projects.

To participate, send a mail to: core {AT} lists.tmplab.org

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MilkDrop and texture filtering

Posted by lekernel in Milkymist on July 30, 2009

I just found out that bilinear texture filtering improves rendering quality tremendously, compared to the “nearest texel” method currently implemented in Milkymist’s texture mapping unit:

Modified version of projectM so that it does not filter textures

Bilinear filtering enabled

Tests were carried out using projectM, an OpenGL implementation of MilkDrop, and the preset “Geiss – Cosmic Dust 2″.

I will make texture filtering support in the Milkymist TMU a top priority after the first pre-alpha release.

It was also quite reassuring to see that OpenGL produces the same artifacts as Milkymist when filtering is disabled.

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Toxic Gas Sensors at /tmp/lab

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Misc projects on July 23, 2009

Those of you who have been to the /tmp/lab may have experienced the delicate smells of the nearby chemical factory.

We want to learn more about this pollution, so we will implement an automated measurement system.

Block diagram

To monitor the air concentration of pollutants, we use cheap sensors made by a company called Figaro. The models used are TGS2600 and TGS2602; the same are used by the FridaV project. The TGS2600 measures contaminants such as hydrogen and carbon monoxide, while the TGS2602 detects ammonia and hydrogen sulfide (that we think is responsible for the occasional foul smells at the lab).

The outputs of these sensors is digitized and sent to an advanced Arduino called Fonera. It even has 802.11! And it can run Linux! Those features of this Arduino for experts (we hope we will be still able to use it despite our little DIY skills) make it perfect to post automatically the results on the web, by using the popular Twitter for example.

We are thinking about using a SPI analog to digital converter, as the Arduino hardware seems to be able to handle it.

More to come soon, check out the wiki page.

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Design software bugs

Posted by lekernel in Uncategorized on July 19, 2009

Actual screenshot from FPGA Editor. Just trying to load a design buried in many folders.

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FPGA Workshop #3: Computer Architecture, August 29th

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives, Howto's, Milkymist on July 17, 2009

Computer architecture is the science and art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals (Wikipedia).

With the invasion of digital devices during the last decade (cellphones, wireless routers, digital TV…), it has become more than ever ubiquitous.

However, it is still a poorly known subject for most people. Even among the self-proclaimed hardware hacking community, most fanatics of the Arduino ~~development board~~ open source physical computing platform do not know that all the functionality of their much-hyped toy comes from an AVR microcontroller chip that has been being manufactured for years by Atmel. And among those who know, yet fewer people are knowledgeable about the inner working of the AVR microchip; in which computer architecture plays an important role.

The reason behind this might be that during decades, computer architecture was reserved to academic lectures and companies who had enough cash to build integrated circuits costing several hundreds of thousands of dollars. This left little room for the individuals, except those who had the guts to wire together hundreds of logic ICs together. But these amateur systems lag well behind commercial solutions in terms of performance, size, and power consumption.

But today’s falling costs of powerful FPGAs make it possible for individuals to build complete high-performance computer systems (System-on-Chips) from scratch.

This workshop will explore this possibility. After introducing basic computer architecture concepts and practices, we will load a simplified version of the Milkymist System-on-Chip design in the development boards and execute basic programs on it. Then, using Verilog HDL, we will design a simple peripheral for the system-on-chip, integrate it, and test it on the board.

This workshop is for people who want to discover practical computer architecture, and at the same time for those who already know about architecture and want to get an introduction about how to add a peripheral to the open source Milkymist System-on-Chip.

Date: August 29th, 14:00
Venue: /tmp/lab geek collective
Price: Free
Info+Registration: Workshop page

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Distributed Crypto SAT Solving workshop, Sept 10th

Posted by lekernel in Geek collectives on July 14, 2009

In this workshop led by Mate Soos (PhD in INRIA Rhone-Alpes) we will take a distributed SAT solver design that works similar to SETI@Home and hack it until it works faster, gives better results. The results will be public and the solver downloadable, along with the server to enable anyone to crack much-hyped but useless crypto-systems using collaborative effort.

SAT solvers are mathematical tools that solve problems given in the CNF notation. Since all problems can be described in CNF, in particular, cryptographical problems, SAT solvers can be used to crack ciphers. They have already been used to solve Crypto-1, used in London (20 seconds to break the encryption…) and HiTag2, used in car immobilizers.
Difficult cryptographic routines such as those used in WPA (wireless internet access), SSL (bank transactions), etc. need much more computing power than older ciphers. This means SAT solvers must be designed to work in a distributed environment, and work similar to SETI@Home or Folding@Home.

Date: September 10, 2009
Location: /tmp/lab, near Paris
More info+Registration: Worskshop page

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