Chaos Computer Club - archive feed

A talk about the state of the art with metal 3D printing, and how it can let you make rocket engines much more cheaply and quickly than ever before. I will briefly describe the anatomy of a rocket engine and why the extreme conditions it must endure make designing one hard, and then introduce powder metal 3D printing and how you print an engine. I work for a company in this field, and I will show...

Most technical people hear about fusion power in the news or see it in games and movies, and are familiar with the joke that it's always 20 years away. Beyond this, it's surprisingly rare to find good information beyond the basic physics and the marketing promise of unlimited, clean energy. As an engineer working in the fusion technology sector, I give a primer on how fusion power works, why its b...

The talk takes a deep-dive into the Abbeystead explosion (using pretty much all available sources available on the subject), one of the worst civil engineering disasters in post-war history, through the lens of the HSE investigation. It looks at what the project was for, how it was designed, what went wrong, and why. Swiss cheese is a way of conceptualizing accidents, and the explosion is used so...

Robot Wars is a TV show that inspired a generation of engineers to take up the sport of "Robot Combat", but what drove success in the design of those competing? Looking at some famous matches and designs, this talk will break down the rock-paper-scissors of the sport, and try to provide an understanding of how this can help to educate a new generation of engineers today. Should the sport have a Me...

The British rail industry publishes a lot of open data: there's at least 18 distinct data sources, plus the ones I'm forgetting. This'll be a whirlwind tour of most or all of those sources, with a view at helping people who would be interested in playing with train data but don't know where to start. You'll (hopefully) leave with some ideas for what you could build (if you didn't already have some...

The canals of the UK have undergone transformation from industry to decay to leisure and in recent years to housing. In this talk, we'll go through some of the history of this modern day shanty town along with lessons for any budding boaters considering life on the cut. We'll cover the fundamentals of boat life including legality, work from home challenges, common pitfalls new boaters can face alo...

How do you get several three storey Cornish beam engines, a collection of Grade I listed buildings and a whole network of steam infrastructure on the path towards net zero? This talk is the experience of a volunteer on the practical challenges met whilst helping the London Museum of Water and Steam with several major projects. Expect tales of reverse engineering boiler control system ladder logic,...

“Could you crash the Moon into the Earth?” “If the Sun explodes, would we all get vaporized?” “What’s the weather like on Mercury?” Discover the answers to these questions (and many more!) at "Astrophysics for Supervillains"! Facts about space are all well and good but discovering that if you threw someone into a black hole, they would be spaghettified – stretched out long and thin before getting...

In which the badge team have a natter about the tildagon badge, the hexpansion format, the development process, pitfalls and panics along the way. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/449-badge-talk

"So what do you do?" Everything. ────────── As a kid I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still can't, but over the past twenty years I've turned that into a superpower. In this talk I'll tell you how I hacked the idea of a standard career and managed to combine skills from different fields and specialties, leading to some unique roles and opportunities. If you love learning and...

Infrastructure Review & Closing of GPN22 about this event: https://cfp.gulas.ch/gpn22/talk/PXT8GR/

Technologists are wizards. Today, we wield the power to effect changes from a tent, a bedroom or an office the likes of which fifty years ago one might need the power of a small nation-state to accomplish. Having seen these systems from all angles - building the tech, researching digital consent academically, and fighting biased public sector algorithms in the media and the courts - I'm confident...

How does the most complicated machine in the world work? Why should we pay 16 billion euros to keep some physicists happy with a new toy? What has CERN ever done for us? What happens when you lose control of a beam the size of spaghetti with the energy of a full express train? This talk, delivered by a beam instrumentation engineer at CERN, will introduce CERN and it's accelerator complex, and dis...

A presentational workshop with Q&A on getting started in Laser Cutting, diodes vs CO2, water cooling vs RF lasers. What is a Galvo Laser? Where to buy and what to expect? What different controllers are there? Which software exists and which to use for what? Including advice on taking your project from idea to finished item. Combining laser cutting and 3D printing. Materials types and finishing tec...

A look at the history and construction of Scotland's hidden network of remote dams, tunnels, shafts and underground generating stations. Not many are aware of how extensive, ground-breaking, enduring and socially significant the hydro infrastructure hidden under our Lochs and Glens really is. Come and join me for a healthy dose of BIG PIPES! about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/...

A lot has happened at the other end of life since the last EMF camp; pregnancy, birth and adjusting to life with a tiny human. I am an engineer, so when two thin blue lines appeared and I found myself thrown into the chaos of pregnancy and parenthood, I discovered that the best way of dealing with it was to use the engineering approach that was already ingrained in me. “An engineer's guide to pare...

This talk will describe the development process for a digital cartridge to fit any Super 8 home movie camera without any modifications required. There are a huge number of unused 8mm home movie cameras that have been languishing unloved for the last four decades since their owners were seduced by videotape. Many of them are built to a rather high quality, and best of all, they can still be found f...

Short 10 minute talks on any topic Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/549-lightning-talks-sunday

Die Grenzen von Diversity: Ist Kink noch Diversity oder nur eine persönliche Vorliebe? Warum sind eigentlich auf Hackerveranstaltungen so oft Menschen mit Seilen? Welche gemeinsamen Wurzeln verbinden queere, hackende und kinky Menschen und was könnten wir von einander lernen? Wir machen einen Ausflug in die eigentümlichen Regeln, Rituale und Etiketten der Kink-Szene, um herauszufinden, was davon f...

Ein wilder Ritt durch die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten Bilder von Menschen zu machen. Kann Spuren von Strahlung enthalten. Moderne Medizin basiert grossteils auch auf neuen Möglichkeiten Dinge sichtbar zu machen und seit der Entdeckung der Röntgenstrahlen 1895 hat sich eine Menge getan. Wir werden Versuchen mit einem Minimum an theoretischem Hintergrundwissen zu klären was diese Ärzte eigentlich me...

Der Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) legt Herstellern von Software und auch Open Source Communities strenge Regeln in Bezug auf IT-Sicherheit ihrer Produkte auf. Dieser Vortrag gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die Ziele und Inhalte dieses Gesetzes. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den geforderten technischen und administrativen Regelungen und Verpflichtungen. Es wird erläutert, worauf sich Hersteller, Open S...

Resistance, systemic change, and our sustainable future can – and must – be playful! To quote the activism artist group Guerilla Girls: “If you can make someone who disagrees with you laugh, you're in their brain, and you can change minds.” The speaker will begin by sharing her journey in social impact games and its landscape, focusing on activism initiatives in games. She will draw examples prima...

In October 1971, Frieder Nake published an article in Page, the Bulletin of the Computer Arts Society, entitled "There Should Be No Computer Art", making the point that there were more important things for humans to work on together in the late Twentieth Century, than whether or not a computer should be allowed to make "art". In this talk, we'll take a journey together to look at one aspect of com...

Festooning your clothes or costume with lots of glowy lights is fun. Making the glowy lights survive hours or days on end of dancing in sweaty raves or muddy festivals is harder. In this talk I discuss several ways of being a walking lightshow, the unfortunate lessons I learned over years of trying them out in the real world, and some attempts at avoiding these failures in future. [Specifically I...

A case for choosing alternatives to GitHub for your open-source works. Both practical and philosophical. Our thoughts, creations and relationships online are made possible because of large platforms based in Silicon Valley. Let's talk about GitHub. People use it. I mean, that's where everyone else is. Period. End of story. ... Or is it?! The first part dives deep into the rocky history of SourceFo...