Hackerspace News

Game of Life – 2023-06-27

🇭🇰 · DimSumLabs · Felix Klee

Arachnia introduced us to the Game of Life, which she had implemented in Processing for an art installation. Afterwards, we tried out various patterns on our touch screen , to see how they evolve. Of particular joy was the evolution of the QR code pointing to our lights . The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. The “game” is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, alive or dead, or “populated” or “unpopulated”. Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur.

DimSumLabsEventaddcodinggamegeometryhackingprocessingprogramming

The disaster that struck [updated]

🇳🇱 · Pixelbar

Wednesday, June 28th, at around 8:00 AM, we received distressing messages notifying us that the building housing Pixelbar was engulfed in flames. This building was not only a home to artists, furniture makers, and other builders, but it was also the heart of our community. The fire has had a devastating impact, reducing the entire structure to ashes. Fortunately, no injuries were reported. The incident has left our community in a state of shock, as we have suffered the irreplaceable loss of not just our physical space, but also all the equipment, tools, and projects we had gathered over the course of 8 years. Article on NOS: Ondernemers Rotterdam in tranen na brand: ‘Ik ben nu heel erg failliet’ Article on De Haven Loods: Ongeloof en tranen in de ogen: Keilewerf, the day after… TV program Hart van Nederland: TV item covering the event All the support has been heartwarming, but we still have a long way to go. We are determined to rebuild our hackerspace, keeping our mission alive. We are looking for equipment (supplies, tools, etc) and donations to rebuild our hackerspace to its former glory. Any contribution, no matter how big or small, will make a tremendous difference in our ability to rebuild. Donations page Donation link via QR Code:

Using an old webcam on modern Linux

🇬🇧 · Leigh Hackspace

The Trust WB-1200P, a webcam from the early days of USB devices. Linux is known for its good hardware support of even ancient pieces of kit. From time to time the kernel devs deprecate drivers and architectures that are no longer supported, but for the most part, you can pick up an old piece of hardware and get it running on a major release or two from the current mainline.