A Question to Milwaukee, a Bucketworks Emergency

Bucketworks is a co-working, meetup, and practice space for creative professionals.  They’ve been gracious enough to host DC414 monthly meetings and many other events for hackers.

We’re all at risk of losing this space due to some recent financial problems they’re encountering.  I encourage anyone to give back to this awesome space and help them continue to help us.

DC414 as an organization is helping, you can too by donating to Bucketworks by following this link.

Please read Tim Syth’s (Director of Bucketworks) question to Milwaukee:

After being born and raised in rural Wisconsin, and spending nearly 5 years wandering the planet as a photographer and student, I came to Milwaukee about 18 months ago because the city intrigued me. It was gritty, blue-collar and raw. It did not offer the apparition of a polished facade. Its issues were displayed prominently on its sleeve. It felt real.

Perhaps naively, I also came to Milwaukee hoping I could make a difference. Here was a place I could come and actually have a name and face as I tried to leave a positive mark as the director of a project called Bucketworks. I still believe this.

Bucketworks, for those who don’t know, just celebrated its eleventh birthday. Eleven years ago this May it was started by James Carlson and a cadre of accomplices who wanted nothing more than to explore creatively in a way that only art in warehouses can provide. There was little method to the madness, but it was one of the first collaborative spaces in the country, and in Milwaukee of all places. It was a place all about making it happen (whatever “it” was) and giving people a reason to gather and work together. It was the spot in the city for the curious and motivated to gather and create art, businesses, theater, events and products.

Bucketworks has had its issues, much like its home city, but through thick and thin and two floods Bucketworks has managed to persevere, and in that time, Milwaukee has started to blossom. We now have the Milwaukee Makerspace, ArtMKE, the Hudson, VETransfer, Gener8tor, MARN, the Creative Alliance, Open MiKE, just to name a few. As a relatively new transplant, the vibrancy of the creative culture in Milwaukee is a sorely told story—we are lucky to be in this time and place. But as each of these great efforts filled a niche, and as each of these efforts has been born, Bucketworks has adjusted and pushed ahead because it has always been the job of Bucketworks to be on the edge—to be that hard-to-explain place “where things start.”

Fast forward 18 months from my arrival in Milwaukee to today and some of that gritty, blue-collar and raw is weighing on me. Those of you I have had the pleasure of meeting know that I have been very open about the situation at Bucketworks. It has its issues and it wears its dirt on its sleeve. Specifically, we have not been been paying rent for 4 months. For the year I have been here prior to those four months, we paid $7000/mo for 6 months and $2500/mo for 6 months before that. We are not paying rent because we spent $2500 on a broken heating system we don’t own, but because we could not afford to fix the system completely, we still paid $2500/mo to heat the space in the winter. We patched a roof we don’t own with the gracious donation of time from a Milwaukee startup that helps veterans develop job skills. We repaired air conditioners. We spent $2000 on a sprinkler system we don’t own to get the building up to code. We replaced toilets that were broken, patched floors, and fixed lights, all while running the organization.

But why not just raise the prices to cover the bills? We don’t raise the prices because we feel it is important for there to be a place in our city where a person can explore projects without breaking the bank. We believe a lack of money should not stop people from trying. Bucketworks is home to 15+ businesses on any given month who pay on average less than $200 a month to operate. If you can get past the Commons, bang for your bucket it is the lowest-cost place in the city to start a business. Bucketworks is a place where teenagers from the city come to make art while learning important things like punctuality and responsibility. Bucketworks is a place where people gather to learn English and to learn about citizenship. Bucketworks is a place where people meet to talk about open data and to teach each other about technology and mysticism and financial planning. Bucketworks is a place to sword fight, practice aerial silks and to dance. Bucketworks is where people voluntarily work together on improving healthcare. Bucketworks is the place where bees are nurtured and celebrated. In short, Bucketworks is a living and breathing demonstration of functional, diverse community in a city that is known for its silos and segregation.

Please note this isn’t a blame game that falls on our landlord or others who are currently interested in the space. I have a good relationship with our landlord—we agree with a shake of our hands and then do the best we can. We operate like much of Milwaukee operates, and I think this is to be celebrated. Also note that this text represents solely my words and perspectives.

In closing, I want to say that Bucketworks is cleaning out its closets and washing the dirt from its sleeves. I will meet with anyone who is interested and let them know where we stand, what we need to do better and what our plan is to get there. We already have great partnerships that are interested in supporting and bringing stability to this wonderful project, but right now we need time, and in order to get that time, we need money. $18,000 would get us six months of runway on rent, $36,000 would get us twelve, and anything in between would be awesome.

As a recent transplant to this city who has seen Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Venice, New York, Mexico City, Riga, Paris and many others, I believe Milwaukee is a place to be right now. We have a city that can hide little and is full of people who want to do more. I am committed to making this a place where people have a real option when they want to try an idea. I am willing to do what it takes to bring long term stability to an awesome project in a city that is just rediscovering itself.

So the question I have is this:

Does Milwaukee want Bucketworks?

If it does, please donate what you can. If all you can do is forward this on, please do so. We have an opportunity to show that Milwaukee is a community together. We are not asking for much and we never have asked for much, but I am asking for Bucketworks now. If we reach our goal, the funds will be used for to cover rent. If we do not reach our goal, the funds will be used to find a new home. Our goal is to raise $18,000+ by the end of the business day today—please help.

Thank you,

Tim Syth
Director of Bucketworks

March meeting madness!

The March meeting was no let down, we had lots of people and as always great demos. Ngharo got it started with a make your own pringles can cantenna. 9 luck attendees got to make and take home their own cantenna!  Then he kept it going with a quick demo of radio Mobile and how to use it to make a long range wireless mesh network. Then the professor gave a demo on metasploit using a java exploit to root a windows box. dw5304 took over and gave a little demo of a hacked xbox360 and using a laptop to control everything the console does. Here are some pictures from the meeting. Congrats to uberushaximus for winning 100 free hours to AOL high speed!!

For the cause!

As some of you might know I run a Tor exit relay from my home connection. I got this in the mail the other day:

Hello and welcome to Tor!

We’ve noticed that your Tor node dc414 has been running long enough to be flagged as “stable”. First, we would like to thank you for your contribution to the Tor network! As Tor grows, we require ever more nodes to improve browsing speed and reliability for our users. Your node is helping to serve the millions of Tor clients out there.

As a node operator, you may be interested in the Tor Weather service, which sends important email notifications when a node is down or your version is out of date. We here at Tor consider this service to be vitally important and greatly useful to all node operators. If you’re interested in Tor Weather, please visit the following link to register:

https://weather.torproject.org/

You might also be interested in the tor-announce mailing list, which is a low volume list for announcements of new releases and critical security updates. To join, visit the following address:

https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-announce

Additionally, since you are running as an exit node, you might be interested in Tor’s Legal FAQ for Relay Operators (https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en) and Mike Perry’s blog post on running an exit node (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tips-running-exit-node-minimal-harassment).

Thank you again for your contribution to the Tor network! We won’t send you any further emails unless you subscribe.

Disclaimer: If you have no idea why you’re receiving this email, we sincerely apologize! You shouldn’t hear from us again.

Yay my node is now stable!! Now we just need to get one running on the dc414 server 🙂

December meeting recap

Ngharo got this started with going around the room and asking everyone what they have been hacking and what they plan on hacking on next, then talking about some improvements to the dc414 server, such as how it is now fully IPv6 friendly and some improvements to the VPN. Then I gave a demo of how BeEF when used with Metasploit can pwn browsers from the inside out. dw5304 stepped in and showed us how to use the windows 7 UI on windows 8 with out having to worry about updates messing things up. Then Noize stepped up and gave us all a great introduction to Subterfuge, a MITM framework that utilizes arp attacks. Then I attempted to give another demo but failed, more on that later 😉 We spent the rest of the night drinking, eating cupcakes “thanx darkwinds wife” and loling at horror pics of server rooms and wiring closets. Congrats to Castor, Tony, and Peppergomez for winning the dc414 free junk giveaway!! Enjoy your junk guys 😛

We got $42 in donations which paid for the pizza and some of the beer with nothing left over for the server :/ which cost about $71 a month. Remember your donations are what keeps dc414 running smoothly for YOU!!!!

September meeting recap

Last meeting was awesome as always, we had some good demos and new faces which is always great. Ngharo started it off going around the room and asking ppl what they hacked last month and what they plan to hack next.

I gave my fakeAP demo to get credit card numbers or sniff traffic. The CC part failed :/ but the sniff part worked like a charm!! Then dw5304 gave a demo titled “Cable hacking for fun” and talked about how to get online anonymously with cable modems, getting almost unlimited bandwidth, modem cloning and lots more. Faraday came packing with some lithium ion batteries and big ass LEDs he gave out “to make flash lights out of” and stuff for making your capacitors which is always fun.

Then I spent the rest of the night drinking beer and yelling in to a ham radio, so I didn’t take any pictures. Congrats to uberushaximus for winning the dc414 free junk giveaway!

Here is a link to the github fakeAP pwnage project, it only works with Backtrack 5 and could use some improvement.
https://github.com/dc414/fakeAP_pwnage

Here is the slides to dw5304’s Cable hacking for fun:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=463779BB134E309F!375&authkey=!AF56QcP0xP4Ofco

dc414 @ barcampmke7

Last years barcampmke was awesome, everyone had lots of fun and met some great people. Some of you might remember we had a little stand last year and ran the good old wall of sheep, well we liked it so much that this year we decided to become an official sponsor of barcampmke and expand our operations. This year we will not only be doing the the wall of sheep, but we will also be running a lockpick and tamper evident village, cat5 cable making couples contest, plus giving away free beer!! To get a free beer you have to either pick a lock from the village in under 2 minutes or reveal the secret message contained in a package secured with tamper evident lables, tape, lock seals, and tug tights, or beat your competitor to making a working cat5 cable! So sharpen up on your skills and win some free beer! See you at barcamp.

Lets hack schools

School is about to start back up for the year which gives us a great opportunity to give. So at the next meeting “9.7.12” if you bring in school/art supplies to donate in addition to the normal $5 dc414 donation you will get a “I HACK SCHOOLS” pin and the satisfaction of helping tomorrows generation to learn. So lets hack schools together!

Some ideas of stuff to give:
No.2 pencils
ballpoint pens “red and black”
Spiral-bound or composition notebooks
colored pencils
colored clay
non colored clay “grey”
backpacks
index cards
construction paper
glue
three ring binders
erasers
Pencil sharpener (hand-held with a top to collect shavings)
folders

dc414 donations bucket 2.0

A while back we started using a bucket to collect cash donations at meetings and for a while I have been wanting to trick it out. So I was keeping an eye out for things to add other then blinking lights, then cmoney came home with a powerball advertisement thing from her gas station that has a electric pendulum thing. I wish I had a picture of it but I didn’t have the for site to take one before I took it apart.

So anyway I got right to work on making the bucket pimp. First I made a little board

with a 555 timer blinking light circuit on it.

put some lights on it and wired the pendulum thing to it.

And hot glued it all to the lid of the bucket.

Here is what it looks like all together.

Ok thats it, I hope you think its cool. If you don’t, go fuck your mom.