Aaron Swartz memorial Hackathon Nov. 8ths - 10th

[Matt Ellen]

Hi!

I was talking to Sam (who some of you may have met on Thursday) and he mentioned a memorial hackathon for Aaron Swartz.

This would take place between the 8th and 10th of November.

Aaron Swartz was a developer who got in trouble for trying to free knowledge. He felt in such dire straits that he took his own life.

The basic idea is to try to accomplish something over the few days. That thing should probably related to giving knowledge to people in some way. (Legally, though.)

I'm not sure if there is anything already planned in Oxford, if so I would like to help. But since I've not heard anything elsewhere, I am happy to organise something.

The first thing I need to know is if there is anyone else who wants to join in. We don't have a list of projects to choose from or a venue sorted yet, as I figured I'd make sure there was interest first :D

Any takers?

Matt.

[Lauren Hutchinson]

Matt, I wouldn't mind helping with this.  You know I've had a hackathon in mind to run for forever and this ought to be a good trial run. ;)

I would try OVADA for this in the first instance--we'll use all those pasting tables from EMF and the upstairs tables if we can and set up the entranceway really comfortably as we used to do last autumn.  Lots of good lighting, pillows and drinks ;)  That's if we can make sure the internet connection is good enough for that many people, and if those parts of the warehouse are free over those days.  The latter is what I'd worry about most.

In terms of projects, two things come to mind fairly quickly, though whether they're interesting to people or workable in the timeframe remains to be seen.

1--We could make an attempt to implement any of the environmental monitoring-type ideas in this thread:  https://groups.google.com/d/msg/oxford-hackspace/uPlpiim-d0U/ghqzIVT1yxwJ

People have periodically kept talking about their interest in such things ever since then, and I think there are some good ideas in there.  If we didn't want to try it for Oxford though, we could try the smaller-scale version, which would be to create systems whereby anybody could have environmental monitoring in their hackspace, home or office and have it report to them when queried on IRC or online.  I'd love to have air quality and heat and humidity ratings and all that kind of thing for the hackspace, especially if we plan to scale up and have lasercutter fumes and that sort of thing floating around.

Aside: I was talking to someone at Revspace in the Netherlands online the other day and we were interrupted by people querying a bot of their own.  They came and typed "?geiger", got a report from geigerbot, and then started abusing someone in Dutch for running around with the smoke detectors.  Ha.  Who has that..?  I'd love to be able to query a ridiculously wide range of such things, even if most of them will be underutilized until we get a larger space.

2--Ben Ward, of Love Hz and aubergine-growth-sensor fame, has been thinking about running local sensor workshops of some kind recently.  These two events could be integrated perhaps?

I completely understand if neither of these seem to particularly feel right for the hackathon though.

Thanks for doing this Matt. ;)

/2p

Lauren

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[Matt Ellen]

Glad to hear you're interested!

OVADA is on my list of places to ask. I'm hoping we'll have a good number of participants, so we'd need the main hall. Otherwise I'll ask Incuna and White October if they're up for it. If not that... I'll find something. OARC perhaps.

With the hackathon, people can come along at the start and pitch their ideas then we pick based on what people want to do (potentially split into groups, if there are enough people, and tackle more than one idea).

I like your ideas, and we can add them to list :-)

Two other ideas that have been suggested:

- Hacking Snap to remove the Scratch dependency

- Going through the unanswered questions on Stack Overflow and answer as many as we can, or verify that an answer with no votes on it actually answers the question.

[Nick Kolpin]

I'd be interested in joining. I've got an idea I never find enough time to work on that would be fairly apt, providing some functionality to make arxiv.org (a free repository of academic papers) more useful.

Nick

--

[Samuel Carlisle]

Dear beautiful Oxhackers, way cool to see this spinning up. This is a triumph! I'm making a note here, huge success!

I will be hosting / cat hearding for the Berlin hackathon and helping with glue / intl orga. We are lucky enough to have a dedicated volunteer / co-ordinator this year. Please email:
Lisa (li...@lisarein.com) and say hi! I have told her / linked her to this thread. We can get you added here:

You can, of course, copy, paste, remix, edit here: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Worldwide_Aaron_Swartz_Memorial_Hackathon_Series (this was from last year) - IMHO we can archive what is there and make a blank slate for this year. Note there is also: http://aaronswartzhackathon.org/

FYI in terms of the Berlin Hackathon, I\ will most likely host the hackathon at thinkfarm (http://thinkfarm.de/).
I would love for the group of people that congregate in Oxford on Aaron's birthday (8th November) and the group that congregate in Berlin to be twinned / linked to collaborate and share the experience. Get your portal guns Mr Mellen! I will make an orange portal here at my end, you know what to do :p
Let's collaborate on a hackpad? https://hackpad.com/Aaronswhack-lPQh5Dufif7

samthetechie

[Matt Ellen]

I have started a document for the project ideas. Please edit it:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bMrkRG5jL3nwh6EeEvY-V1y3lCziHWl7RiAdIljVW7k/edit?usp=sharing

[David Newman]

I was at an Oxford Data Science meetup group planning meeting last week.
There was a lot of interest in running an data analysis hackathon, using
open data. The idea was to have 3 initial meetings learning the skills,
then run a hackathon later on.

Several people in that group would have ideas and data for the social
use of data.

David

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http://www.greenoxfordshire.com/
Twitter, Facebook: @davidrnewman
Tel. 01865 429750, 077707 35474

[Matt Ellen]

Hi Sam!

Thanks for the info. I will get in contact with Lisa this evening.

I'm chargin' my portal gun in anticipation :D

[Matt Ellen]

Sounds good. Definitely add it to the list! (See above post)

[Neil C Smith]

Hi,

+1 to the general idea of the hackathon

On 7 September 2014 21:10, Matt Ellen <matthe...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> - Hacking Snap to remove the Scratch dependency

I thought the whole point was that it doesn't have one, or am I
missing something? :-/

Neil


--
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Artist : Technologist : Adviser
http://neilcsmith.net

Praxis LIVE - open-source intermedia development - www.praxislive.org
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www.digitalprisoners.co.uk

[Matt Ellen]

Peter (who came up with the idea) said that while it is meant to be decoupled from Scratch, it is still using a few of the libraries.

[Peter Lister]

> Peter (who came up with the idea) said that while it is meant to be
> decoupled from Scratch, it is still using a few of the libraries.

As it stands, the Snap! install isn't neat.

Code Club (and CoderDojo) use Scratch from MIT and there are problems
with this. Version 1 could do with improvements, and while they have
been made, it's clear that MIT re moving away from making it work
standalone and on Linux. Also the only official robotics support in
Scratch is that paid for by Lego (and the Mindstorms kit is very
expensive). People are working on robotics / Arduino stuff in Snap!

Matt asked me for suggestions and so what I'm really asking for is "make
Snap! slick enough that it can be easily used for Code Club - and
control Arduino robots too". I really don't know what's involved, but it
seems quite achievable.

Peter

[Samuel Carlisle]

Hey Peter, sounds cool- can you please post a dump of some links / notes to give context. Thanks!

samthetechie

[Pawel Kozlowski]

Nick,

I think it'd be a great idea to improve the functionality of arxiv! (even as a longer term project)
I had some thoughts on it too... what if we could make a front end for arxiv that handles peer review for free?
People can sign up to a field of study and the program can randomly select reviewers from that field when someone submits an article for review. The comments and names of reviewers can be published for the sake of transparency (or at the very least retained in case of an information request).

This would provide an alternative to open publishing (for which companies are currently making ~40% profits or more)

[Nick Kolpin]

Hi Powel, 

That's basically one of the things I was thinking of. Also a system for epijournals, as described by Tim Gowers (where articles could be tagged as approved by a set of academics), which is basically a cheap/free version of the current peer approval process. I'd also previously written some code (although I seem to have broken it somehow) that allowed users to manage the stream of papers better, organising them into lists, having private comments, etc.

I think it would be interesting to get some academics and programmers together to pool ideas for how modern journals should work, and ways that could be bolted onto the existing arxiv system.

Nick

[Matt Ellen]

Scratch 2.0 is open source (https://github.com/LLK/scratch-flash). I don't know if it's complicated to get it running on Linux. There is a scratch to arduino project already going (http://s4a.cat/) but I don't know what version of scratch that works for.

[Neil C Smith]

Hi,

On 10 September 2014 15:09, Matt Ellen <mellen....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Scratch 2.0 is open source (https://github.com/LLK/scratch-flash). I don't
> know if it's complicated to get it running on Linux.

But for some completely weird reason they've moved to Flash, when
everyone else seems to be trying to abandon it! According to the
Wikpedia entry for Snap!, Scratch doesn't run on Linux - maybe it
could on x86, but AFAIK there's no ARM support so no use on the Pi,
etc.

OTOH, Snap! is implemented in JavaScript, hence me wondering how /
what the Scratch dependences are? In terms of controlling robotics, I
know the TinkerForge guys recently released JavaScript bindings that
run from the browser using web sockets. That in itself might be a
cool thing to get working in Snap!, but also I wonder how easy it
would be to write a little daemon that communicated with an Arduino in
the same / similar way?

Or quick Googling found this - https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm
Looks like it uses Firmata on the Arduino, which is something I used
years ago and probably the right thing for this job.

[Pawel Kozlowski]

Hi Nick,

Sweet!
I hadn't heard about epijournals.. I'll read into what Gowers has to say.

I'm in physics and I've heard other people murmuring about wanting a free/open journal as well, I'll see if anyone is interested in discussing.

Shall we make a separate discussion thread?

Pawel

[Peter Lister]

My suggestion was based on the recent observation that Snap install on
Linux isn't just an rpm, and a conversation with someone at CoderDojo
earlier that day about the desirability of Scratch controlled robots for
Code Club etc.

I certainly have NOT put a great deal of thought into this, so I'm very
happy if anyone can tell me more.

> But for some completely weird reason they've moved to Flash, when
> everyone else seems to be trying to abandon it! According to the
> Wikpedia entry for Snap!, Scratch doesn't run on Linux - maybe it
> could on x86, but AFAIK there's no ARM support so no use on the Pi, etc.

Yes, Scratch v2 is weird. Version 2 of anything should be heading
towards more flexibility, not less. I'd guess that some senior committee
decided on using Flash (well, can't you just... ?) , rather in the same
way that the BBC decided that using Adobe AIR was a good idea.

> OTOH, Snap! is implemented in JavaScript, hence me wondering how /
> what the Scratch dependences are?

Dunno, but the instructions for the Snap! install require Scratch. Just
addressing that would be good.

> In terms of controlling robotics, I
> know the TinkerForge guys recently released JavaScript bindings that
> run from the browser using web sockets. That in itself might be a
> cool thing to get working in Snap!, but also I wonder how easy it
> would be to write a little daemon that communicated with an Arduino in
> the same / similar way?
> Or quick Googling found this - https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm
> Looks like it uses Firmata on the Arduino, which is something I used
> years ago and probably the right thing for this job.

Yes, I saw the reference on the Snap! page - it looks like a good idea
to me.

Thanks,
Peter

[Jayanth Chennamangalam]

Hi Nick and others,

I find this a very interesting idea - I've been thinking on these lines myself for a while. I think a great model for peer review is the Internet Engineering Task Force (ietf.org) wherein people submit Internet-Drafts (documents describing computer networking protocols, and the precursors to RFCs) on the IETF website, and anybody on their mailing list can comment on them (everything is free and open). In most cases, this peer review results in newer versions of the draft being submitted. With enough interest, an Internet-Draft gets promoted to an RFC. I think the scientific process will benefit from borrowing some of these ideas.

The other ideas are great as well - is the plan for everybody to work on one project during the hackathon? Or groups working on different projects?

[For those of you who don't know me (which is most of you), I just visited Oxhack for the first time today and found it a very interesting group of people. I'm an astronomer (new postdoc at the University of Oxford) who likes to tinker around with stuff (mostly software, a little bit of hardware), and I'm looking forward to getting involved!]

Cheers,

Jayanth

On Wednesday, 10 September 2014 14:25:07 UTC+1, Nick Kolpin wrote:

[Matt Ellen]

Just realised that the 10th is Monday. I meant to run this Friday/Saturday/Sunday

This will be running 7th, 8th and 9th of November.

Sorry for the confusion.

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 17:04:38 UTC+1, Matt Ellen wrote:

[Matt Ellen]

If you are intending to attend, please add yourself to this lanyard thing, so I get a good idea of numbers:

http://lanyrd.com/2014/aaron-swartz-memorial-hackathon-oxford/

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 17:04:38 UTC+1, Matt Ellen wrote:

[Matt Ellen]

Slight change of venue for Saturday and Sunday, due to stuff going on at OVADA

We'll be at OARC on Saturday and Sunday. The place is open 10am until it closes, which I think is 10pm.

If you aren't aware, OARC is upstairs at East Oxford Community Centre, Princes St (junction with Cowley Rd), Oxford OX4 1DD

On Sunday, 7 September 2014 17:04:38 UTC+1, Matt Ellen wrote: