HackNotts in TWO WEEKS, Linux Workshop, and IoT Talk.

HackNotts is just two weeks away, so make sure you pick up your tickets! Coming up, on Tuesday we have a workshop on getting started with Linux, and we have plent of great speaker events coming up as well.

HackNotts - TWO WEEKS AWAY!!!

HackNotts is JUST TWO WEEKS AWAY now, and we on committee are busy getting everything ready for HackSoc's greatest event of the year!

HackNotts: Get your tickets NOW!

Every year HackNotts, HackSoc's very own hackathon, gathers hundreds of hackers to engage with new technologies, each other, and with the tech industry as a whole. Learn new skills, meet new people, and enjoy workshops and prizes from some great tech companies from Nottingham and beyond.

This year HackNotts has left our usual venue of the Ada Lovelace Computing Lab, and is instead coming to internet connected host near you!

Join us online this year for everything HackNotts is known for sans the food: great people, fascinating workshop content, unique swag, games corners, a giant bear, and more.

We also have a swag giveaway on Twitter where you can win just by using the hashtag #HackNotts2020 (You have a good chance of winning currently, so make sure you enter!)

Tickets are completely free and you can get them in under a minute at the button below.

HackNotts Volunteering

We’re also looking for volunteers to help out! This is a unique opportunity to help us out while also gaining valuable experience that looks great on your CV!

If you’re an experienced programmer, Mentoring could be the position for you. This involves being available for programming questions and advice through discord; if anyone needs any help with their project, they can come to you.

For those of you who would prefer to help in a less technical way, you might prefer acting as a Discord Moderator. You’ll be responsible for ensuring the discord is a safe environment for everyone. This is ideal if you have any previous experience moderating servers and/or events.

If you enjoy public speaking, then becoming a Host might be for you. This gives you a chance to engage with people, as you’ll be introducing guest speakers and workshops.

We also have the position of Welfare Officer, but due to the nature of the role, please note that we can only consider applicants that have completed a Mental Health First Aid course. We understand this is more of a specialist role, so if you are qualified, we’d love for you to volunteer.

If any of these roles appeal to you, click here to apply!

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at [email protected] or ping @Hacknotts Organizer on Discord.

Upcoming Events

Our events run at 7pm and run on our Discord or via Zoom. For events running on Zoom you can join with the button below.

Linux Workshop

Coming up on the 17th of November at 7pm we have a workshop on learning the basics of installing and using linux based operating systems.

Linux is the operating running on everything from the biggest datacentres to tiny embeded devices, so it is well worth leaning about.

During this workshop Peter will go over a few different distributions, and dive into the usage of Bash, the default linux scripting language.

So whether you a free software die hard, or just want to learn about something new, be sure to join in.

Because of the interactive nature of the workshop we will be running it over on our Discord.

Programming Cafe

On Tuesday the 24th of November at 7 pm we are having a programming café, an informal gathering where you can work on your personal projects, show them off to others, and have a chat while you do it!

Simply hop into general-voice on the Discord to join in!

The (Connected) House of Horrors - A talk by Terence Eden

On the 26th of November at 7pm on Zoom we have a talk on the dangers of IoT from Terance Eden.

We fill our homes, our lives, and our bodies with Internet connected devices. But do we really understand the dangers which lurk inside them?

Terence Eden is a technology expert with a focus on open standards. He is an open source coder, open data publisher, and freelance security consultant. He was formerly the UK Government's representative to the W3C. He speaks around the world on open standards, open source software, and open data. He also helped get four-and-a-half new emoji into Unicode.

You can read his personal blog or follow him on Twitter at @edent.

Final[Fantasy] -> Quirks

Coming up on the 1st of December at 7pm on Zoom we have a talk from our own Alexi and Leanne on the technical quirks of the Final Fantasy series of video games.

From speedrunners to lore nerds and all sorts in between push and break games, taking them to pieces to see how they work. Join Alexi and Leanne on a journey through the bugs and exploits that the Final Fantasy community have found and dive into the code and design to see how they work and what lead to these game breaking exploits shipping.

Automotive Cyber Security - A talk by Aileen Ryan

Coming up on the 8th of December at 7pm on Zoom we have a talk from Aileen Ryan on Automotive Cyber Security.

In the era of connected and autonomous vehicles, the topic of cyber security has become critically important for road vehicles. Every top-selling make of new car in 2020 has safety-critical components connected directly to the Internet and autonomy will further increase the significance of these connections. Automotive-related hacks have nearly doubled every year since 2016 and 82% of those did not require physical access to a vehicle. Real-life attacks remain rare for now, but in future a successful attacker could remotely steal a truck, crash a car or even bring a city to a standstill, risking lives on an unprecedented scale.

This presentation discusses the challenges faced by the automotive industry in the light of increasing cyber risk and offers practical strategies for addressing them, based on the latest cutting-edge research. It will focus in particular on Embedded Analytics – a highly innovative approach, putting intelligent monitoring and analytics infrastructure into the core hardware of a System on Chip (SoC), to engineer and assure resilience. This new engineering approach increases the likelihood of detecting and responding safely to threats that were not known when the vehicle was designed – and is increasingly being deployed in safety- and security-critical systems

Aileen’s executive career spans software engineering, operations and strategy with a variety of firms including Huawei, TM Forum, Motorola and Alcatel. She is widely recognized as a leader in the global communications industry and has been named by Silicon Republic as one of the top 25 Irish leaders in the Sci-Tech world. Aileen serves on the editorial advisory board for VanillaPlus and IOTNow publications, and is a regular speaker and moderator at events globally. Aileen holds an M.B.A., an M.Sc. in Computer Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical & Micro-electronic Engineering from University College Cork.

Every Friday at 7pm we have our Cyber Security Workshops over on Zoom.

During this week's workshop you will have another opportunity to practice going through the process of gaining full control over a vulnerable server hosted on the tryhackme platform. Come along to learn some new valuable skills whilst also gaining an insight into how you can make your own projects more secure. No previous experience of programming or cyber security is required. It would be helpful however if you could install Kali Linux on a virtual machine before the workshop, if you have any problems doing this you could drop a message in the cyber security channel on the HackSoc discord or I can try and help during the workshop. A good tutorial for installing the virtual machine is here.

So whether you are a seasoned hacker, or just interested, be sure to come along.

Opportunities

University Radio Nottingham

Are you interested in working with University Radio Nottingham, UoNSU's award winning radio station? Having just gotten a new studio they are looking for people to get involved and join their tech team, working on exciting projects such as rolling out a new website, and a mobile app to allow people to listen on the go.

If you're interested just drop an email to [email protected]

Join our Discord

The HackSoc Discord is the place to be this year. It is where you can chat about tech, or anything else, as well as where you can find out the latest information about our upcoming events.

Newsletter

You may have noticed that the newsletter was quite late this week. This is due to the unfortunate breakdown of the SU's emailing system. If you would like to find out more about what happened you can read this blog post.