Chaostreff Bern

Boardgame Day on Sun, 17.05.2026

2026-04-28T13:37:00+02:00

There will be a boardgame afternoon on Sunday, 17.05.2026 at our space. Starting at 14:00, we want to come together to play and enjoy some boardgames.

Come and join us (and bring your favorite game with you)!

We plan to conclude the event at approx. 18:00. If there is interest, I'd like to plan regular events in the future.

There is a channel in our matrix space for this (and future) events: Boardgames in the chaostreffbern.ch space

Invitation to the regular general assembly on Saturday, 2026-03-21

2026-03-06T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern invites to the regular general assembly for 2026.

Date: Saturday, 2026-03-21
Time: Starting at 14h
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Zwyssigstrasse 45, 3007 Bern

Members have already gotten the list of talking points and other materials in an e-mail to their personal e-mail address.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Open house 2026

2026-02-04T00:00:00+01:00

We will once again have an open house event this year. This is a great opportunity for all those who have always wanted to visit us but never found the time. But it's also a good time for occasional visitors to drop by again, because a lot has happened in the last 12 months in the still relatively young space at Loryplatz.

We are happy to give a guided tour to first timers as well as those who simply want a refresher. There's plenty to see, including the newly furnished lab, our collection of 3D printers, the ever-growing sticker exchange, the flip-dot timetables for the trams or cosy train seating area.

Date: Saturday, 2026-03-28
Time: From 09:00 until about 20:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The event is part of the international campaign day of the open hackerspace.

We are looking forward to your visit!

Presentation on Open Data by Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer

2026-02-03T00:00:00+01:00

On March 12th, we will have Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer as our guest. He will give a lecture on Open Data.

Date: Thursday, 2026-03-12
Time: Starting 20:00, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

«Open Data« refers to data that is publicly available and may be used by anyone without restriction. Often, these are data created by or on behalf of public institutions. In the digital context, Open Data is typically provided via an API in a machine-readable format.

In Switzerland, authorities are obligated to provide certain data thusly. However, the path to this point was a long one. Matthias Stürmer is very familiar with the history of Open Data in Switzerland, having tirelessly advocated for it for many years, championed its cause, and played a significant role in the creation of the relevant legislation himself.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer heads the Institut Public Sector Transformation at the Bern University of applied sciences. Before that, he was head of the Digital Sustainability Group at the University of Bern. Additionally, he is also president of CH Open and founder of the Netzwerk für eine souveräne digitale Schweiz. In the Swiss Parliament, he is active in the Parliamentary Group for Digital Sustainability.

Theme night: Open Data

2026-02-03T00:00:00+01:00

We are inviting to the first theme night of 2026. In this iteration, we are going to talk about Open Data.

Date: Thursday, 2026-03-26
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our Hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

After a brief introduction of the topic, there will be a time slot for Lightning Talks. These are short presentations with a maximum duration of 10 minutes. After a break, we want to approach the topic further in a discussion round.

The theme nights are an open format to which everyone is invited.

The subject

Data on votes, surveys, or measurements—much of the data collected or created by authorities is now publicly available. Under the term Open Data, vast data treasures can be found on the internet, mostly machine-readable.

But hidden behind APIs and as columns of numbers, the data is of little use. Only when it is processed, prepared, and presented or used in applications does data become information.

We want to exchange ideas about which data we have found and which applications we have discovered. And perhaps some of you have already implemented a project with Open Data—or have an idea for one.

Two weeks earlier, on Thursday, March 12, Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer will give a talk on the topic.

Call for participation

If you also want to give a Lightning Talk, you don't need to do anything except to prepare your slides/documents. Registration is not required. However, we ask you to keep the presentation short (about 10 minutes).

Nix Bern Meetup

2026-01-06T00:00:00+01:00

In January 2026, the Nix Bern meetup group will be holding their meeting in our space.

Date: Wednesday, 21st of January 2026
Time: Starting 18:30, doors open at 18:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)
Link: Meetup.com

We're looking forward to many new faces and exciting presentations and discussions!

Pre-Announcement «Digital Independence Day»

2026-01-02T00:00:00+01:00

During 39C3, the yearly congress of Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the CCC announced the «Digital Independence Day» in an official press release. The event was co-announced by Marc-Uwe Kling during his talk at congress.

An jedem ersten Sonntag im Monat wechseln wir von Big-Tech-Plattformen zu freien, lokalen oder auch einfach nur weniger problematischen Alternativen.

– press release

Chaostreff Bern shares the principles of the DID movement and will actively support the digital independence day with events at our hackerspace. The first event will be held on February 1st 2026, in our hackerspace at Zwyssigstrasse 45 in Bern; more details will follow.

People interested in the movement may already join us this Sunday (4th of January) for discussions on the topic. Please note that this will be a spontaneous assembly without any preparations, the purpose of this first get together is to reach internal consensus about specifics and discuss our further proceedings in regards to DID. We'll meet at 1pm.

More information about the DID are available here:

Press release «CCC unterstützt den monatlichen Digital Independence Day»
Marc-Uwe Kling at 39C3 «Die Känguru-Rebellion: Digital Independence Day»
Official Website for Digital Independence Day: di.day

Demonights 020: The very best of 2025

2025-10-21T00:00:00+02:00

We are delighted to announce that we will be hosting the 20th edition of Demonights, together with the association Echtzeit – Digitale Kultur.

Date: Friday, 5th of December 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

At the start of the event, Andry "Unlock" Joos, who initiated the Demonights series with Oleg "Seism" Lavrovsky, is going to look back at the 19 previous iterations of Demonights.

This is followed by a demo show. A curated presentation of the best that the demoscene created in 2025.

You can find more details on the event website.

Anyone who is not yet familiar with the topic can also find an introduction to the demoscene there.

Update If you can't make it to the event, you can watch the live stream instead: stream.chaostreffbern.ch.

Presentation «The bionic ear» by Raphael Andonie, Ph.D.

2025-10-14T00:00:00+02:00

On Thursday, November 13, 2025, Raphael Andonie, Ph.D., will give his presentation "The Bionic Ear."

Date: Thursday, 13th of November 2025
Time: Starting 20h, doors open at 19h
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

«What distinguishes humans from chimpanzees?» a Bernese troubadour once sang – and provided an answer himself: language and music are uniquely human ways to connect with each other. But what if these paths are blocked by a severe hearing impairment? Then a cochlear implant (CI) can help. A CI creates an auditory sensation by directly stimulating the auditory nerve via electrodes surgically placed in the inner ear.

Raphael Andonie will explain how this «bionic ear» works and what it needs to be capable of in the future in his lecture.

The presentation will be held in German.

Theme night: Digital self-defense

2025-10-14T00:00:00+02:00

We are inviting to another theme night. In this iteration, we are going to talk about digital self-defense.

Date: Thursday the 27th of November 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our Hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

After a brief introduction of the topic, there will be a time slot for Lightning Talks. These are short presentations with a maximum duration of 5 minutes. After a break, we want to approach the topic further in a discussion round.

The theme nights are an open format to which everyone is invited.

The subject

How secure is your PC? Your laptop? Your smartphone? Your Steam Deck? What measures do you take to protect your online accounts from breaches? And what if someone does get hold of your private data after all?

We want to discuss how we secure our devices. We'll talk about hard drive encryption, password managers, and anonymous browsing. Share tips, tricks, and experiences.

Call for participation

Linux Install Event 2.0

2025-10-08T00:00:00+02:00

Support for Windows 10 ends on 14th of October 2025. Even if extended security updates are now available for free (upon registration only), the problem will re-appear in a year. Windows 11 won't be available on many older computers, but they can still be used with an up-to-date & secure Linux system.

We invite you to a day of Linux discussion, installation and answering questions. Let us fight artificial creation of e-waste together! Here is the review of our first install event.

We would like to point out that we cannot accept any warranty or liability. Our offer is provided on a voluntary basis, to the best of our knowledge and belief. Personal data should be backed up in advance to other computers or external storage media.

Date: Saturday, 18th of October 2025
Time: From 10:00 until 17:00
Place: At our Hackspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Our goal is to join other spaces around the world to provide you with the resources and expertise to get you started on your Linux journey!

Looking back at our Linux Install Event

2025-10-01T00:00:00+02:00

Equipped with branded "install-USB-sticks", we opened the doors for our first Linux Install Event. The sticks were prepared as bootable live USB for different distributions. Our demo-device served to test different desktop environments as well.

The day went on quietly, which allowed us to handle the installations without any stress and leave a lot of time for questions and trying out. In addition to successful Linux installations there were also discussions about settings, updates, applications and even Yubikeys. All in all it was a successful event.

As we announced the event at relatively short notice, the number of visitors was a bit limited. This was fine for us to start, as we were able to take our time and answer questions thoroughly. For future events however, we are considering how to attract more people and the right target group, in order to enable them to switch to Linux (from Windows 10, among others).

https://endof10.org

"Chaostreff Bern"-branded "install-USB-sticks"

Looking back at "Jugend Hackt" 2025

2025-09-13T00:00:00+02:00

From September 5 to 7, 2025, a hackathon for and by young people aged between 12 and 18 took place at our Hackerspace. Since 2013, events organized by Jugend hackt have been held in many cities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Jugend hackt is a program for young people who want to use technical skills to improve the world. Supported by volunteer mentors they develop digital tools, prototypes, and concepts for a better future.

For the first time in Bern (and fifth time overall) the Digitale Gesellschaft has organized the event in Switzerland. Ten participants formed three groups to work on their own ideas and projects, supported by volunteer mentors, helpers, and organizers. In between, there was also time to marvel at & try out the tools and hacks in the hackerspace and learn new things. At the end of the weekend, on Sunday afternoon, the youngsters presented their successful projects.

More impressions are available in the article of the Digitale Gesellschaft and the video of the project presentations over at media.ccc.de (both in German only).

It has been a cool weekend and we are always glad to welcome and support the next generation of hackers.

Presentation on Embedded Development with Rust by Pascal Mainini

2025-09-10T00:00:00+02:00

On Thursday, October 2nd, Pascal Mainini will give a lecture on embedded development with Rust.

Date: Thursday, 2nd of October 2025
Time: Starting 20h, doors open at 19h
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Thanks to the promise of performant and secure code, Rust has been gaining increasing popularity in recent years. Since Rust compiles to machine code, its application in the embedded field would seem obvious. However, in practice, it presents more challenges than one might think.

Pascal professionally engages with this topic in his role as a researcher at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. In his lecture, he reports from both theory and practice and shares with us the insights he has gained over the past years.

The lecture will be held in German. It takes place as part of our lecture series. It's the same talk we had to re-schedule in June.

Slides (update 2025-10-11)

Die Folien zum Vortrag könnt ihr hier herunter laden: [pdf]

Linux Install Event #EndOf10 because Windows 10 goes EOL

2025-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

Support for Windows 10 ends on 14th of October 2025 - Windows 11 won't be available on many older computers. But they can still be used with an up-to-date & secure Linux system.

We invite you to a day of Linux discussion, installation and answering questions. Let us fight artificial creation of e-waste together!

Date: Saturday, 13th of September 2025
Time: From 10:00 until 16:00
Place: At our Hackspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Our goal is to join with other spaces around the world to provide you with the resources and expertise to get you started on your Linux journey!

Summer break for our series of presentations

2025-06-25T00:00:00+02:00

During the months of June, July and August, we're taking a break from our lecture series as well as the theme evenings.

Other events will continue as usual. In particular, the public Chaostreff will still take place every Tuesday evening without changes.

We'll announce additional events, as well as the next series of presentations, through our usual channels: here on the website, via RSS or Atom feed, in the subscribable calendar, on the mailing list, on Fediverse/Mastodon, and in the public chat channels on XMPP/Jabber and [matrix].

We definitely plan to resume the lecture series in September. If you'd like to present something interesting, funny, thought-provoking, etc., please contact us via email or chat.

Presentation on Embedded Development with Rust by Pascal Mainini

2025-06-10T00:00:00+02:00

On Wednesday, June 18th, Pascal Mainini will give a lecture on embedded development with Rust.

Date: Wednesday, 18th of June 2025
Time: Starting 20h, doors open at 19h
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The lecture will be held in German. It takes place as part of our lecture series.

Theme night: Mesh networking

2025-04-15T00:00:00+02:00

We are inviting to yet another theme theme night! This time around, it's going to be on mesh networking. This is a networking architecture in which participating devices are interconnected amongst each other. Messages are passed on from device to device until finally reaching their destination. One such protocol which has gotten popular over the last little while is Meshtastic.

Date: Thursday, 24th of April 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The theme nights are an open format to which everyone is invited.

Call for Participation

If you also want to give a Lightning Talk, you don't need to do anything except prepare your slides/documents. Registration is not required. However, we ask you to keep the presentation short (about 5 minutes).

Presentation «Hashi Nomad - Simple Container Cluster» by resmo

2025-04-09T00:00:00+02:00

On May 8th, René 'resmo' Moser returns as presenter to give his talk «Hashi Nomad - Simple Container Cluster».

Date: Thursday, 8th of May 2025
Time: Starting 20h, doors open at 19h
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Alongside Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Apache Mesos, Hashicorp Nomad offers another solution for distributing workloads across multiple systems. resmo will cover the pros and cons of Nomad and explain why it can be a genuine alternative to the market leader, Kubernetes.

Furthermore, resmo will share the experiences he gained running production, high-availability systems with Nomad, as well as provide some hands-on insights and a demo showing how it works in a small homelab setup.

The presentation can be delivered in your choice of Bernese German, German, or English. The slides are in English. It is part of our ongoing lecture series.

Presentation «NixOS - How my laptop became declarative» by cloudlena

2025-03-08T00:00:00+01:00

On April 10th, Lena 'cloudlena' Fuhrimann will give her talk «NixOS - How my laptop became declarative»:

Date: Thursday, 10th of April 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

NixOS is a Linux distribution with an extraordinary approach. The system's structure, that is the installed software and its configuration, are described in a single configuration file. This declarative approach allows for very high system reproducibility. This is made possible by the Nix package manager, which combines classic package management and modern configuration management into a single tool.

Lena's first Linux distribution was Arch Linux (btw.), which she used with great affection for four years. Then, through a friend's suggestion, she discovered NixOS. Using it for the past two years, she's been thrilled by how many of the approaches from the Cloud-Native and container world she can apply to her laptop.

Lena is going to talk on the advantages and disadvantages of NixOS, how she uses it in her everyday life, how her setup and configuration have changed over the past few months, and which of the learnings can also be applied to other Linux setups.

The presentation will be held in English. It is part of our on going lecture series.

Regular general assembly on 2025-03-18

2025-02-20T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces the regular general assembly for 2025.

Date: Tuesday, 2025-03-18
Time: 19:30 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Zwyssigstrasse 45, 3007 Bern

The general assembly will be held during our regular meeting. Members get a list of talking points e-mailed to them in advance.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Theme night: De-Google your life

2025-02-18T00:00:00+01:00

We are inviting to yet another theme theme night! This time around, it's going to be all about freeing ourselves from the tentacles of Google and other data hungry internet giants.

Date: Thursday, 27th of March 2025
Zeit: Beginn um 19:30 Uhr, Türöffnung um 19 Uhr
Ort: Bei uns im Hackerspace an der Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern

The theme nights are an open format to which everyone is invited.

On the subject

Large, US-American technology companies, so-called hyper-scalers, are ubiquitous. Google Search, Gmail, Office 365, WhatsApp - such products are inexpensive, often even gratis, modern, and easy to use. And yet we pay for it, not with money but instead with our privacy and independence.

But what if you don't want that? What alternatives are there at all, and how hard is it to switch away? We want to discuss these questions at the theme evening.

By using open-source alternatives, paid services, and self-hosted solutions, surprisingly many needs can be met. We will share our experiences, where we are stuck, and what ideas still exist.

Call for Participation

Talk on illumos by Toasterson

2025-02-13T00:00:00+01:00

In March, we continue our lecture series with a presentation by Till 'Toasterson' Wegmüller. He will talk about the Open Source project illumos.

Date: Thursday, 13th of March 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Sun Microsystems began making the sources of its own UNIX operating system available in the mid-2000s. As parts of these efforts, OpenSolaris was created. However, after the acquisition by Oracle, its development was closed down in 2010. Since then, the open source project has been kept alive by its community.

Toasterson has been involved in the project as a maintainer and developer for many years. In the lecture, he will provide an overview of the project and its community and sub-communities. He will talk on how the project adopts new technologies and where the journey will go in the future.

The lecture will be held in English.

Open house 2025

2025-02-11T00:00:00+01:00

We will once again have an open house event this year. This is a great opportunity for all those who have always wanted to visit us but never found the time. This year it's a good opportunity for all who have not yet seen our new hackerspace at Loryplatz.

We are happy to give a guided tour to first timers as well as those who simply want a refresher. There's plenty to see, including our collection of 3D printers, the ever-growing sticker exchange, freshly decorated walls, a new flip-dot timetable for the trams or the newly set-up train seating area.

Date: Saturday, 2025-03-29
Time: From 09:00 until about 20:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The event is part of the international campaign day of the open hackerspace (German).

We are looking forward to your visit!

Talk «Langweilige IP Router mit Linux» by Lorenz 'znerol' Schori

2025-01-12T00:00:00+01:00

As part of our series of presentations, Lorenz Schori will present his lecture «Boring IP Routers with Linux»:

Date: Thursday, 13th of February 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

It only takes a few simple steps to convert a current GNU/Linux distribution into a low-maintenance IP router. The presented approach relies on well-known tools from standard repositories and prefers methods which are easily automatable with any configuration management.

Our goal is a Linux system as boring as possible, which can be forgotten in the closet for a few months without the Internet ever dropping out.

Please note that the talk will be held in Swiss German.

Theme night: Mobile Linux

2025-01-11T00:00:00+01:00

We invite you to the third theme night! This time, we are going to talk about mobile Linux:

Date: Thursday, 30st of January 2025
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Place: At our Hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

After a brief introduction to the topic, there will be some Lightning Talks. These are short presentations with a maximum duration of 5 minutes. After a break, we want to approach the topic further in a discussion round. In addition, we will have various devices related to the topic on site, so that participants can try out different mobile Linux systems themselves.

The theme nights are an open format to which everyone is invited.

On the subject

Mobile Linux is a collective term for various Linux distributions and software components designed for use on mobile devices. Mobile devices, in this context, means smartphones and tablet computers. Examples include the Linux distributions Ubuntu Touch or PostmarketOS. There are also commercial operation systems too, like SailfishOS or manufacturer-specific solutions like PureOS from Librem.

Additionally, various user interfaces are being developed in the community that are optimized for use on such devices. These include Phosh and Plasma Mobile, or the Ubuntu-tailored Unity.

Another interesting aspect is the hardware. Typically, Linux distributions cannot be installed on just any smartphone without issues. The selection of compatible and fully supported devices is limited. However, in recent years, there has been a trend where small manufacturers are building special smartphones custom made for use with mobile Linux distributions.

We want to give participants the opportunity for hands-on experience and will try to have as many compatible devices and distributions on-site as possible.

Call for participation

If you also want to give a lightning talk, you don't need to do anything except prepare your slides / documents. Registration is not required. However, we ask you to keep your talk short (approx. 5 minutes).

If you have a mobile Linux system yourself and can bring it along, we would be thankful. This way, we can present a wide range of devices to the participants.

Announcement: Second series of presentations in 2025

2025-01-10T00:00:00+01:00

Our first lecture series is currently still ongoing. Due to how popular it is - both with the audience and the speakers - we have decided to continue the series.

For the sake of completeness, here is the remaining date from the first series:

Thursday, 13th of February 2025: Lorenz 'znerol' Schori with «Langweilige IP Router mit Linux» (de)

For the second series, the following dates have been added, so that we can hold a lecture on the second Thursday of each month without gaps until June 2025.

Thursday, 13th of March 2025: Till 'Toasterson' Wegmüller on illumos (de)
Donnerstag den 10. April 2025: Lena 'cloudlena' Fuhrimann with «NixOS - How my laptop became declarative» (en)
Thursday, 8th of May 2025: René 'Resmo' Moser with ««Hashi Nomad - Simple Container Cluster» (de)
Wednesday, 18th of June 2025: Pascal Mainini on embedded development with Rust (de)

Further information about the individual lectures will follow in the coming months here on the website as well as through the usual communication channels.

Talk on Termux by glow

2024-12-17T00:00:00+01:00

With the presentation "Termux - Not just a terminal emulator for your Android." Oli 'glow' Schmidhauser makes the fourth entry in our series of presentations.

Date: Thursday, January 9, 2025
Time: Start at 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our Hackerspace at Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern

Termux is an open-source terminal emulator and Linux environment for Android. The app can be installed directly from F-Droid without any special requirements. With the bundled package manager 'APT,' many well-known Linux programs can be installed in a way familiar to Linux users.

The presentation will include an overview of Termux, its components, and functions, along with numerous examples of how to use Termux and for which scenarios it excels as an ultra-portable system.

Glow has been using Termux since 2015. They have packaged many programs themselves and contributed to core components. They set up the Termux Wiki and continue to maintain it to this day.

The presentation will be held in English.

Demonights 018: Lebendige Demoszene

2024-12-02T00:00:00+01:00

On December 12th, a very special edition of our lecture series will take place - together with the association Echtzeit – Digital Culture, we will conduct the Demonights 018:

Date: Thursday, 12th of December 2024
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

At the beginning of the event, Andry 'Unlock' Joos will give a presentation on the inclusion of the demoscene in the list of living traditions in Switzerland.

You can find more details on the event website.

Anyone who is not yet familiar with the topic can also find an introduction to the demoscene there.

Theme night: Router-Firewall

2024-11-21T00:00:00+01:00

We invite you to the second theme night! This time, we are going to talk about router-firewall solutions.

Date: Thursday, 28th of November 2024
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Place: At our Hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

After a short introduction to the topic, there will be a couple of lightning talks. These are short presentations with a maximum duration of 5 minutes. After a short break, we will then take a closer look at the topic in a discussion round.

The theme evenings are an open format to which everyone is invited.

On the subject

This time it's less about the hardware and more about the software solutions we use to firewall our (home) routers. There are numerous solutions and a wide variety of approaches: Various specialised Linux and BSD distributions such as PFSense or OpenWRT are tailored to such deployments and offer APIs and intuitive web interfaces for configuring the firewall. The use of OpenBSD with self-written packet filters (PF) requires more manual work, but improves on flexibility. If you run a traditional Linux distribution on your router, you have to choose between iptables, nftables and now eBPF.

But it's not just the choice of software that gives you a lot of freedom - the structure of the tables, chains and rules also gives you plenty of room to express your own creativity.

Call for participation

Theme night: Home lab

2024-10-29T00:00:00+01:00

We invite you to the first theme night! In this first edition of the event we will talk about Home Lab

Datum: Thursday, 31st of October 2024
Zeit: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Ort: At our Hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The theme evenings are an open format to which everyone is invited.

The topic

Your own server at home. Or several of them? With a few VLANs to boot! Who doesn't know it. We set up our home labs out of interest, to try out exciting technologies and the urge to learn new things. Or for very practical reasons; a NAS for storing backups and streaming movies and music to the TV in the living room. The possibilities in terms of hardware and software are almost unlimited.

The Chaostreff Bern in the "Anzeiger"

2024-10-22T21:00:00+02:00

At the 37th Chaos Communication Congress (37c3), we accompanied a reporter from the newspaper "Anzeiger Region Bern." From that, and a subsequent interview at our hackerspace, an article was crafted and published in the edition from 17.01.2024. We have now received the article in PDF format.

To PDF of the article (in German)

Talk on Puppet by Benedikt Trefzer

2024-10-22T00:00:00+02:00

With his lecture «Mit bääbele automatisiere - Systemadministration mit Puppet; eine Übersicht» Benedikt Trefzer making the second entry in our series of presentations.

Date: Thursday, 14th of November 2024
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

Puppet is an open source tool for configuration management. As such, it enables administrators to automated the configuration and much of the management of IT systems. It is often used in DevOps environments to simplify the provision and maintenance of servers.

Benedikt Trefzer has been using Puppet for over 15 years. He is the author of numerous modules and also offers Puppet training courses through his company Cirrax GmbH. The presentation provides an overview of the various components of Puppet and how they work.

Please note that the talk will be held in Swiss German.

Announcement: Theme nights

2024-10-15T00:00:00+02:00

Starting October 2024, we want to test a new format. On the last Thursday of each month, we want run a theme night. During these, are are going to address a specific subject in depth.

The format

The theme night starts with a short introduction. During this, the participants are greeted and the evening's subject is presented in a few words.

We continue with a series of lightning talks, short 5 minute presentations.

After a short break, we will transition into a moderated discussion round and exchange of knowledge. During this, the participants share their experiences with the subject. We will try to lightly moderate the discussion with the goal of preventing it from splintering into many smaller discussion in isolated groups.

Dates and topics

Note: There will be no theme night in December 2024!

Thursday, 31st of October 2024; Home lab: Many of us are running a small network with one or even several servers or NAS boxes at home. For storing backups, streaming media to our TVs or even to provide services on the internet. There are a great many options for both software and hardware to accomplish this.
Thursday, 28th of November 2024; Router-Firewall: Striving for more freedom and additional capabilities in their home network, many choose to replace the router provided by their ISP with a device of their choice. When it comes to configuring the firewall, there are plenty of options. Some choose a custom made distribution like PFSense or OpenWRT, others go with Debian and IPTables, or maybe a BSD with Packet Filter? Plus, each of these solutions offers several different approaches for how to structure the firewall rules.
Thursday, 30st of January 2025; Mobile Linux: For smart phones and tablets, Google and Apple are dominating the market. Outside of these, there is a lively eco system of open source operating systems for these devices. Free Android ROMs benefit from great compatibility and a large selection of apps. More traditional Linux distributions like PostmarketOS and Ubuntu Touch on the other hand, offer innovative interfaces and a familiar system.

Call for action

We are looking for lightning talks for the theme nights announced above. So if you want to narrate on any of the subjects, please contact me. It can be on a technology or project adjacent to the subject that you would like to introduce. Or just something you've learned or experienced and would like to share.

We are also looking for subjects for future theme nights. Here too, if you have an idea, please contact me.

You can reach me by e-mail via vimja at chaostreffbern dot ch or matrix via at ig:vimja.chat.

Announcement of the Haecksenbreakfast

2024-10-08T00:00:00+02:00

All female, intersex, non-binary, trans and agender folks, who are interested in technology, computers, politics around digitalisation etc are more than welcome to join us for our Haecksen-breakfast. Whether you already are a haeckse, new or just curious - come and get to know us! We will organise some vegan snacks. If you want to, you can also bring something to eat (but that’s by no means an obligation or expectation).

Date: Saturday, 2024-10-26
Time: 12:00-14:00 (CEST)
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The format of the breakfast mostly serves the purpose of connecting people and getting to know each other a bit. Usually we do a short introduction round in the beginning and then talk about different topics that pop up, or work on ideas and projects that we would like to realise, or we just have a good time together.

Talk on Ansible by René Moser

2024-10-03T00:00:00+02:00

Next Thursday, René 'Resmo' Moser is going to kick off our series of presentations with a talk on Ansbible.

Date: Thursday, 10th of October 2024
Time: Starting 19:30, doors open at 19:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Zwyssigstrasse 45 in 3007 Bern)

The configuration management software Ansible was launched in 2012. Like all open source projects, it stands and falls with an active community. René got involved in the project early on. Over the years, he has contributed several dozen plugins himself and became a core contributor. Additionally, he co-authored the 2nd edition of the O'Reilly book Ansible Up & Running, which was published in August 2017 with a 3rd edition published in August 2022.

In his talk, Resmo is going to give an overview of what Ansible does. He is also going to talk about his experiences working on the Open Source project.

Please note that the talk will be held in Swiss German.

Announcement: Series of presentations in 2024 / 2025

2024-09-13T00:00:00+02:00

In October, we will start a series of presentation. These will take place on the second Thursday of each month and start at 19:30 h.

As usual, the events will be public. Non members are very much welcome.

As of now, we have the following 5 dates confirmed:

Thursday, 10th of October 2024: René 'Resmo' Moser on Ansible (de)
Thursday, 14th of November 2024: Benedikt Trefzer with "mit bääbele automatisiere" (de)
Thursday, 12th of December 2024: Andry 'Unlock' Joos of Echtzeit - Digitale Kultur with "Demonights 18: Lebendige Demoszene" (de)
- The presentation will be the opening for Demonights 018, an open demoscene meet up.
Thursday, 9th of January 2025: Oliver 'glow' Schmidhauser with "Termux - Not just a terminal emulator for your Android." (en)
Thursday, 13th of February 2025: Lorenz 'znerol' Schori with "Langweilige IP Router mit Linux" (de)

Further information on each talk will be provided in the coming months. Keep an eye out on the the usual channels of communication.

If you have a subject that you would like to present, let us know via e-mail to info at chaostreffbern dot ch.

We moved to the new Hackerspace

2024-07-16T00:00:00+02:00

We have completed our move to the new hackerspace, as planned. The handover from the previous tenants took place on June 26th, which gave us time for some pre-work until the big move which happened on Saturday, July 6th.

Even though it rained partially on that day, we managed to get all the boxes, furniture, devices (and everything else a hackerspace owns) to the new space dry and in one piece. A big thank you to everyone who helped with the move.

The handover of our old space was on Monday, July 15th. Since the building where it was located is due for renovation we luckily were not required to remove all the changes we created in the past 5 years.

Even though we managed all of the time sensitive activities, there is still a lot of work to do in the new space. In the next weeks / months (maybe even years) we have to unpack, paint the walls and ceilings, rebuild our infrastructure and set up the individual rooms. vimja already posted our ideas in the last news article. With approx. 270m^2 space and 8 rooms (and a separate bathroom and shower) we have a lot of opportunities which we want to use. We are always happy to have visitors and help.

The first public meeting will take place on Tuesday, July 23rd from 7 pm as usual. You are invited to join us and get to learn about the new space and our plans. We have updated the info page of the hackerspace with all vital information.

Presentation: Authenticated disk encryption and protection from bit rot in Linux using dm-integrity

2024-04-24T00:00:00+02:00

Date: Thursday, 23st of May
Time: From 19:30 until about 20:30
Location: At our hackerspace (Kyburgstrasse 13 in 3013 Bern)

dm-integrity is a relatively young component in the Linux storage stack. This device mapper target adds two important abilities that have been lacking in Linux before.

One of those is protection from bit rot, that is to say the gradual degradation of the storage medium and the resulting loss of data. This process is inherent to all types of storage media, if not to the same degree. dm-integrity adds the ability to detect bit rot which then empowers us to combat it.

The second new ability is authenticated encryption. LUKS / dm-crypt has long been providing good full disk encryption on Linux systems. A tight integration with dm-integrity now brings protection from additional, if admittedly exotic, attack vectors.

I will describe both use cases in more detail in my presentation. It will also feature some advantages and disadvantages and explain how to integrate dm-integrity with some typical storage stack set-ups.

Example of the integration of dm-integrity into a typical storage set-up in Linux.

Collection

Free access to knowledge is one of our core values. As such and as always, entry to the presentation will be free to all. However, with the pending relocation of our hackerspace we will be taking a collection. Anyone who can afford it is kindly asked to contribute some money to our moving funds.

New hackerspace at the Loryplatz

2024-04-14T00:00:00+02:00

In January, we announced that we will have to leave our hackerspace at Kyburgrasse 13 mid 2024. Ever since, we have been looking for a new location to where we can move our hackerspace.

We are pleased to announce that our search has been successful; we will be renting a new place at Könzistrasse 3 from July 2024.

View Larger Map

Our new hackerspace at Loryplatz in Bern is not just a replacement for the previous space, but a real and significant upgrade.

At 270m&sup2, the space is about three times as big as the current one! It also has significantly more rooms with windows, and therefore daylight, and the possibility of letting in some fresh air (or extracting exhaust air from various devices). The location at Loryplatz is also excellent. It's just 4 stops from the main station on the number 7 and 8 trams, which run very frequently. Plus there are several options for food and drinks near by.

We will be moving our hackerspace in July 2024. At this point, it is not yet clear whether that will necessitate an interruption to our weekly Chaostreff schedule. We will publish further information as it becomes available. You can of course also look forward to an inauguration party sometime in the second half of the year.

Where today the stairs are leading to the "live escape game" escape room, they will soon be the entrance to our new hacerk space.

Room planning

The details on how we are going to furnish and design the new space are currently undergoing discussion. If you would like to join the discussion, please register on our mailing list or join one of our chats.

The basic parameters have been fixed by now. The sheer amount of rooms allow for a whole new amount of freedom. Here a first taste of what you will find in the new space:

Two hack centers
A hardware hacking lab
Cinema and multimedia room
Pen and paper RPG room
3D print room
shower
kitchen

Help us move

The move will take place in the first two weeks of July. We were able to extend the rental of the old hackerspace at Kyburgstrasse 13 by two weeks. We are grateful to everyone who takes the time to help us with the move.

As far as cleaning is concerned, we expect it will require modest effort only, since we are the last tenants before the place gets renovated.

Call for donations

The move to the new hackerspace will be a financial challenge for us. In addition to the costs for the actual move, we will likely also need one or two purchases in order to be able to make good use of the new space. Last but not least, the rent for the new space is also somewhat higher than for the old one.

Because of that are grateful for donations. The easiest way is by bank transfer:

IBAN: CH24 0839 0034 6243 1000 0
Zahlungszweck: Spende
Zahlungsempfänger: Chaostreff Bern, Bern
Adresse des Empfängers: Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern

Presentation: Reading data from smart meters with an IoT adapter

2024-03-15T00:00:00+01:00

Datum: Thursday, the 25th of April
Zeit: From 19:30 to ca. 20:15
Ort: At our Hackerspace (Kyburgstrasse 13 in 3013 Bern)

The process of installing smart meters in Swiss homes has been on-going for several years. The aim is to replace conventional electricity meters across the country by 2027. In Bern, EWB started installing devices of the types L+G E450 and Ensor eRS801 last year. BKW are planning the installation of 400'000 Kamstrup Omnipower smart meters, beginning mid 2024.

All smart meters in Switzerland come with an interface that should enable the owner to access the collected data themselves. The technical aspect of this access, however, is not trivial, as it requires special hardware and software.

To overcome this, a range of IoT adapters with an open source firmware - called gPlug - has been developed. These small devices can be connected to the smart meter using a single cable and make its data available on a website via WLAN in the local network or deliver it to a smart home system via MQTT.

A lot of engineering has gone into this. The hardware had to be optimised for series production without compromising reliability. The requirement to supply the device with both data and power via a single cable was a particular challenge for some of the interfaces.

In his presentation, Hermann Hüni will also describe the heterogeneous smart meter landscape in Switzerland. The different network operators install smart meters from different manufacturers, which also have different interfaces.

Looking back at the open hackspace day 2024

2024-03-05T00:00:00+01:00

Last Saturday, the 2nd of March 2024, the Open Hackerspace Day took place.

We were open from 9 o'clock. We had our first visitor about an hour later. After that, it got pretty busy until around 4 in the afternoon.

Many people came to visit us for the first time. We had the opportunity to make new acquaintances and hear interesting stories.

Later in the afternoon, the flow of visitors slowed down a bit. Additionally, many of the people who visited later in the day had been here before at least once or twice. This left some time for us to hack and work on our own projects.

In total, around 20 people visited us. We are satisfied with the day and are looking forward to the next open day in 2025.

For anyone who missed the open day, here's a reminder that we open our space to the general public every Tuesday evening from 19h.

Day of the open hackerspace 2024

2024-02-25T00:00:00+01:00

This year we are once again taking part in the Open Hackerspace Day. As such, we open our doors to everyone interested.

This is a great opportunity for all those who have always wanted to visit us but never found the time. Of course, it's also a good chance to visit the space again before we have to move out this summer.

We are happy to give a guided tour to first timers as well as those who simply want a refresher. There's plenty to see, including our collection of 3D printers, the ever-growing sticker exchange, our self-made ventilation, the split flap display in the hack centre and much more.

Date: Saturday, 2024-03-02
Time: From 09:00 until about 20:00
Location: At our hackerspace (Kyburgstrasse 13 in 3013 Bern)

We are looking forward to your visit

Presentation on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with OpenStack, OpenTofu and GitLab

2024-02-19T00:00:00+01:00

Date: Thursday, 21st of March
Time: From 19:30 until about 20:30
Location: At our hackerspace (Kyburgstrasse 13 in 3013 Bern)

Please note: that the presentation will be held in German.

Our sponsor, Cirrax GmbH, is providing the Chaostreff Bern with resources in their OpenStack based cloud.

In the past months, we have transitioned from managing those resources manually, to using a modern Infrastructure as Code (IaC) workflow.

In IaC cloud resources such as virtual machines (VMs) or their storage media is no longer managed by hand. Instead a machine readable file is created. This file describes the target state. A piece of software is then used to compare this target state with the actual state at that time. The software will show the differences and upon request make the necessary changes to transition the environment to the target state.

At the Chaostreff Bern we are using OpenTofu as the IaC tool of our choice. Our own GitLab instance allows us to use OpenTofu in a state of the art workflow.

The presentation will be split into two parts. During an initial 30 minutes, I will give an introduction to IaC and the tools used. We will also talk about the difference to and integration with configuration management software. After a short break, I will then explain some of the details of what we are doing at the Chaostreff Bern.

Collection

Looking for a new hacker space in 2024

2024-01-24T00:00:00+01:00

The building at Kyburgstrasse 13 where our hacker space is located, has been sold. The new owners intend to renovate the building completely. For that reason, all tenants have to leave the building in summer 2024.

For the Chaostreff Bern that means that we have to leave our hacker space. We moved in in December 2018, more than 5 years ago. Over the years we have transformed these rooms and made them our own. To now have to leave them is hard on us.

Nonetheless, we have to leave. At our 2024 general meeting (de) we have formally decided that we still want to rent our own rooms and have formally kicked off the search process.

The parameters for the search remain similar to those of the last search in 2018. Those who wish to contribute with their time or suggestions are asked to make contact via the mailing list or one of the usual chat rooms.

Our own [matrix] server

2023-05-16T00:00:00+02:00

[matrix] is a chat protocol, similar in many ways, to XMPP / Jabber. The crucial feature in either one is the federation. This means that users of different servive providers and different servers can all communicate with one another. This is very similar to what we are all used to from E-Mail.

For over a year now, we have been running our own [matrix] server here at the Chaostreff Bern. On this server, our members can get an account with the chaostreffbern.ch domain. Even custom domains are possible on request.

On this [matrix] server, we also run a public chat channel.

Open and federated chat protocols are an important alternative to the proprietary and closed chat solutions of the internet giants. To make this technology available to as many people as possible, we offer non-members accounts under the separate domain aare.chat.

If you would like an acount, for yourself or your friends / family, just ask at one of our weekly meetings or on one of the exisiting mailing lists and chat channels.

Official fediverse account

2023-03-25T00:00:00+01:00

The Chaostreff Bern now has an official fediverse (Mastodon) account. You can follow us at @ChaostreffBern@chaos.social.

Sticker Exchange Update

2023-03-25T00:00:00+01:00

Ever since our first meeting, we have been maintaining a sticker exchange - a collection of stickers. Everyone is welcome to contribute new stickers to the collection and, more importantly, take and keep any sticker they like.

Over the years, the collection has grown at a staggering rate. This has necessitated changes in the way we organize and store the stickers. The latest change was the introduction of folders, where we keep assorted collections on a given subject. For example a folder with stickers for operating systems, sorted by alphabet.

The current state of the sticker exchange with further details and up to date pictures can be found on the recently updated dedicated page.

International Open Hackerspace Day 2023

2023-03-07T00:00:00+01:00

We would like to invite you to the International Open Hackerspace Day 2023. You can find the map of all participating spaces here.

In Bern we will be discussing technologies as well as privacy related matters. Even some 3D printing projects are to be finished. Come check out out ongoing projects like the interactive split-flap displays, an ancient pong console and out very own sticker exchange! Our sticker exchange has grown tremendously since this page was last updated!

We are looking forward to your visit!

Vortrag: Das Panoptikon der Videoüberwachung durch die Polizei

2022-11-03T00:00:00+01:00

This event will be held in German. There is no translation into English for this page. Select the German language to read the text in German.

Vortrag: Die Europäische Union plant ein neues Gesetz für eine Europaweite Chatkontrolle

2022-11-03T00:00:00+01:00

This event will be held in German. There is no translation into English for this page. Select the German language to read the text in German.

Infoveranstaltung zur Vernehmlassung der Teilrevision des Polizeigesetz

2022-10-21T00:00:00+02:00

This event will be held in German. There is no translation into English for this page. Select the German language to read the text in German.

GNU Taler talk

2022-10-20T00:00:00+02:00

Note: The talk will be held in English!

On Saturday, November 5th 2022 at 19:00 there will be a talk about GNU Taler given by Christian Grothoff at our Hackerspace. Feel free to come by then.

Exempt from https://taler.net/en/:

We provide a payment system that makes privacy-friendly online transactions fast and easy.

Media references (only in German - titles translated):

Day of open hackspaces 2022

2022-06-24T00:00:00+02:00

On Saturday, the 27th of August 2022 from 14:00 until 23:59 we are opening our doors on the day of open hackspaces 2022 - we are looking forward to your visit.

Invitation to our digital meeting: Tuesday, 2021-04-27 20:00

2021-04-20T00:00:00+02:00

Dear Eukaryotes

We invite you to our digital meeting next Tuesday:

Where: https://meet.chaostreffbern.ch/chaostreff

When: Tuesday, 2021-04-27 20:00

We are looking forward to meeting you and exchanging ideas, projects or something else!

See you there

Chaostreff Bern

Press release

2020-04-04T00:00:00+02:00

Unfortunately this press release is only available in German.

Please switch to the German Version of this page to view.

All events are canceled

2020-03-16T17:50:00+01:00

Due to the current corona virus situation all events and weekly meetings are canceled.

Members may continue to use the hackerspace but are asked to adhere to the currently recommended hygiene measures.

Regular general assembly delayed

2020-03-12T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern hereby delays the regular general assembly for 2020. A new date has not been set as of yet.

The reason for this is the current situation around the Coronavirus. We do not wish to put our members into a difficult situation where they have to chose between protecting themselves and their next of kin and exercising their rights at the general assembly.

We continue to monitor the situation and will inform our members as soon as possible about further proceedings.

The regular Chaostreff meetings continue as usual.

If you have any questions, please contact the executive board.

Regular general assembly on 2020-03-17

2020-01-21T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces the regular general assembly for 2020.

Date: Tuesday, 2020-03-17
Time: 19:00 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern

As always, the general assembly will be held during our regular meeting.

Agenda:
- Review of protocols from lat year's GVs
- Work of the executive board
- Review of the financial report
- Election of the executive board
- Election of the CCC-CH envoy
- Sponsors
- Varia

More details on the topics can be found in the Pad.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Analogue games night at the Keyburg

2019-11-28T21:30:00+01:00

Just before everyone is leaving for Leipzig, we'll have another evening for playing tabletop games.

When: Friday, December 13th, from 8pm
Where: Hackerspace of Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern (Link)
What: Many good tabletop games

Please bring all the good tabletop games you own and want to play with other people.

We'd appreciate a short notification if you want to join.

Gentoo Linux: Vortrag und install party

2019-10-07T00:00:00+02:00

Presentation

The presentation covers functionality which is less well known. Among them the creation of custom overlays and the custom fitting of profiles. Another subject covered will be binary packages.

When: Thursday, 2019-11-21 19:00
Where: Ristorante Casa d'Italia, Bühlstr. 57, 3012 Bern
(Link)

Workshop

At the Gentoo install party, we will guide you through the installation of Gentoo Linux. Whether you want to install Gentoo on hardware or in a VM is left for you to decide. An important topic will be the encryption of the system's hard disk.

When: Saturday, 2019-11-23 14:00
Where: Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern
(a href='hackerspace.html'>link)

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux is a source based meta distribution. As such, Gentoo offers a lot of control and many ways to customize the system. For that purpose, the project has created a plethora of tools. Arguably the most important one being the package manager Gentoo which usually installs software not from pre-built binary packages but instead compiles it directly from the source code. The process of building the software is controlled through small text files called ebuilds. Because the software is compiled and linked on the system, Gentoo can offer a large span of both new and stable software. The users can decide for themselves how far in either direction they are willing to go, either with the entire system or just select parts of it. Gentoo then, can be whatever it is you always wanted from your Linux distribution.

LugBE

The Presentation and the workshop are organized in cooperation with the local Linux User Group, the LugBE.

Chaostreff at our Hackerspace

2019-05-16T00:00:00+02:00

In December 2018 we moved into our Hackerspace at the Kyburgstrasse 13. Since then we have put a lot of time and energy into making the hackerspace into an awesome place. Fortunately, the location of our Hackerspace close to the city center is great. We are also very happy with the rooms which are well suited for our purposes. Feedback from our members and guests has been overwhelmingly positive.

Two of the three rooms are located below ground and do not have any windows. To keep the air fresh and breathable, we have installed a venting system.

Lötecke im Hackerspace des Chaostreff Bern

Also feeding into the venting system is the fume hood in our 'lab'. It transports the fumes from the soldering irons out of the space.

Also in the 'lab' is our 3D printer which is used rather enthusiastically.

A lot of time has also gone into installing our network. There are now ample RJ45 ports in addition to decent WLAN coverage. Unfortunately there is no fiber channel available in the building yet, but this should change later this year.

In march we invited our members and friends for a party to officially open the hackerspace. Also present was the Waffle Operation Center from the See-Base.

3D Drucker mit Druckerzeugnissen

After the opening, we revived the weekly Chaostreff meet ups. Of course those now take place here in our Hackerspce.

There are numerous projects aimed at improving the space which are not listed above explicitly. But with all the tools in place, our members have started bringing their own projects as well.

If you want to contribute to one of our projects, want to visit the Chaostreff or see our hackerspace, come visit us. The best time to visit are the public meetings on Tuesday. If Tuesday does not work for you, send an E-Mail to info@choastreffbern.ch and we will find someone who shows you around some other time.

Irregular general assembly on 2019-06-04

2019-04-30T00:00:00+02:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces an irregular general assembly.

Date: Tuesday, 2019-06-04
Time: 19:30 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern

As always, the general assembly will be held during our regular meeting.

Agenda:
- Review of the protocol from the regular general assembly from Tuesday, 2019-02-12
- Donation to immerda.ch
- Funding for our hackerspace

More details on the topics can be found in the Pad.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Regular general assembly on 2019-02-12

2019-01-10T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces the regular general assembly for 2019.

Date: Tuesday, 2019-02-12
Time: 19:30 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern

As always, the general assembly will be held during our regular meeting.

Agenda:
- Review of protocols from lat year's GVs
- Work of the executive board
- Review of the financial report
- Election of the executive board
- Election of the CCC-CH envoy
- Getting in contact with lawyers
- Website
- Sponsors

More details on the topics can be found in the Pad.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

No weekly meetings until the official opening

2018-12-01T00:00:00+01:00

From December 2018 until mid March 2019, the Chaostreff Bern is busy building up the new hackerspace. During this time, the public weekly meetings are called off.

The official opening of he new hackerspace takes place on Saturday, 2018-03-16. Afterwards, the public weekly meetings will be resumed.

Irregular general assembly on 2018-11-20

2018-11-06T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces an irregular general assembly.

Date: Tuesday, 2018-11-20
Time: 19:30 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Zwischennutzung Warmbächli, Güterstrasse 8, 3008 Bern

As always, the general assembly will be held during our regular meeting. This time it will be about the details of renting a new room.

Agenda:
- approval of the budgets for equipping our Hackerspace

More details on the topics can be found in the Pad

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Visit to CERN

2018-09-02T11:00:00+02:00

Visit to CERN on 2019-02-09

As already announced on our mailing list, we were able to book a guided tour at CERN. Hopefully we'll be able to visit some of the experiments of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) which is shut down for maintenance at this time (though emergency maintenance work may restrict access any time).

We'll meet on Saturday, 2019-02-09 at 1:30 PM at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Since most of us will be travalleing there by train, there will be an assembly in Berne which I'll announce at a later date.

We booked the tour for 35 persons. If you want to join us, please contact me (via mail or jabber to jensjenix.net) until noon of 2019-01-18 and send me the following personal information which we are obliged to send to CERN for each visitor:

last name, first name, date of birth, place of birth, country of birth and nationality.

Since the locations of CERN are located on both Swiss and French ground, you'll need an ID or passport which allows you to travel into both countries (a Swiss ID is sufficient for Swiss citicens).

The registration is handled as "first come, first served", so enroll as early as possible (50% of the seats are already taken).

Official opening of the new Hackerspace

2018-08-12T00:00:00+02:00

We have rented new rooms for use as the Chaostreff Bern's Hackerspace. Now we are inviting all life forms to visit the official opening of our new Hackerspace at Kyburgstrasse 13. At the same time, we will also be celebrating the four year anniversary of the Chaostreff Bern itself.

Date: Saturday, 2019-03-16
Time: The doors will open at 14h. The space will stay open to everyone all afternoon and evening.
Location: Kyburgstrasse 13, 3013 Bern, Switzerland (Map)

In the afternoon and early evening there will be a couple of short presentations on the history of the Chaostreff Bern, on our new Hackerspace and on our vision for the Chaos here in Bern. We are also planning to have dinner of some sort.

A Timetable will follow as we get closer to the event. Please save the date!

New room: Our own Hackerspace

2018-07-19T00:00:00+02:00

The search for a new location has come to an end. We have found new rooms which are conveniently located at the Kyburgstrasse 13 in 3013 Bern. The keys to the new location will be handed over to us in December 2018. A house warming party is planned for 2019.

At Kyburgstrasse 13 we are no longer co-renting the rooms, which opens up many exciting possibilities. We will use the new location as a Hackerspace which is open to all our our members around the clock. Of course the Hackerspace will also function as a location for our weekly meetings. Details on the location, how to get there and how to enter will be posted on our website in time.

There is a lot still to do before we can move into the new Hackerspace and use it as planned. A first meeting will be announced shortly. If you want to support us, come by or have a look at the pad we use for coordination.

Git Workshop

2018-07-18T11:00:00+02:00

Workshop

The workshop has been highly requested for a long time so I finally decided to make one.

Date: 2018-08-07 20:00

The following topics will be covered:

Basic Introduction
- Configuration
- Read-Only Repositories
- Linear Workflow using local repositories
- Tips and Tricks
Advanced Usage
- Remote Repositories
- Git-Server Solutions and Features (GitLab)
- Distributed Workflow with branches
- Integration with Project Management

The goal is to provide people with a base knowledge, with which they can create and manage git repositories. Furthermore it should help working together on all kinds of projects.

Necessary preparation includes a working installation of git on your system.

Mateworkshop

2018-05-15T18:00:00+02:00

Introduction

During the Diver Days 2018 we organized a mate workshop. The participants had the opportunity to make their own mate tea and experiment with different ingredients.

The following ingredients and materials were available:

Yerbata Mate Tee
Citric Acid (powder)
Black Tea
Limes
Lemons
Crushed Ice
Sugar
Cane Sugar
Whole Cane Sugar
Water
Water with (few, medium, much) bubbles
Elderflower sirup
Many thirsty hackers

Workshop

At first we tried to copy Club Mate but as we found out soon enough we can make much better things with the ingredients we have, Note that we made a three times concentrated kind of sirup so we can make larger amounts of tea using different combinations.

We started with three different infusions of mate tea.

Cold infusion
Mate tea infused in cold water and letting it rest for 6-20 hours depending on the time on hand
Hot infusion 1
Like normal team with boiling water
Hot infusion 2
Reusing the used leaves from hot infusion 1

Cold Infusion

Austere, slightly bitter, like the other two combined

Hot Infusion 1

Austere, slightly bitter, intense flavor

Hot Infusion 2

Lighter, less intense flavor and not really austere

Findings

Mixture of Infusion 1 and 2 should yield the best results but we have not yet tested this. Cold infusion is also a viable alternative if you have enough time on hand, as this takes anywhere from 6 to 20 hours depending on your time. Surprising was the synergy with elderflower sirup. Sugar does not dissolve easily in cold water.

Conclusion

After hours of experimenting and trying different things we found our favorite:

1 10oz glass
1 part elderflower sirup
1 heaped teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon of citric acid
1 teaspoon freshly pressed lemon juice (alternatively use lime juice)
Mix well
Top with ice
Fill with cold infused mate tea
Eventually dilute with water if the beverage is too strong

Ideas for next time

Ginger Mate
Ingwerer Mate
Caramel sirup
Mixture 1. und 2. Infusion
Hibiscus sirup

Glossary

Ingwerer: Tasty ginger based alcoholic liquor that brings out the sharp- and freshness in the ginger.

Diver Days 2018 Report

2018-05-15T17:00:00+02:00

Location

In the beautiful, yet quaint Town of Hartlisberg the distant Chaostreff Bern assembled itself in perfect weather. With a magnificent view of the Swiss alps and lake Thun this weekend was defined by many a hacker.

Food & Drink

Breakfast and supper were organized and cared for.

Friday evening two risotti were on the menu. One with tomatoes and the other with mushrooms. Saturday evening we cooked spaghetti with a sauce bolognese. The vegan alternative to the meat sauce was bolognese using soy mince.

The drink situation was quite nice, as it included mate, beer, wine and other soft drinks.

Conclusion

The first Diver Days were a complete success. Even though hacking was a bit limited because of the warm and sunny weather.

Ankündigung Diver Days 2018

2018-03-24T14:00:00+01:00

The first hacking weekend organized by the Chaostreff Bern is directed to all nerds. Eating, drinking, hacking, interesting discussions as well as a relaxing get-together with view of the mountainside are the primary focus of the event.

Date: 20. April 2018 12:00 PM - 22. April 2018 approx. 6:00 PM

Location: Scout Centre Hartlisberg, Ob. Riederenweg 16, 3612 Steffisburg

More infos can be found here. [link in german]

Irregular general assembly on 2018-03-27

2018-03-11T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces an irregular general assembly.

Date: Tuesday, 2018-03-27
Time: 20:00 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Zwischennutzung Warmbächli, Güterstrasse 8, 3008 Bern

As always, the general assembly will be held during our regular meeting. This time it will be about the details of renting a new room.

Agenda:
- Decision on renting a room in the first place
- Costs related to renting the room
- Financing the room
- Basics rule for access to and usage of the room
- Furniture and equipment
- Choosing a suitable room
- Delegating the choice of a room

More details on the topics can be found in the Pad, which is written in markdown to make printing easier.

Our assemblies are public. Anyone can participate in the discussions. However, only members of the Chaostreff Bern are allowed to vote.

Saerching for a new location

2018-02-06T00:00:00+01:00

The location where we currently hold our meetings is expected to close in September 2018. That's why we are now looking for a new home. We conducted a meeting to start looking for a new location and collect all requirements that it should meet. Here are the results:

We are looking for a new location
We want to rent a room for our own, so we have more possibilities than is currently the case. Sharing a room with other groups as we do now is only seen as compromise
We want to rent the room via a rental agreement
Our budget for the rent is approximately CHF 1000,- per month
There are a few requirements which the new location needs to fulfill:
- Electricity
- Water supply
- Internet connection
- Heating
- Toilets / sanitary facilities
- Outside space for smoking
- Minimum size: ap. 40 m²
- Unlimited amount of keys / access tokens
The room should be reachable easily from the city center of Bern:
- Public transport stop with direct connection to the central station nearby
- At least 4 connections to the central station per hour
- The public transport stop should not be further away than on our current location

Next steps:

We need to rely on all members and friends of the Chaostreff Bern for looking for a new location. If you find a suitable room which satisfies our requirements, please send the details to vimja. We ( ianfas / rexxnor / echo / jenix / mes / vimja) will then get in touch with the landlord, organize the possibility to inspect the room and handle further steps.

The protocol of our meeting which contains all requirements and nice-to-have items can be found here (in German): https://pads.ccc-ch.ch/p/r.9c5319fbc0478384bd83553306c8d688

34c3-syled Chaostreff Bern T-Shirts

2018-01-09T00:00:00+01:00

34c3:Tuwat, the 34st Chaos Communication Congress, took place at the end of Dezember 2017 in Leipzig. Especially for the occation, draemmli has made a couple of Chaostreff Bern designs, following the 34c3 design guide.

We liked them so much that we decided to print one of them onto a new T-Shirt. The shirts we have chosen are made from Bio-cotton and the design has been printed using a multi-color screen-printing process. When worn, they look a bit like this:

Chaostreff Bern T-Shirt in the 34c3 design. (Image relased by draemmli under the cc0 license).

We sold about half of the 32 shirts we printed directly at the 34c3. The rest of the shirts, available in a range of sizes and while supplies last, can be purchased from us at the Chaostreff Bern for CHF 40.- per piece.

You can find the original designs from draemmli on his website:

Originales Design (PDF, 62KB)
Minimales Design (PDF, 33KB)
T-Shirt Design (PDF, 68KB)

Slides of the presentation "Machine Learning" from 2017-11-18 are available

2017-11-21T00:00:00+01:00

Following the successful presentation "Machine Learning" by Dr. Felix Wichmann on Saturday, 2017-11-18, we are happy to announce that the slides of the presentation are available now. You can download them here (PDF, 7.7 MB).

We want to thank the presentator, Dr. Felix Wichmann, all guests which were attening and Puzzle ITC for sponsoring the room.

Chaostreff Bern general assembly 2018 announcement

2017-11-14T00:00:00+01:00

The executive board of the Chaostreff Bern announces the general assembly for 2018.

Date: Tuesday, 2018-01-23
Time: 20:00 Uhr
Location: Chaostreff Bern, Zwischennutzung Warmbächli, Güterstrasse 8, 3008 Bern
Agenda: See the pad

Lecture and discussion (in german): MASCHINELLES LERNEN: Methoden, Algorithmen, Potentiale und gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen

2017-10-18T00:00:00+02:00

On saturday, November 18th 2017, Dr. Felix Wichmann will hold his lecutre about machine learning at Belpstrasse 37 in Bern. This lecutre should give an introduction to machine learning and it's implications to our daily live. Following the presentation we'll have a public discussion. Both lecture and discussion will be held in german.

Official announcment in german: Am Samstag, 18. November findet von 16:30 bis 20:00 Uhr der von uns organisierte Vortrag "MASCHINELLES LERNEN: Methoden, Algorithmen, Potentiale und gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen" von Dr. Felix Wichmann in der Belpstrasse 37 in Bern statt.

Ankündigungtext:

NEURONALE NETZWERKE und KÜNSTLICHE INTELLIGENZ scheinen immer mächtiger zu werden. Aber wie funktioniert maschinelles Lernen eigentlich? DR. FELIX WICHMANN erklärt anhand von Beispielen, wie verschiedene Methoden und Algorithmen des maschinellen Lernens funktionieren und welche Probleme sich dabei (noch) ergeben. Wir werden Beispiele sehen, in denen Computer noch weit davon entfernt sind, genauso gut oder besser zu sein als wir Menschen - aber auch Beispiele, wo dies bereits gelungen ist. Es stellen sich nicht nur ökonomische, sondern vor allem auch ethische und moralische Fragen: Welche Aufgaben dürfen Computer übernehmen? Diverse staatliche und private Organisationen versprechen ein goldenes Zeitalter, in dem Maschinen unser Leben angenehmer, einfacher und sicherer machen. Doch zu welchem Preis?

DR. FELIX WICHMANN

studierte experimentelle Psychologie und promovierte an der Universität Oxford. Später forschte er am Max Planck Institut für biologische Kybernetik und nahm eine Position als Assistenzprofessor an der TU Berlin an. Heute ist er Professor für Neural Information Processing an der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen und Direktor der Vision Research Gruppe am Max Planck Institut Tübingen. Felix Wichmann versucht, die Komplexität der Sache in seinen Erklärungen aufzubrechen und Themen verständlich zu präsentieren. Er bemüht sich um didaktische Erläuterungen, und hofft, dass sein Engagement und Interesse auf die Zuhörenden überschwappt.

Veranstalter: Chaostreff Bern

Sprache: Deutsch

120 Plätze - first come first served. Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich, der Eintritt ist frei.

Personen, die auf einen barrierefreien Zugang angewiesen sind, melden sich bitte bis zum 11.11 per Mail an chaosbern@chaostreff.ch.

Anreise: Ab Bern Hauptbahnhof Tram Linie 3 Richtung Weissenbühl bis Haltestelle „Hasler“.

Flyer zum Download:
https://www.chaostreffbern.ch/files/Flyer_Vortrag-Maschinelles-Lernen.pdf

Wir bedanken uns bei Puzzle ITC für den Hörsaal.

CCC-CH unterstützt Referendum gegen das Geldspielgesetz

2017-10-10T00:00:00+02:00

The Chaos Computer Club Schweiz (CCC-CH) is part of a committee organizing the referendum against a gambling law here in Switzerland. In that committee, the CCC-CH joins the Digital Society Switzerland (Digiges), the Swiss Pirate Party (PPS) and the Internet Society Switzerland (ISOC). As a member of the CCC-CH, the Chaostreff Bern is indirectly part of the committee as well.

The committee takes offence in the internet censorship measurements which are part of the law. We cite the Digiges' (German) press announcement.

Die vorgesehenen Netzsperren gefährden die Stabilität des Internets, untergraben Sicherheitsmechanismen und zerstören damit das Vertrauen der Internet Benutzer in der Schweiz. Netzsperren sind weitgehend unwirksam, da die geplanten DNS-Sperren problemlos umgangen werden können. Erfahrungen zeigen, dass durch diese Art der Sperren neben dem eigentlichen Ziel oft auch weitere Angebote unabsichtlich mitblockiert werden. Zusätzlich funktioniert die im Gesetz vorgesehen Umleitung auf eine Informationsseite bei verschlüsselten Verbindungen, wie sie von Online-Casinos verwendet werden, technisch nicht.

To stop the new law from going into effect, we need to collect 50'000 signatures within the next 100 days and get them notarizing as well.

You can be part of the effort too:

Download a sheet for 10 signatures (PDF)

Chaostreff T-Shirts are available

2017-04-30T15:00:00+02:00

It's been a while since we voted on the design for out shirts. By now, we completed the order for them and they were printed and delivered to us. The shirts are black and contain a print of the Chaostreff Bern logo in white on the right side of the front. As already announced on our mailing list, we ordered additional shirts in different sizes together with the preorders. They can be purchased for 30 CHF each at the Chaostreff or any other of our events.

The logo of the Shirts looks like this:

Announcement: VIM workshop

2017-04-30T00:00:00+02:00

Tl;dr: The VIM workshop will take place on Saturday, 2017-05-20 from 14:00h at the Güterstrasse 8.

Despite it's age and special usability concepts VIM, Vi IMproved, is still one of the most popular text editors in existence. There are numerous tutorials and introduction, still many users shy away from learning VIM. Yet there are many advantages of using VIM, even when compared to some of the most modern text editors. VIM's efficient usage concept can save a lot of time and nerves.

For these reasons I will hold a VIM workshop. There are a number prerequisite for participating. This is so we don't have to start from the very basics. The prerequisite are:

A computer (laptop)
VIM needs to be installed
Participants must have completed vimtutor

The workshop will cover the following topics:

Replace
Search and replace
Visual mode
Yank & Paste and registers
- Yanking and pasting to and from system buffers
marks
Buffers
working with multiple windows
An assortment of useful plugins

The workshop will take place on Saturday, 2017-05-20 from 14:00h. It will be held in our usual location at Güterstrasse 8. There is no need to register for the workshop.

General assembly 2017, protocol

2017-04-11T00:00:00+02:00

The Chaostreff Bern's 2017 general assembly took place on Tuesday, 2017-03-14. The protocol contains all the decisions we have made during the assembly. The protocol is available, in German only, here.

Installing and testing OneRNG

2017-03-13T00:00:00+01:00

OneRNG is an Open Hardware random number generator that plugs into USB. You can learn more about it on its website, its original Kickstarter campaign or in an LWN.net article from 2015. There is also a somewhat more technical project documentation.

Back in January, the OneRNG went back on sale. Jenix organized a group order and about two weeks ago, our units arrived. Here is what I have learned since then.

Installation

The packaging of the OneRNG contains a URL which leads to the installation instructions, including instructions for a physical examination of the device to make sure it has not been tampered with. However, the instructions for installing the software are a little sparse. They are fine if you run Debian or Fedora, but if you're building your Linux system in a more manual way and if you're compiling your own kernels, you might need some additional information.

The installation package simply installs a couple of scripts. Here is a brief overview of what each of them does:

/lib/udev/rules.d/79-onerng.rules is a udev rule which triggers actions when the OneRNG gets plugged in or out
/sbin/onerng_verify.py is a python script that verifies the firmware of the OneRNG against a PGP public key which is hard-coded into the script
/sbin/onerng.sh gets called by the udev script mentioned above every time the OneRNG gets plugged in or out. Simply put, it does the following:
- Initiate the hardware
- Check the firmware
- Start harnessing the OneRNG randomness by reading from the random number generator, scrambling the output by encrypting it with OpenSSL and then passing it to the rngd. The rngd then feeds the randomness into the Linux Kernel's entropy pool.
- Stop OpenSSL and the rngd when the OneRNG gets removed.

Personally, I use Gentoo, but have also helped installing a OneRNG on an Arch system. Presumably, these steps are more or less the same on most distributions.

Kernel

The device needs the CDC ACM driver. The kernel option for the driver is called CONFIG_USB_ACM. In menuconfig, you can find it like so:

    Device Drivers  --->
       [*] USB support  --->
           <M>     USB Modem (CDC ACM) support

I suggest installing it as a module that you can load and unload. The module will be called cdc_acm.

Dependencies

There are a couple of dependencies: * rngd - a daemon that feeds randomness to the kernel. Usually packaged as "rng-tools" * at * python-gnupg - a Python interface to GnuPG

On Gentoo, you can install those dependencies via

emerge -av \
    sys-process/at \
    dev-python/python-gnupg \
    sys-apps/rng-tools

The service atd needs to be started when the OneRNG is plugged in. To avoid the hassle of having to start it manually every time you plug in your OneRNG, just add it to the default runlevel:

# OpenRC
rc-update add atd
/etc/init.d/atd start
/etc/init.d/atd start

# Systemd
systemctl enable atd
systemctl start atd

For me, the version of python-gnupg packaged for Gentoo (0.3.8) did not work. Apparently the output is formatted in a way which the onerng_verify.py script did not understand. As a result, the firmware verification failed every time. Eventually, I installed a newer version of python-gnupg through pip as user root:

pip install --user python-gnupg

The package is stored in /root/.local/lib64/python3.4/site-packages/.

Software

# Download the tarball from github
cd /usr/src
wget https://github.com/OneRNG/onerng.github.io/raw/master/sw/onerng_3.5.orig.tar.gz

# Unpack it 
tar xzvf onerng_3.5.orig.tar.gz
cd onerng_3.5

# Install the software
./configure
make install

# Make udev reload the rules so it learns about the new one
udevadmin control --reload-rules

Testing

You can test the OneRNG by having a look at the randomness pool of your kernel, depleting it and then seeing how fast it fills up again.

First, you'll want to make sure no other instances of rngd are running that might be filling up your randomness pool:

# Systems using sysv-init or OpenRC
/etc/init.d/rngd stop

# Systems using systemd
systemctl stop rngd

# Also kill manually started instances
until ! killall rngd; do continue; done

Also make sure that the OneRNG is not plugged in at the start of this test, so you can get a good comparison of what happens.

Check how much randomness is available (it usually tops out at 3800 and a bit):

cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

Deplete all randomness (hit ctrl+c after a few seconds):

cat /dev/random > /dev/null

Then check your randomness pool again. It should now have a much lower value. If you check yet again, you should see that it's raising steadily but rather slowly.

Now plug in the OneRNG, then deplete the randomness again. If you now check the available randomness again, you should see that it is raising up to 3800 within seconds.

Here is a simple copy&paste script for the tests performed above. Make sure you do this in a new terminal though:

cat << EOF | bash
echo -n "Randomness avialable at the start: "
cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

echo "Emptying randomness pool"
cat /dev/random > /dev/null &
sleep 1
kill %1

echo -n "Randomness just after depletion: "
cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
sleep 1
echo -n "Randomness one second after depletion: "
cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
EOF

Here is my output before and after plugging in the OneRNG:

# Before
Randomness avialable at the start: 2554
Emptying randomness pool
Randomness just after depletion: 22
bash: line 10: 10318 Terminated              cat /dev/random > /dev/null
Randomness one second after depletion: 143

# After
Randomness avialable at the start: 3116
Emptying randomness pool
Randomness just after depletion: 7
bash: line 10: 10381 Terminated              cat /dev/random > /dev/null
Randomness one second after depletion: 3100

From the value one second after the depletion, you can clearly see how much faster the available randomness is rising when the OneRNG is plugged in and working.

Debugging

It's annoying to have things not working and not knowing why and what to do. So here are some things you can have a look at if the OneRNG is not working for you. Most of the commands below will have to be run as root.

When the software is working, a bright yellow LED should turn on on the OneRNG after it's plugged in
- When randomness is drawn from the OneRNG, the LED becomes dimmer. You can watch this happened by typing cat /dev/random > /dev/null
Make sure the kernel module is loaded. It's called cdc_acm. You can check which modules are loaded by running lsmod. The module gets loaded automatically when the device gets plugged in. If for some reason it does not, you can always load it manually by running modprobe cdc_acm
After plugging the device into your computer, check the output of dmesg to verify the device was recognized correctly:

[105837.526045] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[105837.609531] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d50, idProduct=6086
[105837.609535] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=3, SerialNumber=3
[105837.609537] usb 1-1.2: Product: 00
[105837.609539] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Moonbase Otago http://www.moonbaseotago.com/random
[105837.609541] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 00
[105837.610312] cdc_acm 1-1.2:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device

In the last line, you can see the name of the new device. Using this, you can now find it in your filesystem:

ls /dev/ttyACM0 && file /dev/ttyACM0

/dev/ttyACM0
/dev/ttyACM0: character special (166/0)

Use lsusb (usually available in a packaged called usbutils) to see if the device was recognized correctly (The Bus and Device numbers will be different on your computer, the ID should be the same):

[...]
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 1d50:6086 OpenMoko, Inc.
[...]

The scripts spawn two processes:
- rngd -f -n 1 -d 1 -r /dev/stdin
- openssl enc -aes128 -nosalt -in /dev/ttyACM0 -pass file:/dev/ttyACM0 -out /dev/stdout

To check if they are running, use ps -faux | grep -e openssl -e rngd. Here is the output on my system:

root     10947  0.0  0.0  11516   884 pts/1    S+   01:09   0:00              \_ grep --colour=auto -e openssl -e rngd
root     10376  0.0  0.0  15896  3732 pts/1    S    00:58   0:00 openssl enc -aes128 -nosalt -in /dev/ttyACM0 -pass file:/dev/ttyACM0 -out /dev/stdout
root     10377  0.0  0.0   9488   836 pts/1    S    00:58   0:00 rngd -f -n 1 -d 1 -r /dev/stdin

The results of the firmware verification get written to the system log. For me the messages end up in /var/log/messages. Here are sample messages for a successful and a failed firmware verification:

Successful firmware verification:

Mar 12 00:58:17 pcsm1501 OneRNG[10341]: firmware verification passed OK - version=3

Invalid firmware detected / unsuccessful firmware verification:

Mar  9 19:25:45 pcsm1501 OneRNG[14816]: firmware verification failed: Invalid firmware signature: 3

If you start the script manually, you can see some more potentially informative / useful information. Make sure you pass the correct ttyACMn device (check dmesg to find out which one is the correct one):

/sbin/onerng.sh daemon ttyACM0

Here is the output from a successful run:

/sbin/onerng.sh: line 192: 11415 Terminated              dd if=/dev/$2 iflag=fullblock of=$t bs=1
/sbin/onerng.sh: line 192: 11420 Terminated              dd if=/dev/$2 iflag=fullblock of=$t bs=4
nohup: redirecting stderr to stdout

Membership and fees

2017-01-10T00:00:00+01:00

The Chaostreff Bern now has a bank account. Henceforth members can pay their member fees via bank transfer. Bank details and other information about the membership can be found on a dedicated page.

spaceAPI

2016-11-28T00:00:00+01:00

The impatient can find our spaceAPI here.

spaceAPI is an API to provide data on a hackerspace. Information such as the location of the hackerspace, the address of it's website, whether it's currently open or how warm it is inside the rooms can be retrieved through this means.

As is customary with APIs, spaceAPI is not supposed to provide information in human readable information but rather make the data accessible to machines. Developers can then write programs to process the information and / or display it to an end user in a formatted manner. With this approach it's not necessary for each hackerspace to write their own app and a user to install them all. Instead, a single app can be written which can then access and display the information from all hackerspaces - as long as they implement the API. There is already a number of applications - both native- and webapps - using the spaceAPI available.

To allow an application to find all the hackerspaces that implement the spaceAPI, there are directories - lists of the URL's for each hackerspace's spaceAPI. The Chaostreff Bern is currently listed in both the spaceAPI.net directory and the directory from FIXME Lausanne.

If you want to try out our spaceAPI yourself, it will be easiest to download the MyHackerspace app from the free F-Droid App-store. This app is developed by the FIXME Hackerspace in Lausanne who release it under the GPLv3 license.

The CCC has recently launched a spaceAPI based list of Chaostreffs and related Hackerspaces. It also features an aggregator of the calendars from all listed entities. Unfortunately, the Chaostreff Bern is not listed yet.

Even though the Chaostreff Bern is not actually a hackerspace, we do still have a room with a fixed address where we meet on a regular basis - information that can be expressed through the spaceAPI. Since our website is static, our implementation of the spaceAPI has to be static as well. In our case this means that we upload a simple JSON file onto our webserver. To display the open/closed status of the space, we have setup a cronjob that toggles the state on Tuesday evenings:

0 19 * * 2 sed -i -e 's/\t\t"open":.*$/\t\t"open": true,/g' /var/www/html/spaceapi.json
0 23 * * 2 sed -i -e 's/\t\t"open":.*$/\t\t"open": false,/g' /var/www/html/spaceapi.json

Chaostreff in "DerBund"

2016-11-12T09:00:00+01:00

As we have announced on our mailinglist, a journalist from the newspaper "DerBund" has visited our Meeting last Tuesday. The article he wrote about us was published in the newspaper today (Saturday the 12th of September 2016) and can be found either on the Website derbund.ch or as PDF on our server.

Report on the formation of the association

2016-11-06T00:00:00+01:00

As announced we formed the association Chaostreff Bern on Tuesday, 2016-10-25. There is now a menu entry called "Association" on our website. As of now, this menu has only little value to English speaking folks since both our bylaws and the protocol of the meeting are only available in German.

The protocol has been digitally signed by the transcript writer (draemmli). You can find the signed version in our repository.

A copy of the protocol, hand signed by both the transcript writer and the elected board of management (tr, ianfas, vimja), is with each of the members of the board of management.

More information on the association and membership will follow shortly.

Announcement: Formation of the association Chaostreff Bern

2016-10-11T00:00:00+02:00

We have decided that we will turn the Chaostreff Bern into a formal association. The formal founding will be done at the meeting on Tuesday, 2016-10-25.

We are currently working out the details. There are two different drafts for bylaws of the organisation 1 2 and also a list of agenda items for the meeting. All three documents are located on our Git server where anybody can engage in their further development.

Discussions outside of our regular meetings are held on our mailing list. We have ongoing discussions on all sorts of details which need to be sorted out when forming an association. One week before the event, on Tuesday, 2016-10-18, we will have a discussion round on the bylaws at our regular meeting.

Some background

The Chaostreff Bern was founded almost two years ago. For reasons of simplicity, chaos and privacy, we abstained from forming an association back then. However, we always kept it an option.

On Thursday, 2015-03-12 the Chaostreff Bern's first meeting took place. Since then, a whole lot has happened; We have met regularly, although we changed the intervals and times of the meetings several times before finally arriving at the current scheme. In and around the Chaostreff Bern, presentations were given and workshops held. We have become part of the Chaos Computer Club Switzerland (CCC-CH) and have organized two gettogethers to meet with the people from this organization. We have had many discussions and even a few presentations on the topics of security and encryption and have also organized keysigning parties where people could get some hands-on-experience with practical cryptography. On the political front, we supported the referendums against the NDG and the BÜPF.

From this it is clear that even without the formal structure of an association, we undertook quite some ventures, met interesting people and have engaged in the larger community.

Reasons for forming an association

But why then do we want to form a formal association? And why now?

There is no easy answer for this questions and there is not just one single answer, either.

Of course, having an association brings a number of advantages and the question to ask is whether these advantages overbalance the additional work which has to be done to manage the association. For a while now it has shown that eventually we would reach this point with the Chaostreff Bern and now we think that we are finally at this critical point.

The Chaostreff Bern is in possession of a number of things, all of which have been donated over time, and also a small sum of cash. Most of these things are easy to deal with, but others not so much. We also seek to have an account with a finance institution to better manage our spendings.

At the moment, our regular meetings are held in the common room of the Warmbächli at Güterstrasse 8. We rent this room per evening, one evening per week. We like it a lot at the Warmbächli but the current situation is sub-optimal especially since the common room is not really meant for this kind of usage. A group of renters has offered us to join them in renting a room adjacent to the common room. This would significantly lower our costs for the meetings which is why we have decided to join the other groups renting the room. To manage this properly, we need an association.

Over the past few months we had the pleasure to find that the Chaostreff Bern has many active members who are ready to put both time and effort into the tasks that need to be done to keep the Chaostreff going. For a successful association it is of course essential to have people who are willing to share the work load and spend some of their free time. For this reason we believe that now is the right time to turn the Chaostreff Bern into a formal association.

Introduction to I2P

2016-09-20T20:00:00+02:00

Anonymity is a very important property on the internet for various reasons. The best-known and most used network to prevent surveillance is TOR (The Onion Router). But as monopoly-like circumstances are undesirable for many reasons, taking a look at alternatives such as I2P is always worthwhile.

The Presentation should give a short introduction to I2P and show what it is, how it works and what it can be used for. As cryptography is an important part of anonymous communication, basic knowledge about it will come in handy.

Jens, who will be holding the presentation, wrote his Bachelor Thesis about I2P during his study at BFH, especially focusing on information gathering about the network and analysis of potential security issues.

The presentation will be held at the next Chaostreff, on Tuesday 2016-09-20 from about 8 pm, at our usual meeting location Güterstrasse 8.

Updates on the Git Server

2016-09-03T00:00:00+02:00

The Git Server of the Chaostreff Bern has been restructured. All repositories of the Chaostreff Bern have been consolidated in the new group Chaostreff: https://git.chaostreff-bern.ch/groups/chaostreffbern

This makes finding and managing the projects easier. If you would like to contribute to a project, you can sign up and request access to the group via the web interface.

If you have previously worked with any of the repositories, you will have to update the remote URL, which can be done with the command below:

git remote set-url origin git@gitlab.honet.ch:chaostreffbern/chaostreffbern_website.git

The server is now accessible under any of the addresses listed below:

All links on this website have been changed accordingly.

Announcement: XMPP presentation

2016-07-05T00:00:00+02:00

The Chaostreff Bern is running its own XMPP servers since last summer. Everyone can register their own account and participate in private or public chats. To increase the understanding for the technology, vimja will hold a talk on the protocol.

The talk will explain the fundametals of the protocol, the management of contacts and the flow of conversations. Some of the most important protocol extensions will be covered as well.

The presentation will be held at the Chaostreff Meeting on Tuesday, 2016-07-19 from 20h at the Güterstrasse 8.

You can register your own XMPP account on our service page.

BÜPF: Call for collecting signatures

2016-05-27T14:00:00+02:00

The deadline for the BÜPF referendum is in just over a month. If until then, we don't have 50'000 signatures - collected and verified - this questionable law will go into effect. For our privacy's sake, it is essential that the referendum is successful and the people of Switzerland can vote on this new version of the law.

Unfortunately, until now, we have far too few signatures. If we want to prevent this law from going into effect, now is our last chance. So it is now time to go out to the streets and collect signatures.

The Digital society has created a video on the topic of surveillance. It presents the related problems in a clear and pregnant form. The video has been posted on a number of platforms where you can like or share it: Twitter Facebook Youtube Vimeo

If you want to engage in the effort of collecting sigantures, please check out our page on the subject.

Projects on chaosbern.ch

2016-05-10T00:00:00+02:00

Within Projects of chaostreffbern.ch or short chaosbern.ch, there is a new kid on the block.

Themes and interests so far are

Additionally to these, you find new

Presentations

This webpage lists all details about past workshops and presentations, including slides and source for download.

Collecting signatures for the BÜPF Referendum [update]

2016-03-29T00:00:00+02:00

As mentioned in the press release from March 23, the national council has second the revision of the BÜPF. BÜPF stands for "Bundesgesetz zur Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs", which translates to National law concerning the surveillance of postal and communication services. To stop this worsening of the already existing law, all we can do now is to let the people of Switzerland vote on the matter. But for that to happen, we have to collect enough signatures (50'000) for the Referendum to be successful.

On a national scale, the signature collecting of CCC-CH members is coordinated via buepf.ch. The Chaostreff Bern is of course supporting the campaign. To help with the task of collecting signatures, we have setup a tool on our dedicated page on the BÜPF. It can help you find a good date and some companions. There is also further information, some tips and a large list of links on the topic.

Update

The Referendum committee provides a mailing list dedicated to the coordination of collecting signatures in the region around Bern. Use it to find people to go collect signatures with, to coordinate on dates and places or to organize larger drives. You can subscribe to the list online.

Press announcement: BÜPF-Referendum is coming!

2016-03-26T00:00:00+01:00

Press announcement from 2016-03-23

The BÜPF-Referendum is coming!

On 2016-03-22 an alliance of more than a dozend organizations and political parties has decided to start a Referendum against the revised version of the "Bundesgesetzt zur Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs" (National law for the surveillance of postal and communication services), or BÜPF for short. The BÜPF has passed the last votes in the parliament on 2016-03-18. It contains a whole range of points that threaten basic rights and the freedom of Swiss citizens. By the look of things, the BÜPF will be published on 2016-03-29, starting the 100 day Referendum periode which will end on 2016-07-07.

The following political parties are supporting the Referendum and vouched to contribute a number signatures in relation to their size and strenght:

Alternative Liste
Jungfreisinnige Schweiz
Junge Grünliberale
Junge SVP
Juso Schweiz
PdA
Swiss Pirate Party

In addition to the political parties, a number of organisations are supporting the Referendum as well:

Digitale Gesellschaft
Verein Grundrechte
Operation Libero
Internet Society Schweiz ISOC-CH
Chaos Computer Club Switzerland
Stiftung pEp
Wilhelm Tux

There is also a number of other organisations and parties that did not commit themselves to a specific number of collected signatures but are supporting the Referendum nonetheless. Usually they will be contributing by providing logistics services, financial support or raising awareness to support the collecting of signatures.

The committee will announce the arguments against the revised law in a press announcement in April. The most important reasons however, will not change and are listed here:

The extension: The list of offenses and the applicable areas get extended in a major way to the point where even individuals and organisations would have to provide access to their Wifi, mail servers and other communication infrastructure.
The Telecommunications data retention for all communication done by all citizens is disproportionate. Even more so after the EuGH and other high courts in Europe have pointed out the violation of basic rights resulting from these practices.
Intruding computers to install government issued trojan software is very dangerous. It compromises the system's security and endangers the integrity of proof which puts the constitutional legality to question.
The use of spy software for the investigation of relatively minor crimes (such as theft) is disproportionate.
In addition to the above mentioned points, government issued trojan software is not even necessary in the first place. Data from encrypted communication can usually be obtained from the operator of the service in question via court order.
National communication companies are put to a disadvantage under the burden of having to comply with the law which does not affect other players in the global market.

stopbuepf.ch / buepf.ch / uberwachungsstaatnein.ch

Download of the official (German) version of this press release

CCC-CH Gettogether am 23. April 2016 in Bern

2016-03-22T23:00:00+01:00

Once every few months, the CCC-CH has a gettogether, a meeting of the Chaostreffs and hackerspaces. During the meetings, we discuss interesting topics that are of interest to the CCC. Members can present their latest projects, we plan events and trips. The gettogethers are rotated between the CCC-CH members, resulting in them taking place in a different location every time. This presents an opportunity to visit different hackerspaces and meet other hackers.

Gettogether in September in Bern

On Saturday, 2016-04-23, the next CCC-CH gettogether takes place. This time around, we host it in Bern again:

When: Saturday, 2016-04-23 from 13:30
Where: Güterstrasse 8, 3008 Bern, 2. Floor
Agenda: Pad
Lunch: Ab 12:30, register form
Door open from: 11:00

Location and travel

Details on the location and travel can be found on our dedicated page.

Lunch

Like last time, we invite the attendeeds for Lunch befor the meeting. We are not sure yet what exactly we will cook, but it will probably be Spaghetti. Lunch starts at 12:30 so if you arrive at Bern main station at 12:00, you have enough time to travel to the Güterstrasse. You can register for Lunch online.

There is also Club Mate and an assortment of other beverages including various beers, Cola, apple juice and Bitter lemon.

Introductory talk on Blockchain technology - second attempt

2016-03-14T18:00:00+01:00

The talk "Introduction to Blockchain technology" was originally scheduled for February. Unfortunately this did not work out. It has now been moved to a new date.

The talk will be held on 2016-04-21 from 18:30 in the room 105 of the main building of the University of Bern, Hochschulstr. 4, 3012 Bern, 1. floor.

We organize this talk in cooperation with the Research Center of Digital Sustainability of the University of Bern and the LugBE. If you come to see the talk, please register in the LugBE calendar beforehand. You can find further information and a flyer on the university website and in the original announcement on this website. Pleae note that the talk will be in German.

Announcement: 2016 keysigning

2016-03-08T12:00:00+01:00

In the one year that the Chaostreff Bern has been around, a lot has happened. Possibly most important, we have met a lot of amazing people. So it seems appropriate to have another run of PGP keysigning. This will hopefully help with getting to know one another and make secure communication easier.

With this we are also trying to motivate people who are not yet using PGP to get active and improve their security. This is why we plan enough time for new users to inform themselves, create their keys and get used to the system. Of course we are happy to help with questions and problems at the Chaostreff and on the mailing list.

The procedure is explained in detail here (German only) but will largely be the same as last year. With the one difference that we now have a propper location for doing this.

To register for the keysigning, send the output of gpg --keyid-format LONG --finger print <test@domain.com> to chaosbern [at] chaostreff.ch before Sunday, 2016-04-03, 20h. The actual keysigning will take place at the Chaostreff on Tuesday, 2016-04-05 from 20h.

Links

For further information on the topic, check out these Links:

Announcement Tinker day 2016

2016-03-02T22:00:00+01:00

We like it a lot at the Güterstrasse 8. Still we have some ideas for improvements. That is why we organized a tinker day on Saturday, 2016-03-12 from 14h at the Güterstrasse 8.

The main goal of the day is to install a LAN cable and to install a lock on a chest of drawers. But you can also just work on your own projects, chat with people or cook and hack together.

Chaostreff meeting at the Pfadi Patria

2016-03-01T23:00:00+01:00

On Tuesday, 2016-03-08, the room at the Güterstrasse 8 is not available. This is why the meeting on that day will take place at the home of the Pfadi Patria in Bern. It is located approximately 2 minutes from Bern main station at Mauerrain 5. The meeting starts, as usual, at 19h.

For those who don't want to search the way on their own, we assemble at the main station from where I will leed the group to the location. We assemble on the Welle at 18:45 and start walking at 18:50. For recognition I will be carrying a Pesthörnchen flag.

View Larger Map

Introducing the acme-conductor

2016-02-02T20:00:00+01:00

Over the past weeks, 2_B has invested a substantial amount of time into the development of a new ACME client. ACME, for those who don't know, is the protocol developed by letsencrypt to validate the ownership of domains. The client developed by 2_B, called acme-conductor, is focused on making lots of certificates for a large number of hosts, which is unlike most other ACME clients.

For a while now, acme-conductor can be used productivly, even if he is still in the beta phase. The certificates for our XMPP infrastructure for example, are managed by an acme-conductor. So the time has come to present the software to a larger audience and make it available to the public.

At the next Chaostreff, on Tuesday 2016-02-09 from about 20h, 2_B will introduce his software in a short presentation. The presentation is for people who has a technical knowlege and e.g. know what ssh is. This will be held at our usual meeting location, at the Güterstrasse 8.

New schedule for the meetings

2016-01-23T20:00:00+01:00

For a while now, we have been looking for a new location for the meetings. Recently we had a test meeting at the Güterstrasse 8. This seemed like a viable option and people liked it a lot.

We have also had some discussions on the days of the meetings. Apparently, Thursday is unfortunate choice. Also people were asking if we could switch the days. This should allow people to come to the meetings who are usually busy on Thursdays.

As a result, from now on we meet on Tuesday at the Güterstrasse 8 in odd calendar weeks and in the Lorraine Brasserie in even weeks.

At the new location we also have the space and necessary equipment for workshops and presentations. If you have something to tell or teach, please take the opportunity.

The schedule and other information is explained in detail on the meeting page. You can also find the dates in the calendar on the right hand side (bottom of the page on mobile devices). The easiest thing might well be to subscribe to the ICS calendar.

Talk: An introduction to Blockchain technology

2016-01-15T08:00:00+01:00

Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin. Without it, the popular crypto currency would not exist. In fact, almost all processes within modern crypto currencies can be explained from the viewpoint of the blockchain. But today, the blockchain technology can be used for usecases outside of the financial world, too.

This talk will give an introduction on blockchain technology. To get started we will look at the aim of the blockchain and then we will see how a typical blockchain works to achieve that aim. On the basis of the Bitcoin Blockchain many important propperties will be explained; How is a consensus achieved, how does the blockchain protect against double spending, how does the proof of work work, how does a pruning client work, how does the network identify transactions.

To get a better understanding, we will compare the Bitcoin blockchain to the relatively modern blockchain of Ethereum. On the example of Ethereum, we will see how blockchain technology can be used to implement more advanced functionality, even outside of the financial sector. Ethereum is also a great candidate for a discussion on hardware miners.

This talk will have a focus on blockchain technology. Functionality which is part of Bitcoin or Ethereum but is not involved in the blockchain will not get covered.

We organize this talk in cooperation with the Research Center of Digital Sustainability of the University of Bern and the LugBE. If you come to see the talk, please register in the LugBE calendar beforehand. You can also find further information and a flyer on the university website.

The talk will be held on 2016-02-18 from 18:30 in the room 105 of the main building of the University of Bern, Hochschulstr. 4, 3012 Bern, 1. floor. Please note that the talk will be in German.

Tails Workshop

2016-01-09T22:00:00+01:00

Now that we are actually going to meet in the new room with lots of space, we put that space to use. We will have a workshop on the use of Tails.

Everyone who would like to learn more about Tails or just wants to provide constructive criticism is asked to bring to the meeting on January 12th a Laptop and a USB-Stick with the current version (1.8.1) of Tails. To be able to use Tails' persistence feature, be sure to have your stick installed by the Tails Installer.

RFID-Zapper-Workshop with the Chaostreff Bern - a report

2016-01-04T02:00:00+01:00

Saturday, 21th November - a gray, wet and cold day. Just the right weather for some tinkering and soldering I think at about 14 o'clock as I approach the autonomous school Denkmal where the workshop will take place. I'm a little bit nervous, after all, I'm organizing the very first workshop at the Chaostreff Bern. I wonder how it will be... Will there be enough equipment? Will the workshop meet my own expectations?

At the entrance I meet the first familiar faces. I'm told that more people are waiting upstairs. Let's go then - occupy a room and unpack: soldering irons, screw drivers, pliers, battery holders, Switches, sensing detectors and some food are covering the table a short time later. Even more people arrive, it's getting cramped in the small room. In the end, there are about eight people - railroad-nerds, electronics engineers, mathematicians, programmers and other freaks.

To get started, I prepared a short presentation that explains the most important working steps. I decided against a lecture since it was not necessary: immediately after good to go, people broke out the soldering irons and started disassembling the cameras. Soon everyone was busy. A short glance at the presentation from time to time, the soldering fume started filling the room, the sizzling noise of capacitors discharging. This all went without a single person getting hurt. The participants supported each other. I liked the spirit: People just went ahead and tinkered - no reservations, questions got shouted into the room, someone would come over to help. A workshop just the way it's supposed to be, with pep and maybe even a bit of fanaticism. After about 2 and a half hours it was over. Over that time period, we created 5 working RFID zappers. It sure helped that most of the participants were using the same model of one way camera. As was to be expected, the zappers got tested instantly. The highlight of this was the overcharging of two Swisspasses which worked just fine.

Everyone helped cleaning up the chaos - as it should be - and soon we were done with this too. Some last discussions and exchanging of information, then everyone went their own way again. And so did I, tired but happy: everything went fine, a comfy afternoon of tinkering with the chance to learn a lot and meet interesting people.

This article, including the pictures and the presentation, are being released by macmaniac under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Chaostreff on Jan. 12th at the Güterstrasse 8

2015-12-16T15:00:00+01:00

In the second week of January 2016 (the week of January the 11th), the Chaostreff will take place on Tuesday, 2016-01-12 at Güterstrasse 8. On Thursday of the same week (2016-01-14) there will be no Chaostreff at the Brass!

For some time now, we have been looking for a new location for the weekly meetings.

At Güterstrasse 8 we have found a room that seems to be suitable. In January we will have a Chaostreff meeting there to give people the opportunity to look around and experience the location themselves.

About the room

The room belongs to the Wohnbaugenossenschaft Warmbächli who are in the process of repurposing the old industrial building into modern living and working space. The room has, amongst other things:

A lot of space with tables, chairs and couches
It's heated
Power
Internet
A meeting room with a beamer
A selection of beverages
- List of available beverages [PDF] including prices
- YAY! Club Mate!
A big kitchen
Ping Pong table
Foosball table

All this comes at a price. Renting the room costs us CHF 50.- per evening. We do however believe that this is totally worth it, especially when considering the rather high prices we pay at the Brass. Also remember that the meetings would only take place at the new location bi-weekly.

Pictures of and further information about the room can be found here.

Getting there

The room is located at Güterstrasse 8 on the second floor:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=46.9477&mlon=7.4157#map=16/46.9477/7.4157

View Larger Map

You can get there either by Bus or by tram:

Bus line 11 (direction Holligen) to the end stop (Holligen)
- 6 minutes travel by bus
- From there it's another 3 minutes walk
- There's a bus every 6 minutes
Tram lines 7 (direction Bümpliz) and 8 (Direction Bern Brünnen Westside)
- 7 minutes travel
- From there it's another 5 minutes walk
- There's a tram every 3 minutes

There might be small stones or other obstacles on the street. It is thus advisable to be wearing good shoes.

Too complicated?

The meeting will start at 19 o'clock, as usual. Those who want can travel to the new location directly. Those who are afraid to get lost, can meet vimja at the main station in Bern and then travel to the new location with him.

Meeting point is under the Baldachin in front of Bern main station at 18:40. vimja will carry an object of recognition (a Pesthörnchen flag or similar). The group then starts heading out at 18:45.

Entrance

The building is locked from 18 o'clock. We are not yet sure about how to handle this. But you can make our lives easier by arriving before 20 o'clock. Ths smokers usually go out to smoke in groups. So this should not be a problem.

Chaostreff Bern Jabber Server

2015-11-19T00:00:00+01:00

The Chaostreff Bern runs a public XMPP/Jabber server. After having been in testing for serveral months, it now goes live. All details on how to register new accounts and configure client software can be found on our website.

In combination with the XMPP server, we also run a MUC (Multi User Chat) service. This publicly available service allows anyone to participate in chats and even to create and administer their own chatrooms. Notably we are also running the Chaostreff Bern chat on there. More information on how to use the MUC service is available in our services overview.

Background information

XMPP is a distributed messaging protocol. This means that anyone can run their own XMPP server under their own domain and still chat with users of other XMPP services hosted under other domains. In this matter, XMPP is rather similar to Email in fact. When compared to centralized services, this provides a number of advantages. It is much easier for a user to change provider if they don't like their current provider anymore or if their provider stops the service. The possibility of running their very own server gives user ultimate control over their data. And distributed services are harder to to surveil and intercept.

There are numerous implementations of both XMPP-clients and servers available. Using the XMPP protocol allows them to all work with one another. Running your own XMPP server is rather simple. It should be, because the advantages of distributed services only apply, if people do run their own instances. Unfortunately many XMPP users chose one of few very large providers.

We want to animate people to run their own XMPP servers. We are open to questions and happy to help with concrete problems. For all those who can't run their own servers, we want to provide this service.

Status

Because of delays in the public release of letsencrypt, the certificates of the conference and proxy server are still self signed. We will swap them out in the coming weeks. Most users should not be affected in any notable way by this.

The STUN server is still untested and probably not working. If you are familiar with STUN and would like to heelp us with it, please contact us.

Hosting

As with our website, the machine running our XMPP server is provided by Cirrax. Cirrax is a Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud provider here in Bern. They have a focus on privacy, security and open source software.

T-Shirt Design [2nd update]

2015-11-18T12:45:00+01:00

When we first decided on a logo for the Chaostreff Bern, we also wanted to create T-Shirts. Finally we have gotten together some designs. Please discuss them on the mailing list and at the meetings. We will decide on the final version on the meeting on 2015-11-26.

Result

As a result of the voting, we chose the design below for our first print run of T-Shirts:

Druck

We will print the T-Shirts on Saturday, 2015-11-28. [2nd update] Because of technical difficulties, the printing of the T-Shirts will note take place at the scheduled date. As of now, we do not know for how long it will be delayed. A new date will be announced here and on the mailing list [/2nd update] Strix will prepare the screen. Everyone can bring and print their own T-Shirts, backpacks, towels, whatnot. Where and at what exact time this will take place has not yet been decided. We will announce it on the mailing list.

Those wo can't come to the printing event themselves but still want an item printed can bring the items to the next meeting (2015-11-26) and give them to us. We will then print them and bring them back to a meeting at a later date.

The costs of the colors rather depend on the interest. There will be black and white for sure but Strix can also bring some other colors if that is desired.

Designs

Check out these fancy designs (click to enlarge):

CCC-CH Schleuder

2015-11-15T00:00:00+01:00

The CCC-CH has a Schleuder which is a PGP encrypted mailing list. It's used for coordination and internal discussions. Since the Chaostreff Bern is a member of the CCC-CH, our associated hackers can join the list.

If you want to get on the list, contact Tobi, our list administrator. Please make sure that you meet the following requirements:

You have got a PGP key with a length of at least 2048 Bit
Your PGP key has an expiration date which is set less than 5 years in the future
You have done keysigning with Tobi
You have payed the CHF 5.- CCC-CH members fee to Tobi

Tobi usually attends our weekly meetings. You can meet him there. To do keysigning with Tobi, please bring along a printout of your key information (gpg-key2ps -p a4 <Key ID> > out.ps).

Workshop: construct a RFID-Zapper

2015-10-08T13:45:00+02:00

Kusi will give a workshop at the Chaostreff Bern. In this workshop, the participants will build a RFID-zapper - a device to electrically destroy RFID-tags. No prior knowledge of the subject is required to visit the workshop.

This Youtube video gives a first instruction of what will be done.

Planning

Those who are interested in participating can register online: https://dudle.inf.tu-dresden.de/RFID-Zapper/. Please note that this form is publicly accessible. If you would rather not register that way, you can send an Email to Kusi instead. Once known, the exact date and location of the workshop will be announced on the mailing list.

Things to bring

The participants should bring some equipment:

Unused one-way camera with a flashlight
A case for the zapper (at least the size of a match box. For some models, the zapper can be fitted into the camera's case)
soldering iron (if you have one)
(flat blade) Screwdriver (big/small)

Material wanted

We would be glad if someone could provide some additional soldering irons. We assume that not all the participants will have their own.

Also Kusi is still looking for good options for the case and would be glad if someone could provide some pointers.

Coordination of the Signature collecting for the NDG referendum

2015-10-08T01:00:00+02:00

To support the collection of signatures, we have setup a page dedicated to the NDG that includes various resources.

Collecting signatures for the NDG Referendum

2015-09-27T00:00:00+02:00

On September 25, 2015, the national council accepted the Nachrichtendienstgesetz (or NDG for short). To prevent the law from going into action, all we can do now, is to collect the necessary votes for a Referendum to happen - and that's exactly what we're going to do. On a national scale, the signature collecting is organized via nachrichtendienstgesetz.ch and the Chaostreff Bern is supporting the campaign.

You can find further information on the subject on our NDG page.

On the future of the Chaostreff Bern

2015-09-23T00:00:00+02:00

We started the Chaostreff Bern in February, 2015. Since then, we meet on a regular schedule in the Lorraine-Brasserie to discuss interesting topics and to eat and drink. We have met many interesting and nice people and we have discussed a wide variety of topics.

I think that the time is now right for the next step. But why is that even necessary?

The issue

The meetings in the Lorraine-Brasserie are pleasant gettogethers. But they have a number of problems: It's usually rather cramped and loud and the sparse space is taken by plates and drinking glasses. In my opinion the possibility to seriously discuss interesting topics and the collective search for solutions should be an important part of a Chaostreff. It should also be possible to take out a mobile computer and get some work done if necessary.

The loud atmosphere in the Brass makes discussions rather difficult. Quite often it's so loud that one can barely understand the person sitting directly to the right or left. Since everyone is eating at different times, people are constantly distracted.

Another problem is that of the laptop computers. Too often the tables we're sitting on are too small for everyone to get a decent junk of table space. Also the little space provided by the tables is usually occupied by plates and drinking glasses. This makes taking out and working on a laptop difficult. And even if you manage to do so, there is no WiFi available at the Brass and we have to use the mobile network.

Thoughts on a solution

We have discussed the above problems multiple times both at the Chaostreff and privately with individuals. The obvious solution is to meet in a different place. There are a number of requirements for a new meeting point:

closed room
located near the center of Bern
heated (winter)
electrical power
Internet
For the duration of the meetings, we should have the room to ourselves
- Alternatively, the room should provide an atmosphere that allows for active discussions and working

Not a hackerspace

There are also a number of things that the room does explicitly not need. Most importantly, it doesn't need to be a hackerspace, meaning that the room doesn't have to be ours, we do not need the possibility to store equipment in the room and the internet connection does not need to be under our control. On the other hand, it's quite OK if using the room costs us a bit of money. We should be quite capable to provide smaller amounts of money.

From experience we know that finding good rooms is hard. This is even more so if the room needs to be located near the city center. Additionally we are not yet sure how exactly these new meetings are going to work. These two points are connected with one another. Here are some suggestions on how this could work:

The meetings of the current form will be replaced entirely by the new ones. This would mean that we'd meet on a weekly basis at the new location. This however, would mean that we'd need a room on a weekly basis, which is probably even harder to find and possibly quite expensive. And we should also discuss the psychological effect that this could have on outsiders; Is it harder to approach a group of people when they are located in a locked basement than it is if they're sitting in a restaurant? Quite possibly...
We continue the weekly meetings at the Brass. Additionally we also meet once a month at the new location. That would make it a lot easier to find a suitable location. But it would mean that we'd have 5-6 meetings a month which is a lot.
- If we make the date on which we have the additional meeting flexible, it makes finding a location even easier.
We keep meeting at the Brass every Thursday. Except for one Thursday of the month, we'd meet at the new location instead. This however leads to a complicated schedule, which can be confusing, especially for people who don't come to the meetings on a regular basis.

Just for fun...

Even though a new location should enable us to have serious discussions and to work on problems, it's important to not cut short the fun parts. 'Just for fun' and 'because we can' are important reasons for all sorts of cool projects in the hacker community. Even if we're going to have discussions on serious topics, the aim of the meetings is to have fun and there should be no pressure.

Logo chosen

2015-09-11T00:00:00+02:00

As announced, we voted on the logo for the Chaostreff Bern at the meeting on 2015-09-10. The logo receiving the most votes is displayed below. From now on, this is the Logo of the Chaostreff Bern.

An SVG version of the logo is available here.

Weekly meetings

2015-09-08T00:00:00+02:00

The schedule we used for our meetings thus far, 'every Thursday but the first in the month', was complicated. It led to misunderstandings and frustration. Because of this, from now on, meetings will take place on a weekly basis. It's important to note that this is the only thing changing for now. The meetings will still take place in the Brasserie and start at 19:00.

Background

The reason for having such a complicated schedule in the first place were the meetings of the Linux User Group Bern. They meet every first Thursday of the month. Since we didn't know how much the groups of visitors to our events would overlap, we didn't want to run both events at the same time, even if it was just once a month. By now however, it has become clear that the groups of visitors to the LugBE meetings and the Chaostreff are fairly diverse. I also think that the LugBE meetings are special and interesting enough to miss the Chaostreff once a month - at least for me they sure are.

A new date for deciding on the logo

2015-08-20T00:00:00+02:00

We've been looking for a logo for the Chaostreff Bern for a while now. After postponing the decision back in June, a whole number of new drafts have been submitted which many of our members seem to like. Because of this, we think that the time has come to make a decision.

We will decide on the logo at the meeting on 2015-09-10 at 20 o'clock. Everyone attending the meeting will have a chance to express their feelings on any of the drafts. Also, everyone present, will be allowed to vote. As voting system, we'll use the method described by CGP Grey in his video Quick and Easy Voting for Normal People.

All the drafts that have been submitted so far, can be found in the posting Wanted: A logo for the Chaostreff Bern. Please note that some of the drafts in that post have been obsoleted by superior versions.

If you have any concerns about this process, please tell us on the mailing list.

CCC-CH Gettogether on September 19, 2015 in Bern

2015-07-09T00:00:00+02:00

Gettogether in September in Bern

For the september 2015 gettogether, the Chaostreff Bern inivites the CCC-CH. Since we don't have our own hackerspace where we could meet, the meeting will take place in the denk:mal in Bern.

The autonomous school denk:mal is a place for selforganized and self-determined learning. All courses are for free and nobody become any money for that. Additional informations can be found on their homepage.

The denk:mal is located at Lagerweg 12, 3013 Bern.

View Larger Map

By foot, it's about 10 min from the Bern main station. If you'd rather not go by foot, you can take the bus, line 20 from Bern main station (the bus only travels in one direction, so you can't possibly take the wrong one) and exit at the station 'Lorraine', from where it's another 200m to the location.

The day of the meeting, 2015-09-19 is a Saturday and since we don't want people to have to get up early, the meeting will start at 14h. The agenda items can be found online in a pad. There will be people in the denk:mal before 14h, so those who want to come in early to meet people, to hack and discuss are welcome to do so.

Invitation for dinner

We invite everyone to come and eat dinner with us before the meeting starts. The denk:mal has a big kitchen that we can use. We will make Spaghetti with different sauces (including ones for vegetarians and vegans). We will eat at 12:30, so those arriving at 12h have enough time to come to the denk:mal. To give us an idea of how much we have to cook, we ask everyone who wants to come eat, to register via email to chaosbern [at] chaostreff.ch. If you have allergies and similar, please let us know in the email. Please send the email before 2015-09-18 23:59:59.

Chaostreff Bern is now a member of the CCC-CH

2015-06-16T00:00:00+02:00

During this years Chaosversammlung, the CCC-CH's general assembly, the Chaostreff Bern got accepted as a member of the CCC-CH.

As a member of the CCC-CH we can participate in all discussions and decisions. To represent the Chaostreff Bern in the Chaosversammlung we have to appoint two envoys. Since noone else applied for the positions on the mailing list, Tobias and Niklaus Hofer are going to take the posts for the time being.

Also we have to pay a fee of CHF 5.- per member of our Chaostreff and year to the CCC-CH. The transferal of the money has to be done before August 1st. This is also the case for the currently running year. Tobias will collect the money and transfer it in the name of the Chaostreff Bern. Since we are not officially an association and don't have a member list, we ask those to pay, who feel themselves associated with the Chaostreff Bern and who agree with the ideas of the CCC-CH. Tobias will not be able to attend any meetings during the month of July, which is why we ask everyone to hand him the CHF 5.- before the end of June.

Wanted: A logo for the Chaostreff Bern

2015-06-03T00:00:00+02:00

The Chaostreff Bern needs a logo. In this point we agree, at least on the mailinglist we do. What we are not sure about is how the logo is supposed to look. There are a few suggestions already (see below), but we are still looking for good ideas and for artists to help us implement some of our ideas.

Call for suggestions

If you have ideas for a logo or, better even, a draft or finished suggestion, you can send them to the mailing list. Preferably send it to one of the existing threads concerning the topic. Don't worry if your drafts are rough around the edges - surely if people like the idea, someone can be found to help you with your work. We will publish all the suggested logos here in this post. However, the correct place to discuss them is the mailing list.

Decision making process

The call for suggestions and disussion stays open until Thursday, 2015-06-25. On the Chaostreff meeting on that day, we will decide which logo we want to use for the Chaostreff Bern. We'll take into account the concerns and opinions raised during the mailing list discussion. The final decision though will be made by the people present at the Chaostreff that evening.

Logo suggestions thus far

Bern coat of arms with Chaosknoten

Download

Bern coat of arms with Posthoernchen

Download

Posthoernchen-Knoten

Download

Posthoernchen-Knoten with bone

Download

Lettering 'Bern' with Chaosknoten

Download

Bern coat of arms with dangling Chaosknoten

Download

Bear paw and Chaosknoten

Download

Bear paw and Chaosknoten without text

Download

Cat paw scratching the Chaosknoten

Download

Computer mouse and knot inside the Bern coat of arms

Download

Bern coat of arms as part of a computer mouse

Download

Bear paw scratching the Chaosknoten

Download

Bear paw scratching a five string Chaosknoten

Download

Bear paw scratching a five string Chaosknoten (mirrored)

Download

Bear scratching a shorter Chaosknoten

Download

Cosin 2015

2015-06-01T00:00:00+02:00

The Cosin is an annual conference organized by the Swiss Chaos Computer Club. Talks, discussions and workshops cover topics of technical- as well as policitcal and cultural nature.

This year, the event takes place from June 12th to 14th at the Villa Ritter in Biel/Bienne. The schedule can be found online, as can further information on the website.

CCCamp Swiss Village call for donations

2015-05-06T00:00:00+02:00

Every fourth year, the Chaos Computer Club organizes a big camp, the Chaos Communication Camp or CCCamp. The last camp was in 2011, so the next one will take place this summer from 13th to the 17th August 2015. The wiki contains all the informations on the camp.

The camp is organized in villages, which are organized by the respective communities. For the CCC-CH village at the upcoming camp, we would like to rent a big tent. The tent will be our village center, a place to tinker and hack, to meet, to discuss, cook and eat. Those who were with us at the last camp know what I mean. The tent will also provide protection from the weather. Beside the tent, we'll also need tables and benches (or chairs) for people to sit and work on.

The final prices for the tents have not been announced by the CCC yet. Based on last camps prices we are able to provide a rough estimate of around 900 Euro.

Everybody can decide for themselves whether they want to help pay for the costs. I do however think that it would be nothing but fair if everyone who plans to be part of the village, would pay their part. We don't want to pinpoint an amount, but we recommend that everyone pays 35-45 Chfr. The tent needs to be payed in advance, so we'd rather people paid sooner than later.

Those who want to help pay for the tent, please send their money via electronic transfer to the following bank account (the village is organized by the CCC-CH, which is why their bank account is used to collect the money):

Bank:                PostFinance
Account number:      60-605459-2
IBAN:                CH54 0900 0000 6060 5459 2
Name:                CCC Schweiz
Reason for payment:  "CCC Camp Zelt"

(Do not forget to enter the reason for payment!)

If you would like your name to be listed publicly, add the following line to the reason for payment:

+public

We'll inform the mailing lists as soon as the targeted amount has been reached.

New website

2015-05-03T00:00:00+02:00

One of the requirements for the Chaostreff Bern's website is, that it has to be static, meaning, that no code should be run on the server. All pages delivered to the user have to exist in their final form on the server. The reason why we want that is, to protect the server. With a static website, there is no PHP interpreter to be attacked and no database to be injected.

The first website we had was written by hand and didn't have any CSS or Javascript. Because of that, the website di not exactly look great. It also wasn't very practical to add new content to it. Especially adding in multilanguage support made linking the menu a pain.

There are a lot of tools that can generate static websites. Tobias who was already familiar with Pelican, wrote our website from scratch, using Pelican. The new website looks a lot better than the old one, but also brings with it a bunch of new features. Writing articles in multiple languages is now easer. The website is now also optimized for mobile devices and it features RSS and Atom feeds as well as an iCal calendar.

A big thanks to Niklaus for all the content, to Tobias for writing the new site, to Strix for providing the RSS icon and to Cirrax for the hosting.

Keysigning, retrospect

2015-04-30T00:00:00+02:00

As planned, the keysigning took place last Thursday (2015-04-23). Of the eleven people who had registered, ten turned up. By now, most of the participants have signed all keys and sent the signatures out.

As you'd expect from the Chaos Computer Club, we caused a bit of chaos, too. Reading out the long fingerprint in the restaurant's full garden was rather antertaining. Also, because there was not enough room, we were unable to execute the ordered process of identifying each other. Instead, we formed a wild huddle of people all trying to identify each other.

For future parties there's room for improvement. The process of sending in the key information to sign up for the party has not worked out all that great. I forgot to update one of the keys on the list, despite the owner reminding me to do so. Another key was not displayed propperly (luckily in such a way that it did not pose any security risk). The CCC-ZH has, in the past used a software that automates and simplifies the sign-up process through the use of a web interface. For future events, we'll consider this as a solution. I also had to learn, that sending UTF-8 attachments in an email is not the best of idea. Various email clients would either change the encoding when saving the attachment, or they'd try to reformat it, both of which alter the fingerprint of the file.

A big thanks to everyone who participated in the keysigning

First meeting, retrospect

2015-04-12T00:00:00+02:00

The first meeting took place on Thursday, 2015-03-12. For everyone who was not present, I'll recapitulate the meeting.

Since I had no idea whatsoever about how many people would come to the first meeting, I reserved eight seats at the restaurant. It turns out that this was not nearly enough. We ended up being 25 people, causing quite a bit of chaos. Awesome! Luckily, the staff was relaxed about the situation and handled the situation well.

Thanks to everyone who came to the meeting for the amazing night. Hopefully we can continue strong!