Bloghorn

For the last month or so, I’ve been working on an ASP program that displays data from an SQL database that, until now, was done in a command line interface that looked far too confiusing to be functional. However, there were a few barriers to completing this assignment:

• I’ve never coded ASP before.
• I’ve never connected to a Microsoft SQL server through a server side app before.
• I had no idea what the structure of the database was.

So essentially, 50% of my time has been spent learning ASP, 25% figuring out where stuff is in the database, and 23% actually coding the system. A system which went into beta testing this afternoon.

After writing and debugging close to 3,000 lines of code in a language I’ve never seen before, watching as the intended users interact with the system was one of the best feelings of accomplishment I’ve felt. And what’s even better was, except for a few minor feature requests, there wasn’t a single complaint. It seems like everyone naturally figured out how to work the system, and it displayed exactly what they needed. All that’s left is some tweaking next week, writing 2 more pages, and I can hand it off to the local IT department to maintain as I trudge back to Penn State.

5 more days of work, and then I’m free for the rest of the summer (or at least what’s left of it).

HOPE, the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, was this weekend, and it was amazing.

Cat and I started out from New Rochelle about 7:30 AM, and took a cab to the Hotel Pennsylvania. We dropped our bags off at the baggage storage place in the basement, and headed off to the conference. At registration, I mentioned I was a speaker, and the people promptly handed me a pretty blue lanyard for my badge, instead of the regular black one Cat recieved.

Badge from HOPE

We headed upstairs and hung around in the hammocks for a while, setting up the RFID badges and talking to a group of HAM radio operators that we were talking to on the conference’s simplex frequency (147.525 FM). It was pretty fun to talk to the 20 or so HAMs that attended, seeing what they were up to and checking out the stuff they were building.

For most of the conference, we were bouncing from one talk to another. Here’s a list of all the talks I attended:

• The Attendee Meta-Data Project
• Bagcam – How Did TSA and/or the Airlines Manage to Do That to Your Luggage?
• Citizen Engineer – Consumer Electronics Hacking and Open Source Hardware
• Featured Speaker – Kevin Mitnick
• Featured Speaker – Adam Savage
• Featured Speaker – Jello Biafra
• From a Black Hat to a Black Suit – How to Climb the Corporate Security Ladder Without Losing Your Soul
• A Hacker’s View of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
• Hacking the Mind, Hacking the Body: Pleasure
• The Last HOPE Closing Ceremonies
• Maintaining a Locksporting Organization and Breakthroughs in the Community
• “Off the Grid” Voice/Data Communications
• Packing and the Friendly Skies – Why Transporting Firearms May Be the Best Way to Safeguard Your Tech When You Fly
• Social Engineering
• Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM) – A Brief Primer on the Arcane Art and Science of electronics Surveillance and “Bug” Detection

We also spent a fair bit of time bouncing between the lockpicking village (Cat was determined to figure out how to pick locks) and sitting around in the hammocks. There was a chatroom-like app running the whole conference where attendees could type short messages and they would appear on the bottom of the big screen on the 2nd floor. It was pretty entertaining, especially late at night.

Me speaking at HOPE

My talk went off fairly well. At first I couldn’t get the notes to display on my laptop, but I decided it was better to get started and do it off the top of my head than to worry about getting the notes in the right format. According to the RFID badges, there were at least 75 people in the room, but taking into account for the percentage with RFID enabled, I’d put the estimate closer to 100. Everyone in the audience seemed interested, and asked some really good questions. And despite not having my notes handy, on later reflection, I hit every point I wanted to make.

On Sunday, I went and took the General class upgrade exam for my amateur radio license, and to my surprise, I passed! So I am now (for the time being) KC2QCY/AG, at least until I get the license in the mail.

Cat soldering together a TV-B-Gone

Me and Cat also built our own TV-B-Gones, those adorable little contraptions that turn off TVs from across the room. Cat had fun with hers in the TGIFriday’s in Penn Station, turning off the TVs around the bar and pissing off some pretty inebriated folks. No one suspected the cute, innocent girl in the corner, though. Wonder why…

One last link, this time from the closing ceremonies. Trust me, it’s worth the click.

In short, it was one of the greatest weekends of my life, and I can’t wait to do it again in 2010 at The Next HOPE. And this time, I’m dragging more friends along. I can see it now, the Penn State posse…

Here’s the original announcement on the HOPE Wiki:

NYC Taxi Presentation announcement

Here’s the PDF of the presentation and the audio:

NYC Taxi Presentation

NYC Taxi Presentation: HOPE Audio

NYC Taxi Presentation: HOPE Video

Purchase DVD of video from 2600 website

Here’s the main source, “Taxi 07: Roads Forward”

Download PDF eBook

Articles mentioning the presentation:

• Penn State: IST Student Examines New York City Taxi System
• C|net: HOPE Conference highlights everyday hacking
• C|net: 2600 HOPE conference bringing hacking to New York City
• The Last HOPE, Part 4 of4

As soon as the clock strikes 5 PM tomorrow, I’m off with Cat to pick up our passes for HOPE, so we can beat the rush on the registration table that’s bound to happen on Friday morning. After that, the next thing you’ll probably see posted is the presentation post, with my slides, and probably the audio (after the presentation is over).

Speaking of the presentation, I really feel indebted to all the people at work who went out of their way to help me with this presentation. I can’t thank them enough for the time, effort and patience they displayed in helping a lowly intern be able to present on a topic as controversial as this. I’ve probably inconvenienced more than a few people in the process of preparing for Friday, and to them I apologize, and extent my heartfelt appreciation for their patience.

However, despite having help from the TLC, all the research, figures, and images in this presentation will be from public sources, such as the New York Times, the TLC website, and the Taxi 07: Roads Forward book published in December 2007. I’m going to try to link to as many of the sources I’ve used as possible in the post, but the bulk will already be referenced in the presentation. This presentation is designed to be an introduction to the NYC taxi system for out-of-towners, as well as a discussion on the privacy concerns in the “GPS” system implemented last year, and as such there will be no big surprises. Everything I’m presenting has already been said, I’m just gluing the pieces together.

One last thing to keep in mind is that I’m not an actual TLC employee. Technically, I’m a “consultant” working for ComSys, the company JP Morgan is using to place and pay all the former Bear Stearns interns. As such, I’m not a spokesman for the commission (although how you’d get the idea that I was, me wearing a black t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, I don’t know), just an individual interested in the way the system works. Just like any other hacker presenting this weekend.

That said, I think I’ve put together an informative, entertaining, and interesting 30-45 minute presentation, with a lot of stuff the average person doesn’t think about, and I’m looking forward to standing up in the Turing room at 8 PM and seeing where the night takes me. But hopefully not too far from my notes!

73, and I’ll see you in NYC!

When the Taxi and Limousine Commission heard that I wanted to present about the GPS system at a hacker convention, a system that has already caused more than a few lawsuits, they were none too happy, and wanted to throw around the weight of the non-disclosure agreement I signed to its fullest extent*. However, after weeks of working with Constituent Affairs and the legal department, I’ve finally cleared the presentation to be used at HOPE. I’ll be doing some extra tweaking, but for the most part, it looks really good.

In other news, I finally broke down and bought an iPod touch. The iPhone has been calling me all summer, and I was very tempted to get it, but when someone on SA was selling their old touch, and with firmware 2.0 around the corner, I couldn’t resist. So for around $200, I have a 16 GB iPod touch with all the functionality of a iPhone, minus the cell connection, and I’m very pleased with the results. I’m already pulling my gmail by IMAP with it, and it’s really quite nifty.Now if only it had a WiFi radar app, like NetStumbler, I’d be set!

*[edit] Had wanted to, but were nice enough to try to get it to an acceptable state. At no point did they actually say “no”, but they never quite said “yes” until yesterday.