E2: Bogdan

The Power Hackers series continues with Bogdan Ciuca, builder of the 1950s era TV with volume / channel knobs that control Netflix, the hacker behind the Netflix Socks that detect when you fall asleep and pause your show, and even a coffee grinder that’s being upgraded to support the HTCPCP for over the internet coffee makery!

Transcript:

[Music]
bogdan cracking me up offscreen
all right i have to tell everybody thank
you for the sub thank you for the
follows i don't even know what's going
on here toaster on fire last
miles going for a four month sub all
sorts of records this is just
nuts we have power hacker extraordinaire
bogdan tonight now bogdan is the kind of
guy
who when i came along and said i'm gonna
go throw like netflix on the original
nintendo he's like 80s
whatever i'm going back to the start of
television i'm going to go to the 60s
with a tube
and i'm going to put netflix on that so
guy i will see you there
and so without further ado because boy
he really did something pretty awesome
there
bogdan how are you feeling tonight
i'm feeling good thanks all right well
we have them here up on the screen uh
last miles is telling us that we have
a raid incoming of about 50 let me know
when
uh well go when there you go we're up on
the screen so
um you are live that was a picture of
your basement
earlier tonight that was that was where
you're you're broadcasting from your
hacker paradise what what is that
yeah uh hacker paradise basements are
not very common in this part of
california but uh yeah we have
this old house and uh got this little
sub basement for like utility like water
heater
softener thing nice formed it into a
little hacker paradise like
i did not have a yeah i had no basement
actually yeah when i was when i was
living in california you know i did
that is strange i never even thought
about that but um
for those of you who do like to have a
drink bogdan and i both decided
tonight's gonna be a wine night so
cheers to everybody um enjoy hydrate do
whatever you like
yes hk cupcake uh who you actually know
as the wife of
the hacker from last week alex
hmm cheers and just in honor of you by
the way bogdan i threw
look at this glass this is this is a
legit
wow yeah that's awesome that's in honor
of you
so i i i went and dug it out like just
and actually that you know it's funny
that i i mentioned that because that
also in your honor i don't know if you
know about this
a little surprise i have for you tonight
this is not just a great shirt
this is a special grey shirt what what
what that's awesome do you do you
remember
what this came from i don't i you were
there you were definitely there that is
akira
nice yeah that can you tell them what
akira i mean
what is akira um you mean like the code
name or the actual
what is where did this shirt come from
i'm trying to jog my memory because like
the akira name is like so
muddied with oh well let me jog let me
jog there was there was some
there was some web so for those of you
at home uh
bogdan was on the web team when i first
joined netflix and
you you didn't did you start on the web
team at netflix
um yeah i did a little stint on xbox one
but uh yeah it was
primarily the web team and yeah okay
akira webb yes
yeah yeah akira now by the time i came i
came a bit
after you when did you join you you
joined during quickster or
before that no no no i was definitely
after quickster it was uh 2014.
oh so you actually came after me yeah no
it must have been 2013 because i felt
like you
you had already been there forever i
mean because everyone who's there
when you join a company you feel like
it's forever right you know
clearly they were there in the beginning
so
the roof doesn't even have a pool what
yeah uh wow
okay they're having a little fun in
there
i have not yeah true fact i have not
actually watched the movie hackers and i
feel like i'm just i'm not a hacker i
guess i
you haven't watched hackers i haven't i
haven't you've watched hackers though
oh come on they have their sprinkler
system and the high school hooked up to
like a computer and like
i approve of that for some reason they
hacked in and they set off the
sprinklers because
i i approve of that i do and you
actually are
something of a hardware aficionado
speaking of integration with hacking and
sprinklers
and i mean what do you do with all those
tools and
the esp magic that you first you're the
first one to introduce me to this
actually
um yeah i mean uh
you want to cut to the other video ah
let's not do that yeah
you know what here i'll just show it to
you
this little nightlight thing is from
ikea oh yeah and i put a little esp
chip in there and try to crack it open
um but basically all it does it's really
dumb
it's uh and this is actually really
useful i made this a couple years ago
um oh yeah this looks like a fire hazard
[Laughter]
not not for work stuff right which is
probably fine yeah
that's totally fine i'm sure it's
totally insulated by
by electrical tape which is you know
fine right oh yeah
rgb led on it um
[Music]
and uh all it does is really just ping
like the local
uh air quality service to tell me if
it's like good
moderate bad unhealthy okay i mean it
changes the colors based on what the air
quality is and
over the past few weeks here it's been
red
or purple red in california and that has
to do with
all the fun with the fires right yeah so
just today
it turned green this for the first time
in a couple weeks just for
a brief moment we got a little bit of
green
so well i can hand you today i can tell
you that the east coast
welcomes you gladly anytime you uh want
to
not be on fire but electrical tape
insulation absolutely up to code
nightshade dude says
nightshade dude you you're gonna get
banned you keep this up tonight
just unmod me because i didn't watch
hackers by the way just just to let you
know
last miles by the way karabia is
the ultimate greybeard so last miles uh
he he hacked some he actually just built
like an armed version of debian with
like the latest like
he was in a special kind of hell i made
sure to buy him beer like i'm like
listen
drop by the stream i'm buying the beer
tonight so i dropped him a bunch of bits
and
you know i think he's feeling a little
bit better now so
all right let's let's get down to
hackery when did you
so at 20 2013 2014 you started
you started at netflix but when did you
go to your first hack day
um actually it was like i think it was
my first week actually um
this designer sam horner um he uh
he approached like hey you want to do
hackman like i have no idea what the
hell this
is i'm like yeah let's do it um and that
was a fitbit hack
um and that was like like this is
awesome i
i joined netflix and i made all this
press because some designer dude came up
to me and wanted to do this
thing um so yeah that that was like my
first
uh intro to hack day it was amazing and
that was the fitbit
was the first one yeah okay i i totally
put these in the wrong order i guess we
should have
cut to why don't we cut to the fitbit
first then why
yeah is that is that the right thing to
do i mean i
feel like yes we'll just wing it
let's just yeah all right you know what
we're gonna do that we're gonna this is
actually what bogdan is talking about
this is
netflix staffers hack fitbit to detect
sleep and pause videos so what what is
this
what is this fitbit doing you had a
fitbit sam had a fitbit
you guys said i'm having a problem
remembering where the hell i am
in a episode or what how does this work
yeah so like the whole point of it was
like hey
and i won't do the english accent
because you'll probably slap me
afterwards but
yeah feel free that's okay that's that's
more glasses of wine for that one
it was like you know you watch netflix
and you
fall asleep and then you wake up like
the next morning you're already like six
episodes in like you know would it be
nice if it just like
paused where you were and then you can
pick up the next morning
um so that's where the inspiration came
from um
and for this hack uh like all hacks um
we didn't quite actually get the hacking
the fitbit to do it what we wanted it to
do
like all that had to fake the video okay
well i didn't say all hacks most hacks
yeah no most taxes
that one actually worked uh for the
brief moment
yes that's fantastic
yeah but no that's how this this this
whole thing happened was uh it's like
wouldn't it
be cool if we just uh did this um and
then yeah it would be cool but like
those articles they were all
uh kind of you know editorial
creative freedom with uh you know how we
got it i mean
this is cbs news this is a bastion of
editorial quality here i mean this i
never made cbs news this is pretty
awesome for like you know a first time
on a hack day
i mean isn't it it is it is pretty
awesome
like at the time like oh my god we're
like getting so much press from this and
i
i took a bunch of screenshots of like
reddit hacker news like all these other
uh
bookmarked a bunch of uh news articles
i remember sam was like oh i sent a
bunch of links to my mom
i'm like oh that's cool um so yeah it
was pretty exciting
that is sweet it took me a long time
well first of all i never made cbs news
but
that did you actually win for this i
know i have to ask i mean did you
actually
so this was a losing hack this was a
losing half but in my book it won
because we got like so much press out of
it and i feel
which i feel the same way i feel
absolutely the same way you know i'm
biased on that
but i i actually saw this i thought this
was
super cool and in terms of the fact that
well actually you know what let's just
let's watch this amazing video let's
let's oh no oh can we see this in like
five years
can we are we are we allowed to just
pull that up
is that public
netflix can smoothly fade back audio and
offer on-screen prompts for when the
user may awaken
looks like you fell asleep
when the user returns to netflix netflix
oh we have breaking bad
prompts and options so a user can
continue to watch their playback oh that
space in the s-1
oh man oh you're on tv at this oh man i
don't want to talk about that space that
space is so
wrong i'm sorry that's that's trigger
you should have told me it was a trigger
warning
it's like i i have some serious issues
with that space you do not put spaces in
time codes okay i don't care that
normally you put a space after a colon
it's a time code it's like a biblical
reference it's book all right whatever
i'm not going to get on that again
all right well the story that space
doesn't belong there but you know what
we had just run the autoplay feature so
it actually started playing
every so you would play in it you'd be
watching a show and then you got to the
end of the episode it would play the
next episode we had just made that a
product launch
and we didn't know how long to run that
like do you run that for a show do you
run that for the rest of
life do you do you just keep playing
forever and i remember that we had a ton
of calls
coming in on customer service for people
asking where did i leave off on my show
and that's not good right i mean you
know we're paid for every customer
service call that comes in so
they're all calling in going i was
watching like you know
something i was watching brady bunch
last night and
i don't know which episode i was on so
can you just take netflix and rewind it
to that place you know and so we would
you know run in the back room and rewind
the tape and you know that that
basically was how we handled right yeah
so so we didn't know where to stop
it and you had this innovative way of
knowing how to stop it we i mean this
basically cut right to the heart of the
matter
how many episodes are the right number
of episodes and that's been a meme all
over the internet like endlessly like
like you know it's we call it the post
play interrupter the autoplay
interrupter it shows like
you're going and again i was on tv so i
know the exact part of the ui this was
but
it would show you know are you still
watching
you know yes or no and that was our only
way of like not
playing through you know 10 seasons of a
telenovela like
the only way we could know was we had to
like stop and ask you which of course
everyone said
netflix why are you judging me
you know that but but you had the real
answer here but you didn't stop there
this was
actually something that people could
build themselves wasn't it
um kind of uh so at the time no but then
later on we did uh
i think a marketing push with some um uh
agency
where they created some socks based on
this hack
real socks so you can you know
off-the-shelf arduino components sensors
all that kind of stuff
and i'm not sure where the socks you
know what i don't remember
i mean well it's the socks or you're
cozy you're at home you got the socks
yeah but we have some netflix branded
stuff i don't think we actually sold
anything like that i think this is it i
see the socks in the picture yeah i mean
they're
yeah in partnership with netflix there's
the pinot noir we're drinking
we're drinking wine tonight they have
the wine colored socks
i didn't put two and two together that's
appropriate
[Laughter]
yes and so we actually had
the full like and then if people wanted
to make this themselves we actually
you you built a website for this this is
off the legit netflix domain i have the
link right here
i i it got built makeit.netflix.com
i don't have a makeit.netflix.com i
should have done a make it done netflix
there's the netflix socks netflix sucks
did not build it
it it looks very look at this look at
these components here
look at this look at this what is this
there's a heat sink
there's there's this looks like a legit
proto board here i
i'm i'm seeing it i have to say that
that
those are the socks part socks part
clever i'm going to give you a part
socks of park clever so
yeah this one actually worked
differently this one uh worked only with
a tv if i recall
um i didn't design this one um
but yeah using the ir blaster if i
recall correctly and it just pauses your
tv
for the stream yeah and i think last
miles is correct
oh no sorry will c dot co dot canada i'm
guessing
i'm guessing it was esp868266 based
uh i don't for the socks no
it wasn't um it was just i think it was
a
some sort of arduino board um
crap
sorry by the way
uh last miles i don't know what's going
on with your audio i think everybody
else
everybody else is here in this right oh
it's already we know nano that's what it
was i think arduino nano
okay yeah i think i think chat they're
hearing it i don't know why it's not
coming through for you last miles i
don't know what to tell you there
um so just i mean
chad if you really can't hear it let me
know i mean like if it
okay audios all right we're getting
we're getting multiple audios are fine
so i
i i know you don't normally reboot a
linux box last miles but you might have
to do it this time
okay um i did drop the link in there so
if those of you will want to build socks
at home
yep feel free go right ahead this is the
bag it's one of these guys
oh that looks exactly right yeah
it looks like it i never actually built
this one
yeah oh that's by the way wubba dub dub
that's
alex by the way so
yeah long time no see yeah um well
we actually had let's see so that that
you didn't stop there i mean you were a
monster you got a little taste of press
you got the real win you got you were
ready to do
some serious hacking after that
and then for this one well i i think you
threw down
i think at that point you saw my nes
hack which i also lost
i don't i don't it might have been the
same time as the socks i'm not sure if
those were the same hack day or not but
um we then went on we did the nes and
what were you thinking when you saw
netflix on the original nintendo
i thought it was a pretty badass i still
do it like no but you went better than
that
you did me one you did me one better
uh yeah sure hooking up uh you know a
a tv board to a tv isn't uh
that genius i i felt okay i guess i
guess i'm projecting here because i felt
it was that genius because
just just arrow-wise if looking at this
80s nintendo and going i got
how did you get that tell it first of
all tell us what the television is
need to bring up
the netflix yeah but you know what let's
let's to get in the mode here this is
what bogdan presented
at the next hack day and i have to tell
you all his videos
are a million times better than any of
my videos i i got this here just for all
of you
so let's ladies and gentlemen you are
about to witness the most exciting new
development in the history of television
introducing the netflix vhf now you can
watch
netflix on your philico predicta the
most advanced television of our time
and all the credit belongs to netflix
how did you engineers the feed simple
knobs to choose from thousands
look at the knob turning look at this
knob just look at the picture quality
that's all editing that's legit netflix
that that's playing on there
you had a 4x3 aspect ratio i remember
you worked with evan on this
thinking company that's the best that
ever worked i don't even think it worked
this well during this week leave it to
frank underwood oh man hardware hacks on
stage or a nightmare
it's going out
[Music]
it's beautiful that it was rolling that
that that's perfect
like what do you mean that that speaks
to me that you could not have shown a
better thing
than the fact i could not hold it i'm
going to have a seizure
like crazy we got raided last
miles coming in with a party of 41.
thank you last
miles i just showed netflix from
bogdan here on a 60's era fill code
predicta
knob turning legit like that that but
50's 50's air 50's there what am i
thinking 60's with that
hello raiders i hope all of you are
doing great i saw a part of lastmiles
stream i really hope he went out and
bought beer with those bits
because you know cheers to the raiders
and cheers to bogdan
that's cheers and i'm out of wine i
gotta get
oh if you gotta if you do i mean that
please you know that
do you have a refill handy is that um i
gotta run upstairs and like the way this
yeah all right okay i'll do that later
we'll risk that later okay so
um anyway coming upstairs is listening i
need some wine
okay someone upstairs is listening
please
there's somebody in the hacker's
paradise down in the basement that is in
need of some wine just just saying just
saying
it's clipping so last miles is dropping
a terrible clip we're going to show that
later
don't don't click that i might have gone
off the rails a little bit last night
um so that is fantastic okay so anyway
raiders welcome and we're gonna we're
gonna show this thing because this
you didn't stop there did you i mean
that they actually
took this this this look at this
beautiful basement i mean this is this
is this is where bogdan's located right
all right oh wow someone upstairs did
here oh
that is magical i gotta learn that for
stream man you know
i had i had to go and get a bottle like
you know what
okay i've got fans upstairs that i i
need fans upstairs okay
wait i'm in the top floor okay now i
don't i don't need fans upstairs
okay all right all right so we're gonna
we're gonna go ahead
and now now we can properly cheers that
so anyway cheers raiders cheers bogdan
cheers
okay so coming from this hacker's
paradise we
we went and took a look behind the
scenes here
and we we saw the vhf
now i dug this up and dropped it on my blog
you've definitely seen this before they
actually wanted your philco predicta
after that hack they saw that hack and
it was so amazing to see netflix on a
50s era television
they're like you got to give us that and
you what did you say to them
i said um it emits x-rays i'm not
or anything like sure and on top of that
it smells weird
uh too bad you can't smell it it's in my
garage now like
guy told me he's like hey we're gonna
present your tv next week i'm like um
okay i'll try to get into my basement
second of all it's been wrapped up in
plastic since i last moved
i you know i i love that you mentioned
that because that is exactly what i've
got right here this is a picture
of the smell-a-vision from jiggityjane
this is actually the original hack like
in pristine
wrapped up condition you know it was
protected it was a very delicate setup i
remember and actually we you cracked it
open
i did yeah you showed it i promised
everyone there would be tubes tonight we
obviously have the tube that's the whole
that tube but i mean look look at these
tubes
they're they're legit tubes down here i
mean this is
tube heaven this is this is running
netflix that
i just hats off to you on that as just a
hell of a hack
that's yeah all right but the smell
but but jane tell it the whole internet
is in there in all those tubes i think
she's probably
right about that probably that i mean
that
that's what's keeping the internet
running i mean i now
i i have a favorite moment from this
particular hack day because
at this point i already knew you you you
had that like stress
like from a person who's built a real
hack and you're not entirely sure if
it's gonna work because it's real and
it's legit
and there's that there's that little bit
of tension you get that day you're like
oh my god like don't roll the cable like
did i check the connections and it was
emitting so much
radiation em radiation that you had both
of the
connections for the knobs wrapped in tin
foil
yep didn't work it didn't work because
it was
it was messing around with the uh with
the rotary encoders like
the it would just like start flipping
through the because we had the rotary
encoders like
um the switcher like uh vertical and
horizontal
yep uh did you hook that up on the tv ui
what was that what was the
microcontroller that was hooked up to
um shoot i don't remember
it's like a it wasn't a pie i think i
think you were already in arduino space
and now yeah with some arduino i can't
remember the board
okay um okay so i actually i think it
was a five
yeah cause we used uh telnet to
how did you actually i mean but if it
was emitting that much
interference how did you like debounce
it to get it to not
like just soup i mean the pie would just
burn out if you put like the kind of
power that's sitting in the back of this
thing i mean
on a pile yeah actually i think
like most of the radiation was going
through the actual rotary encoder
um so it was like uh you weren't even
touching and the thing was just like
emit uh signals and it would pick it up
in the board of the
um the rotary encoder and pass it to the
pi and that's what was like
screwing everything up so yeah it would
bounce
there yeah okay so you did that mostly
in software that's all mostly software
yeah i ran to the same issue with the
teleflix you know because that
same same problem like you know the
contacts on some of this old equipment
like they they bounce they
you know by the time you've like you
really got to watch debouncing but that
this seems like a pro class and
debouncing to get this thing to work
and then you know safety concerns aside
you know people they actually got a
version of this that is sitting in the
lobby
at netflix hq yep yes we got
three of these um three of them yeah we
got three of them
one in hq one in la and one in amsterdam
i could see all but one of them yeah
did you sign these i feel like you
should sign these i mean you should have
signed these you totally should have
signed these i want to sign
all right anyway these these are hard
tvs to get you got this off ebay
everything right on ebay or is this
where do you find one of these
televisions so
my ulti the original one so this one was
custom made so we
uh we commissioned this one to get made
um
and uh so the the three copies all look
the same as this one so the
actual screen is a actually a projector
that projects on the back of it oh okay
this wasn't the focus much safer much
safer
kids can play with it kids could play
with it
okay so but yeah the original one i did
get off of ebay
came from plano texas right wow
that's and i like i like what they did
with the knobs they moved the knobs to
the front
but these look like they can handle a
little bit of action so kids kids can
hit this and it'll
this this looks museum safe so all right
very nice
very nice in there last miles thank you
for gifting a sub to
thunks a lot wow that is just monster i
thought we had to talk about jeff bezos
earlier but
thank you very much much appreciated um
so let's see what do we got that that
was a hell of a hack
and that did the rounds on the internet
i mean i think
i think that was as it should i mean
that was just
fantastic right that was fun i did not
see a lot of hacks like that
after that but you know this there was
you know we did manage to get
i mean i had to put an end to that whole
racing back in time
right i mean that's that that actually
you know what just
i'm going to grab it real fast because i
feel like
what are you doing
oh and he's gone yes i feel like
i feel like you know because when you're
up against competition like this
i mean when you're seeing a phil co
predict even a modern safer
version of it like you know i i felt
like you know i was one step away from
losing forever
so i just thought you know if i ever and
i still hadn't gotten a hack award at
this point
so at that point that is exactly when
we went back to the beginning of
communications and this is the att
telegraph key
hooked up that we hooked up to netflix i
still have the wires on the western
union one
that we could just barely manage to
get to work but and i again same bounce
problem
i it was same issue with the
microcontroller
and we're just analog is is a lost art
these days i mean analog electronics
it's just just a bit of a lost art okay
so
they are calling out making burgers and
barbecue that sounds
great with beer last miles grab me one
analog is art i totally agree okay so
from there we stayed analog though
because
you have something hiding behind you
that
actually hooks now and now some of us
joke about and i want to say it was 418
is it is 418 the actual message
that's that's on the internet i feel
like that's the
i am a teapot yep and
maybe yep i feel like it is the 418 i'm
done
you know what we can we can confirm it
let's let's just take a look we don't
want to mislead
anybody here coding at some guy right
this is the uh
it's actually from the htc pcp
uh but we're going to get to that and
say i am a teapot
http code and that i feel like
is the 418 okay so that originally
came from the hypertext coffee pot
control protocol
because if you need to be able to run
coffee pots over the internet
and check on their status over the htc
pcp
you need rfc and this this is
legitimately
rfc 2324 um
which is the hypertext coffee pot
control protocol
and if you're going to control a coffee
pot over the internet you have to make
sure that it is not a teapot
and that's actually where you know i am
so this
this is where the t yep i'm a team pot
for 418.
this is its original standardization but
you knew this
because you had an actual coffee machine
that got electronified
now it wasn't this was the first step
this was the grinding aspect but
do you have that here for us to see
today i do
you got my show with you i i kind of
would love to see it but
i think we're okay let me um
let me make that larger for everybody to
see
so we're gonna just no i need a haircut
oh my god all right yeah this
that's what all right hold on one second
i just have a
six it doesn't make coffee by the way it
just grinds it
and i'm gonna just cut this over so you
can all see this better
um
this is the grinder here on screen
i'm gonna just stay back from this all
right oh yeah there's a grinder
there's the rotary encoder
so let's say six eight minute grind uh
eight
six too long too long too on let's do uh
uh nine second nine nine second grind
[Music]
this is all because i'm too cheap to get
a grinder with an actual timer in it
so i put one in
and uh using a usb cable can we watch
that
countdown do we have enough can we can
we actually see the countdown on it when
it's going let's
let's do that yeah i i feel
and you use the push button to start it
yeah it's it's simple oh nice
that is just a beauty and then cut
perfect look at that that's just
i mean tell tell us tell us about this
how did you do it
how did i do it um so i actually
used uh the nano there already no nano
for this one so it's not internet
enabled but
i did originally prototype it on esp8266
so
guys we could have had this you know
that one
your end and you know get this going we
are next time
that we we're gonna bring that back
because i feel like that
that needs to happen so we we can let's
cut back to you
let's um
all right and i'm just gonna bring that
back over here so we are that is
that is some legit hackery there i i
i you didn't want to buy it right that
was the thing you channeled it from
there i
didn't want to buy a new grinder
that did proper dosing um so i put a
timer in there
now i i see that the alt f4 stream has
shown up here today and
i think the main question that's going
to be i'm going to just channel
a little esp from him um and i think the
main question that's going to be on his
mind is
is it running javascript uh the esp
no is not running javascript actually so
we don't have any node
mcu there's no no there's no
that alt f4 is going to be very upset
he's got a whole
micro services orchestrator setup quirk
is very cool by the way for those of you
who haven't seen them it's just
but yeah it looks like we're gonna have
to do a little bit of work to get that
to work with
javascript and i have seen him doing a
lot of go streaming as well
so all right but i'm guessing we don't
have go support either but
we could probably craft something in a
systems language but
um last miles we'll see in a little bit
uh
enjoy the beer and burger so we are
going to
aaron berger yeah the alt f4 by the way
is definitely another hacker we're gonna
have to get on on stream at some point
so actually we could all work on our htc
pcp
implementation i feel like that that
that we could get that happening
okay so um that he's gonna want to learn
launch in like a micro service thing so
like it's gonna be nice we're gonna
we're gonna build it a little more
complicated than we than we want
i started a hardware project today
definitely
rust we have some rust trolls that love
to hang out here so i'm not gonna talk
about that
all right so that is a non-conforming
so we're just gonna have to say that
that at the moment is a non-conforming
rfc 2324
implementation but we're we're we're
getting there and we're going to
announce that it's not a teapot
it's actually not a coffee machine
either so i don't know if we have an
error code
i am a coffee grinder i am a coffee
grinder i made 419.
4.19 all right you heard it here first
folks
that's the 419. okay we got to make sure
that's not taken
it seems okay um
so but then you know just i you know
there was there was another great hack
the greatest hack
that i feel that the world never saw and
we did show it briefly last time um
with with alex and carenina but you
actually were part of that team
and that was one of the first times we
got to hacked again i'm sad that we did
not get to do this more often
but i'm gonna i'm just gonna bring that
up because that first and only time guy
i'm still heartbroken
i am still heartbroken i am still
heartbroken the one time we really had
the stars aligned
i remember my cousin was getting married
and i asked him i was like your marriage
is on hack day like
like is there any way you could move it
and then he was not thrilled but anyway
i
i did want to hack my head was in the
game and then you know i
wasn't around for more hack days then
you know everything else happened but
um this is this is it here we have it in
the gallery
this was the the pi ui that we were
both suffering with you remember that we
had that
touch screen this is the clock for those
of you who don't know
the clock was a gift to um
red gerard who was an olympic
snowboarder who
slept through his alarm because he was
binging netflix
the night before and after speaking to
some people on social in our social team
i said you know what we could build a
clock if you can send it to red gerard
and they said oh my god yes that'll be
just amazing
and we'll make a special custom bespoke
netflix clock and so i assembled
the greatest group of hackers that i
could find like i just just what i went
to
right off the top my head i said okay
bogdan alex carenina francois
had his laser cutter i'm like we need to
get in a room and we need to build a
clock now none of us had built clocks
before
you don't have any music for this yeah
it's totally different you know what
you know we're gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna
i'm gonna meet you there we're gonna
we're gonna get a little bit of slow
funk for that
so
the time was a weekend we managed to
hack
all the way through that weekend we had
a touchscreen bug where if you touch
this thing
i have a feeling the music's a little
bit loud
and we just hacked all the way through
this weekend and we just built the clock
and when you touch the screen
to try to like set the numbers because
we were trying to build that like touch
stuff
i remember it like jumped by like a
hundred
or like you know 74 like all sorts of
debounce
crap because we were i was having some
hardware issues
and you hadn't built your grinder yet
and we were just
suffering with it but we did a little
bit of debugging and
we got there the whole team was there
there's bogdan just we were all tired i
mean it was
it was it was a tough weekend but we uh
and then you went off and this is one of
my favorite moments in this hack
and i think i think you need to tell it
so first of all you told us about this
well this was our plate that we put on
the top and i was
miserable at the point where we had that
touch bug but you told us about these
boxes
and oh yeah i don't remember boxes
pelican box okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna
we gotta hear bogdan so i'm gonna have
to turn this back up but um
you what what a pelican box this is
normally for camera equipment
um yeah anything you can customize them
to fit any form you want basically
um but yeah they they look pretty legit
like
straight out of a movie you put anything
in a pelican box it looks official
really important and expensive you got
to put it in there you got to protect it
i mean these things are like bulletproof
well not literally but
uh you know waterproof i throw them in
the ocean
you know they'll they're they'll survive
yes
yes these are they just look really
legit
and we we didn't know if it was going to
be safe enough
in transit but you know it we we did
this this is it packaged up with a
readme we wanted that alice in
wonderland kind of look
and that that was the only one in the
world and actually that's
chilling out right there wondering how
we're going to pack this thing with
francois
you know i i was a little bit skeptical
myself but there there was our original
ui treatment but
by the way this is our just in case you
were binging
we were non-judgmental we were
i wanted to tie it to that fitbit thing
but that didn't really make much sense
right you know the fitbit like if you're
awake or like sleeping because like
you're awake
you're not sleeping i mean this is like
the other end of that so
uh jane no francois actually has that
the laser cutter in his kitchen
so yes he just has a laser cutter in his
kitchen
and um i think i think we caused a few
marital issues with some of our hacks
but
anyway um there were there were
arguments but you know we got through it
and um this but
but this i i still want to focus on
on this part because we had no idea what
to put on this box and then and
you're just sort of chilling there and
you're going you know what and i
couldn't find the picture
try as i might bogdan throws on the
skull cap
and just he goes you know what pulls out
like a
can of red spray paint takes this box
and he goes
i'll be back so you just
you took off what what happened
what happened off screen like i don't i
don't understand
how you got pictures of this uh no yeah
like so francois cut this
uh the stencil with the the laser
printer
sorry uh cutter not printer uh the laser
cutter
um and i ran over to uh some art supply
shop that's now since closed down but
they have the
close enough red um so anyway like rush
back to work
uh we're at the office where everybody's
at um then i'm outside on the lawn
trying not to make a mess of anything um
you have security kind of like running
around
like like the spray paint cam like what
are you doing with this spray paint can
and a pelican box sir you clearly must
be a netflix employee
10 or 11 at night or something like that
so yeah you know it's not in normal
business
or anything yeah with the skull cap yeah
i forgot about that yeah
i don't know how i wish i had that
picture i looked everywhere i looked
everywhere for that picture i could not
find
one without dub you don't happen to have
that picture do he might actually have
the role as well but maybe your contact
security they might have it security
almost definitely has it but it'd
probably be hard to get from security
uh just a quick note uncle bill drone
thank you for the follow much
appreciated
that is awesome that the pelican box is
well known i i didn't know it but you
knew
this was this said one of a kind there's
one in the world
netflix alarm clock i mean this said it
this screamed it i mean and then you got
that
you're worried about there's a little
bit of bleed on the end i was like dude
i've never lettered so well in my life
i don't know yeah i mean it still looks
pretty bad from here
i loved i mean yeah it looks good
but no all right i just wanted to i
remember walking around with wubba dub
dub just like just walking around with
that case i was like you know what i'm
just going to walk around
like like mike myers to it
yeah no i i was look i wish i had
handcuffs that would have been perfect
like i just
just just walk around campus with this
box guy
what's in the box i remember that was
totally awesome
dubs with me we're almost like kind of
like you know i think he's like holding
a multimeter like it just
it looked highly suspect whatever we
were doing
he said what picture to the screen i
there there's a picture
uh no jane i'm not even gonna say that
uh
there is a picture of bogdan in the
skull cap
with the spray can like just i couldn't
find i it just has a
viva la resistance to it like i would
have to believe you
taking foreign doesn't matter which is
the case that does have press
all right you're gonna everyone i'm
sorry you're just gonna have to believe
me
yeah all right and then i had as a last
quick hack uh just gonna show a tiny
little tease you worked again with evan
on this
it was really a power team you evan sam
i mean it was it was some tough
competition until we wanted to join
forces and then i got it wrong
and this was a little bit of mood
lighting again
probably needs the funk probably needs
the funk
the funk you have the funk yeah we're
gonna let the [ __ ] go
so we're just we're gonna pull the punk
and
take a quick look at the hue and this
was a phillips hue
hooked up to netflix changing color
based on what's on screen so as you
would see
like stuff that was happening on screen
it would tell the hue what to do and
the gallery as this color changes you
see everything's changing
i don't know if that stuff's supposed to
be on that whiteboard
i don't know i don't know if you should
all be like
erase that what is that
and it would change as the scenes
changed
[Music]
from within the netflix app perfect any
device that runs
green for the netflix you put him in a
pokemon suit
that was for another hat oh that was
different
[Music]
i think you and me have probably lost
more hacks than
anybody and there's kevin by the way
we're going to we're going to talk to
kevin later but
um so that was just just some great
stuff there is that like what was like
your favorite like
and by the way i'm not biased i'm going
to stop the funk for this one
but i'm not biased what was what was
your favorite hack
like just or actually you know what not
not favorite i'm gonna ask a different
question
what was like the most challenging hack
and you really didn't think it was gonna
work but you managed to get on stage and
it did
um probably the last one that you showed
the hue
that one actually worked uh as expected
it had the wow factor you played live
video
and uh the colors just changed in real
time it was amazing that one was the
best one
that was a late night hack right i mean
you didn't that you didn't just walk
into that one like i remember
you guys were there at like two in the
morning that was like one of the other
people in the office still lacking
yeah it was a pretty late morning yeah
yeah that was early morning
early i had it it wraps around who knows
but
yeah no it was that was a that was a
pretty serious like
night i mean it was but but it worked
you got on stage you showed it it worked
that had to feel good no it felt really
good uh
yeah so it took took a long time i think
the most effort
like with all of these is like cutting
the video and that's where
totally burned the midnight oil on i was
like okay this works now
let's make the video i gotta submit it
like within two hours because
then it won't count um and then i don't
think you ever touched on this but like
the most stressful part about it is
you had two minutes to present this
thing so you had i did not two minutes
before
uh you know you had two minutes while
the the current uh presenters are
presenting
um and they had two minutes like behind
the scenes to try to get everything set
up and then wheel it out
um and then you have to get it working
within two minutes because it's a hard
cut off like
two minutes you can't get it up you
can't nope they don't okay
no they don't get off yeah pull you off
get a long cane and everything pull you
right off yeah they take you right
michael spiegelman does a good job of
moving people along like
as traditionally he will say that like
okay well you know i know you
like killed yourself building this hack
but you know you know your time
next time you know i mean gotta prepare
better i mean and it is
it is tough to get through that in two
minutes i mean this
that but i do love like one of my
favorite comments here and i i
you know it was
i i lost it oh damn it there was a
there was a uh there was a product
request on one of these videos and i i
lost it but
they were basically saying like could
you please
make this into the product like could
you please support
uh yeah we had a lot of chatter about
that one
um like you make like a chrome extension
we're like
no no it's a lot of work
that's another thing for me to support
and you got to support it
it's like it was fun it was a hack and
even that like it's not all fun it's
like as as our friend tom likes to say
it's type 2
fun you know it's it's not like type 1
yeah it's not type one like pleasure and
having fun fun like it's it
hurts you know it it like you're
very tired you are viscerally worn out
at the end of the session you don't even
you're delirious you know it
but you feel the sense of accomplishment
and it's wonderful when it like
especially when it comes together but
even when it doesn't come together it's
kind of like you know i did that like i
really put my all out there and
he calls that type 2 fun so
yeah i am more of an artist than a
hacker so
you know i think i think your hacking is
an art
i would say but okay so what's
what's like and i know i'm afraid to ask
this question i wrote it down but i'm
afraid to ask it because wubba dub dub
is here and he's going to remember that
i asked it but oh no
what what was the worst hack
moment like for you like
in this in this string of hacks like
like not doesn't have to be just these
and it could be anything at netflix
where
just you thought you had it maybe it
wasn't working you know just
that it doesn't always work right some
of this stuff's not easy to do
no yeah i think the worst one was
probably the the tv that
that one was just nerve-wracking i wish
i had a i don't know if we have a
picture of this but i just
really vividly remember it like wheeling
the tv down the sky bridge
oh yeah over to the elevators going down
like every little
bump would like just knock something out
of the tv and i remember
so sensitive i remember seeing you and
the crew
walking and i just i wanted to block for
you i just i was like you know what i'm
just gonna like
make sure that no one's in the way like
i'm just gonna like this thing looks so
fragile it clearly
was like a labor of love i mean it was a
ton of work and it just
yeah it was bad like you know the two
minutes that we talked about earlier
like just waiting there like i couldn't
get it to work
until like maybe a minute through like
uh while we were on like
um wait did i present this one anyway
like a minute through like it wasn't
working
um then i finally got it to work and
that was just like the
most uh that's amazing nerve-wracking
experience like this is gonna flop and
like
like all the work just kind of went
nowhere at least there's a video
um so the video is always the same i
remember one woman on stage
starting her presentation and then her
apple watch was
screaming that her heart rate was
approaching like heart attack
level and she just showed it on camera
and walked off the stage like
i mean like i don't remember that one
it's very intense
moment it was it was it was at the la
studio hack day but oh
i missed it yeah she i i was like my
heart went out to her i was like man
that is
good on you get up there you know that
just yeah
the hackers need a salute so all right
um a little bit of advice so to anybody
who really wants to get
into hacking what would be one piece of
hardware
that you would recommend that they pick
up and
you know get familiar with gives them a
lot of options and you know just opens
up the space and you know
something not too expensive like so not
a computer i mean let's let's assume you
have a computer but
like what would you recommend what was
some one of your favorite like learning
tools that
was you know had that hacked sense of
like creativity and fun
yeah so i think if you want to bomb like
in the in between like you know extreme
hacks
where you have to you know roll your own
assembly code versus like
something easier easier like on the
right to kind of get into the space to
encourage
the younger hacker getting into it um
honestly i think that i'm gonna plug
this again but esp8266
is like uh really decent because it
gives you like you know wi-fi
so you have network capability on it
there's a a
ton of uh resources online for it yeah
um
so like there's you you use it the
arduino
um ide so that's uh you know that's also
like a
step in your favor so they make a ton of
development boards based on this chipset
um
uh depending on which chipset you get uh
or development board you have like a ton
of
uh gpio to plug into that's in
yep um and cheap so if you grow it up
it's okay right because yeah if you blow
it up yeah and it's that's the other
thing that's super cheap
like the cheapest variations that you
can find are like the esp-01
it doesn't give you many gpio but it's a
tiny one that i showed you in
this one this night light uh
hack that i did um that one is super
cheap you can find it on amazon for like
two or three dollars a piece that's
probably even cheaper if you buy in bulk
if you had that kind of need on on
alibaba or whatever
but i actually i got an 8266 um
and it was it was a three pack for 12
bucks so
they're they're crazy i mean yeah you
got ripped off on that one i got that
a little hard to set the development kit
up but the arduino
it's you could do arduino stuff i i
hooked up um
micro python it is javascript friendly
so even for the alt-f4 stream like he's
he's gonna be happy there
so but just pound for pound that's
probably your best like
hack like like something that'll like
get you motivated on hacking and like
you know yeah
i mean i still use it now i still turn
to it and like i have these
random ideas in my head i'm like i'm i'm
gonna go to this again easy to prototype
with
not not expense if you blow it up so
you're not afraid of it and
everything else yeah and i burned a few
of them out just because you know i try
to
solder like some pins on the esp01 and
just kind of like fry the whole thing
like well
i guess i'll yep it works happy
soldering yeah
like you know some people on this stream
have issues with um that actually yeah
dub and yeah and karadina would
constantly comment to be like oh guy
please don't solder like just
you know we'll yeah don't stop her guy
got it we'll take care of it
wait can i show you my original hack
yeah like
uh so my okay this is gonna really date
me a little bit but
my my calculator oh yes
the ti 80 what's up what is the ti 85 85
yes z80 based yeah z80 based
um i'm dating myself started with like
assembly that's
me too that's that was one of the early
assembly platforms for me yeah
because it had that hack you see this
switch back here
oh yeah turbo switch turbo mode
terrible it would totally drain your
battery but like the processor speed
just like sped up by like two or three x
or something
you
chat can i get an f for that please like
that
can i just can i just get an f in the
chat i i that
that is overclocking a ti-85 i feel like
that's that
so when when yes it worked it totally
did i i
i think that's amazing um i was gonna
ask if there was anything you wanted to
show that you
that that didn't come up here but i feel
like that ti 85
i mean that that's already how is that
do you have do you have any
anything i don't want to um
i don't know yeah you know i kind of
wish i stuck with like more of that
hardware hacking early on like i didn't
i didn't really pick that up until later
but
i made like i think a nice 20 bucks at
the time overclocking some
some other uh friends calculators
hey buddy i'll go totally uh set up your
your ti-85 you want that to be super
fast
um what did i say i was going to show
you
uh oh the we have the curing
oh the uv turing station yeah um
the other camera yeah yeah let me uh let
me put that on
um hold on a sec let me let me just get
that
crop fixed real quick and this
needs it all right let's see
all right yeah uv curing station so this
is for my
uh sla 3d printer requires uv curing
um and i had a box cardboard box
originally with a uv
light on it with a timer actually didn't
even have a timer at first i would just
kind of like use a stopwatch to do the
thing anyway i got lazy i'm like oh wait
i i'm gonna make a proper box out of
this um so i made this uv carrying
station
i think you buy it nice times of
in terms of like uh money and uh
time or whatever anyway here still using
like you know the
the same timer oh yeah the rotary those
rotary recorders i'm obsessed with those
they're great
and then you have it on the seven
segment like multi
seven segment those are so nice yeah so
i really like it
simple just one control push the button
oh yeah there you go
that what's running the rotary encoder
in there
uh you mean that turntable thing no i
mean uh what what um
so you have the rotary encoder how are
you yeah it's uh
the arduino nano oh okay yeah um
we decided the reuse of what i already
did for the grinder timer so it's pretty
much the same thing
just hooked up to a uv light instead
nice
yeah very simple turntable is
uh solar powered so the light powering
it
from the the uv light just turns a
little turntable
oh that is great
yeah it actually is moving yeah it was
mainly a uh an exercise in trying to
design my own
box for this thing to 3d print so that
was really the
the why i wanted to build it because
yeah i could have just used a cardboard
box and
ended this whole thing but um right yeah
it's more fun to do it this way do you
actually have the t can we see the tv is
it visible
while we're on tv no it's in my garage
i mean i could i can run out there and
no you don't need one
right i mean it's up to you i mean that
but you have the pictures
and we got the picture that's right okay
thanks
okay all right yeah don't don't eat
dinner yet i still want to eat dinner
that yeah okay we're gonna we're gonna
leave we're gonna let that go then
um cam what's up we're actually we're
we're starting to wrap up here
we're hello cam but you know we're we're
getting ready to go
i think i think we're getting to our
night night i'm gonna just cut
that back um while we got it
to this thing so
that should be better yeah it totally is
okay so
um we have that i mean
that was an epic journey i i i feel
epic sized is there a word for that
it popped i i don't even know how to
conjugate that
different yeah i i yeah epoch's time
yeah
whatever there's wine in it
that is just thank you for taking us on
this journey that's much appreciated
yep that is fantastic my pleasure
yes and uh let's see we had the yeah i
think that's everything i had on the
list we talked through
all that wonderful stuff do you want to
give these boys girls and everybody else
a uh
little message here about hacking or
feeling pretty good i can't just do it
and like
just do it and yeah just do it i mean
you have i'm pretty sure you can improve
your life with some sort of
hackery thing in mind like you know
grinding coffee beans or something
there is something can help make your
life better
yes um and you can have guy turn it on
for like guy making some coffee
coffee we are going to build that on a
future stream you're going to have to
drop by
yeah for a coding stream i've already
registered the domain name i've got
codingwithsomefriends.com so it's just a
matter of me getting that site set up
i i got to get the multi-user pad and we
got to just go to it i i think that
that's
that's going to be great so i want to
thank everybody who dropped by tonight
i want to thank our man bogdan power
hacker extraordinaire
for showing all this wonderful stuff and
taking us on a tour
and um yeah we're gonna have to have you
on the show again so
i hope you had a good time here bogdan
thanks a lot yeah this was fun
thanks uh no i've never done this before
so this is pretty awesome so yeah yeah
it's your first time on twitch there you
go
don't listen to wubba dub dub about the
car hack we're not doing a car hack
we should do it he's been pushing for
years he actually got that into an
article
about teleflix that they published i
want to say
what was that oh it was the hollywood uh
oh crap i don't know it was that
one one of the newspapers basically
picked up wubba dub dub saying like
yeah we're probably going to do a car
hack at some point so i
no car hack
all right we're going to find something
we're going to have bogdan back thank
you everybody for coming by it is much
appreciated no we are not committed
don't do that all right well anyway i
want to thank everybody
and yep stay safe stay yeah
stay keep easy in this this world and
all this crazy stuff that's going on
um and by the way for those of you who
don't know drop by if you want to talk
bogdan's actually on there he just
joined tonight
but uh if you do want to come by join
the discord
and uh we can talk about programming uh
and the other shows which actually
next one up is gonna be on saturday
where i'm gonna finish up my nes
rom that i've been actually getting
ready yeah it's legit i'm gonna need
that uv station because these things i
got the duct tape on top of the windows
but these this is actually going in a
cartridge so
we're that's going to be on saturday at
3 p.m
uh eastern but anyway uh
anyway drop by and keep keep safe and
have fun
hack on right back on all right see ya
cheers everyone thanks