Noisebridge

History

Locations

In 2007 and 2008, Noisebridge functioned as a nomadic group, holding meetings at various locations. In October 2008, the group secured a small commercial property in San Francisco's Mission District. However, this location soon proved insufficient for the growing community. By 2009, Noisebridge relocated to a 5,200 square foot space on the third floor of 2169 Mission Street. During that year, the organization had approximately 100 members.

By 2018, the organization was looking for a new space as its lease was under threat. A large donation in 2020 kicked off a new search.

Activities and projects

Many meetups, workshops, and classes are held at the space, including the long running Circuit Hacking Monday, San Francisco Writers Workshop, Wikipedia meetups, Hack Comedy, Five Minutes of Fame, game development groups and classes, Free Code Camp, Code Day, and the Stupid Hackathon.

Past workspaces prior to June 2018 included: an optics lab, bycology lab, biotech lab, bitchen, digital audio workstation, photo development darkroom, book scanning workshop, photo booth, and a lights-out cloud computing lab with more than 100 computer cores and contributed resources to several open source projects, including the GCC compile farm.

Noisebridge members have been involved with research projects that won the best paper awards from top tier academic conferences Usenix Security Conference and CRYPTO.[[File:Noisebridge Arduinos For Total Newbies workshop July 2011.jpg|thumb|right|[[Arduino]]s for beginners workshop, July 2011]]

Spacebridge

Noisebridge had a near space exploration program in 2010, which launched weather-balloon probes exploring altitudes of nearly 70,000 feet, carrying a variety of smartphones and digital cameras for imaging and altitude sensing using a GPS system. Altitudes reached have exceeded the operational limits of consumer level GPS systems.

NoiseTor

NoiseTor (or Noisebridge Tor Project) was a Noisebridge initiative to create and operate additional Tor relays. The project accepted financial donations to sponsor additional nodes. The project was shut down officially by 2022.

Awards and honors

• Noisebridge won the SF Bay Guardian 2010 Best of the Bay award as "Best Open Source Playground"; the review concluded, "the vibe is welcoming and smart."
• In 2011 the SF Weekly awarded Noisebridge Best of San Francisco as "Best Hacker Playground", describing it as "the ultimate in DIY ethic" and noting its "distinctive sense of humor."

Controversies

As of 2013, many women have reported instances of being sexually harassed and assaulted at Noisebridge. Co-founder Jacob Appelbaum was accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment. In June 2016, amid an uptick in accusations against Appelbaum and statements from various other groups banning him from their spaces, Noisebridge did the same, stating in an official blog post that "Jacob is no longer welcome in our community, either in its physical or online spaces". In their statement, they explained that his alleged actions (as well as those of other Noisebridge participants accused of harassement), although they had occurred before its instating in 2014, were in violation of their Anti-Harassment policy.

On 24 September 2018, co-founder Mitch Altman announced that he had quietly left Noisebridge in the month of May.

Cultural references

The video game Watch Dogs 2 was reportedly influenced by Noisebridge.

References

References

1. "Noisebridge website's Vision page". Noisebridge.
2. Mills, Elinor. (30 November 2009). "Building circuits, code, community at Noisebridge hacker space". [[CNET News]].
3. O'Brien, Danny. (24 October 2008). "Hackers need space to innovate". [[Irish Times]].
4. Mills, Elinor. (30 November 2009). "Building circuits, code, community at Noisebridge hacker space". [[CNET News]].
5. (2017-12-21). "Facing Displacement, 'Noisebridge' Hackerspace Seeks New Home".
6. Feldberg, Sarah. (2020-03-02). "Iconic hackerspace Noisebridge is saved by donation of $150K bitcoin".
7. Feldberg, Sarah. (2020-03-05). "After 11 years on Mission Street, hackerspace Noisebridge searching for new home".
8. protected, email. (2015-05-11). "The Stupid S**t No One Needs hackathon was the best tech event ever".
9. "Noisecloud". Noisebridge.
10. (2008). "Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys". USENIX Security.
11. (July 2008). "Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys". Princeton University.
12. (16 August 2009). "CRYPTO 2009: Program: Best-paper award for Short Chosen-Prefix Collisions for MD5 and the Creation of a Rogue CA Certificate". International Association for Cryptologic Research.
13. (30 December 2008). "MD5 considered harmful today: Creating a rogue CA certificate". 25th Annual Chaos Communication Congress. Berlin.
14. Ganapati, Priya. (12 February 2010). "DIY Group Sends $25 Balloon to 70,000 Feet". Wired.com.
15. Ganapati, Priya. (12 August 2010). "Amateurs Fling Their Gadgets to Edge of Space". Wired.com.
16. Knowles, Jamillah. (19 August 2010). "Hackspaces get closer to home". BBC.
17. "Spacebridge". Noisebridge.
18. "Spacebridge Alpha Launch". Noisebridge.
19. (5 January 2017). "About Noisebridge Tor".
20. Steele, Sharon. (3 December 2016). "Tor at the Heart: torservers.net".
21. (12 March 2014). "2014 FOSS Donations".
22. "Noisebridge Tor - Noisebridge".
23. (27 July 2010). "Best Open Source Playpen". [[SF Bay Guardian]].
24. (19 May 2011). "Best Hacker Hangout – 2011 – Noisebridge". [[SF Weekly]].
25. (October 1, 2013). "Claims of Sexism and Sexual Assault Plague Noisebridge Hackerspace". Uptown Almanac.
26. (October 11, 2016). "Power, secrecy and cypherpunks: how Jacob Appelbaum ripped Tor apart". The Guardian.
27. "Noisebridge Statement on Jacob Appelbaum".
28. (2019-06-20). "noisebridge/deprecated-bureaucracy". Noisebridge.
29. (24 September 2018). "I quietly left Noisebridge in May. I am no longer part of Noisebridge. The decision and outcome were difficult for me. I wish everyone well.".
30. Gomez, Jocelyn Hernandez. "Underground computer culture welcomed by Noisebridge hackerspace".