hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0796.txt

Episode: 796
Title: HPR0796: Shane Marks Hacker Space Week Ireland
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0796/hpr0796.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:41:05

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Hello ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I'd like to apologize for the clipping on my side of the interview today,
but given the time condensed as Hackerspace Week is on this week,
I don't think we'd have time to record the shows entirely in my fault and apologies to Shane.
The second piece of news is that this week I'll be changing the RSS feed to updated to include the new RSS 2.0 features.
So if you have an issue with the feed where you don't see a HBR episode coming in,
or this is the last episode you see in your feed, I'd appreciate it if you could mail us,
admin at hackerpublicradio.org so that we can get the problem fixed.
Thank you very much.
Hello everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and I'm delighted to have Shane Marx on the line here.
Hello everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and I'm delighted to have Shane Marx on the line here.
How you doing, Shane?
Ah, not too bad, thanks very much.
Listen, first of all, I'm going to apologise for not grabbing you for an interview.
We met the first night in the pub, it's oddly enough to Irishmen and then a pub go figure.
And I promised to grab you for an interview and somehow this will come as a shock telling about you.
So yes, I'll grab somehow I manage not to not get you for an interview.
So thanks very much for coming on the line here and giving us a quick chat about some hacker space stuff related to Ireland.
So can you tell us a little bit about yourself before we start?
Yeah, sure.
So basically I'm mainly a programmer and I mainly actually doing in games programming and stuff like that.
So I kind of just kind of got interested in Linux and stuff like that and kind of Linux outlaws and stuff like that.
I met everyone through there and then kind of inadvertently got interested in hacker spaces and then found about Irish hacker space kind of seen.
Eventually ended up joining the Nexus, which is the core hacker space and that's pretty much where I am now.
So you are a system of the people's Republic of Korea?
No, I'm actually from Waterford.
I'm not working for Sydney over the county and then when I went to college, when I went to college then I moved to Korea.
So it's surprising enough there's very little people in Korea actually from Korea.
Yeah, you have that, I guess, in cities.
Yeah, yeah.
So first of all, let's just in case there's anybody on the line that doesn't know what hacker space is.
Can you give me an idea of what a hacker space is?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, hacker space is different for everyone, I guess.
But mainly it's just a bunch of people really interested in kind of making stuff or creating things or kind of free culture or open source.
And it's just kind of a lot of what everyone's kind of working together to their own goals, I mean.
And every space is a different kind of focus.
I mean, some spaces do say biohacking, which is doing kind of biology and DNA and all that kind of stuff.
And some do electronics and some do just mainly programming.
And you know, it's all just kind of, I guess, everyone working together and sharing stuff.
Yeah, and it's kind of more hardware-y, I guess.
Yeah.
And your chip load group, as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's an Arduino is really big and just doing electronics and stuff like that.
I know above and the space in Dublin, they do like squeegee circuits and conductive fabrics and stuff like that.
It's a really big and hardware electronics and everything up there.
So how many hacker spaces are there in Ireland?
I might get in trouble for remaining a number, but I think there is four.
Maybe there is more.
Yes, there's four that I know of.
So there's the one in Dublin, which is Togdai, and there's the one in Limerick, which is a milk lab study.
There is the one in Galway, which is a 0.9 labs.com or that idea.
I'm not sure if you could start to do a finder.
And then there is our space, which is the next space in cork, which is hacker spaces cork.com.
Yeah.
I see that. I'm on the site as we speak.
So what could I expect if I, first of all, am I allowed to go over there?
How do I go about joining the hacker space or checking it out?
Yeah, I mean, most hacker spaces have a pretty open policy and showing people around.
I mean, what we generally do is if you hop onto the IRC channel or the mailing list or if you even know someone,
if you can just contact someone from the space and just say, hey, I want to have a look around or something like that.
And someone will show you around that even during the hacker space, the IRC hacker space week that we're having now,
we have a kind of beef and Greek kind of day on the Wednesday 24th.
But in general, I mean, a lot, we run a lot of open days.
So say there'll be an open day in Tog every, I think it's every week or two or something like that.
And everyone's welcome to come and just tell show you around.
And it's a really open environment.
And in terms of.
Yeah, go on.
And I mean, if you want to join as a member, I mean, there is every kind of every space has their own different fees.
It's usually between 20 to 40 or I mean, if you're a student, it's closer to 20.
And if you're fully implied, it's 40.
But others, some spaces run as well when when they reach the amount that they need to keep going,
then they'll allow people to come in and still use the space.
But they're incentivized to become members, but they're not forced because it's better to have someone there.
Then have no one at all kind of as extra people.
I mean, I know what you mean.
It's a year or a month.
It's per month.
Yeah, it's, it sounds like a lot of money, but it's actually not that expensive.
I mean, I knew someone who is in a space next to where the corkspaces and it was for air glue.
And they were paying 40 euro a week for their space.
And they got no materials.
And all they had was a corner and they could work in there and it bring everything to themselves.
And with spaces a lot different.
I mean, you can use other people stuff provided day and how you and stuff like that.
It's a very open environment.
Yeah.
So you haven't you mentioned you haven't an open week.
Can you tell us a little about arguing having a week of events?
When does that run from?
Yeah.
So basically all your Shackerspace week starts on Saturday, which is tomorrow.
And they have this running for a whole week.
And each space is running kind of their own stuff.
So say we're running a film nice, which is showing creative comments movies.
And we're actually showing this movie called Happy World Burma.
The dictatorship of the third sorry.
And it's actually a pretty interesting movie and it uses them.
The library called Popcorn.js, which allows you to have like kind of an interactive movie.
Sort of down on the side of the movie.
It gives you all these interesting pieces of information that they can fit into the movie.
And it's kind of an interactive movie, I guess.
And we're also running a soldering workshop on Friday.
And we're showing people around the space on Wednesday.
I'm running actually a game development workshop on the Saturday, which is the last Saturday.
It's an introduction to Love, which is this and Loua Framework for making 2D games.
So I'm just anyone who wants to come around for that.
And some of the some of the events are you have to pay if you're not a member.
And others are free.
Minus three.
The obviously going around the space is free.
But some of the other ones cost money.
Yeah, tea and coffee.
Yeah, there is.
And in some of the spaces there is.
I mean in talk they have actually a whole kind of drinks and foods thing.
And you can you can buy food there in.
The next is in court.
We actually have we're actually part of a cannon palace, which is this big hotel.
And it's not hotel anymore.
So what they've done is they've divided all the spaces up.
So say there's and there was a circus in there for well.
And there's a lot of art people in there and so that.
And they actually have a whole kitchen.
Area side and so that it's really, really big area.
So a lot of different people there.
Fantastic.
So I know this is limited to Thailand, but.
Where would it go if I wanted to see if there was a hacker space around here in.
And I'm around Amsterdam, for instance.
Yeah, I mean, I'm actually pretty enough.
I actually had the same kind of problem when I first kind of learned about hackerspaces.
I was like, oh, maybe there's some in Ireland.
I'm not really sure.
So it's under searching.
And the main takes I can seem to find is hackerspaces.org.
And that has loads of information about different access spaces around basically the world.
And they have lists of hackerspaces written on up there.
So if you've got a hackerspace.
Usually I haven't met a hacker face data that isn't on the list.
You can just go to your country and find out if there's one there.
There's a big Google map here.
Yeah, there's a big Google map.
And then it has all the lists and it's categorized by country and stuff like that.
And it's really handy.
It's how I found an access in the first place.
And I have a fan talk and how I found the other ones.
So one in Almeer, one in Utrecht, one in Amosfort, one in Amsterdam,
but not one in Bus, Hilverson.
And an opportunity for you.
No!
I have enough.
Thank you very much for being with me.
So how was your trip home?
What did you think about Camp?
I thought Camp was great.
And I talked to a lot of people there.
I talked to you about all the kind of crazy things that we were doing in the space.
And all the kind of crazy ideas I had that I was working on.
And I think the atmosphere was really open.
And everyone was interested in talking about different things.
I kind of mentioned to a couple of people of doing games.
And they didn't really know a lot about games development.
But we're willing to talk about it.
And we're interested in learning more about it.
And I think that was the kind of atmosphere throughout the whole thing
that everyone was interested in.
Do you have anything that I was related to kind of open source
and just kind of, you know, to sharing and stuff like that?
I'm not saying I'm sorry.
No, that's okay.
I'm very interested in the concept of hackerspace and hardware.
I think I was telling you that I did my degree on computer interaction
with, you know, hardware is mechanical engineering
and electronic engineering interacting.
So I kind of like the idea of getting my hands on some hardware.
Yeah, I mean, the space in Dublin is great for that.
I mean, it's so much fun when we got there last time.
They do a lot of electronics there.
And they were making like a lot of like, say, the conduct of fabrics.
I had never really seen conduct of fabrics before.
I kind of, you know, seen some articles on it before.
But it really is really, really cool.
And you can make kind of just really awesome stuff
with like making clothes that light up when you do certain things
or to certain people are making, say, where you can, you know,
just, just all this kind of weird stuff that's just really, really fun
to mess with electronics.
It seems to be that every hackerspace has its own speciality
would that be a fair assessment?
Yeah, we were kind of talking with this one.
I met a couple of guys from talk and I think every space
is a total speciality.
Like we have a lot of people who do like biohacking and say
whether the guys is working on like kind of open source DNA.
And stuff like that there.
Okay.
Yeah.
You can then, I think his website is indivio.com.
But you can read more about what he does there.
But he's, so he's, he's him and the kind of the same group of people
who do that kind of stuff are special to our space.
And I don't know any space that even has that in Ireland.
And then the guys in Dublin are really, they just do so much.
I mean, I can really keep up with what they're doing.
I mean, they have, they have a massive server room there like
and they have like a dark room for photography.
They have an electronics room.
They even have like a room for books.
I mean, it's, the space there is really amazing.
It's really big.
This is so much stuff happening there.
Could you, for example, if you're self-employed,
conduct your business from there or not?
I'm not really sure now.
I think it really comes down to what, I think it really comes down to what rules
the space itself has.
I mean, I think if you were there and you were making proprietary software
to sell to people, I don't think too many people would accept that.
But I think if you are working on something that's maybe open source
and everyone's getting something for everyone's free food,
I don't think anyone minds.
I think it's just, most places I think are okay
once you're not amusing the space is stuff that they provide to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's fantastic, fantastic to hear about this.
Let me have a look over in Ireland.
I'm just pulling back here to the map.
I can see the states is absolutely covered with dots.
Europe is actually covered with dots.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good.
And during the week, well, we were in Ogcamp.
CCC camp was on.
I don't know if you heard anything about that.
Yeah, yeah.
I was, I was planning on heading for that, but Ogcamp came up by.
I kind of had to pick my latent slot.
So this was what CCC camp was?
Yeah, CCC camp is a chaos computer camp.
So it's kind of another conference.
KKS computer conference is on around Christmas.
And then this is on during the summer.
So it's like a big camping kind of event.
The same thing is KS computer if I guess.
And there's, there's just lots of talks on the hackers faces.
And then there's big massive like electronics tents.
Arle, electronics, just hardware, hardware tents and stuff like that.
And just, it's on a, it's not an airfield ground.
I think it is.
And it's just, it's a massive camping event.
And it goes on for five days.
And just really, if you want to meet a lot of the hackers faces from Europe,
that's kind of where you would do it.
And I know some of the guys from talk went over to do hardware stuff there
and just kind of meet people in general.
Yeah.
I think a lot of this hackerspist office has also been promoted by O'Reilly,
which it's Make magazine.
Yeah, yeah.
Make magazine.
Yeah, make magazine and make our fairs really popular.
I mean, a lot of actually hackerspaces called themselves makerspaces
because they don't like the kind of connotation that comes with being called a hackerspace.
So I know a lot of people to concept just.
Yeah.
So I know like, I think zero or nine one labs in Galway called them to a makerspace.
Next is cork.
We call ourselves a makerspace, even though almost all the members call it a hackerspace.
It's just, they were added for official stuff because you know,
just people don't really understand what a hackerspace is.
But when you say a makerspace, they're like, OK, I don't want to know what a makerspace is.
But I know what making stuff is.
So I can kind of, yeah, I can take a guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is fantastic.
I, I, what can I do to help you out here on the show?
What, what message would you want to get the post to?
Yes, I suppose if anyone's listening and they're in Ireland,
I suppose they could check out any of the hackerspaces to see what's going on for the week.
And if they're interested to come down and just take a look and you can just,
you know, all the events are, you can attend any of the events and just,
you know, just to try and get more of all, I guess, if they're interested.
Just one thing.
So I was, you know, I don't know backpacking across Europe or whatever.
And I was a member of one hackerspace would, you know,
they could be cute us to go into others and grab some internet time or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean, actually, there's this weird thing that some of the hackerspaces are working on to them.
I don't know who specifically started it, but they're thinking about making this thing called a hacker,
a hackerspace passport.
And basically it's a passport.
Then you can bring it around to different hackerspaces and get it stamped so that you were there and you were doing stuff.
And, um, yeah, look, look at all the spaces.
I mean, you're generally, you're generally more, more welcome.
Or at least I get, I, at least it's the way I can see it.
You're generally more welcome to spaces that you're not part of once you're part of one.
I mean, you know, when, like, when I went up from, when I went up from, uh,
off the talk and I wasn't there before, I mean, I was like, um, I'm the next.
And they're like, oh, okay, cool.
So, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's, I guess it's slightly different from someone coming from a different space and someone walking off the street.
Yeah.
I know what you mean.
Yeah.
There's a, uh, yes, there's a, uh, I have a t-shirt on type thing.
Yeah.
You, you know, you know, you know, they're actually, yeah, you know, they're actually, you know, they're, they get what it's about.
And you don't have to go around and explain to them what's happening and what space they're about and stuff like that.
You know, yeah, yeah.
And this is about 24 or 7 or does that depend on the, uh, space?
Yeah, it depends on the hacker space.
I mean, I know, the name escapes me.
But the, the space and on the west coast of America, they just throw out keys to anyone.
They don't care who has them.
They just literally throw it about.
They're really kind of, uh, pure, pure kind of anarchist, uh, hacker space.
And, uh, so that place, you can access 24 or 7 with talk.
I think, uh, it's, uh, there's a gate in front.
So you need a key for the gate with the nexus.
There's, uh, two doors.
So cause it's part of the building.
Uh, so you need a key building and a hacker space building.
And most members have the hacker space key, but they don't have the building key yet because it's just, it takes time to kind of get keys for that.
So once you've bought, you can access any time.
It's empty with nearly any space, but just for anyone who doesn't have the keys, I mean, it's, you know, whenever someone's there, I guess.
An ideal location for Erbring Camping Club 2.
I say, uh, what's formation from the hacker space, I guess.
Yeah, I guess so.
I mean, in terms of big spaces, I guess.
Uh, yeah, yeah.
So cool.
Well, listen, thanks for the much for, um,
common online.
And how can people get in touch with you?
Um, I mean, if anyone goes on to the mailing list for hacker space, uh, nexus, they'll probably see me posting her.
Cause I'm always talking crap on the, uh, the mailing list of people.
Or you can, um, you can follow me like an identical, uh, S marks on identical.
So, yeah.
Perfect.
We'll have a link in the show notes.
Listen, Shane, thanks very much for, um, coming on and having an interview.
It was, uh, it was nice to meet you at the, uh, odd camp.
Um, uh, we'll call it today.
Um, ladies and gentlemen, you can tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode here on hacker public radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
For more information on the show and how to contribute your own shows, visit hackerpublicradio.org.