April 30th is the birthday of both Carl Friedrich Gauss and Claude Elwood Shannon. This is a very good reason to take an hour in the evening and celebrate this day in a way that is both entertaining and educational.

Claud E. Shannon is known as the creator of information theory. His research paper “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” published in 1948 laid the foundation for the entire subsequent development of information theory, on which quantum information theory is also largely based. This is a very exciting and important field in computer science, because quantum information theory, together with quantum computers, will probably be the basis for all future information and communication technology.

This is exactly the topic that we will try to unravel this evening, not too seriously and not in a complicated way, with a cake, drinks and music, as is customary on birthdays.

Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the technology that will have the greatest impact on human society in the 21st century. In less than 10 years, it has developed so rapidly that it has surprised even the leading scientists in the field, bringing about changes in almost every area of ​​life and opening up new possibilities for breakthrough scientific achievements, but also making them concerned about the unknown capabilities of this technology.

In our discussion evening, we will simply try to explain what artificial intelligence is and how it works, what artificial intelligence assistants and agents are, how to run large language models on your own computer and give recommendations for prompt and context engineering to get better answers. In addition, we will also talk about the ethics, regulation, politics and imagined future of using artificial intelligence. If this topic interests you, then bring a friend and come to listen or join in the conversation to share your knowledge and experiences with others.

The event will be held in English.

Häkkerikoda is open every Wednesday. Stop by!

At Häkkerikoda we encourage people to poke at technology. This includes the tech in HK itself: servers, networking equipment, and the services running on them.

I will give a brief overview of how all our stuff is connected.

Come work on any personal projects you might have, or pick up a project lying around the hackerspace.

Some inhouse projects that are awaiting hacking:

• Broken pebble watch, fix it, it’s yours
• Raspberry pi that doesn’t boot, fir it, it’s yours
• Try out a 3d printer
• Debug a kobo ereader
• Design a 3d housing for the presence indicator

The financial world is facing the biggest change in history, and centuries of traditional banking are on the verge of extinction. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is significantly changing its foundations, as increasingly powerful financial analysis, algorithmic trading, financial crime and investment advice bring about changes that affect each of us to some extent. For this reason we decided to take time to discuss in hackerspace the current state and future of the financial world, in order to find financial wisdom to secure our financial position in these difficult and changing times. Our discussions will cover topics such as cryptocurrencies, the digital euro, fiat currencies, bank fraud, investment opportunities, tax incentives, and more.

7 o’clock in the morning on a winter day. The radio turns on, and so does the bedroom light, while the computer’s voice wishes me a good morning. I go to the kitchen, which has just reached a comfortable temperature, and the light switches on as I pass the motion detector. While I drink my coffee, I look to the wall display, which shows a few degrees below freezing outside. With a voice command, I switch the radio program. Before I leave, I mumble another command, and 30 second later the parking lot gate opens in front of me. While I’m at work, the heating powers down - ready to power up before I come home, to have it cozy again when it’s needed.

Does this sound like a dream of science fiction to you? Would you like your home to be like this? For me, this is a reality, and in this presentation you’ll get to know how I built it from scratch. You will learn about the design goals (in particular, privacy first, as well as keeping a low budget) and how they have been achieved. I will show you some of the features of this smart home, and which plans are yet to be realized.

Ever wanted a chat application that does not care whether the internet is up? Come learn how LoRa mesh networks make that possible. We will introduce LoRa, then pit the open-source projects Meshtastic and MeshCore side by side, explain the differences, share best practices, point you to the local Meshtastic/MeshCore community channels, and recommend beginner-friendly devices to get started.

After the intro, it is hands-on time: we will have Meshtastic/MeshCore compatible devices available to flash and try on the spot, so you can join the mesh and send messages around the room. Some units may also be available to take with you afterward. Bring a laptop, a USB-C cable, and a smartphone for the app.

The event is free for all participants and no preregistration is needed!

For far too long, pancakes have been the star of pancake mornings only, which tend to start at 8 or 9 and end before midday. But not all of us are morning people and don’t even want to get out of bed that early, with or without the promise of pancakes. Most activity at the Hackerspace also takes place in evenings, which is why we have taken it upon us to make pancakes at a time accessible to night owls too.

We will make pancakes from 6 PM for as long as there is demand. Both sweet and savory toppings will be provided and we will give our best to hack a pancake into one perfect for you. This is the perfect event to meet the hackers at the space in a free and relaxed environment, and also eat lots of pancakes.

This event is free for all and does not require any knowledge about hacking or pancakes to participate.

Nowadays it is easy to determine one’s location or navigate to a destination using maps and apps provided, e.g., by Google, Apple or Microsoft. However, we tend to forget that every time we use those tools, we send data about our location to their owning companies. Further, usage of their services is limited to their apps or web platforms, and thus requires an internet connection. Finally, we rely on the correctness and accuracy of their data, and cannot directly make changes in case we notice any errors or necessary updates.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. In this talk, we will show you OpenStreetMap (OSM) - a free and open database of geographic data. It is used by various free and open applications, including, but not limited to, online and offline maps, navigation and geocoding. Moreover, it is possible to download the raw data as well, and convert it to numerous formats for specific use cases. The first part of the presentation will show you some OSM based applications and tools for using OSM data, in particular focused on maps and navigation.

Furthermore, OSM allows everybody to edit and contribute to the existing data, and changes enter the database in real time. This allows making corrections and additions to the existing data, which propagate into the aforementioned applications as soon as they request the updated data from the OSM database. The second part of the presentation thus focuses on editing OSM data, giving an overview of existing editing tools, and then showing JOSM in more detail.

On Wednesday evening we will watch a documentary that shows how modern technology allows the creation of a highly effective system of surveillance and control of society under the control of state power through large-scale data processing, and what impact this has on society, human groups, families and individuals. This film is not only a story about real life, but also a lesson of threat modeling of the dangers lurking in the free world. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is making this system increasingly capable. Privacy will soon no longer be a right, but is becoming an extremely expensive commodity. But fortunately, there are hackers who value privacy and anonymity, with whom you can try to see if this strict regime can be circumvented..

For the best movie experience, try to be there before the movie starts. The movie runs about 90 minutes.

On a deep technical level, Linux and Windows are more similar than they may seem. In this talk, I will walk through the technical internals shared by most operating systems, and give a short overview of the conceptual differences between Linux and Windows.

If time allows, I will also demonstrate practical Linux kernel development and explain how to build your own Linux kernel modules.

The event will be held in English.

Qubes OS, a “reasonably secure operating system” aims to achieve security by isolation. It is based on the Xen hypervisor and enables the creation of virtual machines, in which the user’s applications are run.

In this presentation I will dive into what Qubes OS is, what are its goals, and what makes it special compared to just running VMs on another operating system, including its template system, integration of applications into one common desktop, secure clipboard and file transfer between VMs and much more.

I will also share my experience of using Qubes as a daily driver for over 4 years, and thoughts about where Qubes can be used, from healthcare to journalism.

The presentation will also feature a live demonstration of Qubes OS: how it works and its various features.

Chat Control is back. In this presentation I will attempt to explain what the legislation does, how it arose, who is behind it, and what we can do about it.

“GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility developed as a non-profit open source project. It’s focused on the research and development of privacy and security technology including substantial improvements to sandboxing, exploit mitigations and the permission model.” - grapheneos.org

In this session we will dive into mobile phone security. What we want to protect, who we want to protect it from, and how GrapheneOS helps both from a privacy and from a security perspective. We will dive into topics like sandboxing, MAC address randomization, permissions, JIT, pogo pins, and memory allocators.

If you don’t know some of these things, don’t fret, everything will be explained. The purpose of the session is to help people make informed choices about their phones.

Chat Control is being pushed by the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the EU, which unites 27 “justice and home affairs ministers”. I cannot find a list anywhere of who these ministers actually are, but their arrival to the next JHA meeting is broadcast live. Watch along and spot the Estonian!

https://www.publicnow.com/view/AC5F7524488159596DBDE73A5C30314670D31945

Wikipedia is the biggest library in the world, the largest collection of knowledge ever collaboratively accumulated in one place and is the foremost symbol of freedom of information. It has articles in most languages in the world and the website is visited by millions of people a day. You, me and almost everybody has from time to time relied on it as the first source of information, gathered and edited by volunteers around the world.

Now you will have an excellent opportunity to give your share into this international collaborative project. We are going to make a workshop, where you can create a Wikipedia article(s) on your favourite topic guided by a leading expert in the field - Wikimedia Eesti CEO Ivo Kruusamägi, who will show you how it is professionally done based on Wikipedia rules and best practices. So, take your friend, laptop with you and let’s do it!

The second part of the workshop is dedicated to practice and will focus on how to edit, format, validate and publish texts on Wikisource. As an example to work on, a collection of works by Oskar Luts is provided. Of course, you can also work on other texts or upload digital copies of other works which are free to use on Wikisource. For the latter, we will also show you how to prepare and upload scanned works to Wikimedia Commons.

Most people think spy gadgets are cool! Well, we have some of those. A cable that seems like a regular charger but quietly takes over your phone. A tiny adapter that grants remote shell access the moment it is plugged in. A small box that enough to fit in your pocket, yet powerful enough to breach a network from across the street.

This workshop will explore the world of covert hacker hardware used for computer, phone and network exploitation. We will look at how these gadgets work, in what conditions we can use them, and how physical access often changes the entire attack story. You will see real devices in action, learn how they are configured, controlled and understand the principles behind the scene.

The session will include live demos, opportunities for questions and discussion, and a close look at gadgets that blur the line between ordinary accessories and powerful intrusion tools. Please bring potential targets, like older unused smart phones or laptops, against which payloads can be used and tested.

The event will be held in English.

Ever wondered how a tiny ripple in a device’s power line can betray its secrets and break cryptographic implementations? This workshop journeys from the idea of side-channel leakage to the classic attacks that exploit it. We will build an intuitive picture of SPA, DPA, and CPA, look at what a good power trace looks like, and discuss sampling, triggering, and noise so that the waveforms you collect are meaningful. After the concepts, we will demonstrate how to capture real traces using the ChipWhisperer Nano platform. You will see how small variations correlate with internal operations, why alignment matters, and how simple mistakes can drown your signal. If you bring a laptop with a USB port, you can follow and try the hands-on exercises on site using the ChipWhisperer Nano hardware. No prior hardware-hacking experience is required. If you have written a bit of Python or tinkered with microcontrollers, you will feel right at home, but curiosity is the only true prerequisite.

The event will be held in English

The embedded systems world is huge. And almost every embedded system runs on an ARM microcontroller? People say that is because ARM is so much more energy-efficient than all the alternatives. But what are the alternatives? And why is that? In this talk we will go on on a deep dive into the CPU world, understand a lot of their inner workings and answer all these questions, and more. Only a rudimentary previous knowledge about CPU hardware is required. If you forgot most of your basic systems lecture that’s fine :) All the important basics of processor architecture will be explained and we are very open to questions and discussion during the session.

The event will be held in English.

This is not an ordinary party where all the world’s problems fade into oblivion in a carefree mood. It is a call to stand up for your own and everyone else’s rights in cyberspace. Do you sometimes feel a nagging feeling that the big companies that rule the internet like Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon know more about your life than your mother? Or have you ever thought about how unpleasant a day could be when you discover one morning that your email and social media accounts have been hijacked and a cybercriminal has stolen every last euro from your bank account? This leads to the inevitable realization that in today’s cyberspace, you are no longer a person to them, but a digital product with your data that can be resold to others. But this can and must be fought against!

If this topic is important to you, come to the cryptoparty, where hackerspace members will introduce modern open source applications that will help you better protect your privacy and data in cyberspace. Linux, Signal, Tor Browser, WireGuard, OpenPGP, etc. are just some of the ones that hackers trust and use on a daily basis.

And of course, the practical workshop will be followed by the more lively part of the cryptoparty with good food, drinks and music in an interestingly diverse hackerspace community. See you!

Did you know that there’s a free online library where anyone can read, share, and preserve texts? That’s Wikisource—a collaborative project where volunteers around the world make books and documents freely available for everyone. The Estonian Wikisource already offers around 3,000 texts in Estonian, while the English Wikisource has grown to more than 600,000 texts. From classic literature to historical documents, it’s all open, searchable, and accessible.

At this event, we’ll dive into how Wikisource works—both as readers and as contributors. You’ll see how to browse and enjoy the collections, and then we’ll roll up our sleeves and learn how new texts make their way into the library: uploading scans, proofreading, and polishing texts together.

This is a hands-on session, so if you bring your laptop, you’ll be able to try it out yourself. Don’t worry if you’ve never done this before—we’ll guide you through every step, and you’ll have the chance to ask questions and get practical help along the way.

Whether you’re into literature, free knowledge, digital preservation, or just curious about how collaborative projects like this actually work, come join us! Let’s explore how we can keep culture alive online—and maybe even add a few texts together.

Find the detailed workshop materials in our wiki.

Tonight we will watch a documentary that investigates a powerful and terrifying spyware called Pegasus, sold to governments around the world by Israeli company NSO Group and used on journalists, activists and others.

Release date: February 14, 2023 (United Kingdom) The film is in English and runs 47 minutes.

Let’s use the law as a tool to achieve our goals! We’ll talk about Estonia’s Public Information Act (Avaliku teabe seadus, AvTS) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) so you know what you can ask for, how to ask for it, and what to do when no satisfying answers arrive. We’ll also explain why exercising these rights matters, promoting transparency and accountability, improving services, and empowering you to shape how your data is handled. Expect a walk-through of AvTS, covering information requests (teabenõue) and clarification requests (selgitustaotlus), in addition to GDPR data subject requests. We’ll cover how to send requests, timelines, fees, and appeal routes with the Estonian Data Protection Authority (Andmekaitseinspektsioon, AKI). Drawing on real examples (and you’re welcome to bring and discuss your own examples and experiences), we’ll share what works and what doesn’t, best practices, and lessons learned.

This is a talk and discussion. Bring your curiosity, interesting cases you’ve encountered, and the questions you’ve always wanted to send but weren’t sure how.

The event will be held in English.

We see digital economy booming but somehow we hardly can taste its fruits. On contrary, digitalisation has promised exponential increase of efficiency but turns out we actually have to work harder now, often doing things we have no skills or deeper knowledge. A clear separation between the work and private life is disappearing and we find ourselves making phone calls from dinner table or writing emails from our bed. Even weirder, despite the increasing value of digital economy, the provided services are getting worse, not better. At the same rate, we are getting more vulnerable and our future is becoming increasingly uncertain. Where does the wealth disappear to, how does digital economy erupt our fundamental economic relationships and how can we survive this? During this Dark Patterns of Digital event we will be exploring the financial value of digital with Marek Tehh and wondering if we can learn anything from the old story of Atlantis.

On September 25, 2025, hackerspace will participate in the BSides information security conference, where we will offer various workshops to participants: we will teach beginners 3D printing, hardware programming and security threats, and how to build various cybersecurity devices using Raspberry Pi.

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will end official support for several Windows 10 products, it means no more security updates or technical support. Therefore, now is the best time to choose a new operating system for your computer.

Our hackerspace community recommends Linux operating system, naturally, because it’s open-source software, totally customizable and free of charge. The choice is very wide, there are lots of Linux distributions with different flavors: Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, Linux Mint, Gentoo, Arch Linux etc. You can try and explore all of them in hackerspace with the advice and support of our Linux gurus. If you like one of them, we will help you install and configure it on your computer, so you can go home and start a new life as a brave new Linux user!

We are living in a strange world. It’s a world of 24/7 news cycle and social media coverage but somehow feels more uninformed and isolated than ever before. We have the best knowledge under our fingertips but the public discussion is locked often around half-truths and white (or not even so white) lies, well manipulated by big corporations, media organisations and by our own our political leadership. We have almost unlimited access to the best music, art and movies but our media feed is dominated by the endless stream of stupid memes, conspiracy theories and AI slop. In our personal lives we record ever increasing volume of photos and videos about our daily routine but fail to encapsulate few memories really important to us. Despite all this new technology we feel unhinged and misplaced in our own existence, facing our own mental health crisis and global climate catastrophe. Exploring the dark patterns of digital with Marek Tehh.

*Event will be held in English.

Cyber defence competitions such as Capture the Flag (CTF) have become increasingly popular around the world in recent years. There are many reasons: the demand for cybersecurity is constantly increasing, the CTF online platforms provide an opportunity for everyone in the world to participate in the competition, providing a real-world problem-solving experiences, they have helped to create strong communities that spread information and generate an ever-growing interest in these competitions in the world, and in the end, the CTFs are fun in their gamification, where with the points, rankings and prizes earned, they are particularly attractive to young people.

The Raspberry Pi and CTF make CTF-pi that teaches you cybersecurity threats associated with the Internet of Things, showing you the impact that conventional setup errors have on the security of your small, but smart IoT devices. Come to our event on Wednesday, where you can safely try it all yourself in hackerspace with the support of a supervisor.

For more information: The CTF-pi repository is at https://github.com/kennolot/CTF-pi

In the history of humankind, there are very rare occasions when the birthday of two prominent scientists is on the same day. It is in this respect that the 30th of April is special, because both Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss and Claude Elwood Shannon are born on this day. In honor of highly influential scientific achievements, Gauss is called the Prince of Mathematics and Shannon is called the Father of Information Theory. In celebrating the birthday of these two scientists, we take a brief look at their scientific achievements, how they have influenced the development of information technology today and reflect on whether these two stars of science have anything else in common other than being born on the same day..

March 14th is the day when we celebrate three events all together: Pi Day, Mother Language Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday. At first glance, these seem like very strange events to celebrate in hackerspace, but in an unusually unique way, they can all be linked to the life of a hacker. Whatever the case, there is always a good reason to celebrate a great event. Let’s take this as an opportunity to enjoy good company with food and drinks in a hackerspace community on a Friday evening. If you have any ideas of how you would like to celebrate any of these three events in hackerspace (hold a poetry competition in honor of Mother Language Day or a quiz about the physics created by Einstein etc.), please send us your ideas early at info(at)hakkerikoda.ee

Let’s get all together and try to find crazyest and weirdest (tech) stuff on online stores that Hackerspace needs, to make it mentally more creative space. Anyone, who is interested in exploring worldwide tech marketplace, dig deep into its stores, to find undiscovered gems of tech, is very welcome to participate and share their coolest mind exploding AliExpress, Temu, eBay etc finds with other tech enthusiasts. P.S. Bring your own shopping examples to show others or prepare a story about online shopping.

Christmas season is coming soon and hackerspace is preparing for it in its own way. We are organizing a soldering workshop, where everyone can make a Christmas-themed gift. This could be a small Christmas tree with flashing lights or some other cool electronic gadget.

Whether you are still in school or already a pensioner, age does not matter, everyone who is attracted by the opportunity to acquire new skills and knowledge of soldering and electronics in a cool company with others is invited to participate. The workshop is suitable for beginners, who have never even held a soldering iron before, as well as professional, for whom the event is an entertaining opportunity to share their experiences with others.