[00:03.320 --> 00:04.920]  Good evening, everyone.
[00:05.980 --> 00:08.820]  It is Saturday, 2200, Area A.
[00:09.700 --> 00:13.880]  Hope number six, that means it's time to learn about building a hackerspace.
[00:14.060 --> 00:19.140]  Brought to you by numbers 107, 54, 39, and 98.
[00:20.240 --> 00:23.700]  Usually I just intro these panels, but today I'm on it.
[00:25.200 --> 00:26.280]  I'm Porkchop.
[00:26.460 --> 00:30.960]  I'm from the New York Computer Community Connection Project, a place up in Poughkeepsie, New York.
[00:32.340 --> 00:35.340]  Next to me, Harry from the Philadelphia Walnut Factory.
[00:36.560 --> 00:39.100]  Next in line, Binary from the Hasty Pastry.
[00:39.840 --> 00:45.740]  And last up is Dragorn, also from New York Computer Community Connection Project.
[00:46.300 --> 00:49.960]  You might be wondering why we picked that name, NYCCCP.
[00:50.300 --> 00:51.160]  Seemed funny.
[00:53.700 --> 00:55.640]  We wanted to talk to you about a whole bunch of things.
[00:55.780 --> 01:03.640]  And we're just going to start by asking, say Binary, why build a hackerspace?
[01:05.560 --> 01:08.320]  Well, there's a bunch of reasons to build a hackerspace.
[01:08.500 --> 01:10.360]  I mean, there's many people who have tried.
[01:10.640 --> 01:14.300]  There's been a pretty long history of them in the United States.
[01:15.100 --> 01:16.940]  But the main reason is collaboration.
[01:16.940 --> 01:20.980]  I mean, you can do so much more with many people than just by yourself.
[01:21.260 --> 01:26.780]  And by pooling resources, bandwidth, cost splitting, everything, you can accomplish so much more.
[01:26.940 --> 01:30.360]  And another reason is just getting everything out of your house or your mom's basement or whatever.
[01:30.520 --> 01:34.600]  I mean, just not having, you know, power tools and computers and crap all over the place.
[01:35.200 --> 01:36.780]  It's pretty good to have a separation of that.
[01:36.920 --> 01:42.760]  And I think another important thing is people work on projects and sometimes it takes them quite a bit of time to finish something.
[01:42.760 --> 01:48.940]  And it's nice to be able to work on something a couple hours a day and have it stay put without anybody messing with it for, you know, weeks or months at a time.
[01:49.860 --> 01:55.620]  And then it's just good to have a meeting space or a place to hang out where, you know, you know, it'll always be there.
[02:00.940 --> 02:04.400]  How did you find all the people that were interested in creating this kind of a place?
[02:04.480 --> 02:08.200]  I mean, of course, you know, there's a lot of geeks in the room, but how do you find the people in your city?
[02:08.340 --> 02:11.320]  How big does your city have to be in order to find that kind of a group?
[02:11.780 --> 02:14.000]  I mean, were you able to do it in Philly that well?
[02:15.120 --> 02:20.900]  Well, and Philly's a fairly large city and there was a small group of people that kind of banded together.
[02:22.100 --> 02:27.140]  And then some of us worked for local universities, so it was fairly easy to put feelers out.
[02:27.940 --> 02:33.360]  There were 2600 meetings that some of us would go to and attempt to recruit new people.
[02:33.920 --> 02:38.600]  A lot of it was word of mouth, and it's really quite difficult to do that by word of mouth.
[02:39.540 --> 02:43.780]  Some of the things that we've toyed around with doing are having, like, demonstrations or talks.
[02:44.060 --> 02:51.420]  Or, you know, like, some sort of community involvement to actually give new people a reason to come in and take a look at the space.
[02:51.700 --> 02:54.480]  And, you know, see the sort of things that we have to offer.
[02:55.480 --> 02:59.720]  Now, I guess out of all the groups up here, Poughkeepsie's probably the smallest city.
[03:00.760 --> 03:03.260]  We found people just because they were our friends, right?
[03:03.320 --> 03:04.220]  They're centered around college.
[03:04.420 --> 03:12.080]  Yeah, we primarily found people in Poughkeepsie via the college that we work for and via friends at IBM and places like that.
[03:12.420 --> 03:15.780]  Poughkeepsie's very different than New York City or Boston or Philadelphia.
[03:15.780 --> 03:17.980]  We're sort of small.
[03:19.160 --> 03:23.660]  Is there anything that people should be looking for in potential space members?
[03:25.800 --> 03:28.140]  Is people with big money bags important?
[03:28.620 --> 03:30.380]  Is people with ingenuity?
[03:30.860 --> 03:33.540]  I mean, I think it kind of goes along two separate lines.
[03:33.860 --> 03:39.620]  So, you definitely need people who are stable, people who can contribute money on a regular basis.
[03:40.860 --> 03:44.000]  But a lot of those people are also very tied up in their jobs.
[03:44.060 --> 03:46.060]  You know, they're working 12, 15 hours a day.
[03:46.060 --> 03:50.180]  They might have families, so they can't really always contribute in terms of time.
[03:50.560 --> 03:59.600]  So, if you can get younger people who have more time than they do money and make, you know, a good balance between the two, you wind up with a pretty nice space.
[04:01.200 --> 04:03.900]  Yeah, I mean, people are definitely the most important thing.
[04:04.040 --> 04:14.360]  And I think, again, the purpose of why we're doing this talk right now is just to share our experiences and failures and successes and hopefully getting other people to create, you know, work in hack spaces around the country.
[04:14.360 --> 04:18.080]  But most people think that economics is the main driving factor.
[04:18.200 --> 04:21.560]  And while that's important, I'm going to say that's the second most important factor in this space.
[04:21.700 --> 04:27.360]  The people in selecting the right people, stable people, people that are dedicated to it, are the most important thing you can do.
[04:28.080 --> 04:31.480]  So, to find those people, usually they find you.
[04:32.020 --> 04:36.120]  In Boston, we're pretty lucky enough where it's had a pretty long history.
[04:36.120 --> 04:39.780]  And I, you know, kind of walked in on that and I found them.
[04:40.160 --> 04:44.820]  They didn't find me, pretty much, because I saw what was going on with some of the different spaces.
[04:45.060 --> 04:47.820]  And I was involved in some different spaces in New Haven, Connecticut.
[04:49.540 --> 04:54.140]  And you get to know people and bring you on or rent the space.
[04:54.140 --> 04:58.360]  But you shouldn't just find someone that has money and say, you know, here's some keys and here's access to all our stuff.
[04:58.360 --> 05:01.320]  And, you know, the root password to all the machines and everything.
[05:01.580 --> 05:03.500]  It's really important to find stable people.
[05:04.700 --> 05:06.640]  Yeah, it's important to find people you can trust.
[05:06.900 --> 05:12.860]  Because they're going to have the keys to get in next to your servers and all your tools and anything like that.
[05:13.460 --> 05:16.800]  So, you need to make sure you don't bring in people that you're not comfortable with.
[05:16.800 --> 05:22.080]  Or people that might cause other issues or drama or anything like that.
[05:22.200 --> 05:23.780]  Or have other reasons to be there.
[05:23.880 --> 05:27.060]  They just want a space so they can get in a lot of their mom's house or something like that.
[05:27.060 --> 05:28.720]  That shouldn't be the main driving factor.
[05:29.140 --> 05:37.380]  And going back to economics and, you know, people with money, I can't stress enough that if you do attempt to start a space, we found that you shouldn't really...
[05:37.380 --> 05:39.680]  A single person should not be paying more than $250.
[05:39.900 --> 05:44.120]  That seems to be the magic number, this year at least, for space.
[05:44.120 --> 05:48.960]  Any more than that, if you were to lose that member, you could really put the whole thing into a financial well.
[05:51.520 --> 05:56.240]  Would you say that the people involved is the major contributing factor to the downfall?
[05:57.340 --> 05:59.200]  I've seen many spaces.
[06:00.060 --> 06:01.720]  I've only been involved in this one.
[06:01.760 --> 06:09.760]  However, it seems to me that if there was one thing that was going to cause the downfall of a certain place, it would be the people.
[06:10.080 --> 06:14.840]  So, I can speak to this because we just had one of our main members move away.
[06:15.400 --> 06:23.640]  And he was probably the most social out of the whole group and often brought everyone together, be it at the space or barbecues or whatnot.
[06:24.000 --> 06:26.480]  And we've suffered quite a bit from that.
[06:27.500 --> 06:33.960]  There's, you know, everyone not being as social as him kind of made things fizzle out a little bit.
[06:33.960 --> 06:38.680]  And so, now trying to really ramp up again, you find it a lot more difficult.
[06:38.940 --> 06:49.260]  I mean, definitely having someone who's very social and can go out and, you know, have many different friends and can pull from many different resources makes it a bit easier to deal with.
[06:49.960 --> 06:53.240]  Oh, I haven't heard him being described as being social before.
[06:53.240 --> 06:54.040]  That's pretty cool.
[06:56.420 --> 06:59.320]  But, yeah, it's definitely important to have stable people.
[06:59.440 --> 07:00.340]  But you should also have a plan.
[07:00.560 --> 07:06.140]  If, you know, people move on, people move to different cities, get different jobs, their life changes, you know, they can't afford to pay.
[07:06.340 --> 07:07.800]  You should definitely have a plan in place.
[07:08.240 --> 07:11.720]  So, if one person were to leave, you'd be able to still maintain the space.
[07:11.900 --> 07:14.420]  So, that's something that needs to be done with planning.
[07:14.920 --> 07:15.280]  But...
[07:16.420 --> 07:31.220]  We've been fortunate to have enough of a contingency plan in Poughkeepsie that we've had a few people that have had to drop out because they got married and bought a house or various things like that where they just said, you know, sorry guys, can't do it anymore.
[07:31.400 --> 07:34.080]  And they paid up for the last month and then moved on.
[07:34.240 --> 07:39.540]  But if you plan well enough that you have a bit of a slush fund, it doesn't hurt that badly until you find a new member.
[07:40.480 --> 07:45.060]  We actually kept, I think it was three months worth of slush in slush.
[07:45.260 --> 07:48.620]  And while that's a good theory, it doesn't always work out that way.
[07:48.620 --> 07:56.260]  I was going to originally pulled all sorts of graphs and charts and all that, you know, nifty financial stuff, which I never actually got a chance to do.
[07:56.580 --> 08:05.540]  But you do need to keep some of your funds squared away so that you can at least operate the space, assuming, worst case scenario, for three months.
[08:06.360 --> 08:10.780]  And after that, well, you can try to jump out of your lease or something like that.
[08:11.240 --> 08:15.180]  But speaking of things like leases, we should probably talk about how to find the actual place.
[08:15.180 --> 08:15.360]  Right.
[08:15.440 --> 08:21.800]  So once you've found the people and you have the drive and the means to do that, the next thing is to find a place to put your stuff.
[08:23.880 --> 08:24.600]  So that...
[08:25.100 --> 08:25.820]  So what size?
[08:26.120 --> 08:28.260]  Like, how do you determine what kind of, how big a place was?
[08:28.340 --> 08:32.200]  I think for Poughkeepsie, at least, what we did was we measured our apartment.
[08:32.200 --> 08:37.860]  And we decided that, well, okay, my, my crap room is about one fourth this apartment.
[08:38.660 --> 08:40.420]  I'll move about half of that.
[08:40.620 --> 08:41.380]  So I'm one eighth.
[08:41.620 --> 08:43.260]  So adding up, adding up, adding up.
[08:43.400 --> 08:47.280]  We ended up with a number like a thousand square feet or 800 square feet, something like that.
[08:47.420 --> 08:47.580]  Yeah.
[08:47.680 --> 08:51.400]  Something in the 800 to 1500 square foot range was our original target.
[08:52.460 --> 08:58.520]  The, um, the way commercial space generally works is you pay per square foot per year.
[08:59.620 --> 09:05.440]  So an average, a number that we were looking for, I seem to remember was about seven bucks, 7.50 or so.
[09:06.580 --> 09:14.880]  And that, that's $7.50 was a price that, you know, people advertise to say it's $7.50 per square foot per year.
[09:15.100 --> 09:15.640]  Per month?
[09:16.540 --> 09:17.120]  No, per year.
[09:18.500 --> 09:19.560]  If you do the math.
[09:19.760 --> 09:20.200]  Okay.
[09:20.440 --> 09:24.460]  It's, you know, it works out about, if it's 700 square feet and whatever.
[09:25.480 --> 09:26.540]  Trust me, it works out.
[09:26.540 --> 09:28.240]  But I, it didn't sound right either to me.
[09:28.460 --> 09:33.860]  But, um, in addition to that, you have any sort of shared space you have with other tenants in the building.
[09:34.100 --> 09:39.720]  In our case, we have, uh, you know, our bathrooms and other assorted facilities, uh, which are shared.
[09:39.820 --> 09:41.280]  So we paid actually a couple of beans for that.
[09:41.400 --> 09:44.060]  And then on top of that, there's more costs like utilities.
[09:44.120 --> 09:45.060]  We'll get to that in a second.
[09:45.500 --> 09:50.140]  Um, but we were talking about size of the space.
[09:50.220 --> 09:51.180]  What else is important about the space?
[09:51.260 --> 09:51.980]  Should we find walls?
[09:51.980 --> 09:56.260]  I think that the next important thing, obviously, besides rent, I mean, that's a huge thing, is distance.
[09:56.660 --> 09:58.560]  Um, you shouldn't expect people to go that far.
[09:58.680 --> 10:01.820]  I mean, I, uh, when I was living in New Haven, um, I was renting space in Hartford, Connecticut.
[10:02.320 --> 10:04.540]  And that was, like, a 45-minute drive for me.
[10:04.660 --> 10:06.180]  And I was like, oh, sure, I'll be able to do this.
[10:06.280 --> 10:08.500]  And I think I'd go there once a week, if that.
[10:09.240 --> 10:14.820]  Um, so you should find a place that is central to everybody and no one has to travel too far to get there.
[10:14.820 --> 10:15.940]  I think that's pretty big.
[10:16.660 --> 10:21.260]  And then, um, I think the, you know, physical location and the obscurity of it.
[10:21.420 --> 10:24.340]  You know, you don't want to have a place with a glass storefront or something like that.
[10:24.440 --> 10:26.580]  You want to have a place that's pretty obscure.
[10:26.640 --> 10:28.100]  No one's going to really know what's going on.
[10:28.320 --> 10:30.780]  You know, you don't want to advertise, hey, we have a whole bunch of gear in here.
[10:30.960 --> 10:33.860]  And, you know, there's a couple deadbolts or something like that.
[10:34.520 --> 10:36.980]  Um, also checking out the building near the integrity of it.
[10:37.060 --> 10:40.640]  You don't want a place that's falling down or, you know, has water damage, a leaking roof, or stuff like that.
[10:40.800 --> 10:42.720]  And especially the integrity of the electrical system.
[10:42.720 --> 10:47.060]  If you're going to have a lot of computers running there, you want something with fairly decent electrical service.
[10:47.720 --> 10:53.740]  One thing I remember at Poughkeepsie was when we moved in, there was a certain part of the ceiling which had been replaced.
[10:53.960 --> 10:57.200]  So there was, you know, new Sheetrock up there, which just looked different from the rest.
[10:57.260 --> 11:01.120]  And we didn't think anything of it until the big snow.
[11:01.560 --> 11:09.760]  And then that froze in the... it's a flat roof, so you have a drain that drains basically out to the normal drainage system.
[11:09.760 --> 11:14.660]  And so water in there froze, pushed out the service cap.
[11:14.800 --> 11:20.760]  And then once the water melted, including all the water on the roof, it came out the service cap.
[11:20.980 --> 11:26.060]  And about a half a foot away from our primary rack, we had one rack at that time.
[11:26.340 --> 11:30.320]  So about a half foot away from rack one was a giant puddle and it was growing.
[11:30.580 --> 11:31.960]  And that was not good.
[11:32.700 --> 11:39.100]  So you do want to be careful about, even though you can't see it, you know, these are some telltale signs that might indicate a problem.
[11:40.100 --> 11:45.880]  The other thing to consider is what form of heating the building has and what form of cooling the building has.
[11:46.060 --> 11:51.040]  The first place we looked at in Poughkeepsie was a really, really neat old IBM building.
[11:51.040 --> 11:54.160]  So it was all industrial with big girders and huge power buses and everything.
[11:54.620 --> 12:01.540]  Until we discovered that it's stone walls, small windows, and no central heating system at all.
[12:01.760 --> 12:06.760]  The only way to heat it would have been electric baseboard heaters running off our power bill.
[12:06.760 --> 12:15.760]  I think I calculated that out as like $3,000 per month in just electricity to operate enough heaters to keep that place heated.
[12:16.180 --> 12:19.020]  I don't remember how I calculated that out, but...
[12:19.020 --> 12:21.380]  No, we have radiator heat for ours.
[12:21.380 --> 12:26.260]  And we have the same sort of thing, like it's all bricks and radiator heat works really well.
[12:26.840 --> 12:34.280]  But trying to cool it down because we have 15 foot ceilings and wall units sometimes just don't cut it.
[12:34.840 --> 12:38.400]  We have one 12,000 BTU air conditioner.
[12:38.760 --> 12:46.780]  And while that really kind of cools it down a little bit, it doesn't come close to really providing the coolness that you need from two racks of servers running.
[12:48.280 --> 12:53.360]  Thankfully for us, our electricity bill doesn't seem to go up no matter how much more we add on to ours.
[12:53.680 --> 13:02.040]  We've got an old factory where there were a lot of seamstresses, so there were heavy duty equipment running all the time.
[13:02.040 --> 13:10.320]  There's like a series of 200 amp breakers down in the basement, so we add to it all the time and it seems to work out well.
[13:10.660 --> 13:17.640]  But if you're not lucky enough to have that, then electricity costs for cooling can really cripple you.
[13:18.600 --> 13:21.600]  Yeah, and we know all about that in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[13:21.600 --> 13:25.660]  That's one of our toughest issues is paying the electric bill.
[13:25.900 --> 13:29.180]  So sometimes it definitely is more than our bandwidth costs.
[13:29.980 --> 13:35.440]  Our heat, which we sort of realized is going in, but then we found out exactly the impact of how much it would be.
[13:35.540 --> 13:39.500]  We have two electric heaters and then we kind of rely on all the machines we run to heat the rest of it.
[13:39.800 --> 13:43.420]  But cooling in the summer is very difficult.
[13:43.420 --> 13:46.300]  For a while we were using these little portable AC units.
[13:46.620 --> 13:54.900]  And I would recommend to stay away from those because they're really not designed to have the exhaust or the outtake or whatever extended at all.
[13:55.060 --> 14:02.200]  So after going through about three of those, we contacted a professional HVAC guy who was pretty cool.
[14:02.440 --> 14:06.500]  And if you find the right kind of person, they can sell your used gear really cheap.
[14:06.620 --> 14:10.540]  So we ended up getting a 30,000 BTU unit and that took care of most of the cooling needs in the summer.
[14:10.540 --> 14:12.680]  And it cost about as much as a portable unit.
[14:12.840 --> 14:15.580]  It's just a matter of finding, you know, the right person.
[14:15.860 --> 14:28.680]  But definitely if you're looking into that, you know, try to calculate out what your utility bills for heating, you know, water, you know, bandwidth will be before you, you know, jump into it and, you know, sign a commitment on a lease.
[14:29.280 --> 14:32.800]  For big data centers, I think the largest cost item is actually electricity.
[14:32.800 --> 14:33.800]  It's not bandwidth.
[14:34.080 --> 14:35.020]  Yeah, that's true.
[14:35.160 --> 14:38.300]  And it's even getting worse because of all these rack mount servers.
[14:38.300 --> 14:42.640]  People don't realize the density of it gets smaller, but the amount of heat they throw is amazing.
[14:43.100 --> 14:43.580]  Yeah.
[14:43.840 --> 14:51.280]  In Poughkeepsie now, we have gas heat in the winter, which we rarely turn on at this point because we just heat the system or the room with all the computers.
[14:52.320 --> 15:00.940]  And then during the summer, we have a 18,000 BTU wall unit and then two 12,000 BTU standalone units just for the server room.
[15:01.040 --> 15:02.980]  And it barely keeps up.
[15:02.980 --> 15:13.460]  It should be said, too, that it seems like from talking with a lot of people, those mobile units actually seem to provide a lot less than they're rated for.
[15:13.860 --> 15:14.780]  Yeah, they suck.
[15:15.060 --> 15:15.220]  Yeah.
[15:15.260 --> 15:22.660]  So if you're buying a 12,000 BTU mobile unit, expect it to put out a lot less than 12,000 BTUs.
[15:22.780 --> 15:24.200]  They're also twice as expensive.
[15:24.200 --> 15:24.940]  Yeah, they are.
[15:25.120 --> 15:27.060]  I mean, they just don't really seem worthwhile.
[15:27.060 --> 15:36.700]  If you can get a place with windows large enough to accommodate some of the larger wall unit air conditionings, they're far better in terms of efficiency.
[15:37.580 --> 15:41.480]  We had to go with the standalone units because our server room has no windows.
[15:42.360 --> 15:44.200]  So we vent them directly into the attic.
[15:45.260 --> 15:48.360]  The attic, fortunately, is pretty much open to air.
[15:48.940 --> 15:51.300]  It's sort of an old warehouse-y type building.
[15:54.460 --> 15:57.800]  So we're talking about cooling and electric.
[15:59.040 --> 16:05.320]  Our lease basically says that we are subletting electricity from the guys we rent from.
[16:05.320 --> 16:10.520]  So we pay a static $200 a month no matter how much we use, pretty much.
[16:10.740 --> 16:11.540]  So lucky.
[16:12.060 --> 16:12.460]  Yeah.
[16:12.700 --> 16:14.580]  Now, how does that compare to you guys?
[16:14.720 --> 16:16.340]  That seems to be the case for us.
[16:16.620 --> 16:17.220]  That's the case for you?
[16:17.340 --> 16:17.520]  Yeah.
[16:17.740 --> 16:21.260]  Like I said, there's a lot of power coming in.
[16:21.300 --> 16:23.880]  And we plug in things all the time.
[16:24.480 --> 16:26.220]  And nobody ever seems to notice.
[16:26.580 --> 16:27.180]  And at PHP.
[16:27.600 --> 16:31.900]  So is the power bill in your name or is it in the place you're leasing from?
[16:32.340 --> 16:33.900]  I believe it's in the owner's name.
[16:34.000 --> 16:35.240]  I'd have to double check on that.
[16:35.340 --> 16:36.980]  But I'm fairly certain that that's the case.
[16:37.520 --> 16:37.920]  Yeah.
[16:38.060 --> 16:42.640]  No, in Cambridge again, you know, you actually get fairly sore ass after paying the power bill every few months.
[16:42.760 --> 16:46.560]  But if you're in a big metropolitan area, I would look at, you know, factory space.
[16:46.700 --> 16:47.980]  That's included in the lease.
[16:48.140 --> 16:50.340]  But I won't say too much on this.
[16:50.440 --> 17:02.300]  But look at the different options that your electric company provides and try to figure out a way to swing the lowest one by certain means, you know, even if you're in a commercially zoned space.
[17:02.300 --> 17:06.880]  There are two major ways of metering power, as I understand it.
[17:06.960 --> 17:10.360]  There's the how much power you're using for the entire month.
[17:10.440 --> 17:14.860]  And then there's how much power you're using at any given moment for the entire month.
[17:15.020 --> 17:16.680]  And there's a slight difference there.
[17:17.180 --> 17:17.840]  Do you guys...
[17:17.840 --> 17:20.080]  Are you guys on the still the kilowatt hour or...?
[17:20.080 --> 17:22.400]  Yeah, we have NSTAR in Boston.
[17:22.820 --> 17:24.720]  And they have two different plans.
[17:24.880 --> 17:26.220]  Yeah, they have a residential demand plan.
[17:26.300 --> 17:33.780]  The demand plan is set up for more people that use, you know, industrial machinery and stuff like that that has a huge in rush current, like when an AC motor kicks on.
[17:35.500 --> 17:35.940]  But...
[17:35.940 --> 17:39.760]  Yeah, our building that we're in in Poughkeepsie is metered off of that.
[17:39.900 --> 17:40.820]  It's an old bowling alley.
[17:41.040 --> 17:43.040]  And it's currently full of a cement company.
[17:43.920 --> 17:46.320]  So they get metered by peak usage.
[17:46.400 --> 17:50.760]  Which means they basically don't notice that we're there using their power.
[17:51.360 --> 17:56.980]  If you go to try to figure out what your power bill is going to be, you should probably come up with a number and then at least double it.
[17:57.760 --> 18:04.360]  We looked at all of our equipment and not counting the air conditioner on the 240 volt line that we can't measure.
[18:05.520 --> 18:10.200]  We guesstimate we're running something in the vicinity of 5,000 kilowatt hours per month.
[18:10.920 --> 18:12.140]  Which would be...
[18:12.140 --> 18:13.040]  It's a lot of power.
[18:13.300 --> 18:15.080]  Which would be a significant bill.
[18:15.880 --> 18:17.540]  I don't want to even calculate that.
[18:17.680 --> 18:23.860]  We got this little handy-dandy meter called a Kill-a-Watt, K-I-L-L-A-W-A-T-T.
[18:24.100 --> 18:25.400]  I think ThinkGeek sells them now.
[18:25.400 --> 18:26.720]  ThinkGeek started selling them now, yeah.
[18:26.720 --> 18:27.200]  Yeah, yeah.
[18:27.200 --> 18:30.440]  You can also use a multimeter with an AM probe that might be a little cheaper.
[18:30.440 --> 18:32.340]  Yes, but only if you separate out the legs.
[18:32.480 --> 18:32.800]  Right, right.
[18:33.140 --> 18:35.520]  Okay, so you have a space and you have some people.
[18:36.520 --> 18:37.460]  What do you do with that?
[18:37.800 --> 18:40.640]  And a couple things, the first thing you want to do...
[18:41.460 --> 18:46.940]  Stuff that we found that works through trial and error is assign a function to each person.
[18:46.940 --> 18:51.020]  Like one person will be in charge of, you know, dealing with the landlord, be the liaison for that.
[18:51.520 --> 18:54.060]  One person will be the treasurer, you know, backup person.
[18:54.180 --> 18:55.940]  One person will be taking care of network operations.
[18:56.080 --> 18:58.980]  One person will take care of, you know, physical stuff.
[18:59.180 --> 19:01.880]  And at least in our place, we do a rotating cleaning schedule.
[19:01.880 --> 19:11.160]  And I think most people don't really think about that, but that's really important, is your place will get really nasty really fast if you don't have someone clean the floor or the bathroom or whatever.
[19:11.340 --> 19:16.420]  So we find just having a monthly schedule usually works if you have something to stick with that.
[19:16.420 --> 19:19.220]  We're slightly less well-defined in McKibsey about that.
[19:19.420 --> 19:27.900]  But we look out where some of the cleaning is done by the cleaning service that the company that we lease the space from hires, since the bathrooms are in a shared area.
[19:28.200 --> 19:34.820]  But for the rest of it, when it's time to clean, we tend to just call everyone and say, show up, and we're going to throw a bunch of crap out.
[19:34.880 --> 19:36.920]  And if you don't show up, your crap might get thrown out.
[19:37.480 --> 19:39.260]  Yeah, we're pretty much the same way.
[19:39.260 --> 19:41.580]  We have a shared facilities as well.
[19:41.840 --> 19:46.280]  So luckily, we don't have to clean up after everyone else, which is pretty nice.
[19:46.640 --> 19:52.780]  But when it comes down to cleaning the inside of the space, it becomes rather difficult to get everybody around.
[19:53.100 --> 19:55.740]  So do it at meeting times.
[19:56.020 --> 19:57.280]  We have concrete floors.
[19:57.560 --> 19:58.800]  Obviously, we're a concrete company.
[19:58.900 --> 19:59.020]  No.
[19:59.520 --> 20:01.560]  Even before that, we have had concrete floors.
[20:01.580 --> 20:05.580]  And I'm constantly amazed at how much actual dirt gets on those floors.
[20:05.580 --> 20:17.820]  If you look underneath any one of our desks, except for those of us who have rugs under our desks, it's actually enough that you can scrape with your fingernail, and there's actual depth to it.
[20:18.160 --> 20:18.500]  Yeah.
[20:18.720 --> 20:19.720]  It's kind of...
[20:20.900 --> 20:25.940]  Unless you actually mop that every week or something, which you're never going to do, so don't even think about it.
[20:28.640 --> 20:30.820]  It's just going to look really, really bad.
[20:30.820 --> 20:36.820]  I tend to remember, actually, the room that we inhabited used to be a showroom for concrete.
[20:37.180 --> 20:44.380]  So what we had to do was basically take... we took buckets of water, we threw it on the ground, and we pushed it out before we moved anything in.
[20:44.560 --> 20:50.700]  So we were... by any means, clean it when you first get in there to as much as you possibly can.
[20:50.700 --> 20:58.800]  If you can afford it, too, air filtration systems like HEPA filters, even though, in your case, you probably have to change them fairly frequently...
[20:59.420 --> 20:59.880]  Very frequently.
[21:00.100 --> 21:01.240]  ...are very nice to do.
[21:01.480 --> 21:07.820]  About once every two weeks, we replace one of the furnace filters that we have the special exhaust fan to exhaust into the server room.
[21:08.220 --> 21:12.560]  And it goes through a filter, and those filters clog up in about two weeks.
[21:12.560 --> 21:12.940]  Yeah.
[21:13.560 --> 21:17.180]  One thing that's funny about concrete, which I didn't realize, at least.
[21:17.340 --> 21:17.620]  I don't know.
[21:17.780 --> 21:20.280]  Other people probably knew, and I just was dumb about it.
[21:21.460 --> 21:27.120]  Concrete plus water equals caustic to metal, which is a problem in a computer.
[21:28.540 --> 21:35.320]  So filtering out stuff became very, very important for us very quickly after we started seeing things fail.
[21:35.480 --> 21:37.960]  Although I don't think we've actually seen things really fail.
[21:38.200 --> 21:39.380]  I blew up a power supply.
[21:39.380 --> 21:39.940]  Yeah.
[21:40.820 --> 21:49.860]  The other thing that concrete, very fine concrete dust will do is collect on all the surfaces that are supposed to be heat sinks and so on and so forth and just inhibit that.
[21:50.380 --> 21:50.540]  Yeah.
[21:50.620 --> 21:51.980]  It's not just concrete dust, though.
[21:52.340 --> 21:54.860]  Chances are you'll probably be getting a building that isn't brand new.
[21:55.140 --> 21:58.280]  So chances are there's going to be a lot of dust falling from everywhere.
[21:58.500 --> 22:03.120]  So you'll need to plan to take care of that, and you'll probably want to plan about air filters and whatnot.
[22:03.600 --> 22:13.360]  Concrete dust is just particularly pervasive and fine, but any old building, any industrial space, is going to be full of dirt that's going to get into servers and whatnot if you don't put in air filters.
[22:14.280 --> 22:26.260]  In our case, we maintain positive pressure in the server room so that we exhaust in so that a minimal amount of dust comes in since there is no direct connection from the server room to the concrete factory people.
[22:26.900 --> 22:43.980]  We haven't done it yet, but one thing you can do to cut down on dust, I've done this at work, is to take concrete sealer, you can get that at Home Depot or whatever, and put it on any bare concrete floors, and that just basically keeps any dust from rising from the floor after your shoes scuff it up and whatever else,
[22:44.200 --> 22:48.960]  after you drop a heavy server, you know, 700-pound server, whatever, on the concrete and crack it.
[22:48.960 --> 22:49.460]  Yeah.
[22:50.440 --> 22:50.920]  All right.
[22:51.180 --> 22:51.300]  Okay.
[22:51.500 --> 22:57.380]  So one thing to keep people there that we found is it's good to schedule a weekly meeting and really stick to it.
[22:57.460 --> 23:01.540]  So you say, okay, we're going to meet every Wednesday night, 8 o'clock, and you make sure everybody shows up.
[23:01.960 --> 23:15.260]  And that's kind of the one night where, you know, other things you should think about are, like, visitor policies and policies on if someone leaves or whatever, what they'll usually ask for, like, a first and a last month rent.
[23:15.460 --> 23:27.140]  But, so if you have a visitor policy, it's good to have, you know, one night a week where everybody gets together to work on a project, clean the place, work on infrastructure, something like that, and just not have random people come over to drink beer and hang out or whatever.
[23:27.940 --> 23:29.160]  I really can't stress that enough.
[23:29.280 --> 23:33.960]  It's really important to just say, okay, certain things need to get done, and they're going to get done once a week.
[23:34.220 --> 23:35.980]  And, you know, that's pretty much that.
[23:36.260 --> 23:37.500]  And that's worked pretty well.
[23:38.140 --> 23:41.320]  Yeah, if you include food, people seem to come more frequently.
[23:41.760 --> 23:44.840]  Yeah, like when you get together for dinner and then you work on the project or something like that afterwards.
[23:45.200 --> 23:45.400]  Yeah.
[23:46.280 --> 23:57.280]  Along those lines, having separate areas in the space, you know, everybody will get their own work area for stuff, but then having a clear, defined separation of a common area where everybody just hangs out, you know, you might have a video projector or a couch,
[23:57.380 --> 24:04.980]  a couple of video games or whatever, it's completely separated from people's workspace is pretty important for quite a few reasons.
[24:06.620 --> 24:10.520]  Having a server room completely separated off is also kind of nice.
[24:11.240 --> 24:15.640]  When you're jamming in a bunch of machines together, as many of you know, it gets pretty freaking loud.
[24:16.760 --> 24:22.480]  And so being able to have a public area where you can kind of get away from all that noise is really nice.
[24:23.560 --> 24:28.640]  When we moved into our space, there was just sort of this little cage area that they used to use as a tool shed kind of thing.
[24:30.120 --> 24:35.620]  Eventually, what we ended up doing was, well, we tried to put up this stupid pink foam in order to dampen the sound.
[24:35.720 --> 24:37.900]  And that actually worked pretty well, we thought.
[24:38.080 --> 24:39.980]  And then we added more machines and more machines.
[24:40.060 --> 24:43.100]  We got more sensitive to, as you know, now we don't have as much noise.
[24:43.300 --> 24:46.400]  So we started putting up sheet rock and, well, that was great.
[24:46.400 --> 24:54.480]  And then we put more insulation in there, like actual, like, was R15 insulation or whatever.
[24:55.040 --> 24:55.840]  Fiberglass insulation.
[24:56.120 --> 24:56.880]  Fiberglass insulation.
[24:57.620 --> 24:59.020]  Another layer of sheet rock.
[24:59.220 --> 25:00.180]  And then that's what we got now.
[25:00.260 --> 25:01.860]  And that's pretty decent.
[25:02.080 --> 25:03.800]  It's still a little loud in some places.
[25:04.080 --> 25:05.840]  And, of course, you've got to remember to vent all that.
[25:06.180 --> 25:06.420]  So...
[25:07.180 --> 25:07.620]  Right.
[25:07.800 --> 25:10.540]  So one thing we didn't talk about we should touch on is bandwidth.
[25:10.760 --> 25:11.680]  I mean, that's pretty important.
[25:12.000 --> 25:14.760]  One of the workspaces I was involved in in Boston, we rented a place.
[25:15.040 --> 25:16.660]  And we found out we couldn't get DSL to it.
[25:16.860 --> 25:18.140]  Or anything to it, for that matter.
[25:18.780 --> 25:20.140]  So we had that space for about three months.
[25:20.280 --> 25:22.980]  And we had to leave the lease just because we couldn't get any bandwidth in there.
[25:23.080 --> 25:23.600]  It was pretty...
[25:23.600 --> 25:26.040]  You know, we couldn't really use it for what it was intended purposes.
[25:27.080 --> 25:27.360]  So...
[25:28.020 --> 25:29.580]  There are different options depending on where you live.
[25:29.720 --> 25:33.100]  We're lucky enough in Boston to be part of a cooperative ISP.
[25:33.240 --> 25:34.860]  So we pretty much run our own tier two ISP.
[25:35.700 --> 25:41.380]  And to help offset the cost, I think all the workspaces do this is just offer, like, web hosting or Colo services.
[25:41.860 --> 25:42.640]  It's pretty cheap.
[25:42.920 --> 25:45.600]  And, you know, have people that you trust, you know, maintain their own machines.
[25:45.740 --> 25:48.200]  And you just put it up on your net block for them.
[25:48.400 --> 25:50.200]  And that's good income to help offset the bandwidth.
[25:51.180 --> 25:51.500]  So...
[25:52.180 --> 25:54.580]  Most of the time, you're going to want to go with a commercial DSL service.
[25:54.700 --> 25:57.540]  Especially if, you know, you have people paying you just so you get a good SLA.
[25:57.820 --> 26:03.280]  Don't try to do something with a cable modem or, you know, cheap PPPoE DSL or something like that.
[26:03.280 --> 26:04.000]  Yeah.
[26:04.400 --> 26:07.500]  We looked at getting an official T1 in Poughkeepsie.
[26:07.800 --> 26:19.140]  And thanks to the lack of any tech companies, for the most part, except IBM in Poughkeepsie, a T1 would have cost about $900 a month.
[26:20.060 --> 26:21.280]  That's a big expense.
[26:21.420 --> 26:22.080]  That's more than rent.
[26:22.480 --> 26:22.700]  Yeah.
[26:23.000 --> 26:26.400]  So what we ended up getting was a commercial DSL line as well.
[26:26.400 --> 26:34.280]  And we lucked out because there's a non-Verizon, non-phone company, DSL company in Poughkeepsie.
[26:34.360 --> 26:36.860]  So we're one of their largest commercial customers.
[26:36.860 --> 26:38.400]  So they tend to like us.
[26:38.780 --> 26:42.020]  Which is really beneficial if you have any problems with your lines.
[26:42.300 --> 26:45.100]  There was a guy who was supposed to actually present at this conference.
[26:45.120 --> 26:45.880]  He couldn't make it.
[26:46.760 --> 26:52.940]  Who did a lot of scanning and a lot of things that most ISPs would have just sort of put the kibosh on.
[26:54.780 --> 26:57.880]  They called us up first and said, well, what's happening with this guy?
[26:58.080 --> 26:58.880]  And he seems to be doing this.
[26:58.940 --> 26:59.660]  He seems to be doing that.
[26:59.940 --> 27:02.960]  And I could actually talk to them and explain to them what exactly was happening.
[27:03.280 --> 27:04.840]  And he was like, oh, okay.
[27:05.000 --> 27:07.680]  Well, you know, we're getting complaints, but this, that, and the other thing.
[27:08.940 --> 27:10.520]  And he could finish his research.
[27:10.520 --> 27:12.660]  And he ended up finishing his research.
[27:13.620 --> 27:18.660]  So having a friendly company, having a person, you know, names that you can call, you know.
[27:18.660 --> 27:24.820]  This exists at larger companies too, but unless you're a big commercial customer, you generally don't get that level of attention.
[27:25.880 --> 27:27.880]  And then the guys don't know you too well.
[27:28.740 --> 27:34.420]  Yeah, finding a small ISP and talking to them ahead of time and, you know, showing them that you have some clue is huge.
[27:34.660 --> 27:37.060]  They'll be willing to work with you a little bit more and they probably won't.
[27:37.060 --> 27:39.720]  Yeah, demonstrating a cluefulness is really good.
[27:39.880 --> 27:41.180]  If you can talk to their techs directly.
[27:42.180 --> 27:44.960]  We were lucky enough, we even got reverse DNS delegation.
[27:45.460 --> 27:49.160]  When we first asked about it, they went, no, because people always screw it up.
[27:49.260 --> 27:50.720]  And then they yell at us that their DNS is broken.
[27:50.980 --> 27:53.800]  And we were actually able to persuade them that we were not stupid.
[27:54.600 --> 27:56.920]  And we lucked out in there as well.
[27:57.080 --> 28:00.240]  That would never have happened if we'd gotten the DSL from Verizon or something like that.
[28:00.540 --> 28:00.880]  Yeah, not at all.
[28:01.000 --> 28:04.540]  And it also helps if you want, you know, more net allocation or something like that.
[28:04.540 --> 28:07.920]  If you want another net block, if you can justify the use, you know, tell them what they're doing.
[28:08.260 --> 28:10.360]  We got a half a Class C for ourselves.
[28:10.380 --> 28:12.680]  I guess you own your own Class C.
[28:13.280 --> 28:13.900]  Sure, yeah.
[28:14.840 --> 28:15.420]  Sort of.
[28:16.440 --> 28:18.800]  We take half a Class C from our ISP.
[28:19.660 --> 28:26.900]  I remember when they come to install it for commercial customers, and there's really nothing you can do to prevent them from coming to install it.
[28:27.040 --> 28:32.200]  So they sent along this guy who just happened to be living in the direction that we were on his way home.
[28:32.200 --> 28:34.460]  And he was a dork.
[28:34.620 --> 28:36.400]  He was a UNIX admin for the company.
[28:36.560 --> 28:39.780]  And they were small enough that the UNIX admin also did installs every once in a while.
[28:39.860 --> 28:42.880]  So he came out, and he saw what we were doing, and he was thrilled.
[28:43.340 --> 28:51.280]  How often would you ever imagine to have, you know, a ragtag group of people in this concrete factory, nerding it up with all sorts of computers.
[28:51.280 --> 28:56.300]  So he was amazed, and it turns out that he's the actual guy who does the reverse delegation.
[28:56.680 --> 29:00.540]  So I gave him a call up, and he helped us out.
[29:00.600 --> 29:02.320]  And he's helped us out with a couple of problems since.
[29:03.380 --> 29:05.100]  One of the clueful people.
[29:07.280 --> 29:08.800]  Is there anything else you want to say about bandwidth?
[29:08.940 --> 29:10.400]  How much bandwidth do you actually keep?
[29:10.620 --> 29:13.500]  How much do you need, and how do you determine how much you need?
[29:13.500 --> 29:19.600]  We're running two T1s, and we're pretty well utilizing them.
[29:19.780 --> 29:27.080]  But again, that's, again, we're in a unique situation where we can get pretty cheap T1s because we terminate them ourselves in a data center as part of it.
[29:27.100 --> 29:31.820]  If anyone looks into it, kind of touched on that if anybody was here two years ago, the Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium.
[29:32.660 --> 29:37.080]  It's a group of people in Boston that have basically said, okay, we're pretty fed up with all these ISPs.
[29:37.220 --> 29:38.040]  We're just going to start our own.
[29:38.200 --> 29:41.960]  So they went to the phone company and said, hey, we have ten people that want to buy T1s.
[29:41.960 --> 29:43.940]  You know, if we buy T1s, how much will it cost?
[29:44.360 --> 29:48.800]  We were able to get them about $5, $10 over cost and then, you know, pair on termination fees.
[29:50.240 --> 29:53.480]  But again, when selecting a space, too, look at the physical plant around the space.
[29:53.620 --> 29:59.420]  You know, if the copper is horrible, if, you know, scrolls are chewing on or whatever, you're probably going to have a lot of hard time getting a good DSL loop there.
[29:59.560 --> 30:01.940]  You know, you want to have pretty clean copper going to it.
[30:02.180 --> 30:05.960]  If you're in an office building that has fiber, too, going to it, like a slick or something like that, that's great.
[30:06.360 --> 30:08.180]  That would be a definite plus.
[30:08.460 --> 30:11.620]  So if you're looking at a bunch of spaces, definitely don't take the first one you see.
[30:11.620 --> 30:13.760]  You know, look at five or six spaces.
[30:13.900 --> 30:15.140]  You know, Craigslist is a good place to look.
[30:15.260 --> 30:17.820]  Just driving around your city or whatever for rent signs is.
[30:17.920 --> 30:24.080]  And you just keep a little table of what's good, you know, what features each space has and whatever one is good.
[30:24.520 --> 30:29.980]  It's kind of nice if you're in a major city to be near public transportation as well.
[30:30.680 --> 30:32.180]  We're kind of right off the subway.
[30:32.180 --> 30:39.760]  And so, you know, it's a quick trip down there and people who don't have cars can get there easily without having to pay, you know, taxi fares and whatnot.
[30:40.280 --> 30:42.160]  And that's pretty nice in general.
[30:42.840 --> 30:44.000]  I think we went...
[30:44.000 --> 30:49.120]  When we were looking, we went, just the two of us, not the whole group, because there's like, you know...
[30:49.120 --> 30:49.980]  How many of us are there?
[30:50.140 --> 30:50.540]  Like six?
[30:51.120 --> 30:54.240]  I think originally there were about ten people that expressed tentative interest.
[30:54.840 --> 30:58.060]  And yeah, well, we end up now with one, two, three, four, five...
[30:58.060 --> 30:58.900]  Well, about six people.
[30:59.120 --> 31:00.040]  Yeah, we're about the same.
[31:00.040 --> 31:08.180]  And so just the two of us got in a car and drove around until we found stuff near us that was pretty big and, you know, about the right thing.
[31:08.500 --> 31:22.220]  Copied down their phone numbers, took a couple of exterior pictures, picked our winners, actually went and contacted them, took pictures inside, showed them to everybody, and then we all went out to the biggest and the best and we ended up with where we were.
[31:22.220 --> 31:22.640]  Yeah.
[31:22.760 --> 31:33.860]  If you're in a more rural area, it might be worth your time to investigate how, or rather where the telco switching stations are so that you can make sure you get close enough to DSL.
[31:34.020 --> 31:38.020]  The first place we looked at, we could literally open a window, throw a rock and hit AT&T.
[31:39.040 --> 31:39.840]  It was...
[31:39.840 --> 31:40.560]  The big rock.
[31:41.360 --> 31:41.760]  Hopefully.
[31:41.760 --> 31:42.420]  No, we didn't.
[31:42.520 --> 31:43.920]  That's the place that we couldn't afford to heat.
[31:44.460 --> 31:44.740]  Yeah.
[31:45.020 --> 31:47.060]  That was the $2,000 heating bill per month.
[31:47.480 --> 31:50.420]  We'll probably take questions towards the end if you don't want to keep standing the whole time.
[31:50.420 --> 31:50.900]  Yeah.
[31:51.140 --> 31:53.620]  Well, we are at 33 minutes past the hour.
[31:54.000 --> 31:58.180]  Can we spend, let's say, three minutes talking about how we acquire stuff?
[31:58.380 --> 31:58.920]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[31:58.940 --> 32:06.020]  And then we'll head to some pictures and stuff and then to questions and hopefully we'll get like 10, 15 minutes of questions at least.
[32:06.400 --> 32:12.200]  So, how did you decide what you needed and how did you acquire all the crap?
[32:12.460 --> 32:14.200]  I think the key word is grifting.
[32:14.700 --> 32:15.040]  Yes.
[32:16.960 --> 32:19.440]  There's an amazing quantity of free stuff out there.
[32:19.440 --> 32:22.280]  Check out the local colleges, especially at move out days.
[32:22.520 --> 32:23.100]  Mm-hmm.
[32:24.360 --> 32:26.880]  Working for local universities is great, too.
[32:27.080 --> 32:29.080]  They seem to have a lot of turnover in things.
[32:29.800 --> 32:34.060]  At least in Pennsylvania, it costs a lot to recycle your computers.
[32:34.060 --> 32:37.280]  So, if you work for a local university, talk to your manager.
[32:37.460 --> 32:43.060]  More often than not, you know, they'll have you sign a paper that says you're now responsible for all of this gear.
[32:43.240 --> 32:50.220]  And you can walk home with older Sun servers, lots of Dell gear, the occasional network switcher too.
[32:51.080 --> 32:53.920]  And, I mean, all of it just absolutely for free.
[32:54.520 --> 32:57.340]  We found a lot of furniture from our local university.
[32:57.960 --> 33:03.580]  When they were throwing out all the old desks from a computer lab, you know, they just piled up in the warehouse.
[33:03.740 --> 33:04.700]  And the warehouse guy didn't want them.
[33:04.820 --> 33:05.820]  So, I knew the warehouse guy.
[33:06.000 --> 33:10.140]  And so, we pulled a whole bunch of desks out and just put them into space.
[33:10.240 --> 33:11.020]  It worked out really well.
[33:11.940 --> 33:17.120]  It was actually amazing when we started the space and we talked to everybody we knew, even people who weren't actually involved.
[33:17.300 --> 33:19.980]  How many people just came forward with, hey, you want a couch?
[33:21.360 --> 33:22.140]  Here's a rack.
[33:22.860 --> 33:23.560]  Things like that.
[33:23.780 --> 33:24.000]  We got three couches.
[33:24.620 --> 33:26.980]  Well, actually, for the first couch, you had already.
[33:27.200 --> 33:27.340]  Yeah.
[33:27.500 --> 33:29.780]  But then there was two couches that came in after that.
[33:29.840 --> 33:31.900]  And then we put the kibosh on that one couch.
[33:33.180 --> 33:34.920]  That was a bad couch.
[33:35.100 --> 33:36.580]  We should not have had that in the first place.
[33:36.680 --> 33:37.740]  The couch had no legs.
[33:37.840 --> 33:39.080]  Itch after you get up from that couch.
[33:41.860 --> 33:42.800]  So, furniture.
[33:43.420 --> 33:43.900]  Everything.
[33:44.180 --> 33:45.860]  Do we have any other tips other than universities?
[33:47.200 --> 33:49.260]  Well, you know, there's always Craigslist.
[33:49.480 --> 33:52.060]  There's local garage sales for things like furniture.
[33:53.180 --> 33:55.780]  It's helpful if someone you know has a pickup truck.
[33:56.200 --> 34:01.680]  Because it's easy to take a ride around on, you know, Saturday or Sunday to the local thrift shop or whatnot.
[34:02.120 --> 34:04.560]  If you buy a sofa for like 50 bucks.
[34:04.840 --> 34:06.260]  So, that's pretty cheap.
[34:06.480 --> 34:08.720]  Now, on this coast, there's the MIT Swap Meet.
[34:08.720 --> 34:09.040]  Yeah.
[34:09.060 --> 34:11.460]  And we found a lot of UPSs and some computer equipment.
[34:11.580 --> 34:13.660]  We don't keep a lot of computer equipment that's communal.
[34:13.880 --> 34:16.420]  Aside from the stuff that's been there so long that nobody remembers whose it is.
[34:17.540 --> 34:20.580]  So, we found like $40 UPSs.
[34:20.900 --> 34:23.680]  And those actually lasted once you replaced the batteries.
[34:24.160 --> 34:25.620]  Which is a bit of an expense.
[34:26.580 --> 34:28.320]  We were lucky enough.
[34:28.500 --> 34:34.540]  We got our two main UPSs, which are rack mount UPSs, 2200s for free.
[34:35.300 --> 34:37.860]  There was a mistaken order and they couldn't return them.
[34:39.220 --> 34:44.100]  So, it's helpful if you're known as the guy who will take any bit of hardware that comes your way.
[34:44.320 --> 34:47.040]  Whether you're going to keep it or whether or not you're going to throw it out.
[34:47.240 --> 34:52.280]  If everyone knows that you'll take it, then when they have something to get rid of, they're going to come to you for it.
[34:53.080 --> 34:56.080]  And so, that's really, really been helpful.
[34:56.320 --> 34:57.620]  It's gotten us almost everything.
[34:58.280 --> 35:00.940]  We haven't bought much that's actually brand new.
[35:01.260 --> 35:05.240]  Aside from maybe some access points and our core router.
[35:05.700 --> 35:07.440]  Bit of a double-edged sword though.
[35:07.540 --> 35:09.020]  Sometimes you end up with a lot of crap.
[35:09.500 --> 35:09.700]  Yeah.
[35:09.800 --> 35:10.120]  Yeah.
[35:10.600 --> 35:12.120]  You'll see that in the pictures later.
[35:12.700 --> 35:15.420]  Speaking of which, shall we move along to the pictures and stuff?
[35:15.480 --> 35:17.120]  Actually, one quick tip too on acquiring network hardware.
[35:17.320 --> 35:22.160]  If you think you have the technical know-how, if you look on eBay, there's just so much network equipment.
[35:22.280 --> 35:23.860]  That's 48 volt DC powered.
[35:24.600 --> 35:29.060]  And you can get yourself a DC regulator or a rectifier pretty cheap.
[35:29.840 --> 35:31.980]  And you'll find network routers or switches.
[35:31.980 --> 35:36.520]  You can get them at maybe a third of their cost if you're willing to use a rectifier to power them.
[35:36.660 --> 35:39.100]  Especially leftover from, you know, all the .com blowouts and stuff.
[35:39.240 --> 35:41.260]  People collocated that stuff in Telcos.
[35:42.000 --> 35:43.340]  And it's really cheap.
[35:43.480 --> 35:47.440]  And you can get yourself a 24 port managed switch for like 50 bucks on eBay these days.
[35:48.120 --> 35:54.200]  Also, if you look for some of the off brand stuff, Nick pointed us when we started our space towards Cajun equipment.
[35:54.540 --> 36:00.340]  Which hasn't been made for a while, but we're using it and it's pretty much as good as Cisco as far as we're concerned.
[36:00.340 --> 36:05.920]  It does everything we need to and the parts to replace anything that breaks is pretty easily gone.
[36:06.140 --> 36:08.220]  Just don't put the management interface on the Internet.
[36:08.560 --> 36:08.680]  Yeah.
[36:09.060 --> 36:09.520]  No, that's...
[36:10.560 --> 36:12.920]  The management interface on those things is low.
[36:13.980 --> 36:14.480]  All right.
[36:14.540 --> 36:16.500]  So we have some pictures to kind of...
[36:16.500 --> 36:18.880]  I think they kind of touch on some of the stuff we talked about.
[36:19.160 --> 36:21.420]  And we'll talk about each one.
[36:24.850 --> 36:28.250]  This is a picture of the Poughkeepsie space from just before we moved in.
[36:29.250 --> 36:33.410]  Just before we got there, they were using it as a storage area for...
[36:33.410 --> 36:34.510]  Notice the ceiling.
[36:35.210 --> 36:39.630]  Yeah, you can also notice the interesting water damage that we didn't pay attention to.
[36:43.840 --> 36:45.740]  And that's what it got turned into.
[36:46.400 --> 36:51.660]  As Binary pointed out, you need to try to create a bit of a division between where you hang out and where you work.
[36:51.660 --> 36:56.660]  So from that perspective, all the desks and the servers and whatnot are behind us, or behind the camera.
[36:56.960 --> 37:05.680]  So we keep where people are just hanging around chatting probably a good 20 feet away from where people are trying to work, which cuts down on some of the noise and overflow like that.
[37:09.600 --> 37:12.880]  And that's just an example of cheap ways to mount racks.
[37:14.400 --> 37:18.060]  Go get a 4x4 and cut it in half or get Home Depot to cut it in half for you.
[37:18.140 --> 37:23.460]  I think we paid about 30 bucks for the rack mounts and nothing for the racks.
[37:24.140 --> 37:28.080]  Yeah, this is great if you can't drill into the floor and you want to use a relay rack instead of a four-post.
[37:28.400 --> 37:30.320]  You really do have to secure those to the floor.
[37:30.460 --> 37:34.300]  Because we're using... these are big-ass servers and these are two-post telecom racks.
[37:34.520 --> 37:35.620]  The racks will handle it.
[37:35.720 --> 37:37.220]  The racks are strong enough to do that.
[37:37.380 --> 37:39.880]  But you do need to get them onto the floor really well.
[37:40.060 --> 37:43.260]  And even in this case, you can sort of push in and it wobbles a bit.
[37:43.440 --> 37:47.040]  So if you're in an earthquake zone, maybe not a great idea now to think about it.
[37:47.040 --> 37:48.980]  But there you go.
[37:49.160 --> 37:53.680]  Yeah, the feet there are four feet long to give an idea of how much balance you actually need on them.
[37:55.240 --> 37:59.740]  Also, just a general note, you probably should ground your racks.
[38:00.020 --> 38:01.300]  A lot of people don't do that.
[38:01.620 --> 38:10.860]  But before we had grounded racks and when I was inserting the grounding into the racks, I did notice that there was a difference.
[38:12.500 --> 38:14.340]  For some reason that just made me think of...
[38:15.920 --> 38:17.540]  Now I forgot what I was thinking of.
[38:17.840 --> 38:19.780]  Wow, I'm really tired.
[38:19.940 --> 38:20.220]  Thanks.
[38:20.560 --> 38:26.200]  You see, right, just since I was talking about grounding a second ago, you see there's two lines coming in from the right there.
[38:26.420 --> 38:30.180]  And they're going down to a black thing and that's actually our ground.
[38:30.360 --> 38:35.680]  We've got that big giant loop of black cable up top going all the way back to a ground stake.
[38:36.580 --> 38:40.660]  That's a real hard ground that we paid an extra like 200 bucks for.
[38:40.840 --> 38:44.980]  Yeah, you should make sure from the people you lease from what their policies are on running more power.
[38:45.300 --> 38:48.320]  In our case, they knew an electrician that would work on the side.
[38:48.600 --> 38:51.100]  So we were able to save a little bit of money there.
[38:51.260 --> 38:57.580]  And they were pretty flexible about running heavy conduit cable through their ceilings and whatnot and drilling holes in the walls.
[38:57.980 --> 39:03.620]  But if you don't have a place that's that flexible, you need to make sure you have enough power there already since you may not be able to add more.
[39:04.080 --> 39:08.340]  We've got three 30 amp circuits or three 20 amp circuits.
[39:08.960 --> 39:14.460]  One, two, three, four, 20, no, three 20 amp circuits and two 30 amp circuits.
[39:14.600 --> 39:14.680]  Yeah.
[39:15.120 --> 39:19.200]  In just for the servers, not counting people's desks and the air conditioner for the main room.
[39:20.600 --> 39:23.340]  This picture here is the two...
[39:23.340 --> 39:23.640]  Almost.
[39:24.620 --> 39:24.900]  Almost.
[39:25.700 --> 39:27.020]  Those are the two air conditioners.
[39:27.160 --> 39:29.560]  The 12,000 BTU or one ton.
[39:29.680 --> 39:30.700]  12,000 BTU is one ton.
[39:30.840 --> 39:32.880]  So that's two tons of air conditioning theoretically.
[39:33.520 --> 39:34.540]  Ass to ass there.
[39:36.000 --> 39:42.020]  One thing we should note, there are little clear plastic tubes that are heading down.
[39:42.160 --> 39:43.500]  Those are the condensate tubes.
[39:44.460 --> 39:52.320]  They emptied into a bucket and the bucket was on a scale and the scale was attached to an email address which paged us whenever the bucket was getting full.
[39:52.920 --> 39:54.240]  Oh, that's awesome.
[39:57.140 --> 39:57.580]  So...
[39:57.580 --> 40:05.740]  And we also had MRTG graphs and everything set up so that you could see how full the bucket was and so you knew when you had to go and empty it and it would put down two hours.
[40:05.740 --> 40:09.680]  That lasted about three weeks before we realized we were emptying the bucket every eight hours.
[40:09.680 --> 40:10.080]  Yeah.
[40:10.540 --> 40:14.260]  There's nothing better than getting woken up at four in the morning to go empty the air conditioner's pee bucket.
[40:14.260 --> 40:14.640]  Five gallon bucket.
[40:14.780 --> 40:15.820]  This isn't like the small little.
[40:15.920 --> 40:17.620]  This is the big honkin'.
[40:17.620 --> 40:17.980]  Anyway.
[40:18.780 --> 40:20.100]  Humid times sometimes.
[40:20.280 --> 40:21.440]  And might I remember?
[40:22.080 --> 40:24.940]  Humid plus concrete equals me.
[40:25.160 --> 40:25.440]  Yeah.
[40:27.380 --> 40:29.260]  I think that's all we have to say about that picture.
[40:29.360 --> 40:29.920]  Let's move along.
[40:32.900 --> 40:35.360]  So this is the walnut factory in Philly.
[40:36.100 --> 40:39.080]  And some of the things that we tried to do were build...
[40:39.080 --> 40:51.860]  uh, utilitarian desks that could be used for electronics work for, you know, setting up laptops or desktops and being able to have a fairly open area where people could just plug in.
[40:52.080 --> 40:57.660]  And, you know, there were some spaces that one could claim as their own, but the rest of the space was pretty much open.
[40:57.840 --> 40:59.180]  First come, first serve.
[40:59.540 --> 41:04.000]  Um, you see the two racks off to the center and to the right.
[41:04.220 --> 41:07.040]  Um, and those were just moved in.
[41:07.040 --> 41:08.280]  And they were donated to us.
[41:08.480 --> 41:15.080]  Um, and we're trying to keep them as far apart so that we can keep the sound out of that as much as possible.
[41:15.880 --> 41:18.220]  And, uh, isn't that tabletop a whiteboard?
[41:18.400 --> 41:18.640]  Yeah.
[41:18.760 --> 41:19.020]  Oh, yeah.
[41:19.220 --> 41:19.480]  I'm sorry.
[41:19.540 --> 41:23.560]  Actually, from Home Depot, uh, you can get tabletop that acts as a whiteboard.
[41:24.000 --> 41:32.860]  Um, so if you don't really have wall space to hang a whiteboard, it's nice to just be able to jot down notes on the table and know that you can actually erase them later.
[41:38.570 --> 41:46.010]  So, uh, this picture was thrown in simply because if you look at the door, um, you may see something that looks familiar to you.
[41:46.150 --> 41:48.930]  And it's probably something that every good hackerspace should have.
[41:49.490 --> 41:53.110]  Um, that's a picture of Captain Crunch that states that he's watching you poop.
[41:53.550 --> 41:59.890]  Uh, we had shared bathrooms, so we couldn't really keep it in there because it tended to freak a lot of people out.
[41:59.890 --> 42:01.850]  But it's kind of fun to have, nonetheless.
[42:03.170 --> 42:07.130]  Um, but also the good use of storage space, metal racks that, you know, probably...
[42:07.730 --> 42:10.890]  A lot of, uh, companies throw those out now for, you know, newer racks.
[42:15.130 --> 42:19.470]  Uh, so this is an example of how easily junk can actually acquire.
[42:19.890 --> 42:25.070]  Um, we don't tend to throw out a whole lot without a whole bunch of pushing.
[42:25.070 --> 42:29.610]  Um, so we recently went through a major clean and sweep.
[42:29.930 --> 42:33.790]  And everything in this picture pretty much will wind up being thrown out.
[42:34.270 --> 42:42.050]  Um, in, in Pennsylvania, you can either drive to the ghetto and drop it off on some street corner, or you actually have to pay to have it recycled.
[42:42.430 --> 42:49.630]  Um, so it's something to think about as you're gathering gear, because it's like $20 per computer to have it recycled.
[42:50.170 --> 42:51.770]  Make sure you have a ghetto nearby.
[42:53.630 --> 42:55.090]  Or that you're already in the ghetto.
[42:55.570 --> 42:55.730]  Sure.
[42:56.370 --> 43:00.250]  All right, this is, uh, just a quick picture showing, um, at the Hasty Pastry in Boston.
[43:00.670 --> 43:03.270]  Um, our division of, uh, common area and workspace area.
[43:03.370 --> 43:04.270]  We actually have a separate door.
[43:04.530 --> 43:05.230]  It's a steel door.
[43:05.770 --> 43:07.230]  Um, so we have two levels of security.
[43:07.530 --> 43:13.390]  So you can, kind of, people can hang out, you know, in the front room, um, without disturbing anything, uh, that's going on in the back.
[43:14.850 --> 43:17.510]  And, uh, the little guy up here, if you want to ask, freak out sometimes.
[43:21.210 --> 43:31.790]  And, uh, this is what, uh, our final solution for our air conditioning, our server area was, um, like I said, we, uh, called around, and we found an HVAC guy who was totally willing to work on the side.
[43:32.390 --> 43:36.610]  And he sold us, uh, this commercial AC unit that was pulled out of an office building that I was working in.
[43:36.750 --> 43:41.590]  And, uh, there's a large condenser unit outside that, uh, that came from, like, Harvard University or something like that.
[43:41.690 --> 43:42.950]  And he sold it to us very, very cheap.
[43:43.110 --> 43:46.510]  And if you've ever seen the movie Brazil, uh, he reminded me a lot of Harry Tuttle.
[43:47.010 --> 43:49.890]  Especially with this, whatever the hell this thing's called over here.
[43:50.450 --> 43:51.770]  But, I don't know.
[43:51.850 --> 43:52.590]  It works pretty well.
[43:52.750 --> 43:55.990]  And it, and it's actually because it's so large, um, it's much more efficient.
[43:56.210 --> 44:00.690]  It does, the compressor doesn't need to run nearly as much as when we were using portable units, which actually has helped our electric bill.
[44:02.850 --> 44:06.390]  And this is a rare picture of Minus, uh, enjoying the view.
[44:06.670 --> 44:10.050]  Uh, this is, uh, one of, uh, the first spaces I was involved in in New Haven, Connecticut.
[44:11.570 --> 44:11.970]  Nice.
[44:15.990 --> 44:17.450]  I guess that does it for pictures?
[44:17.710 --> 44:19.070]  Yeah, so about question time.
[44:19.210 --> 44:20.130]  Yeah, I think that more than does it for pictures.
[44:20.130 --> 44:20.690]  Let's, uh, let's go to questions.
[44:21.110 --> 44:23.350]  I think we have, uh, nine minutes.
[44:24.330 --> 44:27.310]  Line up at the mics and ask your question.
[44:28.310 --> 44:29.050]  First victim.
[44:32.890 --> 44:36.310]  Apparently a very short person that was also a mute used that mic.
[44:38.130 --> 44:39.150]  Is that mic up?
[44:39.670 --> 44:39.910]  Yeah.
[44:40.850 --> 44:41.250]  There you go.
[44:41.650 --> 44:41.950]  Okay.
[44:42.610 --> 44:47.110]  Um, first off, Dragorn, my, uh, good friend Ogre wants to send greets to you from Albuquerque.
[44:47.290 --> 44:47.530]  Oh.
[44:47.950 --> 44:55.470]  Um, but my main question is about, um, are you guys, uh, non-profit, 501c3, incorporated?
[44:55.830 --> 44:59.070]  Do you guys do anything like that for, for the organizations?
[44:59.750 --> 45:04.690]  Uh, we, we looked into it in Poughkeepsie and we may still do it at some point.
[45:04.690 --> 45:07.430]  Uh, there's some benefits and there's some losses to it.
[45:07.650 --> 45:09.030]  Uh, it's a lot of paperwork.
[45:09.030 --> 45:11.090]  You have to have regular board meetings.
[45:11.330 --> 45:13.070]  Uh, you have to have state admission plans.
[45:13.230 --> 45:18.990]  And there's some restrictions about what happens to the equipment you acquire as a corporate entity when you then dissolve.
[45:19.350 --> 45:23.070]  Uh, namely, if I recall, you have to hand it off to other non-profit entities.
[45:23.290 --> 45:26.910]  So if you were trying to use 501, uh...
[45:26.910 --> 45:27.090]  501?
[45:27.570 --> 45:28.010]  501c3.
[45:28.710 --> 45:29.430]  501c3 state.
[45:29.610 --> 45:37.770]  If you're trying to use non-profit status to be able to get equipment tax-free and, uh, other things like that, then you can't take it with you if you break up.
[45:38.610 --> 45:38.990]  Um...
[45:38.990 --> 45:43.110]  It also costs $500 for the application to become 501c3.
[45:43.430 --> 45:47.170]  Yeah, and when we were starting out, that was $500 we definitely didn't have.
[45:47.530 --> 45:52.650]  Uh, on the upside, uh, your non-profit, so donations to you, can be written off.
[45:53.270 --> 45:59.390]  So, theoretically, you could try to get, uh, someone to donate space to you as a tax write-off.
[45:59.390 --> 46:01.770]  I don't know that that's ever worked, but you could certainly try.
[46:02.010 --> 46:05.690]  Uh, you might be able to get network bandwidth donated or things like that.
[46:06.590 --> 46:06.990]  Uh...
[46:06.990 --> 46:08.150]  Liability works differently.
[46:08.410 --> 46:10.230]  You can get insurance a lot easier.
[46:10.610 --> 46:12.730]  Um, there are benefits there as well.
[46:12.930 --> 46:19.390]  Yeah, it's, uh, something you should, you could look into, but you should definitely do a lot of reading on it, because there's, uh, a lot of subtleties to it.
[46:20.090 --> 46:24.550]  Right, and, um, in Boston, we, uh, formed a partnership, which gives us a federal tax ID.
[46:25.110 --> 46:29.490]  And, uh, we just file, um, an LLC probably would be the optimal, uh, way to go.
[46:29.750 --> 46:34.670]  But, um, for, there's many reasons that you want to sort of have an entity, um, insurance being one of them.
[46:35.350 --> 46:38.250]  Um, in, in Philly, we're kind of a, a mix of both.
[46:38.510 --> 46:47.530]  Uh, so as a group, we're kind of loosely knit, and we don't have any, any government, um, sort of sponsored, uh, status.
[46:47.530 --> 46:52.490]  But, all of our networking and everything else is currently under an LLC.
[46:53.050 --> 46:56.410]  Um, and we do that primarily because it gives us better rates.
[46:56.970 --> 46:59.630]  Um, we're able to get things wholesale that way if we need to.
[47:00.230 --> 47:03.210]  Um, and we just have our offices there as well.
[47:04.090 --> 47:05.910]  Should I get through, through a few more questions?
[47:06.190 --> 47:06.370]  Yeah.
[47:06.990 --> 47:08.710]  We've got a bit of a line and not much time.
[47:09.750 --> 47:10.290]  Go ahead.
[47:10.410 --> 47:13.250]  Anyway, it's about the, uh, bandwidth, uh, situation you have.
[47:13.410 --> 47:14.830]  And I keep hearing T1 and whatnot.
[47:14.830 --> 47:18.270]  And, of course, we have, um, newer, uh, systems and whatnot.
[47:18.450 --> 47:19.470]  I have files in my house.
[47:19.630 --> 47:21.530]  I have 10 down, two up for 39 a month.
[47:21.750 --> 47:25.550]  And you probably want to kill me when I hear 500, um, $900 a month for T1.
[47:26.050 --> 47:28.910]  Has anything finally hit because you're, what, in commercial areas that...
[47:29.630 --> 47:31.090]  Read your, you read your service agreement.
[47:31.470 --> 47:33.210]  And then, um, ask the question again.
[47:33.470 --> 47:33.970]  I'm unlocked.
[47:34.390 --> 47:35.310]  I can do any port.
[47:35.490 --> 47:35.870]  It doesn't matter.
[47:37.050 --> 47:37.790]  I've been, I've been...
[47:37.790 --> 47:40.830]  Yeah, but whether or not you have the service agreement in your SLRs.
[47:40.830 --> 47:41.110]  Yeah.
[47:41.430 --> 47:44.290]  But it's basically on your, whether you're non-for-profit or whatever.
[47:44.450 --> 47:46.530]  Is that what's dictating the situation to you?
[47:47.110 --> 47:48.530]  Um, it...
[47:48.530 --> 47:54.670]  It's actually kind of a complex question to answer, but there's different tiers and different service levels and different places you peer, um, to the Internet.
[47:55.010 --> 47:56.810]  And FIOS is a completely different animal.
[47:57.050 --> 47:58.950]  Well, it's residential and, uh, sort of things.
[47:59.050 --> 48:06.630]  But what, I mean, has anything come along recently that prices have dropped because of newer technologies available to the consumer, or...?
[48:07.350 --> 48:09.990]  Well, a lot of that has to do with how fast it gets fixed when it breaks.
[48:09.990 --> 48:10.510]  Mm-hm.
[48:10.590 --> 48:10.710]  Yeah.
[48:11.090 --> 48:12.410]  And that's the main issue.
[48:12.550 --> 48:13.970]  So you're worrying about uptime guarantee?
[48:14.230 --> 48:14.310]  But I don't think...
[48:14.310 --> 48:19.330]  Well, especially if you're offsetting your bandwidth by, uh, charging other people services.
[48:19.730 --> 48:19.830]  Mm-hm.
[48:19.910 --> 48:22.530]  You can't really do it with a residential plan.
[48:22.710 --> 48:28.330]  You need something that you're gonna be able to get on the phone and speak to someone about when your link's gonna be back up.
[48:28.570 --> 48:28.630]  Mm-hm.
[48:28.670 --> 48:30.630]  And know that there's troubleshooting in place.
[48:31.010 --> 48:35.870]  With FIOS or cable or regular DSL, you're simply not gonna get that.
[48:36.030 --> 48:37.330]  And you're always gonna have Flutter.
[48:37.810 --> 48:39.550]  Um, it's just not worth it.
[48:39.550 --> 48:41.150]  So it's basically about uptime.
[48:41.490 --> 48:41.590]  Yeah.
[48:41.850 --> 48:42.230]  It's the uptime.
[48:42.330 --> 48:42.810]  It's the availability.
[48:43.090 --> 48:46.290]  If something happens to our line, this phone will ring within five minutes, and I know that.
[48:46.390 --> 48:49.910]  And if it doesn't, then there's significant fiscal penalties to the ISP.
[48:50.150 --> 48:50.450]  So...
[48:50.450 --> 48:54.030]  We've actually been called by the ISP when we were reorganizing our server room.
[48:54.290 --> 48:56.410]  We unplugged the DSL modem to move things around.
[48:56.590 --> 48:58.530]  And they called us and said, did something happen?
[48:59.870 --> 49:00.250]  Right.
[49:00.250 --> 49:00.990]  How's that for service?
[49:00.990 --> 49:02.430]  So we have really limited time.
[49:02.690 --> 49:03.570]  There's a bunch of people sent up there.
[49:03.670 --> 49:05.250]  I'd be glad to talk to you about that afterwards.
[49:05.250 --> 49:05.270]  Thank you.
[49:05.270 --> 49:05.830]  No, no, I'll talk to you after.
[49:05.930 --> 49:06.350]  But thank you.
[49:06.730 --> 49:06.790]  Yeah.
[49:07.950 --> 49:12.790]  Just quickly, that also implies that you'd be using your link at the space to host servers.
[49:13.030 --> 49:15.630]  If you're just using it as a work area and you're going to do your...
[49:15.630 --> 49:21.690]  If you have, like, a deal with a Colo facility and you're doing all your hosting off-site, then it might be much easier for you to get a cable modem.
[49:21.690 --> 49:28.010]  But if you're looking to host servers yourself or sublet your bandwidth out, then you need to get something that lets you do that.
[49:28.430 --> 49:28.910]  Four minutes.
[49:29.110 --> 49:29.570]  Next question.
[49:30.230 --> 49:36.090]  Also on the ISP note, if you're in a building that's more than one or two stories, look around for local wireless ISPs.
[49:36.230 --> 49:37.290]  They're frequently mom and pops.
[49:37.390 --> 49:38.570]  You might find a cool sysadmin.
[49:39.570 --> 49:41.090]  I don't know about the uptime on those.
[49:41.250 --> 49:51.130]  I wanted to ask, really, what do you do when somebody in your space does something really stupid and gets the whole place rated and it's sitting in a warehouse next to the FBI building in Virginia?
[49:51.130 --> 49:52.650]  What do you do?
[49:53.170 --> 49:58.050]  How do you insulate yourself legally when one member of the space does something really dumb?
[49:58.330 --> 49:59.350]  A baseball bat.
[49:59.570 --> 49:59.750]  Yes.
[50:02.030 --> 50:05.430]  Or a pillowcase filled with oranges works very well, too.
[50:05.690 --> 50:06.330]  It doesn't leave bruises.
[50:06.710 --> 50:12.190]  I guess that's why you really got to be careful about who you accept in and what sort of levels of access you give them.
[50:13.250 --> 50:17.850]  Our group is a trusted key group where we've known each other for a really long time.
[50:17.850 --> 50:18.190]  Yeah.
[50:18.310 --> 50:21.210]  And any guest access is fairly closely monitored.
[50:21.230 --> 50:24.550]  That goes for any kind of working organization, too.
[50:24.690 --> 50:28.990]  I mean, the office you work in, what happens if the person that sits next to you does something like that?
[50:29.050 --> 50:30.090]  How are you liable?
[50:30.650 --> 50:33.070]  I mean, it would have to be something that would put everybody at risk.
[50:33.890 --> 50:34.190]  Yeah.
[50:34.270 --> 50:39.950]  I think in the office situation, they go and they take that person's machine, you know, like from their desk or whatever.
[50:39.950 --> 50:42.270]  And arguably, they should be doing the exact same thing in these spaces.
[50:42.830 --> 50:43.910]  Because it is an office situation.
[50:44.110 --> 50:45.150]  That's basically what you're creating.
[50:45.330 --> 50:51.050]  It doesn't look very professional because, you know, you're on a shoe screen, but it still is an office situation.
[50:51.050 --> 50:52.330]  They still only should be taking.
[50:52.510 --> 50:55.350]  And if they take more than that, well then...
[50:55.350 --> 50:55.650]  Yeah.
[50:55.710 --> 50:57.110]  You know, they're all in the same rack.
[50:57.150 --> 50:59.110]  And hey, our warrant says any computers.
[51:00.170 --> 51:00.690]  I don't know.
[51:00.750 --> 51:04.470]  It's a situation we haven't had to address personally, but hopefully we never will.
[51:04.470 --> 51:05.010]  Yeah.
[51:05.990 --> 51:10.530]  I'd like to know about what the ideal number of people you should get to share one space.
[51:10.830 --> 51:15.230]  Oh, that really depends on the number of people involved and how large a space you can get.
[51:15.650 --> 51:21.470]  We find, or at least the spaces I've been involved in, we find six or seven people is a good number.
[51:21.910 --> 51:23.070]  Seems to be the magic number.
[51:23.210 --> 51:24.330]  I think we both have eight.
[51:25.070 --> 51:26.530]  So, six, eight.
[51:26.710 --> 51:28.330]  I probably wouldn't go much higher than ten.
[51:28.570 --> 51:34.290]  Well, and I guess that, you know, like core people versus people who come in to work on various projects.
[51:34.810 --> 51:38.230]  But definitely contributing members, we have six as well.
[51:38.410 --> 51:38.610]  Yeah.
[51:38.790 --> 51:43.390]  We had the original division of full-time people and students since we're right near the college.
[51:43.670 --> 51:47.870]  We didn't feel that we could charge them full price when they don't have a real job yet.
[51:49.030 --> 51:51.650]  But, so we had a number of students that would come in and out.
[51:51.750 --> 51:57.510]  And then we had about five or six core people that would pay most of the bills and whatnot.
[51:57.510 --> 51:59.050]  We charged the students very little.
[51:59.210 --> 52:04.190]  We charged them 50 bucks a month for basically all the same things except for they all shared one giant desk.
[52:05.110 --> 52:06.010]  Two minutes left.
[52:06.250 --> 52:07.110]  Next question, please.
[52:08.250 --> 52:12.330]  We were fortunate enough to have our space donated to us, but we have to...
[52:12.330 --> 52:13.650]  Could you tip the mic down a little?
[52:13.790 --> 52:13.950]  Yeah.
[52:14.370 --> 52:15.010]  Sorry, I'm short.
[52:15.770 --> 52:19.910]  We were lucky enough to have our space donated to us, but we have to share with the law office.
[52:20.170 --> 52:31.830]  And in a situation where we've had to physically build walls from filing cabinets, we were wondering if you had any suggestions for how to maintain security between our office and the law office cheaply.
[52:33.330 --> 52:33.810]  Hmm.
[52:34.690 --> 52:36.990]  I guess that depends on what level of security.
[52:37.290 --> 52:43.450]  I mean, if you can put up drywall, like there's obviously visible security, but that's not really going to keep people out.
[52:44.650 --> 52:52.310]  I don't know that I would necessarily want to share a space with a law office, but I mean, if you get it donated, that's pretty hard to turn down.
[52:52.610 --> 52:56.890]  In Poughkeepsie, we're fairly lucky that we're really friendly with the people that share the building with us.
[52:56.930 --> 53:00.750]  We're their ISP, among other things, and we do tech support for them when they need it.
[53:00.750 --> 53:04.850]  So they leave their office door unlocked all the time and don't think about it.
[53:04.910 --> 53:08.250]  And we've forgotten our inner door unlocked and we don't think about it.
[53:08.350 --> 53:09.930]  And they accept packages for us.
[53:11.470 --> 53:15.970]  I mean, you should definitely build up a good relationship with the people around you is what it comes down to.
[53:16.330 --> 53:21.690]  Yeah, if you could do drywall and put up like a cheap actual wall there, that's the best I can think of.
[53:21.870 --> 53:22.090]  Yeah, do something.
[53:22.630 --> 53:24.390]  We can talk to you more afterwards.
[53:24.910 --> 53:28.810]  Last question, just get one more question in, and then we gotta head out.
[53:29.130 --> 53:29.930]  No question?
[53:30.110 --> 53:30.570]  Oh, okay.
[53:31.410 --> 53:31.990]  Very well.
[53:32.150 --> 53:32.910]  One last question.
[53:33.890 --> 53:35.190]  Actually, this is more of a comment.
[53:35.970 --> 53:36.910]  I'm the guy you referenced.
[53:37.050 --> 53:38.490]  I did all this scanning project and everything.
[53:38.950 --> 53:40.490]  Yeah, you're the guy that got us yelled at.
[53:40.670 --> 53:40.970]  Thanks.
[53:41.310 --> 53:41.930]  No problem.
[53:41.990 --> 53:42.130]  Anytime.
[53:42.430 --> 53:46.710]  But I really wanted to just comment and thank you guys publicly for the support you gave me while I was doing that.
[53:46.870 --> 53:49.590]  Thanks to your relationships, it made it a pretty easy process for me.
[53:50.250 --> 53:52.430]  I know I caused you a lot more pain than I probably felt.
[53:52.610 --> 53:59.650]  But it really goes to show that this really works and can benefit a lot of people and really build a great support structure for any kind of research anyone wants to do.
[53:59.890 --> 54:01.010]  So thank you very much.
[54:01.730 --> 54:06.870]  One of the things that we should mention before we go is that all of us are always looking for new people.
[54:07.070 --> 54:11.890]  So if you're in Philadelphia or Boston or Poughkeepsie, maybe look us up.
[54:12.030 --> 54:13.130]  Send us an email or something.
[54:14.170 --> 54:14.330]  Yeah.
[54:14.510 --> 54:14.650]  All right.
[54:14.750 --> 54:15.130]  Thanks, guys.
[54:15.290 --> 54:19.390]  And hopefully this was useful to you and you guys can start a community space somewhere.
[54:20.270 --> 54:20.930]  Thank you.
[54:21.250 --> 54:21.650]  Thank you.