Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Ben goes through his personal collection of PCB-based badges from various conferences he’s attended since 1999, as well as some famous examples posted online. The first example I’ve got is from PhreakNic 1999 where they found surplus modem PCBs and silkscreened the conference logo on it. He will present the artifacts and talk about the capabilities of each, pointing out when new badge features started to be common. When did they start being puzzles? When did badge hacking start to be common? When have they been controversial? What about SAOs? What differentiates corporate conferences versus hacker conferences? How has modern electronics manufacturing played a role in making these more ambitious?
*About the Speaker*
Ben grew up in north Georgia, went to college in Atlanta at Georgia Tech, then moved to Austin to work for Motorola's paging products group in IC design verification. After a few years, he moved into compilers, working on the CodeWarrior tools made by Metrowerks. He left for a startup, Veriprise, where he learned Palm OS programming, when them led to Ben becoming lead developer on CodeWarrior for Palm OS. That led to a job at PalmSource in developer relations, then a engineering job at Palm working on the Foleo netbook. In 2008, Ben and his then-fiancée headed to Brooklyn, NY. While there, Ben went off to work at Mozilla on their mobile web browser but returned to Palm after a year to work as engineering lead on the webOS developer relations team. In 2011, he and his now-wife Annelies returned to Austin to start their new life of computer hacking and urban farming. In 2012, Ben was promoted to technical lead on the Enyo JavaScript framework, and in 2013, his group was transferred to LG Electronics where they continued development of their open source JS framework with an emphasis on supporting application development for LG's SmartTV projects.
In 2014, Ben moved on to a new role as a senior developer at Roku working on Roku OS, the Linux distribution and middleware software that powers all of Roku's video streaming product. He's currently the software architect for user interface performance and provides technical guidance and on-device software infrastructure for many of Roku's user interface teams.
*About Teardown*
Teardown is a yearly event hosted by Crowd Supply that draws hackers, makers, and engineers from across the US (and the world) to meet together in Portland, Oregon. Teardown is about the practice of hardware: prototyping, manufacturing, testing, disassembling, and circumventing, all while having fun. Teardown attendees can expect lively talks, demos, art installations, hands-on workshops, fiendish puzzles, and lots of good food. Check it out! crowdsupply.com/teardown
*About Crowd Supply*
Crowd Supply is the crowdfunding platform of choice for engineers, hackers, designers, and idealists. We help them with the funding and support they need to deliver respectful, thoughtfully crafted, open source hardware to their delighted backers. Come see what our creators are making: https://www.crowdsupply.com!
*Follow Us!*
YouTube: youtube.com/@crowd_supply
Instagram: instagram.com/crowdsupply
Discord: discord.com/invite/7p5huQ
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/crowdsupply
Mastodon: hachyderm.io/@crowdsupply
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/crowdsupply.bsky.social
#opensourcehardware #hardwarehacking #opensource #hardware #teardown #maker #hacker #electronics #crowdsupply #crowdfunding #manufacturing
Ben goes through his personal collection of PCB-based badges from various conferences he’s attended since 1999, as well as some famous examples posted online. The first example I’ve got is from PhreakNic 1999 where they found surplus modem PCBs and silkscreened the conference logo on it. He will present the artifacts and talk about the capabilities of each, pointing out when new badge features started to be common. When did they start being puzzles? When did badge hacking start to be common? When have they been controversial? What about SAOs? What differentiates corporate conferences versus hacker conferences? How has modern electronics manufacturing played a role in making these more ambitious?
*About the Speaker*
Ben grew up in north Georgia, went to college in Atlanta at Georgia Tech, then moved to Austin to work for Motorola's paging products group in IC design verification. After a few years, he moved into compilers, working on the CodeWarrior tools made by Metrowerks. He left for a startup, Veriprise, where he learned Palm OS programming, when them led to Ben becoming lead developer on CodeWarrior for Palm OS. That led to a job at PalmSource in developer relations, then a engineering job at Palm working on the Foleo netbook. In 2008, Ben and his then-fiancée headed to Brooklyn, NY. While there, Ben went off to work at Mozilla on their mobile web browser but returned to Palm after a year to work as engineering lead on the webOS developer relations team. In 2011, he and his now-wife Annelies returned to Austin to start their new life of computer hacking and urban farming. In 2012, Ben was promoted to technical lead on the Enyo JavaScript framework, and in 2013, his group was transferred to LG Electronics where they continued development of their open source JS framework with an emphasis on supporting application development for LG's SmartTV projects.
In 2014, Ben moved on to a new role as a senior developer at Roku working on Roku OS, the Linux distribution and middleware software that powers all of Roku's video streaming product. He's currently the software architect for user interface performance and provides technical guidance and on-device software infrastructure for many of Roku's user interface teams.
*About Teardown*
Teardown is a yearly event hosted by Crowd Supply that draws hackers, makers, and engineers from across the US (and the world) to meet together in Portland, Oregon. Teardown is about the practice of hardware: prototyping, manufacturing, testing, disassembling, and circumventing, all while having fun. Teardown attendees can expect lively talks, demos, art installations, hands-on workshops, fiendish puzzles, and lots of good food. Check it out! crowdsupply.com/teardown
*About Crowd Supply*
Crowd Supply is the crowdfunding platform of choice for engineers, hackers, designers, and idealists. We help them with the funding and support they need to deliver respectful, thoughtfully crafted, open source hardware to their delighted backers. Come see what our creators are making: https://www.crowdsupply.com!
*Follow Us!*
YouTube: youtube.com/@crowd_supply
Instagram: instagram.com/crowdsupply
Discord: discord.com/invite/7p5huQ
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/crowdsupply
Mastodon: hachyderm.io/@crowdsupply
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/crowdsupply.bsky.social
#opensourcehardware #hardwarehacking #opensource #hardware #teardown #maker #hacker #electronics #crowdsupply #crowdfunding #manufacturing
