Stepperbox

Adversaries

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Who the threats come from — nation-states, corporations, criminal organizations, and local actors. Understanding adversary capabilities, motivations, and resources as the basis for any threat model.

Analog Design and Applications

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Designing with op-amps, transistors, filters, oscillators, and power supplies. Practical analog circuit design for amplification, signal conditioning, sensing, and control — the foundation beneath every digital system.

3D Printing

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FDM, resin, and other additive manufacturing processes. Printer selection, slicing, materials, and designing parts that can’t be bought — or that shouldn’t need to be.

Amateur Radio

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Ham radio as a freedom technology — HF, VHF, UHF, digital modes, APRS, Winlink, and emergency communications. Licensing, equipment, and building your own gear.

Cryptography

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Symmetric and asymmetric encryption, key exchange, hashing, digital signatures, and practical tools like GPG, OpenSSL, and age. How to protect data at rest and in transit.

ESP32

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The ESP32 family of microcontrollers — cheap, capable, and versatile. Firmware development, WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, deep sleep, and building autonomous devices.

EU

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European Union regulations affecting radio, encryption, 3D printing, AI, and digital infrastructure — the Radio Equipment Directive, GDPR, the AI Act, and CE marking requirements.

Linux

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Linux as the foundation for self-sovereign computing. System administration, hardening, minimal distributions, building from source, and running Linux on everything from servers to single-board computers.

Programming

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Programming languages suited to embedded systems, constrained environments, and close-to-the-metal work — C, Forth, and Lua. Writing software that runs anywhere, with minimal dependencies.

Surveillance

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State and corporate surveillance — network monitoring, metadata collection, device tracking, IMSI catchers, and the infrastructure of mass observation. Understanding what is collected and how.

Vintage Electronics

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Vacuum tubes, point-to-point wiring, hand-wound transformers and inductors, and building electronics from first principles. Understanding and constructing amplifiers, oscillators, and receivers with components you can make yourself.

CNC

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Computer numerical control — routers, mills, lathes, and plasma cutters under software control. CAM toolchains, G-code, and turning digital designs into precise physical parts.

Forensics

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Digital forensics techniques — disk imaging, file recovery, memory analysis, network traffic reconstruction, and mobile device extraction. What investigators can find and how to understand the threat model.

FPGA

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Field-programmable gate arrays — designing custom digital logic in Verilog and VHDL, synthesis toolchains, and building processors, peripherals, and accelerators on reconfigurable hardware. The closest thing to making your own chip without a fab.

Germany

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

German-specific regulations beyond EU law — BNetzA frequency allocations, amateur radio licensing (CEPT classes), weapons law, and telecommunications monitoring requirements.

OpenWRT

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Replacing stock router firmware with OpenWRT. Package management, network configuration, VLANs, firewall rules, and turning commodity hardware into capable network appliances.

Public Key Cryptography

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Asymmetric cryptography in depth — RSA, elliptic curves, Diffie-Hellman, key exchange, digital signatures, and certificate chains. The mathematical foundations and practical applications that make secure communication possible without shared secrets.

Publishing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Self-publishing books, zines, and digital media — typesetting, layout, print-on-demand, ebook formats, and distribution. Getting ideas into the world without gatekeepers.

SDR

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Software-defined radio — turning a cheap USB dongle into a general-purpose radio receiver. Scanning, decoding, and understanding the radio spectrum with tools like GNU Radio, SDR#, and rtl_433.

Soldering and Surface Mount

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Through-hole and surface-mount soldering techniques — iron selection, flux, reflow, hot air, and working with components down to 0201. Rework, inspection, and building the skills to assemble anything from kits to production boards.

China

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chinese regulations on encryption, radio transmission, VPNs, internet access, manufacturing, and export controls — and their practical impact on sourcing hardware and operating networks.

Firewalls

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State-level firewalls and deep packet inspection — the Great Firewall, Iran’s filtering infrastructure, and how nation-states block, throttle, and inspect internet traffic at scale.

Lasers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Laser cutting, engraving, and welding. CO2, diode, and fiber lasers — capabilities, safety, and applications from signage to precision fabrication.

Local AI

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Running language models, image generators, and other AI systems on your own hardware — llama.cpp, Ollama, Stable Diffusion, and the ecosystem of tools for private, offline inference.

LoRa

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Long-range, low-power radio communication using LoRa modulation and the LoRaWAN protocol. Building gateways, nodes, and point-to-point links that reach kilometers on milliwatts.

Repurposing and Recycling

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sourcing components by taking things apart — desoldering ICs, harvesting motors and power supplies, reclaiming sensors, displays, and connectors from discarded electronics and appliances. Identifying, testing, and reusing both analog and digital components.

Steganography

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hiding messages in plain sight — embedding data in images, audio, video, and text. Techniques, tools, and the relationship between steganography and plausible deniability.

TPM

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Trusted Platform Modules — hardware roots of trust for key storage, measured boot, disk encryption, and attestation. How TPMs work, what they protect, and how to use them on Linux and embedded systems.

VPNs

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Virtual private networks — WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IPsec. Building your own VPN infrastructure, tunneling traffic, and understanding what VPNs actually protect against (and what they don’t).

Blockchain Internet

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Decentralized naming, storage, and communication built on blockchain infrastructure — Handshake, IPFS, ENS, and other protocols for an internet that doesn’t depend on ICANN or centralized hosting.

Mesh Networking

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Decentralized network topologies where every node is a relay. Meshtastic, BATMAN, Yggdrasil, and other protocols for building resilient networks that don’t depend on centralized infrastructure.

Moderation

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Platform content moderation — automated filtering, hash matching, AI classifiers, deplatforming, and the mechanisms by which speech and content are controlled on centralized services.

NFC

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Near-field communication — reading, writing, and emulating NFC tags. Access control, data exchange, and the security implications of contactless technology.

Onion Routing

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Tor, I2P, and anonymous overlay networks. How onion routing works, running relays and hidden services, and the practical tradeoffs of anonymity on the internet.

USA

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

US regulations on radio (FCC Part 15, Part 97), encryption export controls (EAR/ITAR), firearms manufacturing, drone operation, and digital communications law.

Woodworking

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Power-tool woodworking — table saws, routers, jointers, planers, and shop setup. Building furniture, enclosures, and structures with repeatable precision.

Censorship

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Censorship beyond the firewall — DNS poisoning, search delisting, app store removal, payment processor bans, domain seizures, and the many layers at which information can be suppressed.

Digital Identities

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Self-sovereign identity, decentralized identifiers, PGP web of trust, and managing digital presence. Controlling who you are online without depending on centralized authorities.

Home Network Security

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Securing your home network — segmentation, DNS filtering, intrusion detection, monitoring, and keeping IoT devices from becoming liabilities. Practical defense for non-enterprise environments.

Metalworking

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Machine-shop metalworking — milling, turning, welding, grinding, and casting. Working with steel, aluminum, brass, and copper to fabricate parts, tools, and hardware.

PCB Making

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Designing and fabricating printed circuit boards — schematic capture, layout with KiCad, etching, milling, and soldering. From prototype to small-run production without a fab house.

WiFi and Long-Range WiFi

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802.11 fundamentals, directional antennas, long-range point-to-point links, and building community wireless networks. Extending connectivity where commercial ISPs don’t reach.

DIY PCB Fabrication

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Making circuit boards at home or in a small shop — laser toner transfer, photoresist and UV exposure, CNC isolation routing, and direct printing methods. Etching, drilling, plating, and getting reliable results without sending out to a fab.

Manual Woodworking

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Hand-tool woodworking — chisels, planes, saws, and workbenches. Joinery, carving, and building with no electricity required. Skills that work when the power is out.

Supply Chain

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Supply chain compromise — backdoored hardware, tampered firmware, malicious dependencies, and interdiction of components in transit. How adversaries insert themselves between manufacturer and end user.

Manual Metalworking

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Hand metalworking — filing, hacksawing, riveting, blacksmithing, and forge work. Shaping metal with muscle, heat, and hammer when machines aren’t available.

Semiconductor Making

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The frontier of DIY fabrication — home lithography, oxide growth, doping, and the growing community of garage semiconductor fabrication. Understanding the processes that underpin all modern electronics.

Software Attacks

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Software exploitation — malware, zero-days, phishing, side-channel attacks, and remote code execution. The attack surface of operating systems, browsers, and networked applications.

Hardware Attacks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Physical and electrical attacks on hardware — JTAG extraction, bus sniffing, fault injection, chip decapping, and side-channel analysis. What an adversary with physical access can do to your devices.

Manual Milling and Lathing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Operating manual mills and lathes — reading dials, cutting threads, boring holes, and holding tolerances by hand. The foundation skills that CNC automates but cannot replace understanding of.

Gunsmithing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Firearm maintenance, repair, and building — understanding actions, triggers, barrels, and stocks. The intersection of metalworking, woodworking, and precision fitting applied to firearms.

Molecular Biology

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

DIY bio — PCR, gel electrophoresis, CRISPR, DNA extraction, and biohacking on a budget. Building a home lab for genetic analysis, fermentation, and synthetic biology.

Chemistry

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Practical chemistry for makers — etching, plating, adhesives, casting resins, flux formulation, and understanding the chemical processes behind fabrication and materials science.

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