“Every day, we come up with a new thing we want to automate,” explains HeatSync Labs board member Luis Montes.
The trouble is that each little gadget makes life more complicated for the lab. In addition to writing new code and piecing together new hardware for each gadget, hackers must setup and maintain the servers that keep the gadgets running. If they create enough them, these automated tools become more of a hassle than a convenience.
That’s why Montes wants to move all of them under the control of a single open source system created by one of the hackers who hangs out at HeatSync. The system is called SkyNet, a nod to a certain early-80s sci-fi flick. “Yes,” says the tool’s creator, Chris Matthieu. “I’m trying to build SkyNet from The Terminator.”