Iffy Books | 404 S. 20th St., PHL
hacking, free culture, gardening, zines
On Wednesday, October 15th at 7 p.m. we'll meet to discuss The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces by Seth Harp (2025). We'll cover the whole book. 🎧 Get the audiobook on Libro.fm
Charging your phone in a public place can be stressful. What if someone is collecting your metadata for marketing purposes? What if they're copying your files or installing malware? A USB data blocker can help! It's a little adapter with the data terminals left disconnected, so you can charge your phone anywhere without fear. This […]
Join us for an introduction to Meshtastic, an application that lets you send private text messages over the air using pocket-sized LoRa radio transceivers. We’ll show you how to flash the latest Meshtastic firmware to the device, customize the settings, and start chatting with your friends. Here’s a link to our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic. […]
Doors at 7, reading at 7:30. Stay tuned for details!
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.
Make a home page like it's 1999! Join us at Iffy Books for a new workshop called Make Your First Website, led by Ragman a.k.a. Richard Green. You'll learn the basics of HTML and create a static site on the free hosting service Neocities. No experience necessary! Please bring a laptop if you have one. […]
For this workshop you'll use a Pi Pico board and CircuitPython to create a programmable mechanical keyboard with two keys. No soldering experience necessary! To complete this project you'll need to buy a kit for $14. Here's what's included: • RP2040/Pi Pico board • 2 mechanical keyboard switches • 2 key caps • oak base […]
Join us and build a tiny solar-powered square wave generator on a breadboard. No soldering required! The workshop is free to attend, but you'll need to purchase a kit for $12.50 to complete the project. Here's a link to the how-to zine we'll use. And here's a diagram of the oscillator circuit we'll build: Register:
In this workshop you'll learn the basics of soldering by building a tiny oscillator circuit with two transistors and two LED lights. No previous experience needed! Register:
On Saturday, 10/25 we'll be tabling at the People Power Media Fest, presented by PhillyCAM. Stay tuned for details!
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.
For our October 29th meeting we'll discuss The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. (We originally planned to read Planetes Book 1 by Makoto Yukimura this month, but we moved it to November 26th.) 🎧 Get the audiobook on Libro.fm In Daretana's greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead--killed, to all appearances, when a […]
Join us for another Philly zine fest! Saturday November 1st, 2025 at Temple University’s Mitten Hall from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.! Organized by Philly Soapbox.
Homebrew Website Club is a growing world-wide network of meetups for everyone who wants to take back their web experience from social media silos, and own their online identities & content, or just want support with blogging!
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.
The Permacomputing + Solarpunk meetup is the first Wednesday every other month at Iffy Books! You can join us in person (404 S. 20th St., PHL) or remotely via Jitsi Meet. ➡️ Virtual meetup link From Permacomputing.net: Permacomputing is a more sustainable approach to computer and network technology inspired by permaculture. Permacomputing is both a concept and a […]
FAFIO is a new meetup for folks who want to learn new tech skills but aren't sure where to start. Let's fuck around and figure it out! This session the focus will be on steganography, a way to conceal secret messages in digital photos. You'll need a computer if you want to try it. More […]
In this workshop you'll learn the basics of soldering by building a tiny oscillator circuit with two transistors and two LED lights. No previous experience needed! Register:
> The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people.
On Saturday, November 8th the Model Internet Club will meet outdoors for the first time! We'll be at Rittenhouse Square from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Our plan is to set up a battery-powered wi-fi network that anyone in the area can connect to and browse our tiny collection of websites. You're welcome to browse […]
Join us for a workshop on one-time pad encryption! We'll walk you through a technique for sending truly private messages without a computer, using 6-sided dice to generate random numbers. We'll use an encoder/decoder sheet that fits on a single sheet of paper and can be recreated from memory. You can find the workshop materials […]
At this workshop you'll learn to create passphrase-protected files using OpenSSL, a command-line program that's probably already installed on your computer. With this technique you can send encrypted files via email/Dropbox, then share the passphrase with the recipient on a secure channel (e.g., Signal). Useful for avoiding surveillance & data mining! Save message: echo "My […]
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.
Make a home page like it's 1999! Join us at Iffy Books for a new workshop called Make Your First Website, led by Ragman a.k.a. Richard Green. You'll learn the basics of HTML and create a static site on the free hosting service Neocities. No experience necessary! Please bring a laptop if you have one. […]
➡️ Virtual Meetup Link “In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggest we avoid.” First published to great acclaim in 1988, Langdon Winner’s groundbreaking […]
In this workshop you'll learn the basics of soldering by building a tiny oscillator circuit with two transistors and two LED lights. No previous experience needed! Register:
On Saturday, November 15th at 6:30 p.m. we're hosting a presentation on network-wide ad blocking with Pi-hole and AdGuard Home led by Dave Slinger. No registration needed for this one!
Join us for an introduction to Meshtastic, an application that lets you send private text messages over the air using pocket-sized LoRa radio transceivers. We’ll show you how to flash the latest Meshtastic firmware to the device, customize the settings, and start chatting with your friends. Here’s a link to our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic. […]
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.
Stay tuned for details!
In this workshop you'll learn the basics of soldering by building a tiny oscillator circuit with two transistors and two LED lights. No previous experience needed! Register:
Stay tuned for details!
One of the reasons it's hard to leave home without a cell phone is that it's nice to listen to podcasts while you're walking around. In this workshop you'll learn to write a Python script that downloads the latest episodes of your favorite shows to an MP3 player (or a folder on your desktop if […]