Re: What the hack roundup

[Justine Aitel <justine.aitel () immunitysec com>]

Dear Dave,
Just an FYI, I'm not American.
Justine

Dave Aitel wrote:

> So, as with all conferences I'm doing a post-conference report to the 
> mailing list. My summary is this:
> What the Hack rocked. It was by far more awesome than I thought it 
> would be. First of all WTH is humongous. It was on a massive scale I 
> hadn't really experienced before. Second of all, it was remarkably 
> well run. It had a for-the-people-by-the-people atmosphere I've never 
> seen before. At no other conference are you going to get served drinks 
> by some of the best hackers you've ever met. And I don't mean 
> "hackers" in the same sense that small-minded people pretend to when 
> what they really want to say is "coders". Remember when hacking was 
> fun and not something you did just for cash? Apparantly everyone in 
> Europe does.
>
> One of my favorate talks (I didn't hit many of them, but the ones I 
> did hit were excellent, up to date, and well done) was this one:
> http://wiki.whatthehack.org/index.php/Evolutionary_Computation . There 
> were many good talks I couldn't make it too, and they're all available 
> online already. There was a huge booth of Apple computers busy doing 
> live transcoding during the conference, so the talks were available 
> almost immediately afterwards.
>
> Lemme just do a bullet point list of WTH, since there were very few 
> Americans there (Justine and I were almost the only ones):
>
> o WTH had its own phone system. You could bring a phone (some standard 
> kind) or buy one there, and you'd have phone service wherever you 
> went. People could call you on your phone from anywhere in the world 
> and it would get routed through the WTH pdx to you, sitting next to a 
> camp-fire drinking beer with THC people and watching the lights on the 
> spaceship.
> o There were happy rabbits running around the campground. Oddly, these 
> rabbits didn't chew on the ethernet or power cords. I can only assume 
> they were trained rabbits, there to provide amusment.
> o There were lesbian computer art displays (you'll have to see it to 
> understand what I mean)
> o There was a 50 foot space ship with a light display. I originally 
> thought it was inflatable. It wasn't. I wouldn't have been surprised 
> if it had worked.
> o There was a THC birthday party with free beer
> o There were lots of other places with free beer
> o Even if you paid for your beer, it was reasonably priced
> o There were easy signs to get to the place from all available directions
> o Parking was plentiful, and well manned
> o It was visibly stunning - walking into the place you went past a 
> huge, lit sign, that said "Hacking is not a crime." Everywhere you 
> went were colored light bars. The visual impact of the conference is 
> hard to explain.
> o You could walk into almost any tent for a free show of some kind. 
> For example, the blinkenlights people could tell you how to play pong 
> on their big light display using your camp phone.
> o Food was reasonably good, and reasonably priced.
> o Toilets and other facilities were perfectly good. Power appeared to 
> be exceptionally good.
> o Very few mosquitos
> o EU Feds much better dressed than US feds.
> o There was a room full of sun computers to use (with full working 
> network connections) if you felt like browsing for a bit. None of 
> these were defaced or owned by amatures.
> o Everyone there quite smart and nice. No salesguys at WTH. WTH is not 
> all about the "networking". You could leave your wallet/laptop on the 
> table, and not worry about it walking too much.
> o A military (NATO?) AWACs buzzed us for fun during lunch. As halvar 
> said "I guess a lot of wireless boxes got popped just now". Who has an 
> AWACs in the area?
> o All talks in understandable english. Lots of good viewer questions, 
> but few people just raising their hand to say how smart they are, like 
> in most conferences.
>
> Basically, WTH was mind-blowingly awesome. In a couple years we plan 
> to hit up the CCC camp as well, since I assume it's similar. Next time 
> we'll bring a tent.
>
> -dave
>
>
>
>
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