Let the Insanity begin :)

[archmaker]

Headed to Vegas in about 24 hours (Lucky so far, as I was upgraded to 1st class out there and back!)

I don't gamble, but going to DefCon, the annual Hacker's convention. Talk about some INTERESTING people watching going on! :)

Been going for years, and each time I go, my batteries get recharged to do the work that I do, a lot of energitic, inquisitive, people attend this event, estimate is for 15,000. The energy at this event is mind blowing sometimes, but I feel like I grow as a person each time, and each time I found myself further and furthere outside the box.

There will be several news stories I am sure coming out of the event this year, especially as it relates to the hacking of the computers on cars.

[redneckdan]

Yup, always good to get together with a few thousand of your peers in industry. Probably about like MineEx. Lots of drinking, lots of cocktail napkin engineering and lots of networking.


I'd be interested to hear about that car hacking thing.

[Trey45]

The cave I live in doesn't get enough news to keep me well informed on such matters, it's only been here within the last 2 or 3 years that I learned about "ethical hacking". I thought all hackers were up to no good, looking for ways of ripping people off. These ethical hackers I heard about probe software looking for weakness. Very cool. Makes sense too, I've always heard if you wanted to catch a thief, you have to think like one.

[archmaker]

Trey54, think of hackers as being the Ralph Nader's of the internet. To give you an idea, one of our respected hackers worked with a medical company to disclose the problems they had with their pacemakers and insulin pump (using wireless technology he could send commands to the pump or the pacemaker). Now he worked with the vendor, but I can assure there are those that would have other intentions. His name was Barnaby Jack, and he passed away a few days ago at the age of 35.

As for your typical confernce . . . it is not even close. You pay cash to get in, very few people use their real name (hence the cash), and the talkers may be drunk, and have not taken a shower in a few days. The Capture the Flag event gets a little rank after 3 days of people hacking away, in a contest, they rarely leave, and it is 24 hours a day for all three days.

I attended this a few years ago, a good entertaining presentation, at 10am in the morning. It is about the mechanical aspects of building robots, like electrical motors have a preferred direction they like to spin, and if you put the same motors on the same robot, you will have 2 that are spinning the way they want and 2 that are not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jpG78oiD_U