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>Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while. This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all.
by ramesh31 1y ago
>Defcon is no longer a counterculture conference, and arguably hasn't been for a while.
This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The broader question is is something like the original spirit of DefCon even still possible? The industry (and the stakes) are so much higher now that it seems impossible.
- sylens 1y agoIt is but you have to intentionally keep it small and limit tickets. I think one of the issues that Defcon has is that they just don't cap tickets; historically they could not, because you could only buy a badge with cash so there was no way of predicting how many people would show up.
- woodruffw 1y agoI don't think it's really a matter of limited attendance. Smaller hacker conferences in the US are not much different in terms of baseline acceptance of government/defense presence. It's more of a cultural thing, and not a new one. (That's not to say that there aren't conferences that are explicitly anti-MIC, because there are. But if you just sample by size, I suspect you'll find no correlation there.)
- immibis 1y agoI've heard that toorcamp is the only US attempt to mirror a European hacker camp and that it doesn't work because the culture is just too different. Speaking of culture, RIPE NCC allows individuals to have ASNs, with or without a case of Club Mate.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 1y agoThere are plenty of quieter, smaller conferences.
- CalRobert 1y agoMaybe What Hackers Yearn or CCC?
- sneak 1y ago> This happens to literally every convention ever, not surprising at all. The CCC would never. Europe, for all its authoritarianism and infringements of human rights (even in relatively liberal places like Germany) still seems to be trying to not backslide into full-on military-industrial complex like the US is/has.
- lenerdenator 1y agoIf you honestly think that they're not either backsliding into the full-on military-industrial complex or benefiting from the American military-industrial complex, I have some nice ocean-front property in Kansas City to sell you. EDIT: If you don't believe me, ask the USMC about their nice new H&K service rifles. Did we need to do that? No, we could have thrown a nice piston upper on M16 lowers, but that doesn't keep the bier flowing in Oberndorf am Neckar. Or ask someone in the Pentagon about their partners at BAE.
- wkat4242 1y agoWell yes we have military industry and back room deals but the industry here doesn't have the big lobby clout the MIC has in the US.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoThat's easy to do when you have the US on speed dial.
- okasaki 1y agoTo do what? Blow up our pipelines? Use us as staging for bullshit invasions?
- orwin 1y agoI mean, in the last 50 years, US called Italy, Germany more than the reverse. And if you don't count logistical units, US has France on speed dial, not the reverse. The one time France asked the US something military-wise, Obama refused.
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoCCC might be able to survive because it’s European and multi lingual
- sunaookami 1y agoCCC is not counterculture for ~10 years now. They have also become way too big and the vast majority of presentations are (extremely left-leaning) politics.
- shazbotter 1y agoHacker culture has always been left leaning, lol. Open source is a grand anarchist experiment. You expect hackers to be like, "we love capitalism! We love strong hierarchies!"? Don't be daft.
- tekla 1y ago> Hacker culture has always been left leaning No it hasn't. It started as counterculture. 90's hacker ethos might as well make you a fascist these days.
- immibis 1y agoExample please
- shazbotter 1y agoI was using computers in the 80s, Usenet by the late 80s. The hacker ethos back then was about as far from fascism as one might imagine.
- int_19h 1y ago> We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoYou do 10 things at a small conference, everyone says "we need more of X{0}..X{9}", you have more things next year, more people, everyone wants more of whatever, more people, more problems with more people (security, cost, sponsors,..), more attention of mainstream media, more people next year, more push for politics, more people, more issues with more people, etc., and in the end, you get a boring business conference like many others. I'm pretty sure that each of the niches could make their own conference now, at some small venue where a 100, 200, 500 people would come... SNES hacking and development? Sure, a small, really nice conference... but then someone would want NES too, and N64, and sega, and PS1, and corporate sponsors, and you end up with E3 instead of 50 retro developers and 150 curious people doing interesting stuff.