I'll never get people who say that there is too much politics at a god damn hacker conference like the CCC, considering The Chaos Computer Club was founded in 1981 specifically to be a political watchdog.
more so especially since the very act of "hacking" is a political statement because it involves redistributing power over information.
Code is law, remember?
That would be like complaining about "too much law" at a constitutional convention.
It seems that no modern comment section is complete without the complaint "too much politics", then followed by "but everything is political". Some talks do not even try to draw a line from politics to computers, and I think that is what people feel unhappy about.
The first two talks are in the "Ethics, Society & Politics" category, and the third in the "Art & Beauty" category. Why would they need to be about computing?
It's a big organisation, and politics is wrapped up in what they do, along with the post-WWII Antifaschism culture in Germany.
Even if it weren't the case, I don't get why attack them for helping stand up for democracy, something in dire need of advocacy these days
Unrelated to this conference I've often heard the "everything is political" argument, and mostly with a passive-aggressive "or else.." (you're up for a political fight) undertone. I once enquired on very mundane things in life, and yes "those too are political act". Well, if everything is bleakly political in that sense, we may make it universal, just call it Newspeak.
Especially as congress has, for as long as I remember, been about the superset of infosec, society, art, etc. IMHO it's more along the lines of complaining about any ride that isn't a roller coaster at a theme park--no one is forcing you to go on any rides, other people clearly enjoy them, they're not taking anything away from your roller coaster, and having them increases the diversity of the crowd in an ultimately positive-for-everyone way.
Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground. That is the real problem.
> Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
You could never do that. A few years ago, some activists tried to make a fuzz with stuff like creeper cards, intervention teams and codes of conduct. But those were never needed in the first place, almost nothing ever happened at CCC that would have warranted those things. But "those white male hackers are certainly sexist raping pigs" is a firmly entrenched stereotype in certain circles.
The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out. Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't "hooray, more refugees", "hooray, more EU dictatorship" or "hooray, down with everything right of Rosa Luxemburg".
I get your arguments. In my opinion the core of the problem is that a lot of the "political" taks are about political topics that are outside the core of the kind of politics (?) that are related to hacking. These talks are what people are complaining about as "too much politics".
That's fine but technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, you can't talk about (for example) facial recognition technology without mentioning the social groups it affects the most or is used against. Same for plenty of others topics directly or indirectly related to hacking and computers.
If you look at the history of the CCC, they also don't see a line between technical freedom and social freedom, because you can't have a free internet in an unfree society.
The 'outside' topics you mention are often just the hackers' way of applying their methodology to the world beyond the screen. Society is a larger system with its own bugs and exploits that inevitably affect the computers you use and the code that run them, and hackers like to apply their methodology to analyze that to understand the consequences.
Moreover, if you actually want meritocracy, you have to address the social barriers that keep people out of the room, and you can't do that without addressing the outside world.
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
I’m not sure you think otherwise, and are just calling on the US as an example since the HN crowd is heavily US skewed, but just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a German event.
The US is a large, well connected country with a lot of hackers, for all definitions of "hacker", it is even the country that created the term.
And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
Anyways, it is the CCC, and they are doing it in Germany, of course, because they are German.
For many hackers, it is just a game, a technical puzzle. The interesting part is overcoming the obstacles, the information or bounty money they get in the end is just the reward, its nature doesn't matter much. Even when there is no reward, people do it because it is fun.
Like with lockpicking, many pickers work with the cylinder in a vise, and the lock is just a mechanical puzzle. That the lock can be attached to something one would want to secure is just a distant thought.
The shape of the politics changed, though. From civil rights, questioning authority and cypherpunk, which inherently has a libertarian bent, there's now much more identity politics and social justice / grievance culture with only tenuous connections to tech.
For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI. It's a very conservative degrowth movement nowadays, all in all.
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
Hacking was always against centralization and central control (and towards decentralization) - which is why any lecture celebrating the bigtech AI companies would strongly be against the whole culture.
While for various reasons AI is a controversial topic, I would say that if someone gave a great talk about how to decentrally train some AI model efficiently as some volunteer computing project, this would be perfectly fitting for the C3.
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
No, just this one, because it steals from almost everyone and gives to the few. Even if it seems to be somewhat failing at monetization for now, control is in the hands of a very few.
I am happy they are careful with new technologies, especially one like AI, and also set the right impulses. Enough non-political reasons to have that stance, especially taking in societal implications and how technology affects everyone and not just stakeholders and techbros. In a time when tech in the US is just accelerating by the top-down agenda of figures like Andreesen, Thiel & Co., that is very much needed imo.
All talks will be live streamed, and right after the talk is done you have a rough cut available instantly under "re-live" you can watch until the final recording is available; https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/relive
I should note that some talks will not be recorded, and only available at the congress. These are clearly marked on the congress hub website, but not easily available on the fahrplan view.
I made https://fahrplan.cc where you can filter the [not] recorded sessions, categories, and titles.
I've mostly made it for myself to skip the recorded sessions when on-site and to see what's coming up at the current time of day. It therefore tries to include all the self organized sessions, workshops, meetups, music programs, etc. I've been running it for a few years and people use it for all kinds of use cases, including sitting at home and watching the streams.
Ah, the filterable schedule would be even better if you could filter on multiple categories at once. I just want security/hardware/science, and then I would have to constantly switch around, which is worse than looking at the full schedule with the other categories included.
Me and some friends used to attend the CCC some 15-20 years ago. Back then, we just showed up at the entrance on the first day and bought our tickets there.
This year we were toying with the idea of going for a revival. But man, did we underestimate how much this event has grown...
Tickets in the second presale round were gone within 1-2 seconds. We didn't stand a chance. I feel like we failed the entry exam tbh.
Anyways, to everybody who did score a ticket: have phun, and happy hacking!
The easy way to get tickets is via local hackspaces that are somewhat (not necessarily formally) associated to the CCC. There is a ticket contingent for people active in and around the wider chaos community that gets distributed via the hackspaces. They all handle things slightly differently, but the way to get tickets is usually to show up at a hackspace once in a while (or knowing someone who is active there) and getting tickets from there in the presale phase.
The other guaranteed way for tickets is to volunteer enough as an angel at the Congress the year before to get an angel voucher. But you obviously need a ticket for a Congress in the first place do to that.
I've one ticket for sale (€190-255), since I bought two tickets (one € 255 supporter for myself and € 190 for partner) but also got a speaker ticket (https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...), since speaker announcement was after the first round of sales via vouchers.
So let me know if someone is interested in this ticket, see my GitHub for mail address. I know other speakers where even unaware of this (so I might know another ticket for sale).
Tickets are sold (to the first email that arrived at 10:25 CEST, and the second ticket of a friend who's also a speaker to the second mailer at 11:11 CEST).
If you're looking for a similar event, you might want to check out GPN - Gulaschprogrammiernacht (https://gulas.ch).
It skews a bit more German, but it's essentially a smaller "summer congress" that used to have free attendance until this year (tickets now cost 10€ to cover the breakfast, IIRC). A lot less people there, but the general vibe is very similar.
Since 22C3 I really enjoyed watching online and chatting with a small irc community about it. I had this notion that if I ever lived in Europe I’d go myself. Well for the last three years it seems I haven’t gone - the ticket situation was a shock at first but makes sense. The number of unrecorded talks does feel like it’s gone up though which has been regrettable.
If you still have old friends from those times, ping them and ask if they have any tickets for friends. Most times I've gone, it's been via local/social associations and people I've known from those, only managed to buy a ticket once, but it's short of impossible normally.
Going to CCC changed my life last year and really opened up my eyes. So sad I'm not able to attend this year, but hoping I am able to return soon. Anyone who understands why technology cannot be viewed in a vacuum without considering the humans who use it will fit in immediately. Do yourself a favor and go.
Personally I'm most excited about "Don’t look up: There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites" with Nadia Heninger & Annie Dai. Harald Welte's "ISDN + POTS Telephony at Congress and Camp" covers how they're doing telephone infrastructure at congress/conference itself, and will surely be interesting too:
> Just like at this very event (39C3), the last few years a small group of volunteers has delpoyed and operated legacy telephony networks for ISDN (digital) and POTS (analog) services at CCC-camp2023 and 38C3. Anyone on-site can obtain subscriber lines (POTS, ISDN BRI or PRI service) and use them for a variety of services, including telephony, fax machines, modem dial-up into BBSs as well as dial-up internet access and video telephony.
Some of the more "celebrityish" talks tend to be popular by reputation, but content is often reused a lot, e.g. "10 years of Dieselgate" kind of falls into that. Watched the original, and the followup, and I think also the followup-followup, eventually it's worth checking out new topics instead, even though the presenters could not be faulted in any way.
He actually made a blogpost on December 6th regarding Warner Bros & Netflix but it's kinda weird: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=97cd29cd Seems like he still needs a lot of time to recover.
Uncertain if this is OT, but given that the CCC is politically inspired organization, I hope not:
One thing that still seems absent is awareness of the complete takeover of "gadgets" in schools. Schools these days, as early as primary school, shove screens in front of children. They're expected to look at them, and "use" them for various activities, including practicing handwriting. I wish I was joking [1].
I see two problems with this.
First is that these devices are engineered to be addictive by way of constant notifications/distractions, and learning is something that requires long sustained focus. There's a lot of data showing that under certain common circumstances, you do worse learning from a screen than from paper.
Second is implicitly it trains children to expect that anything has to be done through a screen connected to a closed point-and-click platform. (Uninformed) people will say "people who work with computers make money, so I want my child to have an ipad". But interacting with a closed platform like an ipad is removing the possibilities and putting the interaction "on rails". You don't learn to think, explore and learn from mistakes, instead you learn to use the app that's put in front of you. This in turn reinforces the "computer says no" [2] approach to understanding the world.
I think this is a matter of civil rights and freedom, but sadly I don't often see "civil rights" organizations talk about this. I think I heard Stallman say something along these lines once, but other than that I don't see campaigns anywhere.
Some talks which sound really brilliant. I love [0] exploiting a memory leak for years before it's fixed. Also [1] I'm really curious about the custom crypto used in Chinese apps. Oh and curious about the found [2] GPG vulnerabilities. I think some of the politics ones are actually also very interesting. Looking forward to the streams.
Common misconception. HN uses "hacker" as in "the people who do the work that makes Y Combinator rich" rather than "someone who plays with technology". HN hackers are contrasted with CEOs and so on - people whose job is not the on-the-ground work.
this wasn't the point ... the point is that the whole thing is getting more and more political and less technical and fun.
I was at the camp and some congresses in the past and they where always fun but nowadays it seems like it's like a political movement event for certain strands and ideologies and way less fun and interesting things (thou there are gems) and it seems that you have to think a certain way or at least accept certain positions even if it's not your position because otherwise you are silly or something else.
Okay, that's it. i think i will do some data analysis and do a talk at some place next year about the outcome of the analysis which talks are there and if there's really a trend. :D
Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the many talks from the „politics“ category. You have the wrong mindset.
Originally, I wanted to enjoy the cringe fest of privacy related grandstanding while the „community“ was absolutely silent during the dystopian Covid overreach.
But then I spotted, between the many „Nazis everywhere“ vibed talks, one spectacular Antifa affiliated talk about the „Budapest-Complex“.
> Der Vorwurf der … steht in keinem Verhältnis zu den verhandelten Vorkommnissen
Roughly translated: The claim of … is completely disproportionate relative to the discussed events.
„Discussed events“ as in? That some random pedestrian almost got killed because someone decided he‘s a neonazi? Hammers are nowhere to be mentioned. I mean, my knowledge of this is a little bit rusty, but somehow I get the feeling it’s going to be an inspiring leadership class in bending the meanings of words.
By the way, the Antifa-Ost which this talks seem to be concerned with is afaik exactly one of those groups mentioned in the recent US admin‘s update to the list of terrorist groups.
Hacking and politics was always deeply intertwined in Germany/Europe. Especially the CCC has always been at least as much a political organization as it is a hacker community.
Hey, at least you can reasonably argue that the political content has been headed downhill since the more aggressive days of the past. Do we see wikileaks or the likes anymore? Not really.
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
well, it has a lot to do with people growing up during cold war and german reunification.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
I'll never get people who say that there is too much politics at a god damn hacker conference like the CCC, considering The Chaos Computer Club was founded in 1981 specifically to be a political watchdog.
more so especially since the very act of "hacking" is a political statement because it involves redistributing power over information.
Code is law, remember?
That would be like complaining about "too much law" at a constitutional convention.
It seems that no modern comment section is complete without the complaint "too much politics", then followed by "but everything is political". Some talks do not even try to draw a line from politics to computers, and I think that is what people feel unhappy about.
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
The first two talks are in the "Ethics, Society & Politics" category, and the third in the "Art & Beauty" category. Why would they need to be about computing?
It's a big organisation, and politics is wrapped up in what they do, along with the post-WWII Antifaschism culture in Germany.
Even if it weren't the case, I don't get why attack them for helping stand up for democracy, something in dire need of advocacy these days
Unrelated to this conference I've often heard the "everything is political" argument, and mostly with a passive-aggressive "or else.." (you're up for a political fight) undertone. I once enquired on very mundane things in life, and yes "those too are political act". Well, if everything is bleakly political in that sense, we may make it universal, just call it Newspeak.
1 reply →
Especially as congress has, for as long as I remember, been about the superset of infosec, society, art, etc. IMHO it's more along the lines of complaining about any ride that isn't a roller coaster at a theme park--no one is forcing you to go on any rides, other people clearly enjoy them, they're not taking anything away from your roller coaster, and having them increases the diversity of the crowd in an ultimately positive-for-everyone way.
Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground. That is the real problem.
> Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
You could never do that. A few years ago, some activists tried to make a fuzz with stuff like creeper cards, intervention teams and codes of conduct. But those were never needed in the first place, almost nothing ever happened at CCC that would have warranted those things. But "those white male hackers are certainly sexist raping pigs" is a firmly entrenched stereotype in certain circles.
The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out. Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't "hooray, more refugees", "hooray, more EU dictatorship" or "hooray, down with everything right of Rosa Luxemburg".
25 replies →
Maybe it's that people disagree with the politics, but also don't see a room for discussion.
In my experience, you are right - that is what most complaints of "too political" really mean.
I get your arguments. In my opinion the core of the problem is that a lot of the "political" taks are about political topics that are outside the core of the kind of politics (?) that are related to hacking. These talks are what people are complaining about as "too much politics".
That's fine but technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, you can't talk about (for example) facial recognition technology without mentioning the social groups it affects the most or is used against. Same for plenty of others topics directly or indirectly related to hacking and computers.
If you look at the history of the CCC, they also don't see a line between technical freedom and social freedom, because you can't have a free internet in an unfree society.
The 'outside' topics you mention are often just the hackers' way of applying their methodology to the world beyond the screen. Society is a larger system with its own bugs and exploits that inevitably affect the computers you use and the code that run them, and hackers like to apply their methodology to analyze that to understand the consequences.
Moreover, if you actually want meritocracy, you have to address the social barriers that keep people out of the room, and you can't do that without addressing the outside world.
1 reply →
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
I’m not sure you think otherwise, and are just calling on the US as an example since the HN crowd is heavily US skewed, but just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a German event.
The US is a large, well connected country with a lot of hackers, for all definitions of "hacker", it is even the country that created the term.
And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
Anyways, it is the CCC, and they are doing it in Germany, of course, because they are German.
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For many hackers, it is just a game, a technical puzzle. The interesting part is overcoming the obstacles, the information or bounty money they get in the end is just the reward, its nature doesn't matter much. Even when there is no reward, people do it because it is fun.
Like with lockpicking, many pickers work with the cylinder in a vise, and the lock is just a mechanical puzzle. That the lock can be attached to something one would want to secure is just a distant thought.
Politics is a game too. With far less fun rules, unfortunately.
The shape of the politics changed, though. From civil rights, questioning authority and cypherpunk, which inherently has a libertarian bent, there's now much more identity politics and social justice / grievance culture with only tenuous connections to tech.
For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI. It's a very conservative degrowth movement nowadays, all in all.
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
Hacking was always against centralization and central control (and towards decentralization) - which is why any lecture celebrating the bigtech AI companies would strongly be against the whole culture.
While for various reasons AI is a controversial topic, I would say that if someone gave a great talk about how to decentrally train some AI model efficiently as some volunteer computing project, this would be perfectly fitting for the C3.
Addendum: There is an AI talk (as pointed out by wunderwuzzi23 at https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/agentic...
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
No, just this one, because it steals from almost everyone and gives to the few. Even if it seems to be somewhat failing at monetization for now, control is in the hands of a very few.
I am happy they are careful with new technologies, especially one like AI, and also set the right impulses. Enough non-political reasons to have that stance, especially taking in societal implications and how technology affects everyone and not just stakeholders and techbros. In a time when tech in the US is just accelerating by the top-down agenda of figures like Andreesen, Thiel & Co., that is very much needed imo.
The vagueness and sheer breadth of the word "politics" is doing the heavy lifting in your argument there.
https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3
All talks will be live streamed, and right after the talk is done you have a rough cut available instantly under "re-live" you can watch until the final recording is available; https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/relive
The final recording will appear under a day or two after the talk is held: https://media.ccc.de/c/39c3
EDIT: A different variant of the schedule with better filtering is available here: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/schedule
I should note that some talks will not be recorded, and only available at the congress. These are clearly marked on the congress hub website, but not easily available on the fahrplan view.
I made https://fahrplan.cc where you can filter the [not] recorded sessions, categories, and titles.
I've mostly made it for myself to skip the recorded sessions when on-site and to see what's coming up at the current time of day. It therefore tries to include all the self organized sessions, workshops, meetups, music programs, etc. I've been running it for a few years and people use it for all kinds of use cases, including sitting at home and watching the streams.
I like your tool, but the schedule in the "hub" can now also filter for "recorded":
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/de/schedule?mode=lis...
Ah, the filterable schedule would be even better if you could filter on multiple categories at once. I just want security/hardware/science, and then I would have to constantly switch around, which is worse than looking at the full schedule with the other categories included.
You can have multiple tabs open.
Excited! It's such a great event.
I'm currently on a plane towards Hamburg and will be speaking on Day 2.
"Agentic ProbLLMs - Exploiting AI Computer-Use and Coding Agents"
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/agentic...
Really enjoyed your talk two years ago :)
Me and some friends used to attend the CCC some 15-20 years ago. Back then, we just showed up at the entrance on the first day and bought our tickets there.
This year we were toying with the idea of going for a revival. But man, did we underestimate how much this event has grown...
Tickets in the second presale round were gone within 1-2 seconds. We didn't stand a chance. I feel like we failed the entry exam tbh.
Anyways, to everybody who did score a ticket: have phun, and happy hacking!
The easy way to get tickets is via local hackspaces that are somewhat (not necessarily formally) associated to the CCC. There is a ticket contingent for people active in and around the wider chaos community that gets distributed via the hackspaces. They all handle things slightly differently, but the way to get tickets is usually to show up at a hackspace once in a while (or knowing someone who is active there) and getting tickets from there in the presale phase.
The other guaranteed way for tickets is to volunteer enough as an angel at the Congress the year before to get an angel voucher. But you obviously need a ticket for a Congress in the first place do to that.
I've one ticket for sale (€190-255), since I bought two tickets (one € 255 supporter for myself and € 190 for partner) but also got a speaker ticket (https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...), since speaker announcement was after the first round of sales via vouchers.
So let me know if someone is interested in this ticket, see my GitHub for mail address. I know other speakers where even unaware of this (so I might know another ticket for sale).
Tickets are sold (to the first email that arrived at 10:25 CEST, and the second ticket of a friend who's also a speaker to the second mailer at 11:11 CEST).
If you're looking for a similar event, you might want to check out GPN - Gulaschprogrammiernacht (https://gulas.ch).
It skews a bit more German, but it's essentially a smaller "summer congress" that used to have free attendance until this year (tickets now cost 10€ to cover the breakfast, IIRC). A lot less people there, but the general vibe is very similar.
It is no longer the same. It went from somewhat exclusive dining experience to full blown nuclear junk food chain vibe.
I've stopped attending it about 10 years ago. I rather prefer to watch some few interesting topics online, and skip all the wanna-be political junk.
You choose to ignore politics, but politics doesn't choose to ignore you. Ostriching doesn't seem productive.
1 reply →
Since 22C3 I really enjoyed watching online and chatting with a small irc community about it. I had this notion that if I ever lived in Europe I’d go myself. Well for the last three years it seems I haven’t gone - the ticket situation was a shock at first but makes sense. The number of unrecorded talks does feel like it’s gone up though which has been regrettable.
If you still have old friends from those times, ping them and ask if they have any tickets for friends. Most times I've gone, it's been via local/social associations and people I've known from those, only managed to buy a ticket once, but it's short of impossible normally.
Going to CCC changed my life last year and really opened up my eyes. So sad I'm not able to attend this year, but hoping I am able to return soon. Anyone who understands why technology cannot be viewed in a vacuum without considering the humans who use it will fit in immediately. Do yourself a favor and go.
If you can't make it to Congress go to one of the hacker camps in the summer.
I was at WHY and it was even better!
I see a lot of great talks whose topic is worth attending.
Are there any talks whose speakers are known for their expertise that one should pay attention to?
Personally I'm most excited about "Don’t look up: There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites" with Nadia Heninger & Annie Dai. Harald Welte's "ISDN + POTS Telephony at Congress and Camp" covers how they're doing telephone infrastructure at congress/conference itself, and will surely be interesting too:
> Just like at this very event (39C3), the last few years a small group of volunteers has delpoyed and operated legacy telephony networks for ISDN (digital) and POTS (analog) services at CCC-camp2023 and 38C3. Anyone on-site can obtain subscriber lines (POTS, ISDN BRI or PRI service) and use them for a variety of services, including telephony, fax machines, modem dial-up into BBSs as well as dial-up internet access and video telephony.
I've seen this satellite thing before - it's already been published as a paper.
https://satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu/docs/dontlookup_ccs25_fullpap...
Two big names that jump out, the CEO of Signal Meredith Whittaker and Cory Doctorow. They both frequently give thought provoking talks.
Some of the more "celebrityish" talks tend to be popular by reputation, but content is often reused a lot, e.g. "10 years of Dieselgate" kind of falls into that. Watched the original, and the followup, and I think also the followup-followup, eventually it's worth checking out new topics instead, even though the presenters could not be faulted in any way.
All of these looked good to me this year: https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/#e72b9560a7c729d1b38c93ef18a5...
stacksmashing is a good bet for sure
First time without fefe :-(
Is there actually anything known to his wellbeing?
https://mastodon.social/@oec@infosec.exchange/11474011506716... https://mastodon.social/@oec@infosec.exchange/11483544044249...
He actually made a blogpost on December 6th regarding Warner Bros & Netflix but it's kinda weird: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=97cd29cd Seems like he still needs a lot of time to recover.
time to use chaospost to send him a get-well card! :-)
Honestly, I'm surprised he's still alive.
Hope he gets well soon.
Uncertain if this is OT, but given that the CCC is politically inspired organization, I hope not:
One thing that still seems absent is awareness of the complete takeover of "gadgets" in schools. Schools these days, as early as primary school, shove screens in front of children. They're expected to look at them, and "use" them for various activities, including practicing handwriting. I wish I was joking [1].
I see two problems with this.
First is that these devices are engineered to be addictive by way of constant notifications/distractions, and learning is something that requires long sustained focus. There's a lot of data showing that under certain common circumstances, you do worse learning from a screen than from paper.
Second is implicitly it trains children to expect that anything has to be done through a screen connected to a closed point-and-click platform. (Uninformed) people will say "people who work with computers make money, so I want my child to have an ipad". But interacting with a closed platform like an ipad is removing the possibilities and putting the interaction "on rails". You don't learn to think, explore and learn from mistakes, instead you learn to use the app that's put in front of you. This in turn reinforces the "computer says no" [2] approach to understanding the world.
I think this is a matter of civil rights and freedom, but sadly I don't often see "civil rights" organizations talk about this. I think I heard Stallman say something along these lines once, but other than that I don't see campaigns anywhere.
[1] https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/
[2] https://youtu.be/eE9vO-DTNZc
Some talks which sound really brilliant. I love [0] exploiting a memory leak for years before it's fixed. Also [1] I'm really curious about the custom crypto used in Chinese apps. Oh and curious about the found [2] GPG vulnerabilities. I think some of the politics ones are actually also very interesting. Looking forward to the streams.
[0] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... [1] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... [2] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
The first one is indeed fascinating...almost deserving of its HN post :-)
It has been submitted six times in the last 10 months, with a grand total of 1 comment...I though this site had Hacker in the title...
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgfw.report%2Fpublica...
Common misconception. HN uses "hacker" as in "the people who do the work that makes Y Combinator rich" rather than "someone who plays with technology". HN hackers are contrasted with CEOs and so on - people whose job is not the on-the-ground work.
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I made a matrix room for the HNers being there and to prevent polluting this thread.
https://matrix.to/#/%23hn-at-39c3%3Arustch.at
hope to see fefe back on the speaker list at some point in the future <3
Anyone got any news on his recovery? I was glad to see a new post on his blog this month.
Holy hell, I had missed that post
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I damn love CCC, so excited to be there this year. God bless!
See you there!
Are there any streams working? https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3 says 'has not started yet'.
That's because it hasn't. You wrote this on Dec 26, the event starts on Dec 27, 9:30 UTC.
it's because the congress has literally not started yet.
opening is tomorrow 10h30 CET
I went to DEF CON one year and loved it. One day, I'd love to go to CCC!
Lots of ai this year, but I didn't happen to see a console hacking segment this year.
Should I assume the times on this site are UTC+1?
If you see the Opening Ceremony starting at 10:30, then yes.
Noted, thanks! Will there be recordings? I'd love to watch but it starts at 4 AM for me.
Edit: the youtube playlist for 38c3 seems pretty comprehensive. Thanks to whoever is doing that, it must be a pain.
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CET, yes
As always, lots of cool content.
Anyone have a schedule that works for different Timezones ??
> Shit for Future: turning human shit into a climate solution
LOL, never change CCC, never change...
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I see this comment every year, and I am confused every time.
There was no point in time where ccc or c3 was not an political event/organisation.
this wasn't the point ... the point is that the whole thing is getting more and more political and less technical and fun. I was at the camp and some congresses in the past and they where always fun but nowadays it seems like it's like a political movement event for certain strands and ideologies and way less fun and interesting things (thou there are gems) and it seems that you have to think a certain way or at least accept certain positions even if it's not your position because otherwise you are silly or something else.
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The comment is about how political it is, and that it's getting too much. For example this talk: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
Every year the needle gets moved more
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Okay, that's it. i think i will do some data analysis and do a talk at some place next year about the outcome of the analysis which talks are there and if there's really a trend. :D
Do it. I'm really interested.
Everything is political, always has been.
The "apolitical" is just an implicit endorsement of the status quo.
Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the many talks from the „politics“ category. You have the wrong mindset.
Originally, I wanted to enjoy the cringe fest of privacy related grandstanding while the „community“ was absolutely silent during the dystopian Covid overreach.
But then I spotted, between the many „Nazis everywhere“ vibed talks, one spectacular Antifa affiliated talk about the „Budapest-Complex“.
> Der Vorwurf der … steht in keinem Verhältnis zu den verhandelten Vorkommnissen
Roughly translated: The claim of … is completely disproportionate relative to the discussed events.
„Discussed events“ as in? That some random pedestrian almost got killed because someone decided he‘s a neonazi? Hammers are nowhere to be mentioned. I mean, my knowledge of this is a little bit rusty, but somehow I get the feeling it’s going to be an inspiring leadership class in bending the meanings of words.
By the way, the Antifa-Ost which this talks seem to be concerned with is afaik exactly one of those groups mentioned in the recent US admin‘s update to the list of terrorist groups.
Highly recommend this talk!
you mean too much politics you disagree with
also everything is political, whether you like it or not
no, too many politics that have nothing to do with computers
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True
I used to look up to C3 but honestly not anymore
Too much naive activism and I'm not sure what importing more of the 3rd world has to do with C3 honestly
From year to year more politics and less interesting stuff.
Hacking and politics was always deeply intertwined in Germany/Europe. Especially the CCC has always been at least as much a political organization as it is a hacker community.
Hey, at least you can reasonably argue that the political content has been headed downhill since the more aggressive days of the past. Do we see wikileaks or the likes anymore? Not really.
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
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again this myth. look at past fahrplans, there was always quite some political stuff. you just agreed with it and therefore it was not inconvenient.
In terms of the extent, no.
So you did a comparative analysis of previous events and there's no indication that there's more politics?
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CCC was always political (very left to far left). Never understood why hacking has to be political in the first place.
well, it has a lot to do with people growing up during cold war and german reunification.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
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Interesting, the same came to my mind when reading the fahrplan.
read up on the history of the CCC, it might blow your mind
People come for the technical talks and leave for for the politics.
Every year you got new people who find out the hard way that the CCC is a place for ardent activism, not for critical thinking.
The people who stay do it to meet their friends there.
Not true, better line up than ted AI or Next
Hard to ignore in these times...
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