Hacker Conference

Last weekend (July 18, 19 and 20th) I attended The Last H.O.P.E., a hacker conference here in New York put on by the magazine 2600, the Hacker Quarterly. H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers on Planet Earth.

What's a hacker conference about? Well, this one was about the hacker community, security, and general internet connectivity. Plus a lot of computer geeks.

Really, I don't consider myself a hacker. I could understand the presentations, but it just isn't my cup of tea. I don't really want to spend a lot of time learning computer security systems, coding, etc. I'd have stayed as a Computer Science major if that was the case.

But this conference was exactly the kind of thing that made me excited to live in New York. You just don't see these happening much in the Twin Cities.

Ultimately, I fluctuated between really enjoying it and being a bit bothered by it. Given that it was a conference made up of 80% guys between 15-30 that pride themselves on their ability to stay indoors, body odor was a problem sometimes. But there was some interesting stuff. And great speakers!

Here's some tidbits:

The ID card you got to grant you permission to the conference areas was a white circuit board as pictured below:

The backside had a small battery. It was a functioning tracking device. Basically, it could tell where I was when I was within the conference areas. I was able to log in to the conference website and see where I currently was, where I had been, what talks I had attended, where others who registered were. Near the big conference rooms, there was a screen displaying the current data:

Theoretically, I'm one of those red dots. If there weren't so many dots, mine would have read 3225, which was the id number. It was pretty cool, as the tag flashed red every five seconds or so as it sent out a signal.

There were talks from about 10am until midnight Friday, Saturday and Sunday (talks ended at 7pm). As you can see from the empty conference room below, attendance was at capacity. The conference rooms were named after famous Computer Scientists, the one below is named Turing:

I didn't take the picture of the crowd, so theoretically you can see me in there somewhere (but don't look too hard. I knew where I was and I couldn't find myself). This talk was made during Steven Levy's talk. Levy is a technology writer who writes for Newsweek. He also wrote the book "Hackers" back in 1980ish.

Other cool speakers include Lazlow (who co-wrote GTAIV and has done radio work for many of the previous other Grand Theft Auto video games), Adam Savage from Mythbusters, and the guy who was the consultant for Sneakers (early 90's spy movie with Robert Redford).

I learned about safe cracking, lock picking, telephones, internet testing, and a ton of other things technology related. Speaking of lock picks, here's the beginner set I bought:

Alicia and I have both gotten a tiny luggage lock, but that's it. Neither of us has managed to get the master lock pictured. It really feels like an art. You use the S shaped thing to spin the lock like a key would. Then, while providing torque (turning it), you use the blue handled tools to push the "pins" into the lock. When you first start, it feels easy. But then you have trouble getting the pins right. It just doesn't wanna work.

All in all, the hacker conference was great for getting out of the house and doing something. I don't go to many bars, and I'm kind of a bum about seeing music shows. This made me feel like I've gotten something out of living here. Huzzah!

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Footnote: I've usually only posted pictures I personally took so that copyright issues weren't a problem. I couldn't find much in the way of credits or limitations on some of the photos in this post, so I've included links to their original source. Just click the picture for credits. If you own the rights to any of these photos and do not want me using them here, feel free to email me. You can find my email at the top right under "about me."