Thank you @defcon for the opportunity to give back to our amazing community ❤️

Did you know that #defcon operates a crisis hotline 24 hours a day during the conference, ready to respond to everything from medical emergencies to personal crises to sexual assault? The volunteer goons that staff it get months of training and practice role play, and basically give up their weekend to be ready to help our community stay safe and healthy.

This is noble, difficult, valuable, and largely invisible work, and deserves our appreciation.

@tprophet @telechallenge @defcon @nikita

<obligatory> 🙃

Over the years I have dreamed a lot, and then done a lot of stuff @defcon. And not by myself, ever, and I want to be clear on that. There's a whole lot of infrastructure that works so well it's easy to take it for granted, but creating this amazing space is a ton of hard work for multiple dedicated teams that work all year to create the DEF CON we just enjoyed. So I'd like to express my profound appreciation for all of this. Every crazy idea I have takes a lot of people to pull off, and wouldn't be possible without this community. We stand on the shoulders of giants and a lot of love built this place. So to my DEF CON family, my deepest love and appreciation. Places where you can bring a dream and build it are so rare. Never lose that.

We have come back every year since then with an official contest. This year, we had to pivot the @telechallenge in the late stages of development due to unanticipated circumstances. However, we had an idea for something else--why not create one of the easiest contests at @defcon - something kids could play? We pitched the #HackerCoolingContraption as a backup plan and somehow, @nikita talked the convention center into letting us put a POOL on the ROOF. I swear I am not making this up. We had yet another crazy idea, and DEF CON gave us space to try it out. Our winner this year was an 11 year old, who was at his first DEF CON. His contraption was absolutely ingenious and we interacted with hundreds of hackers, who submitted dozens of entries, of which 16 were judged.

The first @telechallenge started as the Telephreak BBS Challenge. I built a puzzle that strung together a challenge on a floppy disk with an actual phone based BBS (super old-school, the one I ran in high school and still full of messages and warez from back then) that could only be reached by dialing a local room extension at the Alexis Park. Getting the extension required a live social engineering challenge.

You could get a floppy disk from me if you were under 25 and it was your first @defcon. I just made the game and did it, with the help of @rixon who donated space in his room. I wasn't even thinking of it as a contest. More for fun, a way to see if anyone could solve it, and a way to meet smart people we could invite to the Telephreak party.

Grifter noticed. He made the case with @thedarktangent that a young couple who came to their first DEF CON and spent it solving an epic puzzle should get a black badge. They did, and they also got a coveted Telephreak party invitation.

@tprophet @thedarktangent @defcon

I love the history lesson prophet!

And I love that I've joined the goon core this year...

DEF CON is the kind of place where if you show up with an idea and you're willing to put in the work, they make a space and let you try it out. That's how we started @queercon. We were kicking the idea around the Alexis Park pool, and DJ Keith Myers said if we found a space he would play. So I asked @thedarktangent if @defcon would give us a space. He gave us a room, the Goons made that space safe (which was very much needed back then) and the rest is history. We dreamed it, and DEF CON created a space for us to do it, sometimes profoundly changing the lives of the thousands of people it continues to touch (and for which I take absolutely no credit; I'm only a founder emeritus these days).

#DefCon32 Hotline

You can reach #DEFCON staff during normal hours of operation to anonymously report any behavior violating our code of conduct or to find an empathic ear! You can contact us via:

Voice Call, SMS/Text, or Signal:
+1 (725) 222-0934
or Discord: @defconhotline

We hope you have a safe and fun #DefCon32!

@lextenebris damn... That's what I get for posting this from the mobile app...

Direct link to video

https://www.youtube.com/live/8zyGGw4aeMQ

#roleplayinggames #roleplay #ironswornrpg

Did a live #solorpg of my #ironsworn campaign.

I'm happy with what I did... Streaming my solo sessions is a different experience from stream about cyber security content though.

Come found out who "Zinnia* is, and how will James and Slick get away from the Colossus

https://www.youtube.com/live/8zyGGw4aeMQ

*Powered by the #ironsworn #starforgedrpg system*

@hackaday lol, EV 'hype'

Hype like block chain, cryptocurrency, and LLM...?

@media_dept I don't follow ppl here, only swcurity/AI/LLM hashtags, and I follow RPG and Pokemon reddits..

Completely different communities. Good content here is hard to find without needing a dozen Mastodon logins

@gamey "this is my side project", "I do this for fun to escape the bullshit at work"

Except when your side gig props up the Internet... One reason some people need to be realistic about their baby and plan for handoff to people or groups that can better manage it.

@bryanbrake I know it's probably supposed to be a joke but I am not against LLM assistant Documentation as long as a human keeps a close eye on the results before they get published. Documenting projects is a huge and tedious task that most people don't want to do and anything that helps with that is a good thing in my book! You are absolutely right tho, we have massive issues with documentation for FOSS projects and I doubt this would be enough to solve them!

@gamey lol, "human keeps an eye on it"

It's a joke that's sadly true...

'they know how it works' and "it's beneath them to document their baby" (let's call it what it is), they will set it and forget it...

@media_dept the problem is that the snobs think they are correct because they've been here since they turned the lights.

I usually come over to see what the "out of touch with reality" crowd is saying before I head back over to Twitter and reddit.

@gamey who's gonna document the LLMs manpages if devs won't document their own open source documentation?

Let's get an LLM to document the LLM that documents all the manpages.

Just found a super easy way to run a LLM on your own computer: https://ollama.com/

Just install it, run it, and then you can do this in your terminal:

#ollama #ai #llm #llama3 #llms #generativeAI #largeLanguageModel #windows #meta

@ScienceScholar