[HN Gopher] Call for Participation to Chaos Computer Club's 37C3
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Call for Participation to Chaos Computer Club's 37C3
        
       Author : hacka22
       Score  : 172 points
       Date   : 2022-10-09 07:38 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (content.events.ccc.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (content.events.ccc.de)
        
       | m00dy wrote:
       | I wonder in what category the concept of decentralisation fall
       | into.
        
         | fit2rule wrote:
        
         | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
         | Decentralized is nice, but Distributed is better.
        
           | m00dy wrote:
           | Distributed is nice, but still can be centralized.
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | Maybe, Security?
         | 
         | I mean, cryptography is at the core of it.
        
         | abudabi123 wrote:
         | Two categories I can think of are the quantum field or the
         | totality.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | >Social sciences
       | 
       | No.
        
         | atoav wrote:
         | There have been quite some interesting social science talks at
         | the last iterations of the congress. E.g. regarding the
         | interaction between technology and society, quantitative
         | analysis on bots on social media and such.
         | 
         | So whatever weird prejudice you seem to showcase here, maybe it
         | is worth considering to get over yourself for something that
         | interests... hackers. It is a hacker conference after all, and
         | believe it or not technology also intersects with social
         | sciences in interesting ways.
        
       | 3l3ktr4 wrote:
       | Does anyone know how can I join the org team?
        
         | lucb1e wrote:
         | Probably start by volunteering as angel and get to know people,
         | being proactive, organize, and roll into such a function?
        
         | farhaven wrote:
         | The sibling already answered in broad strokes. For the current
         | congress, you're probably too late. Organizing the thing
         | started, if I remember that correctly, somewhere around
         | May/June this year.
         | 
         | There's multiple levels of organization, grouped under the
         | various *OCs (Foo Operations Center), the best place to get to
         | know them and get involved is at the congress through angel
         | shifts. The second best place is probably to hang out in the
         | various German/Swiss/Austrian hackerspaces during the year and
         | getting to know people who are part of the orga.
        
       | O__________O wrote:
       | Anyone have links to prior examples of submission that resulted
       | in presentation with a link to the presentation too?
       | 
       | Here are two blog post on suggestions for researching and
       | submitting security conference proposals:
       | 
       | https://medium.com/katies-five-cents/writing-infosec-confere...
       | 
       | https://sroberts.medium.com/building-better-security-present...
        
         | q3k wrote:
         | https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2019/Fahrplan/
         | 
         | https://media.ccc.de/b/congress/2019
        
           | O__________O wrote:
           | Thanks, just to make sure I am not missing anything, those
           | are examples of presentations, but the proposals that were
           | submitted for them are not provided, right?
           | 
           | Looking for them myself, found to guides to research and
           | submitting proposals which I added to the original request
           | for examples; neither though appear to provide actual
           | submission examples.
        
             | q3k wrote:
             | The most important elements of the submission (abstract and
             | description) are there. There's no reason to try to 'game'
             | this, just submit a good talk proposal on a topic that
             | aligns with the focus tracks of the conference.
             | 
             | The CfP is handled by people who are able to tell apart a
             | bullshit talk with a well-written proposal from a good talk
             | with a proposal written by someone inexperienced. :)
        
               | O__________O wrote:
               | Mainly just curious what gets submitted as is, since
               | guessing a lot of people have no idea what to expect and
               | seeing prior examples would significantly reduce that
               | gap.
               | 
               | (Also swear I have seen something like blog post that
               | showed this before, but unable to find it.)
        
               | johannes1234321 wrote:
               | Previously accepted talks give you a quite good sample
               | about what kind of content is accepted ...
        
               | froh wrote:
               | you'll find plenty of CCC talks on YouTube.
        
       | Kenji wrote:
        
       | 6stringmerc wrote:
       | >We also welcome submissions that present a theoretical
       | reflection on the impact of new technologies on artistic
       | practices and forms of expression.
       | 
       | Finally, the perfect forum to deliver my perspective of ML and AI
       | current state of music and the outlook for the next 1, 3, and 5
       | years. There will be a lot of hurt feelings. It will be very
       | constructive however and show the roadmap between artists and
       | engineers that is yet to develop in earnest and can potentially
       | be the next largest US cultural export.
       | 
       | To use a simile, the current level of ML/AI music is about on par
       | with a precocious elementary student with a basic understanding
       | of an Akai MPC. That's why you can listen to 1,000 of them and
       | _maybe_ one resembles a not-bad song. Not bad is not good mind
       | you. It just means it's not physically offensive  / unlistenable
       | to humans.
       | 
       | One of the hardest lessons for non-creative people to learn about
       | the _how_ of what I do need to understand creativity is
       | inherently rule breaking. Derivative art - like that hack
       | warhol's Prince portrait- have a limited impact overall. Coming
       | back from crazy town with a handful of cool images nobody has
       | seen before like Dali? Now we're talking!
       | 
       | There is hope in the sector, but unfortunately for the tech
       | realm, you're doomed unless you reconfigure your development
       | approach to have 60% of the brain pathways look like spaghetti
       | designed by a coked up ambitious chimp with Visio. I'll have to
       | dig it up but I heard guitar sales in the US increased during the
       | pandemic...same basic design since the log.
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | >the current level of ML/AI music is about on par with a
         | precocious elementary student with a basic understanding of an
         | Akai MPC.
         | 
         | not really true. As far as seven(!) years back people have done
         | experiments where AI reproduction was good enough to fool even
         | experienced listeners
         | (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-
         | generates-m...)
         | 
         | The biggest issue with AI art isn't the quality, we can already
         | make generative art that is faithful enough to not be
         | distinguishable. It's that authorship is an inherent part of
         | art, and nobody is really interested in art that has no human
         | creator in the same way nobody watches bots play chess, despite
         | higher quality of play. Authenticity is central to art, what
         | Walter Benjamin called the 'aura' of a work. (it's unique place
         | in space and time, which automated art does not have).
         | 
         | Keeping this in mind the NFT craze over seemingly random
         | pictures makes more sense, because it was essentially a
         | mechanism to give a replaceable, fungible, mechanic work an
         | aura of sorts, anchoring it. Rather than fidelity, this will be
         | the central question of the tech/art intersection.
        
         | codethief wrote:
         | > To use a simile, the current level of ML/AI music is about on
         | par with a precocious elementary student with a basic
         | understanding of an Akai MPC.
         | 
         | Uhhmm...
         | 
         | https://www.beethovenx-ai.com/
        
           | nmilo wrote:
           | And how much training and guiding did that take? It's not
           | like they hit "generate" and the first try made some good
           | music. This definitely took a ton of human guidance and
           | curation.
        
             | lbotos wrote:
             | Does more guidance == less valuable? I don't think so.
        
       | black_puppydog wrote:
       | Funny to see a bunch of (quickly flagged) comments that show a
       | clear misunderstanding of what the German hacker scene is and
       | wants.
       | 
       | Besides not being a monolith and this being amenable to labeling
       | as such, it's still in many parts different from many other
       | hacker scenes.
       | 
       | The CCC has always had the ambition (and backing
       | credentials/skills) to be a political movement as much as a
       | technological one. In fact that's the origin story of the
       | Congress; Wau Holland inviting others to "do something" with
       | these machines that were set to change the world. This political
       | attitude always had a left and anti-fascist bent, IMHO something
       | that Germany in the 80s, and nowadays, desperately needs.
       | 
       | The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear)
       | looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state
       | actors. Having worked with the intelligence community seems to be
       | more of a badge of honor over there?
       | 
       | In France in comparison the scene as I see it focuses much more
       | on making _things_ , while organisations like La Quadrature du
       | Net are well known but small and not at all organized/supported
       | in the grass roots way that the CCC is. Which is why they seem to
       | enjoy the CCC events, it's always great to have them there. :)
       | 
       | I might be getting this very wrong, like I said I'm only seeing
       | the US scene from "over here" and I only have shallow interaction
       | with the French scene.
       | 
       | I'd also love to hear from other places and how your local nerd
       | communities do in terms of taking political agency.
        
         | aestetix wrote:
         | I agree completely. There are many things I like about CCC. For
         | example, corporate sponsorship is forbidden, and many speakers
         | use handles rather than their legal name. This distancing from
         | $dayjob helps to prevent government/military and corporations
         | from undue influence, and also frees the speakers to say what
         | they actually think about a technology, not fearing that they
         | will lose their job over it.
         | 
         | Regarding the political bent, one big difference from the US is
         | that people at CCC will openly express their disagreements, and
         | are generally respectful about it. The only limitations are
         | that Nazis are not allowed, which is partly because they are
         | forbidden by law.
        
         | j3s wrote:
         | > The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear)
         | looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and
         | state actors.
         | 
         | this is true, and it's one of the reasons I helped start
         | cyberia.club and layerze.ro - US tech is deeply entwined with
         | megacorps and it sucks the joy out of hacking, at least imho.
        
         | super256 wrote:
         | I left the CCC in 2020 after C3 crew decided that the cock.li
         | mail-service is a fascist and started, escalated, and carried
         | out an attack on its administrator Vincent Canfield [1].
         | 
         | Sorry, but throwing someone on the floor in front of the
         | congress building for registering clearly sarcastic domains
         | such as "hitler.rocks" and "nuke.africa" is just not what I
         | understand under anti-facism. It's merely a power move for
         | confirming your own moral superiority. I mean, just look at the
         | website, and you will clearly see that the whole site is meant
         | as a joke.
         | 
         | If you want to be political, you shouldn't start with labelling
         | someone as "fac|rac|sex-ist" because that implicitly means that
         | it's the end of the discussion. That's not how politics should
         | work. Paul Graham wrote a wonderful essay about this. [2]
         | 
         | I'm now just donating my ex-membership fee to my local
         | Chaostreff, since I know what kind of person runs that place :)
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W_61YicxOM
         | 
         | [2] http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html
        
           | Dunedan wrote:
           | > Sorry, but throwing someone on the floor in front of the
           | congress building for registering clearly sarcastic domains
           | such as "hitler.rocks" and "nuke.africa" is just not what I
           | understand under anti-facism.
           | 
           | I'm not familiar with what happened there, but at least to me
           | these domain names are definitely not "clearly sarcastic".
        
             | glogla wrote:
             | Oh you're missing the best one, "nigge.rs".
        
             | super256 wrote:
             | > I'm not familiar with what happened there, but at least
             | to me these domain names are definitely not "clearly
             | sarcastic".
             | 
             | Have you taken a look at the website? [1] You should be
             | able to detect that the site is satire within a few
             | seconds.
             | 
             | Of course, we could dig up the whole "what is satire, what
             | is x-ism" controversy up again, like after the Charlie
             | Hebdo shooting. But I do believe that it's a joke,
             | especially when looking at the context (what most people
             | apparently don't do).
             | 
             | And before labelling someone as a fascist, that's
             | undoubtedly the thing that you should do first: look at the
             | context.
             | 
             | [1] https://cock.li/
        
               | numpad0 wrote:
               | Did you just invent a longform for "it's only a prank
               | broo" expression
        
               | Dunedan wrote:
               | > Have you taken a look at the website?
               | 
               | No, I haven't, because the parent comment was referring
               | to registering these domains, not about what they serve.
               | 
               | I also don't want to judge whether whatever happened at
               | that C3 was justified, but rather that it's not clear
               | from just domain names if there meant in a sarcastic way
               | or not.
        
           | dingosity wrote:
           | meh. sure. the world is against you and doesn't understand
           | your specialness. or you could just read Popper.
        
           | sascha_sl wrote:
           | As someone who has spent time on Vincent's mumble years ago,
           | he is definitely at least fascist adjacent.
           | 
           | And his use of slurs is by no means ironic, unless you want
           | to claim he is ironic 100% of the time he is online.
        
           | medlazik wrote:
           | "fac|rac|sex-ist"s must absolutely be called as such _first
           | thing_ in order to end the discussion. Characterized,
           | ignored, deplatformed.
        
             | super256 wrote:
             | No, because it takes priority over the question of truth or
             | falsity, and it outweighs everything else the person has
             | done. Regardless how positive its impact has been.
        
               | medlazik wrote:
               | Separate the artist from his art, and all this bullshit.
               | That's the usual neolib reasoning, nothing new.
               | Capitalists historically never had a problem with
               | Fascism, only posturing.
        
           | glogla wrote:
           | In just this post, you
           | 
           | 1) Disingenuously frame someone being removed from premises
           | where they are not welcome as "decided that X is a fascist
           | and started, escalated, and carried out an attack".
           | 
           | 2) Care more about someone who runs services on
           | "hitler.rocks", "nuke.africa" and "nigge.rs" than you care
           | about CCC being kind and welcoming place for everyone - for
           | example, people who might not want to be called "niggers".
           | 
           | 3) Use "it's just joke bro" as a defense for despicable
           | behavior.
           | 
           | I have no idea what someone like you was doing in CCC in the
           | first place.
        
             | super256 wrote:
             | > 1) Disingenuously frame someone being removed from
             | premises where they are not welcome as "decided that X is a
             | fascist and started, escalated, and carried out an attack".
             | 
             | No, this is -- to my best knowledge -- what happened.
             | 
             | > 2) Care more about someone who runs services on
             | "hitler.rocks", "nuke.africa" and "nigge.rs" than you care
             | about CCC being kind and welcoming place for everyone - for
             | example, people who might not want to be called "niggers".
             | 
             | No one is calling anyone like this. But I see that it's
             | intentionally provoking through obscenity. However, it is
             | not possible to determine the boundary between "obscene"
             | and "non-obscene" according to factual characteristics, and
             | everything about this is subjective:
             | 
             | For some people graffiti is obscene, for some people
             | kissing in public is obscene, for some people name-calling
             | is obscene, and some aren't concerned with whatever you do.
             | 
             | In fact, we can see this in this discussion: I see that the
             | domain is using the TLD to break a taboo and to get
             | attention, but I don't see an insult in this as it's not
             | redirected at anyone harmfully. It's all up to the reader's
             | interpretation.
             | 
             | > 3) Use "it's just joke bro" as a defense for despicable
             | behavior.
             | 
             | I would agree with you, if he would actually make
             | differences between race or sex. But he doesn't.
             | 
             | In the end it's just a vanity domain, which to me is funny
             | for the reason that so many people get hung up on it, which
             | is most likely the desired effect.
        
           | exolymph wrote:
           | "Satire" isn't the right designation -- it's trolling, which
           | is related but distinct (and permits but does not require
           | sincerity).
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | At some point in the future, people will be studying and
             | analyzing 4chan trolling the way they analyzed British
             | political satire rags of the 1800s.
             | 
             | It is a new form of writing, though. Satire, today, is
             | thought of as something that is known to be false, while
             | trolling seems to be characterized by a sort of "stochastic
             | truth" where the author is purposely ambiguous about
             | whether they believe it or not. It lets the author of a
             | piece of trolling say things that are clearly over the
             | line, and mean it. It lets the author walk back the
             | statements if they are unpopular and lean in if they are
             | popular.
             | 
             | I do wonder if original pieces of satire and parody from
             | hundreds of years ago were written with the intention of
             | the same ambiguity of truth.
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | Political satire being taken as truth[0] comes with the
               | territory. In fact, that's kind of the implicit joke. We
               | laugh at every politician that reads an Onion article and
               | thinks they need to rally the wagons to stop the $8bn
               | Planned Parenthood Abortionplex. It is a rhetorical prank
               | on the rich and powerful.
               | 
               | The problem with 4chan political trolling is that they
               | always use the same fucking joke and there's no
               | underlying satire to pick up upon. "Here's some people
               | who don't fit in to the default social mold, now laugh
               | and mock." This isn't satire, there's no rhetorical
               | prank. This is just pissing in an ocean of piss. Even
               | treating the board as a whole performative art piece is
               | just running the OneJoke recursively against a large
               | swath of probably-white, possibly-poor, definitely
               | autistic people.
               | 
               | There is no ambiguity of truth. The people who treated
               | /pol/ as satire up and left decades ago. The only people
               | who remain are true believers interested in hurting
               | people, including themselves.
               | 
               | [0] Also known as "eating The Onion"
        
           | Foxboron wrote:
           | >I left the CCC in 2020 after C3 crew decided that the
           | cock.li mail-service is a fascist and started, escalated, and
           | carried out an attack on its administrator Vincent Canfield
           | [1].
           | 
           | You choose to ignore the anti-trans posters they hung up in
           | the conference center.
        
             | super256 wrote:
             | > You choose to ignore the anti-trans posters they hung up
             | in the conference center.
             | 
             | This is news to me. Could you share more info about this? I
             | did a quick google search and couldn't find anything.
        
               | Foxboron wrote:
               | Well, I don't know what to tell you. There isn't anything
               | published around this. But you can maybe find traces of
               | the posters on social media.
               | 
               | They where an iteration of the "Birds doesn't exist..."
               | posters which was a meme during that years CCC.
        
               | dijit wrote:
               | This is very new information to me and I followed the
               | drama closely at the time as I have friends on both
               | sides.
               | 
               | I would appreciate a citation as _nobody_ has mentioned
               | anti-trans posters.
               | 
               | What was mentioned is that there had been conflict the
               | year before and that Vincent was told he wasn't welcome,
               | which was the root of the escalation.
        
               | throwaway35c3 wrote:
               | There were threads in 4chan /g/ around 35c3. Hard to find
               | the photos now, but "Trans aren't real girls wake up
               | 35c3" post with the number "69115371" is in the thread:
               | https://archive.ph/ki6Un See other posts to get the
               | impression.
               | 
               | cock.li, /g/, 4chan joint assembly printed and spammed
               | these posters and their logo (you can see it in the OP
               | post thumbnail) all around and were explicitly told not
               | to organize an assembly on 36c3.
               | 
               | Regardless, Vincent Canfield decided to come to 36c3 and
               | started conflicts somewhere around the Tor, GNUNet and
               | some activist/political projects around there, then
               | refused to get out when told to do so by orga and called
               | the police.
        
               | Foxboron wrote:
               | Well, the dead account has some links which I won't
               | repost. Feel free to reach out over IRC or email if you
               | want other/more links I guess.
               | 
               | From what I gather is that the conflict around the
               | website started at 35C3 with the posters and the general
               | shitposting. It was pinned to the cock.li assembly and vc
               | was then asked to not come back. Which they did 36C3 and
               | resulted in the above video.
               | 
               | Whether or not vc knew all of this, or was directly
               | involved, I don't know.
        
           | aestetix wrote:
           | Where did the C3 crew say the service was fascist?
           | 
           | As far as I understand, he showed up to Congress and did a
           | Hitlergrusse (Nazi salute) to their security. In Germany that
           | is illegal and arrestable, so he should actually be grateful
           | they only kicked him out and did not call the police. Germany
           | has very strict laws against video-recording people without
           | their consent, so creating this video would be considered
           | another crime.
           | 
           | I can't speak for the content of the video itself, but I
           | would imagine that most Germans would see "throwing someone
           | on the floor" as a reasonable response to making the
           | Hitlergrusse.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | super256 wrote:
             | > As far as I understand, he showed up to Congress and did
             | a Hitlergrusse (Nazi salute) to their security. In Germany
             | that is illegal and arrestable, so he should actually be
             | grateful they only kicked him out and did not call the
             | police.
             | 
             | This is simply not true. Before the C3 took place, Michael
             | required Vincent to remove all the unfunny stuff from his
             | website to be able to register an assembly for C3. However,
             | Vincent did not agree to this, so he didn't register an
             | assembly.
             | 
             | Then, during C3 on the 27th Dec, Vincent sent out a tweet
             | that he's on C3, and so he and a few users of his email
             | service met informally, but not as a cock.li assembly. It
             | wasn't a huge crowd, I think like 5 people(?).
             | 
             | Michael then approached Vincent and said, that he wouldn't
             | be allowed on the premise. Vincent then offered to take it
             | to the Arbitration Board, which was specifically set up for
             | situations like this: When someone experiences
             | sexism/racism or discrimination of any kind, they should
             | take it to the AB, where the awareness team tries to find a
             | mutually agreeable solution. Michael didn't like this
             | proposal and just told him to leave within the next 5
             | Minutes.
             | 
             | Apparently the short-haired girl, which was following
             | Michael, did not want to wait 5 Minutes. That's when
             | Vincent sent an audio recording to himself and switched to
             | video recording. That's what you see in the first post I
             | made.
             | 
             | The phone which Vincent used for recording was seized by
             | security. However, confiscating cameras or camera phones is
             | the sole responsibility of the police or the bailiff.
             | Stewards and security guards are not allowed to do that.
             | 
             | > Germany has very strict laws against video-recording
             | people without their consent, so creating this video would
             | be considered another crime.
             | 
             | This isn't true either. You are allowed to record if you
             | have legitimate interests in recording the current event,
             | e.g. when a friend gets knocked down to the floor by other
             | people, as the others would be free to leave the scene if
             | they really wanted to. However, you are not allowed to
             | release the footage to a public forum without the consent
             | of the party that displays the helplessness.
        
               | oxnrtr wrote:
               | Have you ever re-read your posts and realized how
               | incredibly whiny this all sounds?
               | 
               | He tried to start shit and got thrown out. Stop whining.
        
               | super256 wrote:
               | I just find it sad that some people come up to this
               | thread and straight up lie bc someone sent a link to here
               | on IRC.
        
               | oxnrtr wrote:
               | Dude, just read the stuff you write. You seem to have
               | some axe to grind, but every detail that you seemingly
               | "forget" to mention (and is pointed out later) makes you
               | look worse and worse.
               | 
               | You and your friend seem to be objectively terrible
               | people and I see absolutely no reason why anyone would
               | want to deal with you.
               | 
               | And now you can cry as much as you want about how you are
               | being victimized, because I really don't care.
        
           | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
           | > clearly sarcastic domains such as "hitler.rocks" and
           | "nuke.africa"
           | 
           | When I visit the page I'm greeted by a banner with fake
           | quotes, here is a selection:
           | 
           | > I'm 200% n*ger
           | 
           | > Come fuck with a n*ger. I'm a business man
           | 
           | There is _nothing_ that indicates sarcasm or satire there
           | when it comes to all those choices, given that the site
           | advertises itself towards 4chan users. At best it 's edgy and
           | infantile, at worst it's just the usual racist shit that is
           | "funny" only to the people repeating it very loudly over and
           | over and over.
           | 
           | Weird how the only flavour of "sarcasm" and "humor" people
           | like you and the site owner can come up with is the
           | glorification of nazis and making fun of black people.
           | 
           | I wonder who it is you are trying to fool here...
        
           | throw827474737 wrote:
           | > clearly sarcastic domains such as...
           | 
           | Not sure where that guy is from (and also dont want to judge
           | the story at all),.. BUT there is not much like that here but
           | one of the few and also by law forbidden taboos is this. With
           | that, you are never clearly sarcastic, the opposite. No
           | excuse, sorry.
        
             | asmor wrote:
             | He is from the US, but lives in Romania.
             | 
             | For a long time, cock.li was hosted on Hetzner - until a
             | bunch of bomb threats to schools in the US originated
             | there. There was a fun little bit of government overreach
             | involved too, since the german police seized the server
             | twice - the first time they only took a single drive
             | (probably as advised by Hetzner staff), and then, a week
             | later, they demanded the entire server. It's pretty much
             | implied that this was at the behest of US authorities,
             | since a related FOIA request at the german feds was denied
             | with "may cause adverse affects on international relations"
        
         | coffeeblack wrote:
        
           | tpush wrote:
           | Nonsense.
        
         | thesaint wrote:
        
         | roastedpeacock wrote:
         | Wau Holland. Missed by those who never met him.
         | 
         | I too love a good talk on (e.x exploit research) and longingly
         | wonder if in part due to attempts of censorship by companies,
         | also the value of exploits if the 'glory times' of such
         | presentations are over. Ultimately I respect the CCC for
         | providing a platform to discuss difficult problems adjacent to
         | technology as well.
        
       | larodi wrote:
       | All the we-pay-noone to participate is very weird in 2022 when
       | information technology industries are potentially among the
       | wealthiest. And particularly when the events are non-free-
       | admission.
        
         | lima wrote:
         | Agreed in principle, but 37C3 is a volunteer-run event.
         | Admission fees are low and (barely) cover expenses.
        
           | larodi wrote:
           | Volunteering is a very tricky and shady business. If it was
           | not - we'd all be volunteering and getting paid without tax.
           | There's a reason for some limits in volunteering laws
           | whenever they exist in a country.
           | 
           | I bet the same people running this whole thing are also very
           | well paid techies. Not sure about the volunteers though.
           | 
           | And third, not last, the fact something is run by volunteers
           | does not change it's nature - it is still a business thing.
           | Some expenses are paid for and eventually all the
           | subcontractors are paid while the volunteers are not. Not
           | fair at all.
        
             | hypfer wrote:
             | You're missing the point.
             | 
             | The whole thing is purposefully built like that. There is 0
             | interest in having people on stage that do it for the
             | money. Instead it is about people that deeply care about a
             | topic and want to share knowledge, ideas etc with others.
             | 
             | It is not a regular IT conference. It is not a business
             | thing.
        
             | farhaven wrote:
             | Actually, there aren't really subcontractors. There _is_ a
             | registered company called CCC Veranstaltungs Gmbh (CCC
             | Events Inc.) which more-or-less owns a lot of the equipment
             | (sound stages, lighting, ...) and nominally rents the
             | venues and such, so that if the conference goes bust,
             | there's a legal entity that can go bankrupt instead of
             | individuals, but that's about it.
             | 
             | Food stalls are not hired by the CCCV GmbH, they pay to be
             | there (and in turn get to dictate their prices), video
             | streaming and such is handled by FEM e.V. (a non-profit
             | that specializes in this kinda stuff) and is not paid
             | (except for expenses, I think, but I don't have insights
             | into that part of the finances) and truck drivers and such
             | are actually volunteers.
             | 
             | "The people running this thing" are also volunteers. They
             | do get a bit of money as an exchange for having to take
             | unpaid vacations way in advance of the event for organizing
             | stuff, but it's a far cry from "well paid". It's more of a
             | "here's enough to not go broke on rent and food".
        
             | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
             | I have it on government authority that taxes are voluntary.
        
             | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
             | The volunteers range from well paid techies to couchsurfing
             | students.
             | 
             | I'm not convinced of your last line. A business is
             | typically maximizing profit, which isn't what's happening
             | here to my knowledge.
        
             | jon-wood wrote:
             | I can see how from the outside you'd think that way. Hacker
             | events are very different to big corporate conferences, and
             | don't intuitively make sense in a world where almost
             | everything that happens is being done so someone can make a
             | buck.
             | 
             | Everyone involved is a volunteer, or at the very most
             | making significantly less money than they could running
             | events of a similar scale in the real world, and they're
             | all doing it because there's not really anything quite like
             | these events outside of them. There's a distinctly anarchic
             | feeling to them, with a great many things that just
             | organically happen because someone thought it would be fun,
             | and then it got totally out of hand because other people
             | latched on to it as well. The Chaos Post is a prime example
             | of this, a postal service which is effectively a bunch of
             | nerds cosplaying a worldwide postal service - I've known of
             | people who addressed postcards to themselves, but at a
             | future event on another continent, and they got delivered
             | intact.
        
           | patcon wrote:
           | Disclaimer: runs free events, where organizers are
           | volunteers, in which we're still trying to find sponsorship
           | money for small speaker honorariums.
           | 
           | While I'm grateful to ccc organizers and understand that
           | things are sometimes clearer and easier without the
           | distorting effects of money...
           | 
           | I think defaulting to offering an honorarium to speakers is
           | really healthy. The cultural baseline can easily be set to
           | that any "financially comfortable" speakers donate it
           | straight back without collecting, while only those who need
           | it, keep it.
           | 
           | Why? Because speakers with many areas of expertise cannot
           | afford to spend time speaking for free. Some really rad
           | people can, but just saying that many cannot. And while it's
           | maybe not a big deal if there's narrow representation of ppl
           | volunteering at the ticket booth, there is a larger loss of
           | possibility when cash-poor types of speakers can't afford to
           | show up.
           | 
           | Speakers are the bringers of ideas, and who speaks affects
           | the _intellectual_ space that an event creates. And it might
           | be said that creating that intellectual space is the main
           | point of an event. The other motivation is maybe creating a
           | new _relational_ space, new relationships between people that
           | tend to be fostered and grown around the feeding trough of
           | presentation content.
           | 
           | So the "intellectual" is about "what gets broadcast" and
           | "relational" is more about "who gets enticed to attend", and
           | "which ideas fuck and make new ideas in the conversations
           | between those attendees". All of the above flows from the
           | speakers, and so I'd argue that it's more important to use
           | the powerful magic of money to help certain speakers show up.
           | 
           | I think the sweet spot for starting to experiment with
           | honoraria is: low enough to be a bit insulting to those who
           | would be driven by the money, but high enough to meaningfully
           | cover some costs for someone just trying to get by :)
        
             | em-bee wrote:
             | as far as i can tell, the ccc does offer support for travel
             | expenses and accommodation if needed
        
             | makeva wrote:
             | I understand your point but the Congress is not really a
             | typical conference where ideas flow from speakers to
             | attendees.
             | 
             | Instead everyone is expected to contribute ideas (and even
             | physically as a volunteers)
             | 
             | The talks are actually only a part of the whole things and
             | the main track talks (for which this CFP is for I assume)
             | are only a part of the talks (the rest are organized by
             | assemblies)
             | 
             | It's very different to usual IT conf, even compared to
             | FOSDEM.
             | 
             | (Not part of the orga, this is only my understanding as an
             | attendee)
        
         | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
         | This is not an industry conference. This is a hacker
         | conference, by the community, for the community. Many people
         | involved are students, who really benefit from the admission
         | prices being as low as they are, and the cool projects you see
         | around the assembly area are so cool because they are from
         | tinkerers, people with time (which is often mutually exclusive
         | with money), people who do cool stuff.
         | 
         | Paying the speakers would increase ticket prices (though not by
         | much), create a "why do they get paid when everybody
         | volunteers" effect that would discourage volunteers, and
         | ultimately likely lower the quality of the conference.
         | 
         | They make pretty clear that if travel costs are really an
         | issue, they'll find a solution.
        
           | thesaint wrote:
        
       | UltimateEdge wrote:
       | I wonder why the Congress takes place during the last few days of
       | December. There aren't many travel options if you want to get
       | back to your country before the new year.
        
         | jimmytidey wrote:
         | CCC often reveals new software vulnerabilities. I don't know if
         | it's deliberate, but if they reveal those vulnerabilities at
         | Christmas, they ruin the holiday of whoever is responsible for
         | fixing them - quite likely someone working for a big
         | corporation.
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | Or "ruining someone's holiday" is a secondary effect.
           | Simplest explanation is that it's easy to get vacation time
           | from your "normal" job at that time compared to other times,
           | so if you want to make sure as many people can make it as
           | possible, those dates are likely to be the best.
        
             | GekkePrutser wrote:
             | Except most people that would like to go have family
             | commitments around this time. And airports are really busy.
             | 
             | I've never been due to the busy and costly flights thing
             | myself.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | Where were you trying to travel from? Last time I was at
               | the congress, most people I talked to arrived by train,
               | myself included, even if it took a day of traveling.
        
               | GekkePrutser wrote:
               | I'm Dutch but I live in Spain now so by train is not
               | really viable.
        
           | Dunedan wrote:
           | People associated with the CCC most often do responsible
           | disclosure. Therefore you can expect vulnerabilities revealed
           | during C3 to be already known in advance to the vendor. AFAIK
           | an exception to that are jail breaks, which have quite a
           | history of getting announced during C3 without disclosing
           | them to the vendor first.
        
         | foepys wrote:
         | As somebody else already said, it's perfect for the DACH
         | region. Many companies close "between the years" (the 7 days
         | between Christmas Eve and New Years) or run on a bare minimum
         | staff.
         | 
         | It's easy for most people to take time off then and visit the
         | congress.
        
         | black_puppydog wrote:
         | It's traditionally and still a very DACH dominated event, for
         | better or worse. Travel by regional/interregional trains around
         | this time is perfectly fine, and it's a time where it's quite
         | easy for a whole big community to synchronize for taking
         | vacation.
         | 
         | Remember that this is not the type of Congress where people go
         | on paid time. There are no sponsorships and generally no
         | commercial interest behind this event, so I think (my guess, I
         | have no data to back that up) that most people take vacation
         | days and pay their own ticket.
        
           | lucb1e wrote:
           | ("DACH" meaning Deutschland, Austria, Chwitzerland, if I'm
           | not mistaken; i.e. the main German-speaking region. Not sure
           | this is common knowledge outside of people that are in /
           | regularly deal with DACH; I only learned of it 2 years after
           | moving to Germany, being from the Netherlands.)
        
           | ciex wrote:
           | It's a good chance to use your Bildungsurlaub allowance
           | (education vacation?) where for 5 days a year you are being
           | paid by your employer for educating yourself in a way of your
           | choosing. C3 is recognized for that program almost everywhere
           | in Germany.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | Always assumed it was because no-one else wanted the conference
         | centre at that time of year, so it was cheap.
        
       | glogla wrote:
       | Leipzig again or back to Hamburg?
        
         | raimue wrote:
         | Hamburg, as announced in an earlier blog post.
         | 
         | https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2022/37-chaos-communication-co...
        
         | farhaven wrote:
         | Hamburg, they finally finished renovating the CCH.
        
           | O__________O wrote:
           | Links for CCH:
           | 
           | https://www.cch.de/en/
           | 
           | https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Center_Hamburg
        
             | aintmeit wrote:
             | But the chaos created is for whom?
        
           | glogla wrote:
           | Wonderfull, looking forward to seeing all the nooks, crannies
           | and secret passages again.
        
         | oger wrote:
         | Hamburg afaik
        
       | sprash wrote:
        
         | seb1204 wrote:
         | I'd like to see some credible sources for this claim please. My
         | impression is that individuals involved and associated with the
         | CCC are not only experts in their field they often also have
         | good understanding of how society is being challenged by
         | climate change, deforestation, pollution, urbanisation and
         | individual transport.
        
         | sen_armstrong wrote:
         | I missed the drama at the time, are you referring to (edit:
         | fixed link) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21905761?
        
           | johnny22 wrote:
           | and because i followed the clink and clicked the poster link
           | I see "This account was suspended following an FBI request.
           | Please contact the support team. "
           | 
           | I didn't realize that was a thing.
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | Any user can put that on their own profile, if they feel
             | like playing the victim card :)
             | 
             | Their last post was 2021-11-03
             | (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=h1x) but a old
             | archive of their profile from 2021-01-10 (https://web.archi
             | ve.org/web/20210110145033/https://news.ycom...) shows that
             | the text was already there, almost a year before their last
             | post.
             | 
             | So yeah, seems they put it there themselves :)
        
         | blablabla123 wrote:
         | Almost every part of these 2 sentences is factually wrong, as a
         | quick Google searches would reveal
        
         | farhaven wrote:
         | You mean the CCC that was founded in the rooms of leftist
         | newspaper TAZ at a table that was stolen from the anarcho-left
         | commune "Kommune 1"?
         | 
         | If you don't understand that the CCC is and has always been
         | anti-fascist, you're way off the path, friend.
         | 
         | Edit: forgot to mention: any notion that Antifa is a state-
         | organized thing is misguided at best and wrong and in bad faith
         | at worst. It's just not true.
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | You can even read TAZ officially under the Gopher protocol :p
        
           | sprash wrote:
        
             | farhaven wrote:
             | Who is this "Antifa" that you talk about? Are they in the
             | room with us right now?
             | 
             | Calling the CCC a fascist organization is a pretty hot take
             | that I haven't come across yet, I'll give you that, but as
             | they say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
             | proof".
        
               | google234123 wrote:
               | If you work at a large company and live in a large city
               | then there are probably some in the room with you. Just
               | spend a little time on twitter, people are proud to self
               | identify as such.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | > Edit: forgot to mention: any notion that Antifa is a state-
           | organized thing is misguided at best and wrong and in bad
           | faith at worst. It's just not true.
           | 
           | I'm old enough and lefty enough to remember when antifa was
           | Anti-Racist Action, and primarily skinheads concerned about
           | Nazi skinheads. Glenn Beck really twisted the rightists'
           | sense of history.
        
           | formerly_proven wrote:
           | Implying the German state of all things runs Antifa is at
           | best risible. While justice officers and LEOs will always
           | trend right of society, simply due to self-section based on
           | the inherent authoritarianism of justice and LE in
           | particular, the German security services have done a
           | spectacularly bad job (way beyond Hanlon's razor) at
           | preventing and prosecuting right-wing extremism, crime and
           | terrorism for almost the entire existence of the BRD. The
           | idea that the same security services who systematically
           | covered for right-wing criminals run Antifa is just... I
           | don't even know how you get that idea. Besides, the German
           | police and justice system has been prosecuting Antifa and a
           | large number of other left-wing organizations since always.
        
         | atoav wrote:
         | > a state sponsored left wing terrorist organization
         | 
         | [citation needed]
         | 
         | I live next to a gathering point of leftist/antifa groups in
         | Germany, and given the fact they are "state sponsered" they
         | happen to get a lot of needlessly violent police response. I'd
         | imagine a state which "sponsored" a group would protect them
         | from the state's executive. Also the CCC publishes
         | _consistently_ statements that oppose the current German
         | governments plans regarding internet and surveilance. What is
         | the purpose of a state sponsoring a group that ridicules their
         | badly thought out policies on a regular basis? If I were a
         | state I would not sponsor people that constantly show my
         | policies to be of farcially bad quality, but hey, maybe this
         | makes sense in your world.
         | 
         | Next we could go for the term "terrorist organization". In
         | Germany we have a Verfassungsschutzbericht ("Report of the
         | Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution") which
         | lists all the violent or terrorist acts on a yearly basis. The
         | Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is and
         | has been known to be overyly critical of left wing
         | organizations (so much for "state sponsored" antifa) while
         | being blind to right wing violence like a literal murder series
         | (NSU complex), also because the early officers working at that
         | organization had Nazi roots. STILL the report of that
         | organization shows that right wing terrorism is magnitudes more
         | common and deadly than any left wing violence. So if Antifa is
         | a terrorist group, they are not very good at terrorism, because
         | they don't seem to have a lot of impact in the real physical
         | world that anybody can measure. Leftist violence is mostly
         | against property or rightwing opponents. Right wing violence is
         | against intellectuals, writers, journalists, migrants,
         | politicians and of course leftists. Or you know, maybe the
         | whole terrorism label is a bit far fetched for what I perceived
         | as a more or less disorganized mess of leftist splintergroups
         | full of edgy teens.
         | 
         | So we have a wrong claim of state sponsorship and a wrong claim
         | of "terrorism", which mean I would not be too confident in the
         | third point you are making there.
         | 
         | The CCC certainly leans left. So what? A lot of educational
         | elite groups in Central Europe do. That is quite normal. If you
         | were to ask the CCC they'd probably argue that in the US
         | hackers are surprisingly comfy to be that close to the
         | intelligence community and the state (which is precisely what
         | you accuse the CCC of by being "state sponsored").
        
           | atoav wrote:
           | Funny how throughout my over 11k karma points the only
           | comments that get downvoted without reply or clarification
           | are ones that underline slightly left leaning viewpoints with
           | facts.
           | 
           | I'd love to know the factually wrong parts of what I say, so
           | I can avoid saying it in the future and maybe even adjust my
           | world view accordingly. This happens with many issues I
           | discuss, but when it comes to (on the european political
           | spectrum) slightly left leaning topics there will always be
           | certain people that downvote based on political orientation
           | alone.
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | I fall in a similar camp.
             | 
             | I think generally what we see as "slightly left leaning"
             | ends up being "extreme left leaning" seen from the eyes of
             | the US, as "center" politics in Europe would still be
             | considered "left" in the US.
             | 
             | Basically, the baseline of the entire country leans so far
             | right, that anything outside of the right seems at least
             | slightly "leftists" in US politics.
        
             | throw827474737 wrote:
             | All true, no worries. You cannot change world views.. to me
             | it is always and everytime again really amazing how much
             | some even generally liberal people, especially in the US,
             | despite sometimes non-arguable facts.. as soon as it is a
             | bit left (or not even that, just labelling it as such) it
             | just either cannot be, or must be bad.
        
           | oger wrote:
           | In addition the CCC is a regular contributor to parliamentary
           | hearings - be it investigatory committees or in the context
           | of new or revised legislation. They are an active part of
           | society and their voice is being heard.
        
             | johannes1234321 wrote:
             | > regular contributor to parliamentary hearings
             | 
             | And typically invited by the opposition, not the governing
             | parties ...
        
         | oynqr wrote:
         | The replies to this are already good. Everything between
         | "deboonked" to "always has been".
        
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