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.
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".
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground.
I don't know which past Chaos Communication Congresses you have attended, but it always was. If that's not for you, then that's too bad.
> 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.
Opinions that people get thrown out for are not "I love my country" or "hey, maybe immigration should be handled differently". They're things like "Hitler was ok, actually". And IMO if a conference doesn't throw you out for _that_, it's not one worth attending.
The problem has been the continuous purposeful rightward shift of the overton window as part of a wider strategy by the far right.
You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left". You see the far-right decrying our democratically elected government as "dictatorship", a classic Putinist propaganda move.
Don't let the right wing extremists set the narrative! Don't listen to their complaints about things being too "political" or "far left". It's all just a tactic in their march towards fascism.
Just because you don't see the "far left" doesn't mean it isn't there. Would you consider CDU in Germany to be conservative or even Christian right now? I've been far left all my life until I noticed how fake it all is. Sane goes for the right. now I'm just following truth. It's a lonely path.
All the best & I hope you had a Merry Christmas as well.
CDU is not far left. It's reducing immigration, reducing social services, and removing bike lanes to make more room for cars. Not things the left is known for - but they are things the right is known for.
The best thing the right has done to advance its cause is to convince so many people that the words "right" and "left" don't have actual meanings.
> How many countries are led by the far right? What about the far left?
Since you asked the question, I assume you have an answer, and I'm curious to hear it. I imagine it will reveal more about your personal politics than any observable political reality.
Double-replying to apologize for my previous comment! I saw what I felt was a leading question and answered it with a leading question in kind, but I got turned around reading the thread and realized much later that I actually agree with you and my answer would to your question would probably be more similar to yours than to the person you were replying to.
If San Francisco is what you get when you embrace the left, and opposition to that is fascism, I think a lot of us have just decided we must be fascists.
Nah, this is just the No True Scotsman fallacy. San Francisco is FAR more left in their politics than most of the nation. For example, the new mayor described himself as:
> As a lifelong Democrat and San Franciscan, I am running for mayor to turn around the city I love
London Breed, the mayor before, was endorsed by explicitly Democrat or nonpartisan individuals (including Kamala Harris)
We could go on. What's ironic here is that this comment just reveals how disconnected this form of left wing politics is from the larger nation. They call even examples of the politics of their own "right wing" because they're so radically left
There is no left wing politician in power anywhere in the US.
Democrats are a center-right party, they do not argue for any left wing position - like nationalizing industry, abolishing markets etc etc. In Europe, their equivalents in terms of economic policy would be conservative parties like the CDU.
The fact you consider them left wing is only evidence of above overton window shift happening.
What in the quote screams left-wing to you? Is it just because he's San Franciscan? But that would be circular reasoning: SF is left because of its mayor, and its mayor is left because he's from SF.
> You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left".
No, things have changed in CCC as well. Back in the day, free speech (in the US definition) and a firm opposition to any censorship were consensus on CCC. Nowadays, censorship is totally OK if it targets the right. And any kind of remotely right-wing opinion is declared "not free speech, not an opinion, thus not protected". This is also evidenced by quite a few talks on the topic, and cooperation with far-left activist groups like "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" sabotaging right-wing speech on several occasions.
There is quite a difference between "speech" and what ZfpS does. Their actions are often criminal, and not in the sense of "political crimes" but actually criminal acts that have nothing to do with speech or opinions. They have doxed people and called for violence against them, they have exhumed dead children and paraded around their corpses, stolen things, stuff like that.
The trouble comes when "speech" is arbitrarily defined and/or enforced to suit a narrative. The initial targets are always the lesser-favored extreme cases in order to have the least amount of people disagree with it. Then when the people are comfortable having them define what speech is acceptable, they slowly start eroding rights to include simply anything that they don't like.
That's why people say that taking away the rights of one group is like taking it away for everyone.
When CF continues to host 8chan and other groups that routinely trade monkey torture/zoosadism videos, but for some reason only KF goes too far... yea that doesn't make sense to me. I don't think they should be playing Internet police, and it's possible that (in the US at least) even doing so in the first place could nullify their Section 230 safe harbor protections, by attempting to moderate content that flows through them.
But also in KF's case I think it was not so much their content that got them "in trouble", but the people behind that crusade being so loud about it, like Liz Fong-Jones and Keffals, who relentlessly harassed every possible service provider even remotely related to any aspect of KF-related services at all, which included domain registrars, DDoS protection services, hosting/colo/DNS providers, IP space owners, upstream ISPs (and even Tier 1s), etc.
It was basically a master class in mentally-questionable retribution crusades for bringing their very ugly skeletons out of the closet and exposing all of their wrongdoings. LFJ was mad that their rape allegation was made public by KF, and Keffals was mad that their illegal bathtub-HRT scheme was made public.
> Do you think KiwiFarms deserved to be banned from Cloudflare and all its other former service providers?
I do believe that providers of such services such as cloud, internet, ... have to stay neutral on such purposes under nearly all circumstances. If the team behind KiwiFarms did something illegal, this is a problem for the judicial system.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Well Joscha Bach's talk got removed this year because of that mail exchange with Epstein.
But disregarding the content discussed, I found it indeed a bit off-putting how he basically licked the butthole of his sponsor between those lines.
do you think the old-school CCC would be happy with a guy walking onto the stage and yelling the N word over and over, or would they kick him out? Because that's the quality of "speech" they now support "censoring".
Being (un)happy about something is totally different from creating and promoting an oppressive censorship apparatus, criminal laws and police actions against that something.
Imho: You don't have to like that person yelling that stuff. You don't have to like what they are yelling. But you have to accept that it has to be their legal right to yell that stuff. Because otherwise, any opinion will one day be a criminal thing to say, just takes one election...
You actually don't have the legal right to walk on stage at C3 and yell the N word repeatedly. The fact you think you have or should have that right means I am not the extremist in this conversation.
There is no radical left or radical right; there is only right and wrong! If you don’t understand human rights and realize that you are not the only person or creature on this planet, you need to change your point of view.
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground
Which is fucking based. Being a radical leftist should be normalized even more and people like you need to be driven out of _every_ fucking public space.
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.
Definition of politics: whenever two agents have conflicting goals and a resolution is reached (peacefully or otherwise). Or more succinctly, multi-agent dynamics. Yes, almost everything is politics, and this is not diluting the word, any more than saying that almost everything is made of atoms is diluting the meaning of the word "atoms".
(Parent comment was edited to remove the part about diluting meaning)
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.
> 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.
I would say that with the current US administration, it is similar hard to get to the USA as to Russia.
The difference rather is that in Europe's hacker scene there exist quite some people who, if they stated their opinions openly, would get in much worse trouble if they stated their opinion in Russia than in the USA (because in the USA these opinions are currently "more acceptable"). On the other hand, for Russian hackers likely the reverse holds: I can easily imagine that quite a lot of Russian hackers, if they stated their opinions in the USA, would attract quite a lot of trouble.
Just to be clear: I consider it to be quite plausible that in 5 years, the situation might be similarly bad in the USA as it is today in Russia.
Now, I could say a lot of things Russia is known for, but not for their rich hacker culture, lest it to be mentioned in the same context as USA. Russia simply isn't known for their large hacker culture; Europe is (since I want to include a member of FVEY, specifically a country which Brexited, and am also referring to a time when EU did not yet exist). A somewhat dark past of CCC is related to Russia via Eastern Germany by CCC member Hagbard (my nickname here related to it). Back in those days, the hacker culture very much was counterculture. KMFDM has a couple of good tracks about it.
CCC is German, and started in West-Germany. It is the oldest hacker conference. The second was USA (DEF CON), and the third was The Netherlands (theirs is approx every four years, and has a different name every year). The first one in NL was HeU 1993 (Hacking at the End of the Universe). This list excludes demoscene (IMO part of hacker culture due to reversing / cracking software, plus programmming and art in limited constraints, but at the very least it is related to); the first demoscene party was called Copy Party in Finland, 1980. Nordic countries are well represented in demoscene.
I am only aware of one person who fled USA to RU, and said person wasn't known in hacker culture before he did, plus he ended up there by mistake. By contrast, various people in infosec left USA for Europe. Jacob Applebaum went to Germany, Drew DeVault went to The Netherlands.
Since 2022, brain drain started in Russia due to the full scale invasion and war with Ukraine.
There's a very free country near the USA which does not have the ridiculous entry requirements the USA has. It even has a couple of large cities near the US border, including near cities with a rich hacker culture. Entry to said country is about as easy as entry to Germany. The country is called Canada. Yes, your neighbor.
May HOPE, DEF CON, and Black Hat end up in a tolerant, hacker-friendly country. I am not aware of brain drain due to Trump II. I mean, it is happening, but it also happened during Bush era, and the proportions I don't know about.
As for CCC being held in Germany. They have been very open to foreigners (as have us Dutch been), famous USA hackers were always welcome (and came) to hacker conferences in NL and DE. Talks in NL were almost all in English, at CCC partly (German is a relatively popular language in Europe). Nowadays, almost all German talks get dubbed and subbed. So CCC is very American-friendly, cause we Europeans get that Americans speak almost exclusively English only.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
I only watched two talks. Talks are not why you go to CCC, in my opinion. I spent most of CCC talking. I tried to have some projects, but I just got stuck in conversation all the time.
CCC was to me the first time I had ever been to a place where most people were like minded. I have been searching for a place where I can meet likeminded people for many years, that wasn't online chatrooms. Once I got there, there was an almost immediate "wow this is my crowd".
It does help to have friends that are somewhat networked and can show you the way and introduce you to people though, as many just sit and hang out with their usual crowd. For me, I ended up talking to a lot of the guys from the same country. I also hung out with internet friends and met their friends. It was great.
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.
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.
> HN uses "hacker" as in "the people who do the work that makes Y Combinator rich" rather than "someone who plays with technology"
I do believe that originally Y Combinator indeed did celebrate the people who play with technology, but I guess over the many years the focus has shifted.
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.
The C3's attendees are quite knowledgable in computing topics, so there is no need to bring coals to Newcastle.
The CCC is a German organization. In Germany, the general public already is quite skepctical of tablets in classrooms, so there is not such a necessity to inform the general public of something many people already think.
While there exist initiatives to use tablets in school in Germany (see for example [1]), these (in my opinion misguided) initiatives rather typically fail for financial reasons and because most teachers simply are incapable of using the technology. And, of course, tablets fail all the time.
So, in other countries this may be an important problem, but in Germany, any initiative for tablets in school already fails by the mere incompetence and the mills of bureacracy, so this is rather a potential topic for hacker conventions in other countries.
True! You could apply to give a talk next year. Keeping in mind that not all talks have to be main-track talks for a big audience - there are also several side rooms for minor talks and "self-organized sessions".
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.
Yes. They record almost every talk. You’ll find the relive (unedited recording of the live stream) on https://media.ccc.de and some time later the edited recording also on media.ccc.de and also on YouTube.
There also also live translations to English (and some other languages) for talks in german.
It ends at 1am their time. The conference itself never stops there are people there around the clock. (I wish I could go!! I went to 28c3 in Berlin and 29c3 in Hamburg they were amazing)
Probably. In previous years there were streamdumps available immediately somewhere (though figuring out where took me usually a day or so) and a re-live version on media.ccc.de a bit later. (Usually hours, but from time to time a day or so.)
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.
IMHO, CCC is completely defanged as a political institution. They went along with contact tracing because the local app was open source and somewhat secure and many of the regulars in local spaces people will cause lots of drama if you don't wear a mask in 2025.
Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals. If that's what you're looking for, great, I'm not judging, it just doesn't click with me. I used to visit hackerpaces during my travels but regardless of how open and kind I approach a new place, once they ask me to mask up or inquire for my pronouns things just don't end well, even if I'm really polite in explaining my position. That's not the tolerance and open mindedness I encountered around 2009 during my first C3.
Still, I wish everyone attending the best of times. There's so many people there that I imagine you'll be able to find the right folks if you're there and look around.
Not looking for a debate or inciting hate towards anyone here.
Culture changes. Hacker culture in Europe changed too, young people are moving up and taking positions in local organizations. You didn't change with it, and you're not open to accepting that change, so you are feeling out of place - that's simply how this works.
A lot of those people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else. They decided to embrace that, it comes at a cost - like you feeling weirded out and not showing up - but they're probably fine with that being your problem to figure out.
I've moved on, all good, change is perfectly fine. I just think they lost something that made CCC special. Got my own decentralized trusted circles now. I think I made it quite clear that I wish anyone still attending these events and spaces all the best regardless.
CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
I think it would be fair to say that the club as a whole has become more open about that, I think that's more owed to a lot of folks driving initiatives feeling like the walls are closing in on them though and I can't exactly fault them for that :)
I can fully relate ... back in the days there wasn't much (at least I don't remember) of "this kind" of ppl and everything was just hacking. However I can imagine what you mean.
At the end this growing craziness does not change any time soon so you are right ... "finding the folks that fit you" is maybe the best advice (and this hasn't to be the CCC).
Fortunately the interesting talks are often recorded so nobody has to attend who don't want in order to get the interesting stuff.
I really do appreciate your willingness to live and let live. Too many people from all perspectives are missing that ability when it comes to non-critical things, and forget that they can just… not hang out with the people they disagree with.
The other comments below you seem to be willingly ignoring that you did the mature/kind thing and just wished them well and moved on, whereas a less mature person would have caused a ruckus.
No problem. And FWIW, I’m what I’d consider a highly left-wing person. I only say that to give a sample that not all of us are like that. But I recognize that the loud ones get the attention.
I draw the line on live-and-let live only when the other person’s ideology poses a physical threat to me or my liberties, or those of other folks. But what you describe is how things ought to be - if you don’t feel like hanging around leftists, who the hell cares? I probably wouldn’t want to hang out in a highly conservative space, but I also don’t care if they hang out without me.
Yeah, it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space.
The fact that your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks that's been running those spaces for decades doesn't help either.
They didn't change. You however became something they always despised.
>it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space
On the other hand, there is a discongruency when people who are against control and surveillance start implementing control and surveillance because the particular purpose sanctified the means. Something that previously seemed non-negotiable, culturally fundamental even, was toppled.
> using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics
Why not use secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections in general?
Isn't it also clear who benefits from this decreased trust in politics, or the apathy in politics? It is always the same group: the far right authoritarians.
You just gave the best example of how these interactions usually play out. You know basically nothing about me and yet you assume to know exactly "what I've become" and that I deserve to be "despised" based on 2 statements that don't tell you anything about me because I never explained my positions in depth.
I spent more than a decade in and around 2-3 local hackerspaces and some of the best practices and infrastructure I introduced/built are still in place. You really know nothing about me to arrive at this conclusion, thereby proving my point that the culture has shifted - not me.
> Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals.
So what? You’re not being asked or expected to feel empathy - just show tolerance. Which is the easiest virtue to develop - just ignore behavior which doesn’t threaten you.
If someone is doing their own thing - wearing a MAGA hat, a rainbow t-shirt or carrying a fluffy toy - it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Why does it bother you unless they’re getting in your face?
What is "so what" supposed to mean that isn't covered already by the exact sentence afterwards? Why even come at me with "tolerance" when that's exactly what I haven't been receiving, as I laid out in the paragraph you selectivity quoted. What's your point exactly?
> Synonyms of bigot
> a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership
I merely shared a behaviorial observation of something I find odd. At no time did I react with prejudice or hate towards any particular group.
We might be the same age; I remember that defacing conservative websites was already a C3 thing about 20 years ago. Back then, it felt good to punch up against authoritarianism. Hackers hated Bush and his Patriot Act just as much as many hate Trump now. In Germany, the CDU is of course the perennial enemy.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction: East Germany was an "anti-fascist" totalitarian state as recently as 40 years ago.) Sadly, I think we have been slowly moving in this direction since Covid, where I was genuinely shocked that many of my "leftie" friends had turned into government drones (from my perspective), while they were deeply disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
The more aware they become of how unpopular some of their politics are, the less they believe in democracy as a concept, while I'm still jealous of countries that have proper referendums and freedom of speech. Hate Speech laws are accelerating this divide.
Anyway, I think that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed in decades. The CCC is still doing a lot of great work, but I do feel it drifting away from me because it is not so much about punching up than about punching right.
The authoritarianism quick clearly and explicitly comes from the far right, Putin and Trump. Claiming anything else is ridiclous, its not even hidden anymore. Its a clear outright endorsment.
Back in the Bush days it was about defending freedom but being to invasive about doing it. Nobody was talking about Bush they do about Trump. And the CDU of old is certaintly not the modern AfD.
Claiming the lefts action in covid even approches the lines of thought out of Trump, AfD or Putin isnt a serious argument.
That is not what I said at all. My claim is that, regardless of what the authoritarian right is doing, the left has become more tolerant of authoritarianism itself, especially to 'save democracy' (which is again reminescent of the GDR, starting from its very name).
As to why this split is happening, I'd argue it was easier to be anti-authoritarian when we were in the opposition, just as today's AfD reliably votes against Chat Control or other power grabs because it makes them look good at no cost. But the left has become a dominant force due to its long march through the institutions, and some want to use this power to crush the enemy (debanking, police raids for milquetoast internet comments). Others look at the internet compass from your sibling post and decide they'd rather hang out with people in the libertarian right than with _any_ kind of authoritarian.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying the CCC is an authoritarian organization. But I doubt they'll ever be too critical of our intransparent "Trusted Flagger" system, for example, because they know it would anger many in their crowd. 20 years ago we'd have agreed that this kind of crap only happens in China.
But yeah to me it seems these "antifaschistisch orgs" acting like thugs and then thinking they're immune to prosecution because they're antifaschistisch (according to themselves) of course
Not really, look at the schedule for 34c3. Much more interesting things and less politics.
And it also has felt more and more forced in the last couple years
How is it computer adjacent, keep in mind, it's a talk about how the media communicates things...
Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There are also other unrelated things which do not have a lot to do with computers, like "all creatures welcome".
> Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There is one important difference: surveillance is a deeply computer-/hacking-related topics while migration isn't.
So I would say a talk about surveillance (as long as it is relevant for hacking topics) typically has its place while it is much harder to find a reason why a talk about migration has relevance for a hacking conference.
Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight), so I can understand why the organisers decided to include this talk in the schedule: they considered it to be a good idea that the audience should also get a "non-computer perspective" on a topic that is highly relevant to hackers.
But I agree that for the decision to include or not include this specific talk, the organisers have to apply an exceptionally good judgement: if they make a "wrong" decision here, people will immediately (rightfully) complain that the talks are too political (or if they "wronged" by non-inclusion of this talk, the other side will complain that important topics are omitted).
Not sure the number is up from last year (I think there are fewer O/T talks this year even) but there are many talks that have nothing to do with hacking even if some of them might pigue my interest, such as the following:
Then there are topics merely having "computer" in them like everything in this day and age but aren't about hacking, and it's disappointing because I know for a fact other talks had to make room for these:
I think you're missing the ethos of the event in general, and the fact that you are pointing to tracks in the ethics track or the arts track in particular.
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.
There has been plenty of direct action in recent years, but I can't really think of any on a global scale. Lots of smaller things on a German level, like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
Sure, but it is unarguably much more boring stuff than it was years ago. I attend almost every Congress with a variety of groups, and there's certainly been a culture shift over the years from lots of anarchists who had no qualms with breaking the law to much more corporate scaredy-cats.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
Back in the old days, you could sit down at a table in the hackcenter and do stuff that was more of the exploratory pentesting kind. Because everyone around you understood. Because there were strict "no-photos" policies in place. Because all people were technical and in it primarily for the technical challenge.
Nowadays you cannot do that anymore, because most visitors are non-technical. Nobody respects the photo policy. Everyone judges your actions through their political lens. Instead all the "action" happens elsewhere and CCC became much more about social stuff, talking and politics. And of course about policing and judging other peoples' politics.
I'm not just referring to the talks, but the whole event. But we used to have groups like wikileaks heavily featured, they certainly weren't worried about too many eyeballs.
>like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
And making stuff up that was never talked about there to start a political movement to get that party banned? Yeah nice democracy and journalism there.
Actually I can't ask a court whether you were at that conference without knowing your legal identity - care to share? And why should I expect the court to have a complete list of who was there, and to answer questions about that list? Seems much easier to ask you, and it's strange you don't want to answer.
What are you talking about? Pure nonsense. Discussions about "great replacement" never happened, that's an undeniable fact proven by court records and news media are not allowed to repeat these claims (324 O 439/24, 324 O 524/24, 7 W 78/24).
You might want to check your own source there. Seems to be the opposite of what you claim. The complaints were dismissed and the media is allowed to report.
You might want to read the post again, the court claimed it not as a journalistic news article but as an opinion piece. And it's not the final verdict.
The user had more arguments than just "it's all politics". What level of scrutiny does his statement have to hold up to? Because as far as I am concerned this is not here to find scientific truths.
I don't know man. It's always the same debate: It's either "too much politics" or
"no change at all" whenever this issue comes up and the "nothing changed" crowd keeps on reminding everyone that C3 "was always like that". I'm not requesting a scientific study but if you're this convinced that nothing changed despite may old school attendees chiming in to confirm the opposite, perhaps it would be helpful to compare old and new schedules.
I find it strange you didn't latch on to the original comment, which has the exact same problem you complained about, but reacted to the response. The best action is to ignore threads and sub-threads you don't care about and leave others who do to their fun.
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
That chernobyl and western politics is in any way connected is due to decades unscientific fearmongering. And Berlin has always been a hotbed for that.
Lefties sympathizing with criminals, sharing their wealth distribution fantasies, agitating against competing political views.
You've come a long way, CCC!
The initial ideas was political, but with a clear focus on freedom of information, and the power to govern your own personal data.
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.
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".
> Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't [...] "hooray, more EU dictatorship"
There is a talk on Chat Control though?..
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground.
I don't know which past Chaos Communication Congresses you have attended, but it always was. If that's not for you, then that's too bad.
> 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.
Opinions that people get thrown out for are not "I love my country" or "hey, maybe immigration should be handled differently". They're things like "Hitler was ok, actually". And IMO if a conference doesn't throw you out for _that_, it's not one worth attending.
The problem has been the continuous purposeful rightward shift of the overton window as part of a wider strategy by the far right.
You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left". You see the far-right decrying our democratically elected government as "dictatorship", a classic Putinist propaganda move.
Don't let the right wing extremists set the narrative! Don't listen to their complaints about things being too "political" or "far left". It's all just a tactic in their march towards fascism.
You could use exactly the same rhetoric to make the opposite argument.
Sure, but you would be denying reality. Look at the political reality in Europe and the US.
How many countries are led by the far right? What about the far left?
Just because you don't see the "far left" doesn't mean it isn't there. Would you consider CDU in Germany to be conservative or even Christian right now? I've been far left all my life until I noticed how fake it all is. Sane goes for the right. now I'm just following truth. It's a lonely path.
All the best & I hope you had a Merry Christmas as well.
CDU is not far left. It's reducing immigration, reducing social services, and removing bike lanes to make more room for cars. Not things the left is known for - but they are things the right is known for.
The best thing the right has done to advance its cause is to convince so many people that the words "right" and "left" don't have actual meanings.
> How many countries are led by the far right? What about the far left?
Since you asked the question, I assume you have an answer, and I'm curious to hear it. I imagine it will reveal more about your personal politics than any observable political reality.
Double-replying to apologize for my previous comment! I saw what I felt was a leading question and answered it with a leading question in kind, but I got turned around reading the thread and realized much later that I actually agree with you and my answer would to your question would probably be more similar to yours than to the person you were replying to.
[flagged]
If San Francisco is what you get when you embrace the left, and opposition to that is fascism, I think a lot of us have just decided we must be fascists.
Never been here, huh?
San Francisco is a right-wing, pro-capitalist place.
The left would be public ownership of the means of production.
Nah, this is just the No True Scotsman fallacy. San Francisco is FAR more left in their politics than most of the nation. For example, the new mayor described himself as:
> As a lifelong Democrat and San Franciscan, I am running for mayor to turn around the city I love
London Breed, the mayor before, was endorsed by explicitly Democrat or nonpartisan individuals (including Kamala Harris)
We could go on. What's ironic here is that this comment just reveals how disconnected this form of left wing politics is from the larger nation. They call even examples of the politics of their own "right wing" because they're so radically left
There is no left wing politician in power anywhere in the US.
Democrats are a center-right party, they do not argue for any left wing position - like nationalizing industry, abolishing markets etc etc. In Europe, their equivalents in terms of economic policy would be conservative parties like the CDU.
The fact you consider them left wing is only evidence of above overton window shift happening.
What in the quote screams left-wing to you? Is it just because he's San Franciscan? But that would be circular reasoning: SF is left because of its mayor, and its mayor is left because he's from SF.
You mean the epitome, the nerve center, the capital and apex of 21st century entrepreneurial capitalism? That left-wing bastion? Ridiculous.
> You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left".
No, things have changed in CCC as well. Back in the day, free speech (in the US definition) and a firm opposition to any censorship were consensus on CCC. Nowadays, censorship is totally OK if it targets the right. And any kind of remotely right-wing opinion is declared "not free speech, not an opinion, thus not protected". This is also evidenced by quite a few talks on the topic, and cooperation with far-left activist groups like "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" sabotaging right-wing speech on several occasions.
Why is what right wingers do speech that should be protected, but not what the "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" does?
There's a certain hypocrisy in all right wing demands for free speech. They always mean freedom of their speech, not of people they disagree with.
There is quite a difference between "speech" and what ZfpS does. Their actions are often criminal, and not in the sense of "political crimes" but actually criminal acts that have nothing to do with speech or opinions. They have doxed people and called for violence against them, they have exhumed dead children and paraded around their corpses, stolen things, stuff like that.
The trouble comes when "speech" is arbitrarily defined and/or enforced to suit a narrative. The initial targets are always the lesser-favored extreme cases in order to have the least amount of people disagree with it. Then when the people are comfortable having them define what speech is acceptable, they slowly start eroding rights to include simply anything that they don't like.
That's why people say that taking away the rights of one group is like taking it away for everyone.
Do you think KiwiFarms deserved to be banned from Cloudflare and all its other former service providers?
When CF continues to host 8chan and other groups that routinely trade monkey torture/zoosadism videos, but for some reason only KF goes too far... yea that doesn't make sense to me. I don't think they should be playing Internet police, and it's possible that (in the US at least) even doing so in the first place could nullify their Section 230 safe harbor protections, by attempting to moderate content that flows through them.
But also in KF's case I think it was not so much their content that got them "in trouble", but the people behind that crusade being so loud about it, like Liz Fong-Jones and Keffals, who relentlessly harassed every possible service provider even remotely related to any aspect of KF-related services at all, which included domain registrars, DDoS protection services, hosting/colo/DNS providers, IP space owners, upstream ISPs (and even Tier 1s), etc.
It was basically a master class in mentally-questionable retribution crusades for bringing their very ugly skeletons out of the closet and exposing all of their wrongdoings. LFJ was mad that their rape allegation was made public by KF, and Keffals was mad that their illegal bathtub-HRT scheme was made public.
> Do you think KiwiFarms deserved to be banned from Cloudflare and all its other former service providers?
I do believe that providers of such services such as cloud, internet, ... have to stay neutral on such purposes under nearly all circumstances. If the team behind KiwiFarms did something illegal, this is a problem for the judicial system.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
- Wilhoit's Law
Well Joscha Bach's talk got removed this year because of that mail exchange with Epstein. But disregarding the content discussed, I found it indeed a bit off-putting how he basically licked the butthole of his sponsor between those lines.
do you think the old-school CCC would be happy with a guy walking onto the stage and yelling the N word over and over, or would they kick him out? Because that's the quality of "speech" they now support "censoring".
Being (un)happy about something is totally different from creating and promoting an oppressive censorship apparatus, criminal laws and police actions against that something.
Imho: You don't have to like that person yelling that stuff. You don't have to like what they are yelling. But you have to accept that it has to be their legal right to yell that stuff. Because otherwise, any opinion will one day be a criminal thing to say, just takes one election...
You actually don't have the legal right to walk on stage at C3 and yell the N word repeatedly. The fact you think you have or should have that right means I am not the extremist in this conversation.
There is no radical left or radical right; there is only right and wrong! If you don’t understand human rights and realize that you are not the only person or creature on this planet, you need to change your point of view.
> Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground
Which is fucking based. Being a radical leftist should be normalized even more and people like you need to be driven out of _every_ fucking public space.
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.
Definition of politics: whenever two agents have conflicting goals and a resolution is reached (peacefully or otherwise). Or more succinctly, multi-agent dynamics. Yes, almost everything is politics, and this is not diluting the word, any more than saying that almost everything is made of atoms is diluting the meaning of the word "atoms".
(Parent comment was edited to remove the part about diluting meaning)
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.
> 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.
I would say that with the current US administration, it is similar hard to get to the USA as to Russia.
The difference rather is that in Europe's hacker scene there exist quite some people who, if they stated their opinions openly, would get in much worse trouble if they stated their opinion in Russia than in the USA (because in the USA these opinions are currently "more acceptable"). On the other hand, for Russian hackers likely the reverse holds: I can easily imagine that quite a lot of Russian hackers, if they stated their opinions in the USA, would attract quite a lot of trouble.
Just to be clear: I consider it to be quite plausible that in 5 years, the situation might be similarly bad in the USA as it is today in Russia.
Now, I could say a lot of things Russia is known for, but not for their rich hacker culture, lest it to be mentioned in the same context as USA. Russia simply isn't known for their large hacker culture; Europe is (since I want to include a member of FVEY, specifically a country which Brexited, and am also referring to a time when EU did not yet exist). A somewhat dark past of CCC is related to Russia via Eastern Germany by CCC member Hagbard (my nickname here related to it). Back in those days, the hacker culture very much was counterculture. KMFDM has a couple of good tracks about it.
CCC is German, and started in West-Germany. It is the oldest hacker conference. The second was USA (DEF CON), and the third was The Netherlands (theirs is approx every four years, and has a different name every year). The first one in NL was HeU 1993 (Hacking at the End of the Universe). This list excludes demoscene (IMO part of hacker culture due to reversing / cracking software, plus programmming and art in limited constraints, but at the very least it is related to); the first demoscene party was called Copy Party in Finland, 1980. Nordic countries are well represented in demoscene.
I am only aware of one person who fled USA to RU, and said person wasn't known in hacker culture before he did, plus he ended up there by mistake. By contrast, various people in infosec left USA for Europe. Jacob Applebaum went to Germany, Drew DeVault went to The Netherlands.
Since 2022, brain drain started in Russia due to the full scale invasion and war with Ukraine.
There's a very free country near the USA which does not have the ridiculous entry requirements the USA has. It even has a couple of large cities near the US border, including near cities with a rich hacker culture. Entry to said country is about as easy as entry to Germany. The country is called Canada. Yes, your neighbor.
May HOPE, DEF CON, and Black Hat end up in a tolerant, hacker-friendly country. I am not aware of brain drain due to Trump II. I mean, it is happening, but it also happened during Bush era, and the proportions I don't know about.
As for CCC being held in Germany. They have been very open to foreigners (as have us Dutch been), famous USA hackers were always welcome (and came) to hacker conferences in NL and DE. Talks in NL were almost all in English, at CCC partly (German is a relatively popular language in Europe). Nowadays, almost all German talks get dubbed and subbed. So CCC is very American-friendly, cause we Europeans get that Americans speak almost exclusively English only.
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.
Take this as example: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
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 vagueness and sheer breadth of the word "politics" is doing the heavy lifting in your argument there.
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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390959): 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.
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).
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.
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.
> Ostriching doesn't seem productive.
But listening to pep talks of political opinions that are very opposite to yours does not seem productive, either.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been thinking about going for years. What specifically was life changing for you?
I only watched two talks. Talks are not why you go to CCC, in my opinion. I spent most of CCC talking. I tried to have some projects, but I just got stuck in conversation all the time.
CCC was to me the first time I had ever been to a place where most people were like minded. I have been searching for a place where I can meet likeminded people for many years, that wasn't online chatrooms. Once I got there, there was an almost immediate "wow this is my crowd".
It does help to have friends that are somewhat networked and can show you the way and introduce you to people though, as many just sit and hang out with their usual crowd. For me, I ended up talking to a lot of the guys from the same country. I also hung out with internet friends and met their friends. It was great.
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
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.
> HN uses "hacker" as in "the people who do the work that makes Y Combinator rich" rather than "someone who plays with technology"
I do believe that originally Y Combinator indeed did celebrate the people who play with technology, but I guess over the many years the focus has shifted.
Well, HN was originally "Startup News". https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html
You can also look at the posts from the first day :) https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
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
The C3's attendees are quite knowledgable in computing topics, so there is no need to bring coals to Newcastle.
The CCC is a German organization. In Germany, the general public already is quite skepctical of tablets in classrooms, so there is not such a necessity to inform the general public of something many people already think.
While there exist initiatives to use tablets in school in Germany (see for example [1]), these (in my opinion misguided) initiatives rather typically fail for financial reasons and because most teachers simply are incapable of using the technology. And, of course, tablets fail all the time.
So, in other countries this may be an important problem, but in Germany, any initiative for tablets in school already fails by the mere incompetence and the mills of bureacracy, so this is rather a potential topic for hacker conventions in other countries.
[1] https://www.heise.de/news/Schuelertablets-in-Niedersachsen-M...
True! You could apply to give a talk next year. Keeping in mind that not all talks have to be main-track talks for a big audience - there are also several side rooms for minor talks and "self-organized sessions".
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.
I made a matrix room for the HNers being there and to prevent polluting this thread.
https://matrix.to/#/%23hn-at-39c3%3Arustch.at
I damn love CCC, so excited to be there this year. God bless!
See you there!
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
> Holy hell, I had missed that post
Here it is:
> http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=97cd29cd
> http://blog.fefe.de/?mon=202512
(note that https currently does not work).
that post made me worry more tbh :(
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
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.
Yes. They record almost every talk. You’ll find the relive (unedited recording of the live stream) on https://media.ccc.de and some time later the edited recording also on media.ccc.de and also on YouTube. There also also live translations to English (and some other languages) for talks in german.
> but it starts at 4 AM for me.
It ends at 1am their time. The conference itself never stops there are people there around the clock. (I wish I could go!! I went to 28c3 in Berlin and 29c3 in Hamburg they were amazing)
Probably. In previous years there were streamdumps available immediately somewhere (though figuring out where took me usually a day or so) and a re-live version on media.ccc.de a bit later. (Usually hours, but from time to time a day or so.)
A lot if not most of the talks will be recorded, yes.
All talks will be recorder unless the speaker(s) don’t want it to.
CET, yes
Lots of ai this year, but I didn't happen to see a console hacking segment this year.
I went to DEF CON one year and loved it. One day, I'd love to go to CCC!
Anyone have a schedule that works for different Timezones ??
As always, lots of cool content.
> Shit for Future: turning human shit into a climate solution
LOL, never change CCC, never change...
[flagged]
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.
IMHO, CCC is completely defanged as a political institution. They went along with contact tracing because the local app was open source and somewhat secure and many of the regulars in local spaces people will cause lots of drama if you don't wear a mask in 2025.
Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals. If that's what you're looking for, great, I'm not judging, it just doesn't click with me. I used to visit hackerpaces during my travels but regardless of how open and kind I approach a new place, once they ask me to mask up or inquire for my pronouns things just don't end well, even if I'm really polite in explaining my position. That's not the tolerance and open mindedness I encountered around 2009 during my first C3.
Still, I wish everyone attending the best of times. There's so many people there that I imagine you'll be able to find the right folks if you're there and look around.
Not looking for a debate or inciting hate towards anyone here.
Culture changes. Hacker culture in Europe changed too, young people are moving up and taking positions in local organizations. You didn't change with it, and you're not open to accepting that change, so you are feeling out of place - that's simply how this works.
A lot of those people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else. They decided to embrace that, it comes at a cost - like you feeling weirded out and not showing up - but they're probably fine with that being your problem to figure out.
I've moved on, all good, change is perfectly fine. I just think they lost something that made CCC special. Got my own decentralized trusted circles now. I think I made it quite clear that I wish anyone still attending these events and spaces all the best regardless.
Culture changes, that’s true. However, “change” doesn’t normalize the far left/green initiatives.
CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
I think it would be fair to say that the club as a whole has become more open about that, I think that's more owed to a lot of folks driving initiatives feeling like the walls are closing in on them though and I can't exactly fault them for that :)
> CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
Yes, but what has shifted is "the left", to a point were it has basically been taken over for very specific agendas.
I can fully relate ... back in the days there wasn't much (at least I don't remember) of "this kind" of ppl and everything was just hacking. However I can imagine what you mean. At the end this growing craziness does not change any time soon so you are right ... "finding the folks that fit you" is maybe the best advice (and this hasn't to be the CCC). Fortunately the interesting talks are often recorded so nobody has to attend who don't want in order to get the interesting stuff.
I really do appreciate your willingness to live and let live. Too many people from all perspectives are missing that ability when it comes to non-critical things, and forget that they can just… not hang out with the people they disagree with.
The other comments below you seem to be willingly ignoring that you did the mature/kind thing and just wished them well and moved on, whereas a less mature person would have caused a ruckus.
Appreciate the kind response. At least someone read the entire comment before responding. :)
No problem. And FWIW, I’m what I’d consider a highly left-wing person. I only say that to give a sample that not all of us are like that. But I recognize that the loud ones get the attention.
I draw the line on live-and-let live only when the other person’s ideology poses a physical threat to me or my liberties, or those of other folks. But what you describe is how things ought to be - if you don’t feel like hanging around leftists, who the hell cares? I probably wouldn’t want to hang out in a highly conservative space, but I also don’t care if they hang out without me.
Merry Christmas!
Really matches my experience. Sometime during covid they really moved off the rails
Yeah, it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space.
The fact that your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks that's been running those spaces for decades doesn't help either.
They didn't change. You however became something they always despised.
>it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space
On the other hand, there is a discongruency when people who are against control and surveillance start implementing control and surveillance because the particular purpose sanctified the means. Something that previously seemed non-negotiable, culturally fundamental even, was toppled.
> using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics
Why not use secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections in general?
Isn't it also clear who benefits from this decreased trust in politics, or the apathy in politics? It is always the same group: the far right authoritarians.
That have to be the tolerance they're everywhere talking about
You're most likely mixing up different political communities :D
You just gave the best example of how these interactions usually play out. You know basically nothing about me and yet you assume to know exactly "what I've become" and that I deserve to be "despised" based on 2 statements that don't tell you anything about me because I never explained my positions in depth.
I spent more than a decade in and around 2-3 local hackerspaces and some of the best practices and infrastructure I introduced/built are still in place. You really know nothing about me to arrive at this conclusion, thereby proving my point that the culture has shifted - not me.
> your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks
> You however became soemthing they alway despised.
Holy strawman
> Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals.
So what? You’re not being asked or expected to feel empathy - just show tolerance. Which is the easiest virtue to develop - just ignore behavior which doesn’t threaten you.
If someone is doing their own thing - wearing a MAGA hat, a rainbow t-shirt or carrying a fluffy toy - it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Why does it bother you unless they’re getting in your face?
What is "so what" supposed to mean that isn't covered already by the exact sentence afterwards? Why even come at me with "tolerance" when that's exactly what I haven't been receiving, as I laid out in the paragraph you selectivity quoted. What's your point exactly?
> where adults run around with stuffed animals.
Nice to see something as simple as this is enough to filter bigots away!
> Synonyms of bigot > a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership
I merely shared a behaviorial observation of something I find odd. At no time did I react with prejudice or hate towards any particular group.
Why so antagonistic?
You might align less with the points brought forward, but the amount of politics has not changed much in my perception.
The amount of politics may have stayed the same but the topics have definitely shifted
I mean, yes... Topics in politics shift
I've been there like 2 decades ago and even then it was a deeply political event.
There never a time where German hacker clubs, which are the lifeblood of this event, weren't very political - and very explicitly left wing political.
Even if it was equally or less political than before, it could still be too political for someone that would be worth including.
We might be the same age; I remember that defacing conservative websites was already a C3 thing about 20 years ago. Back then, it felt good to punch up against authoritarianism. Hackers hated Bush and his Patriot Act just as much as many hate Trump now. In Germany, the CDU is of course the perennial enemy.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction: East Germany was an "anti-fascist" totalitarian state as recently as 40 years ago.) Sadly, I think we have been slowly moving in this direction since Covid, where I was genuinely shocked that many of my "leftie" friends had turned into government drones (from my perspective), while they were deeply disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
The more aware they become of how unpopular some of their politics are, the less they believe in democracy as a concept, while I'm still jealous of countries that have proper referendums and freedom of speech. Hate Speech laws are accelerating this divide.
Anyway, I think that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed in decades. The CCC is still doing a lot of great work, but I do feel it drifting away from me because it is not so much about punching up than about punching right.
The authoritarianism quick clearly and explicitly comes from the far right, Putin and Trump. Claiming anything else is ridiclous, its not even hidden anymore. Its a clear outright endorsment.
Back in the Bush days it was about defending freedom but being to invasive about doing it. Nobody was talking about Bush they do about Trump. And the CDU of old is certaintly not the modern AfD.
Claiming the lefts action in covid even approches the lines of thought out of Trump, AfD or Putin isnt a serious argument.
That is not what I said at all. My claim is that, regardless of what the authoritarian right is doing, the left has become more tolerant of authoritarianism itself, especially to 'save democracy' (which is again reminescent of the GDR, starting from its very name).
As to why this split is happening, I'd argue it was easier to be anti-authoritarian when we were in the opposition, just as today's AfD reliably votes against Chat Control or other power grabs because it makes them look good at no cost. But the left has become a dominant force due to its long march through the institutions, and some want to use this power to crush the enemy (debanking, police raids for milquetoast internet comments). Others look at the internet compass from your sibling post and decide they'd rather hang out with people in the libertarian right than with _any_ kind of authoritarian.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying the CCC is an authoritarian organization. But I doubt they'll ever be too critical of our intransparent "Trusted Flagger" system, for example, because they know it would anger many in their crowd. 20 years ago we'd have agreed that this kind of crap only happens in China.
>But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction:
That's the whole thing of the "political compass" both a left-to-right wing axis and a perpendicular authoritarian-libertarian axis:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
Or perhaps you changed over the years?
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
I was trying to understand what this is about, and this seems to have more context https://digit.site36.net/2025/09/09/first-german-trial-on-th...
But yeah to me it seems these "antifaschistisch orgs" acting like thugs and then thinking they're immune to prosecution because they're antifaschistisch (according to themselves) of course
Such talks have been part of ccc for decades?
I am getting more and more confused
Not really, look at the schedule for 34c3. Much more interesting things and less politics. And it also has felt more and more forced in the last couple years
Looking at the 34c3 Fahrplan, like a solid third of the talks are explicitly about politics
I don't get your point
The event that starts with "die Sprache der überwacher"
That's non political?
Its regardlessly still computer-adjacent, not like the talk linked from 39c3
Ok let me rephrase then if you didn’t understand my point: Its getting too filled with politics that don’t have anything to do with computers
How is it computer adjacent, keep in mind, it's a talk about how the media communicates things...
Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There are also other unrelated things which do not have a lot to do with computers, like "all creatures welcome".
> Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There is one important difference: surveillance is a deeply computer-/hacking-related topics while migration isn't.
So I would say a talk about surveillance (as long as it is relevant for hacking topics) typically has its place while it is much harder to find a reason why a talk about migration has relevance for a hacking conference.
The linked surveillance talk has nearly 0 references to computers and is all about media/reporting
> The linked surveillance talk has nearly 0 references to computers and is all about media/reporting
(link to the talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8969-die_sprache_der_uberwacher )
Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight), so I can understand why the organisers decided to include this talk in the schedule: they considered it to be a good idea that the audience should also get a "non-computer perspective" on a topic that is highly relevant to hackers.
But I agree that for the decision to include or not include this specific talk, the organisers have to apply an exceptionally good judgement: if they make a "wrong" decision here, people will immediately (rightfully) complain that the talks are too political (or if they "wronged" by non-inclusion of this talk, the other side will complain that important topics are omitted).
> Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight)
Great, who exactly is making those rules for all hackers?
People have complained about this for atleast the last 15 years where I have been active, to political, not political enough.
Stop complaining, start creating.
> Great, who exactly is making those rules for all hackers?
For example the Hacker Ethic by Steven Levy is very well-accepted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi...
> Stop complaining, start creating.
Who says that I don't do?
Can you point to some?
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/... (already mentioned)
and from last year:
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/K...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/S...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/W...
In comparison, the only talk linked above was "die Sprache der überwacher", a talk about actual surveillance.
Not sure the number is up from last year (I think there are fewer O/T talks this year even) but there are many talks that have nothing to do with hacking even if some of them might pigue my interest, such as the following:
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/...
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/...
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/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
Then there are topics merely having "computer" in them like everything in this day and age but aren't about hacking, and it's disappointing because I know for a fact other talks had to make room for these:
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
and there are a couple more.
Not everything in "Hacker News" is on-topic either I guess.
The talks by e-celebs also don't bring in anything novel, like at all.
I think you're missing the ethos of the event in general, and the fact that you are pointing to tracks in the ethics track or the arts track in particular.
Complex data analytics of political relevant topics have nothing to with hacking? With source code and data available to play with?
I would love to know what you would think would be more fitting talks?
I think you just became a righty and are only just now noticing that CCC folks always hated righties with passion.
Not supporting violence = "righty"?
wait, where did that come from? Your original comment was about politics, not the violence of certain groups. I think that shifts a goal post.
Using right dogwhistles == righty.
Genuinely, what do you mean
That example is a really good one I also stumbled upon. Feels like a Indymedia meeting.
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
computers are political
Not what im talking about
that's because you have a very narrow definition of what political means
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.
There has been plenty of direct action in recent years, but I can't really think of any on a global scale. Lots of smaller things on a German level, like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
Sure, but it is unarguably much more boring stuff than it was years ago. I attend almost every Congress with a variety of groups, and there's certainly been a culture shift over the years from lots of anarchists who had no qualms with breaking the law to much more corporate scaredy-cats.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
Love that you complain about not enough people breaking the law and somewhere below complains about to many people breaking the law
Let's be real, the videos get far to much eyes to break the law. There are smaller talks and groups where it looks different.
Back in the old days, you could sit down at a table in the hackcenter and do stuff that was more of the exploratory pentesting kind. Because everyone around you understood. Because there were strict "no-photos" policies in place. Because all people were technical and in it primarily for the technical challenge.
Nowadays you cannot do that anymore, because most visitors are non-technical. Nobody respects the photo policy. Everyone judges your actions through their political lens. Instead all the "action" happens elsewhere and CCC became much more about social stuff, talking and politics. And of course about policing and judging other peoples' politics.
I'm not just referring to the talks, but the whole event. But we used to have groups like wikileaks heavily featured, they certainly weren't worried about too many eyeballs.
And we all know how that ended...
>like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
And making stuff up that was never talked about there to start a political movement to get that party banned? Yeah nice democracy and journalism there.
Were you at this conference?
You can ask the court that forbid repeating this made-up stuff ;)
Actually I can't ask a court whether you were at that conference without knowing your legal identity - care to share? And why should I expect the court to have a complete list of who was there, and to answer questions about that list? Seems much easier to ask you, and it's strange you don't want to answer.
What are you talking about? Pure nonsense. Discussions about "great replacement" never happened, that's an undeniable fact proven by court records and news media are not allowed to repeat these claims (324 O 439/24, 324 O 524/24, 7 W 78/24).
You might want to check your own source there. Seems to be the opposite of what you claim. The complaints were dismissed and the media is allowed to report.
https://rsw.beck.de/aktuell/daily/meldung/detail/lg-hamburg-...
But what does this have to do with your suggestion that I should ask the court whether you were at the meeting?
You might want to read the post again, the court claimed it not as a journalistic news article but as an opinion piece. And it's not the final verdict.
>whether you were at the meeting?
Where you? You are clearly missing the point.
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?
The user had more arguments than just "it's all politics". What level of scrutiny does his statement have to hold up to? Because as far as I am concerned this is not here to find scientific truths.
I don't know man. It's always the same debate: It's either "too much politics" or "no change at all" whenever this issue comes up and the "nothing changed" crowd keeps on reminding everyone that C3 "was always like that". I'm not requesting a scientific study but if you're this convinced that nothing changed despite may old school attendees chiming in to confirm the opposite, perhaps it would be helpful to compare old and new schedules.
I find it strange you didn't latch on to the original comment, which has the exact same problem you complained about, but reacted to the response. The best action is to ignore threads and sub-threads you don't care about and leave others who do to their fun.
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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
That chernobyl and western politics is in any way connected is due to decades unscientific fearmongering. And Berlin has always been a hotbed for that.
But chernybyl isnt the only or primary reason.
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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Lefties sympathizing with criminals, sharing their wealth distribution fantasies, agitating against competing political views. You've come a long way, CCC! The initial ideas was political, but with a clear focus on freedom of information, and the power to govern your own personal data.