The rest were less good for me personally. Either over-dramatic and shallow (with a sexy-sounding topic) or too procedural in topics I'm not an expert in.
"Liberation of the Freebox", A slightly crazy Frenchman embarks on a quest to find exploit and write a complex exploit chain, using PrDoom and the Linux HFS+ driver to gain root privileges on his set-top box. All this in order to unlock the recording of somewhat rubbish TV channels such as TF1 and M6.
And he waited almost ten years and the retirement of the hardware to reveal it because he didn't want it to be patched.
Somehow it did not get much attention, but Signal president Meredith Whittaker (together with
Udbhav Tiwari) spoke about the risks and threats from AI-enabled systems.
Foundation workshop: Hands-on, how does the Internet work?
by Ingo Blechschmidt, is congress at its best. Getting a diverse set of people with various backgrounds and knowledge levels to
ARP spoof in a little over an hour is art.
I haven't seen all of them (which I wanted to see) yet, I had a lot of fun with various talks. Thus far, my favourite one was hands down [1], and I can explain why. I am not at all good with hardware, nor hardware designing i.e. I'm not the target audience for this talk.
However, the talk was beautiful. It went quick, was informative, good slides, very respectful Q&A (comms and quality-wise), and it had a message of DIY _and_ inspiring hope. It is easy to criticize X or say we need to do better with Y. These guys are doing it, and their journey and findings is completely open source (even though there was substantial financial risk involved). The hacker spirit 101.
One interesting detail: In previous years, Joscha Bach gave a talk on AI, consciousness, and related topics (see e.g. [0]). A similar talk was planned for this year as well, but after emails between him and Epstein were made public (see his comment on this in [1]), his talk was canceled. Instead, there appears to have been an event that critically addressed the situation [2]. Unfortunately it was not recorded. Did anyone attend? A discussion between Joscha and his critics would have been really interesting.
Well that discussion talk is not an open discourse about the situation...
He quoted what he believed was scientific evidence in a private conversation that became public, has comments on fashism being efficient are clearly anti-facist and believed to observe a gender stereotype. No matter if the facts were true, it should be possible to discuss such things (especially those you think are facts) in private without getting canceled. Even if they would play in to the hand of racism or sexism if made as public statements.
I found his appology a bit weak, but I also don't see his offense, despite the messages in public being offensive and possibly harmful.
This meta discussion synopsis "Tech-Transcendentalism as Hypermodern Myth and Neofeudal Ideology [all creatures welcome]" feels like reading a rabit hole of a mountain.
I would have loved another talk from Joscha, the critisism is weirdly ignorant.
To add some context and to spare readers who, like me, know nothing about Joscha Bach and only little about Epstein from having to go through all the linked material:
The allegations do not appear to involve abuse or moral complicity with Epstein. Instead, they seem to focus on emails Bach exchanged with Epstein concerning IQ, race, and possibly sex. Bach denies these allegations of racism and sexism.
That is at least how I understand the material based on the provided links.
"All of the people I know who were friends with this sociopathic child-trafficking pedophile told me he was reformed now" is certainly something to put out there.
> I assume you've spotted the pattern by now: the US trade representative has forced every one of its trading partners to adopt anticircumvention law, to facilitate the extraction of their own people's data and money by American firms. But of course, that only raises a further question: Why would every other country in the world agree to let America steal its own people's money and data, and block its domestic tech sector from making interoperable products that would prevent this theft?
> Here's an anecdote that unravels this riddle: many years ago, in the years before Viktor Orban rose to power, I used to guest-lecture at a summer PhD program in political science at Budapest's Central European University. And one summer, after I'd lectured to my students about anticircumvention law, one of them approached me.
> They had been the information minister of a Central American nation during the CAFTA negotiations, and one day, they'd received a phone-call from their trade negotiator, calling from the CAFTA bargaining table. The negotiator said, "You know how you told me not to give the Americans anticircumvention under any circumstances? Well, they're saying that they won't take our coffee unless we give them anticircumvention. And I'm sorry, but we just can't lose the US coffee market. Our economy would collapse. So we're going to give them anticircumvention. I'm really sorry."
> That's it. That's why every government in the world allowed US Big Tech companies to declare open season on their people's private data and ready cash.
> The alternative was tariffs. Well, I don't know if you've heard, but we've got tariffs now!
> I mean, if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow their orders, and then they burn your house down anyway, you don't have to keep following their orders. So…Happy Liberation Day?
Where were people's favourite lectures?
I attended 7 talks.
My favourite talk by far was hacking the GPG. Brilliant, really: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-to-sign-or-not-to-sign-practical...
The "In-house electronics manufacturing from scratch" was a very inspiring talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-in-house-electronics-manufacturi...
The rest were less good for me personally. Either over-dramatic and shallow (with a sexy-sounding topic) or too procedural in topics I'm not an expert in.
"Liberation of the Freebox", A slightly crazy Frenchman embarks on a quest to find exploit and write a complex exploit chain, using PrDoom and the Linux HFS+ driver to gain root privileges on his set-top box. All this in order to unlock the recording of somewhat rubbish TV channels such as TF1 and M6.
And he waited almost ten years and the retirement of the hardware to reveal it because he didn't want it to be patched.
Somehow it did not get much attention, but Signal president Meredith Whittaker (together with Udbhav Tiwari) spoke about the risks and threats from AI-enabled systems.
AI Agent, AI Spy
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-ai-agent-ai-spy
I also found the talk about Asahi interesting, both from a technical standpoint but also as a nice update what the current status is.
Asahi Linux - Porting Linux to Apple Silicon
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-to-app...
Finally, not recorded, but workshops like
Foundation workshop: Hands-on, how does the Internet work?
by Ingo Blechschmidt, is congress at its best. Getting a diverse set of people with various backgrounds and knowledge levels to ARP spoof in a little over an hour is art.
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/foundat...
I also enjoyed the GPG talk. Other highlights:
Not an Impasse: Child Safety, Privacy, and Healing Together: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-not-an-impasse-child-safety-priv...
APT Down and the mystery of the burning data centers: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-apt-down-and-the-mystery-of-the-...
Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-bluetooth-headphone-jacking-a-ke...
order by personal rank:
Sandstorm JP-8000 sawtooth DSP reversing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM_q5T7wTpQ
Washing machines hacking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1S-PVo3GlA
AMD (ps5 sorta) security: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVJZYT8kYsI
cool demo for the BT headphones talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK5Tz4Bt94Y
precise time syncing with PTP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOt-zRIG5co
x86 > arm with intermediate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDXyW1WERg
I think the blue team ctf ai talk was a good benchmark were we at right now https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-breaking-bots-cheating-at-blue-t...
The one on the bluetooth headphone vulnerabilities was quite fun: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-bluetooth-headphone-jacking-a-ke...
The one on bsd jails https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-escaping-containment-a-security-...
The one on whatsapp bugs https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-dngerouslink-a-deep-dive-into-wh...
I haven't seen all of them (which I wanted to see) yet, I had a lot of fun with various talks. Thus far, my favourite one was hands down [1], and I can explain why. I am not at all good with hardware, nor hardware designing i.e. I'm not the target audience for this talk.
However, the talk was beautiful. It went quick, was informative, good slides, very respectful Q&A (comms and quality-wise), and it had a message of DIY _and_ inspiring hope. It is easy to criticize X or say we need to do better with Y. These guys are doing it, and their journey and findings is completely open source (even though there was substantial financial risk involved). The hacker spirit 101.
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-in-house-electronics-manufacturi...
I can’t not see Catbert in the video player iconography. Someone tell me they did this intentionally.
One interesting detail: In previous years, Joscha Bach gave a talk on AI, consciousness, and related topics (see e.g. [0]). A similar talk was planned for this year as well, but after emails between him and Epstein were made public (see his comment on this in [1]), his talk was canceled. Instead, there appears to have been an event that critically addressed the situation [2]. Unfortunately it was not recorded. Did anyone attend? A discussion between Joscha and his critics would have been really interesting.
[0] https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-self-models-of-loving-grace
[1] https://joscha.substack.com/p/on-the-jeffrey-epstein-affair
[2] https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/event/detail/tech...
Well that discussion talk is not an open discourse about the situation...
He quoted what he believed was scientific evidence in a private conversation that became public, has comments on fashism being efficient are clearly anti-facist and believed to observe a gender stereotype. No matter if the facts were true, it should be possible to discuss such things (especially those you think are facts) in private without getting canceled. Even if they would play in to the hand of racism or sexism if made as public statements.
I found his appology a bit weak, but I also don't see his offense, despite the messages in public being offensive and possibly harmful.
Urgh wtf...
This meta discussion synopsis "Tech-Transcendentalism as Hypermodern Myth and Neofeudal Ideology [all creatures welcome]" feels like reading a rabit hole of a mountain.
I would have loved another talk from Joscha, the critisism is weirdly ignorant.
To add some context and to spare readers who, like me, know nothing about Joscha Bach and only little about Epstein from having to go through all the linked material:
The allegations do not appear to involve abuse or moral complicity with Epstein. Instead, they seem to focus on emails Bach exchanged with Epstein concerning IQ, race, and possibly sex. Bach denies these allegations of racism and sexism.
That is at least how I understand the material based on the provided links.
For context, this is the email exchange between Joscha and Epstein: https://www.jmail.world/thread/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_026406?view=i... (original doc: https://epstein-emails.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/docs/HOUS...).
"All of the people I know who were friends with this sociopathic child-trafficking pedophile told me he was reformed now" is certainly something to put out there.
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
Cory Doctorow's talk is quite strong.
Transcript of the speech on his blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
An excerpt:
> I assume you've spotted the pattern by now: the US trade representative has forced every one of its trading partners to adopt anticircumvention law, to facilitate the extraction of their own people's data and money by American firms. But of course, that only raises a further question: Why would every other country in the world agree to let America steal its own people's money and data, and block its domestic tech sector from making interoperable products that would prevent this theft?
> Here's an anecdote that unravels this riddle: many years ago, in the years before Viktor Orban rose to power, I used to guest-lecture at a summer PhD program in political science at Budapest's Central European University. And one summer, after I'd lectured to my students about anticircumvention law, one of them approached me.
> They had been the information minister of a Central American nation during the CAFTA negotiations, and one day, they'd received a phone-call from their trade negotiator, calling from the CAFTA bargaining table. The negotiator said, "You know how you told me not to give the Americans anticircumvention under any circumstances? Well, they're saying that they won't take our coffee unless we give them anticircumvention. And I'm sorry, but we just can't lose the US coffee market. Our economy would collapse. So we're going to give them anticircumvention. I'm really sorry."
> That's it. That's why every government in the world allowed US Big Tech companies to declare open season on their people's private data and ready cash.
> The alternative was tariffs. Well, I don't know if you've heard, but we've got tariffs now!
> I mean, if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow their orders, and then they burn your house down anyway, you don't have to keep following their orders. So…Happy Liberation Day?
I shared this link on my personal FB page couple of times and it was automatically removed within seconds.
I imagine it will be uploaded to the youtube channel soon: https://www.youtube.com/@mediacccde
Then why continue to donate time and attention to censorship platforms? Having a Facebook account is completely optional.
Wild.
Some popular selections with discussion so far:
Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46453204
Hacking Washing Machines [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46428496
Escaping containment: A security analysis of FreeBSD jails [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46436828
All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411930