WEBVTT 00:24.520 --> 00:26.720 Welcome to DEF CON Safe Mode. 00:26.720 --> 00:27.900 I'm the Dark Tangent. 00:27.900 --> 00:43.360 I'll be your host, along with hundreds and hundreds of other goons, contest organizers, village organizers, and other creatives, trying to build you a virtual experience for... I have a placement for... Missing Las Vegas! 00:44.860 --> 00:52.160 Far from Las Vegas, I'm in Singapore, where I've been stuck since February, so I really am coming at you from the other side of the planet. 00:52.840 --> 00:55.860 Recording this just in case the live connection doesn't work. 00:56.080 --> 01:05.540 So, hopefully I'll be at the end of this recording, available for questions and answers, but if it doesn't work out, sorry, we tried our best. 01:06.020 --> 01:23.360 So, this is the part of DEF CON where, normally, I talk a little bit about the history of the con, what can be expected for the new year, some cool surprises, how to get the most out of it, but really, honestly, I don't really know what to tell you a whole lot, 01:23.360 --> 01:25.240 besides we're online. 01:25.720 --> 01:30.420 It's new, exciting, the theme this year is discovery. 01:30.420 --> 01:42.660 Our color palette are these nice, bright pastel colors, and we're trying to evoke sort of a sense of wonder, discovery, new exploration, and there's going to certainly be a lot of that this weekend. 01:43.420 --> 01:58.080 If you look at what the villages are doing, contests and events, so many different platforms online, we're really stress testing this environment to see what an online community like ours would be like. 01:58.200 --> 02:17.360 So, I'm really kind of excited to do this, and I'm really terrified at the same time, because this is a lot of skills that we don't exercise in Vegas, and we're all about real life and in-person, face-to-face, and this is at a distance with keyboards and video chat and memes. 02:18.460 --> 02:24.780 So, I've been watching everybody on LimeCon for the last week, and some great conversations are happening. 02:24.840 --> 02:26.980 I just don't know what's going to happen when we go live. 02:26.980 --> 02:29.220 So, I hope to see you out there. 02:29.540 --> 02:39.420 So, let me talk a little bit about the decision to go live with Discord and a new platform for us. 02:39.760 --> 02:53.700 So, when I decided to cancel the in-person, I mean, if you read my post, it was pretty clear nothing was going to happen in the States, and we've been totally, totally borne out that that was the right decision. 02:53.700 --> 02:57.260 I mean, everything's canceled in the States, forever, as far as I can tell. 02:57.620 --> 02:58.780 So, online it is. 02:58.780 --> 03:00.420 It's going to be online for a while. 03:00.700 --> 03:04.340 So, we quickly had to discover how could we do this? 03:04.560 --> 03:11.120 And we made a post on forum.defton.org, talked about a whole lot of different platforms. 03:11.220 --> 03:14.440 Do we want to do VR with cartoon-like characters? 03:14.440 --> 03:16.100 Do we want to build a world ? 03:16.100 --> 03:19.080 Do we want to have it text-only? 03:19.400 --> 03:24.940 In the end, it was pretty much down to Riot, which has been renamed now, and Discord. 03:24.980 --> 03:28.320 And we went with Discord because it had a longer history. 03:29.800 --> 03:39.420 Gamers are pretty abusive, and so their platform has been beaten up quite a bit, and they've got some pretty good moderation and server stability experience. 03:39.940 --> 03:41.540 And it was pretty extensible. 03:41.540 --> 03:43.420 A lot of people have built stuff on top of Discord. 03:43.420 --> 03:44.960 So, here we are. 03:45.360 --> 04:00.540 Now, in the last three months, Riverside, some of the guys from Wall of Sheep, some of the DEF CON crew, and others have pulled together and really, in three months, two months, done about a year's worth of work building this Discord server that you're now on. 04:01.540 --> 04:02.940 Please be gentle. 04:03.240 --> 04:04.320 We're in beta. 04:04.880 --> 04:07.200 This is like Google beta, I guess. 04:07.740 --> 04:12.400 So, there's a lot of different things to explore here. 04:12.400 --> 04:17.900 And I'm just going to give you a quick overview, and then we're going to move on to talk about some of the cool things happening with the show. 04:18.380 --> 04:22.140 So, first off, with Discord, anybody can report an issue. 04:22.320 --> 04:26.320 Everybody on the platform has to comply with the DEF CON Code of Conduct. 04:26.500 --> 04:33.540 And because we're guests on Discord's platform, we also have to comply with the Discord's Code of Conduct. 04:33.540 --> 04:35.080 And there's reporting tools. 04:35.340 --> 04:39.980 You can file a report, or a ticket, as we call it, and get a goon to help. 04:40.040 --> 04:46.140 If you see a goon in red there on the right-hand side, you can message them and ask them for help. 04:46.260 --> 04:50.880 And then also, there's Discord moderation that can help. 04:51.300 --> 04:55.520 And if you have any questions during operating hours, just go ask the info booth. 04:55.520 --> 04:56.680 They're there to help. 04:56.900 --> 05:00.480 They're at the top in the upper left-hand of your channel selection. 05:00.860 --> 05:08.280 And once you learn a couple of tricks, like Ctrl-K to jump to channels, you should start zooming around, and it'll feel more comfortable. 05:09.900 --> 05:13.000 So, we're trying something new this year. 05:13.000 --> 05:25.780 We're taking all the talks, all the videos of the talks, the presentations, PDFs, the music, album, everything, the original soundtrack, and we're dumping it all at once on Wednesday. 05:26.640 --> 05:38.120 So, by the time you've seen this, Thursday or Friday, I don't even know when we're playing this right now, by the time you see this, all the videos, all the speeches, everything will become available. 05:38.120 --> 05:41.860 We've never done that before because we've never had the speeches ahead of time. 05:42.140 --> 05:45.040 And what we're hoping to do is allow you to time shift. 05:45.040 --> 05:48.480 There's a lot of other villages and content that aren't doing that. 05:48.600 --> 05:50.120 They're going live. 05:50.340 --> 05:57.700 And we thought, well, if they're going live, maybe we go pre-recorded and give you some more options to watch however you want. 05:57.800 --> 06:08.540 And then, what we are doing live, our big risky maneuver, is every day, all day, from Thursday to Saturday, Sunday, we're having Q&A sessions. 06:08.540 --> 06:16.240 So, if you see a talk that you like and you want to interact with a speaker, you get a half an hour every day on each talk. 06:16.540 --> 06:23.420 So, just go to the DEF CON.org website, look at the schedule, you'll see when the Q&As are happening. 06:25.060 --> 06:36.240 So, you'll also notice at the end of the day, we're operating in Pacific time zone, UTC-7, for those of you not familiar with Americanisms. 06:36.920 --> 06:39.500 We close a lot of the rooms at night. 06:39.500 --> 06:46.060 And this is because we don't want to burn out our moderators and our goons waiting around in rooms where nobody's participating. 06:46.060 --> 06:48.260 So, you'll see a lot of rooms lock at night. 06:48.260 --> 06:50.380 You might see some with a tag that says closed. 06:50.380 --> 06:54.080 You might see some disappear, depending upon how they're closing their room. 06:54.320 --> 07:00.640 But, in the end, they'll pop back up the next day during normal hours, Pacific time. 07:01.140 --> 07:05.540 So, yeah, pretty excited about this. 07:05.540 --> 07:07.280 I've got my refrigerator stock. 07:07.280 --> 07:08.700 I've got my caffeine. 07:08.700 --> 07:14.960 I've got my stimulants and my alcohol depressants, depending upon what situation presents itself. 07:15.100 --> 07:18.260 We're recording and capturing as much as we can. 07:18.400 --> 07:24.420 A lot of the villages and contests are recording as well on Twitch or YouTube. 07:24.420 --> 07:33.000 And so, after the CON, we'll start gathering all of this video and content and results, and we'll start sharing it with the community. 07:33.000 --> 07:39.020 So, if you miss something, hopefully, maybe it'll have gotten captured and you'll be able to see it after the fact. 07:39.460 --> 07:48.020 And for those of you who became human pluses to help support us on the server with a little bit of money, that's really appreciated. 07:48.120 --> 07:51.720 We've never done a free event because there's always costs. 07:51.720 --> 07:58.580 But this year, it was such a special occasion, DEF CON is canceled, that I really wanted to give something back to the community. 07:58.580 --> 08:03.320 We're all in a pretty stressful place with COVID. 08:03.600 --> 08:09.020 I mean, everybody has somebody that has been impacted by it. 08:09.160 --> 08:16.780 And anyway, I just wanted to make everything open to our community and make this sort of a time of celebration and discovery. 08:16.780 --> 08:22.340 Get us connected one way or the other, because we can't see each other in person in Vegas. 08:22.540 --> 08:24.440 So, yeah. 08:24.440 --> 08:28.020 So, this is the best I can do, and I hope it's enough. 08:28.600 --> 08:36.060 Now, to bring you closer together and make new friends, we always have contests. 08:36.520 --> 08:39.440 And one of the contests this year was the badge contest. 08:39.660 --> 08:47.700 So, if you purchased a badge, which was a cassette tape, which was kind of a play on the last time the Lost Boy did a badge for us. 08:47.700 --> 08:49.720 It was a record, if you remember that. 08:52.260 --> 09:00.620 But encoded onto audio, and in the program, liner notes, and in the lanyard, there were clues and hints. 09:00.660 --> 09:04.840 And this is really meant to be a challenge for you to explore before the con. 09:05.180 --> 09:10.220 And then during the con, Lost is deploying one of his super famous mystery challenges. 09:10.220 --> 09:12.380 This is a full-blown mystery challenge. 09:12.620 --> 09:15.900 So, things that were on the badge, badge challenge. 09:15.900 --> 09:21.240 Don't get them confused with things you're going to see on the forums, which is the mystery challenge. 09:21.280 --> 09:27.820 And Lost is primarily going to perform the mystery challenge contest on forum.defcon.org. 09:27.900 --> 09:35.020 But I'd like to introduce him next, so he can tell you all about the craziness of making a cassette badge at the last possible minute. 09:35.020 --> 09:39.520 Putting in a puzzle, getting the audio encoded, and then building a mystery challenge. 09:39.520 --> 09:42.420 And what he's trying to get you to do. 09:42.600 --> 09:44.440 An experience for this show. 09:44.840 --> 09:50.440 So, if you don't know Lost, he's a longtime super contributor to DEF CON. 09:51.160 --> 09:52.720 Sort of a jack-of-all-trades. 09:52.720 --> 10:01.760 I think he's been everything you can be from a school teacher, to a linguist, to a police officer, to super computer hacker, to cryptographer. 10:01.860 --> 10:03.720 He's kind of done a little bit of everything. 10:03.720 --> 10:06.540 I'm very envious of his skill set. 10:07.760 --> 10:16.260 But he also has a great inquisitive mind and is very detail-oriented when he gets into music and puzzles. 10:16.260 --> 10:20.680 And so, hopefully you've experienced some of his puzzles in the past. 10:20.680 --> 10:28.200 And if you haven't, hey, this is a great chance for you to get involved and start either at the ground floor with the badge challenge. 10:28.620 --> 10:29.800 I mentioned the badge challenge. 10:29.800 --> 10:32.480 If you don't have the badge, that's okay. 10:32.480 --> 10:37.860 All the materials are online for free on the DEF CON media server, media.defcon.org. 10:37.860 --> 10:39.340 So, you can still play along. 10:39.340 --> 10:42.480 You just won't have the physical item, but you'll have all the audio files. 10:42.640 --> 10:44.380 Anyway, I'm distracted. 10:44.940 --> 10:49.920 Now, it's my pleasure to introduce you to Lost Boy, if you haven't met him before. 10:50.060 --> 10:52.560 And take it away, Virtual Lost Boy. 10:56.220 --> 10:57.580 Thank you, Jeff. 10:58.520 --> 10:59.880 Hello, everybody. 11:00.020 --> 11:01.900 Welcome to DEF CON Save Mode. 11:01.900 --> 11:07.660 I hope everybody is doing well in spite of these challenging times. 11:08.840 --> 11:22.080 First and foremost, I'd like to thank DT for letting us even have a badge and making that happen and making that possible in spite of the fact that we're in the wonderful COVID times that we are. 11:23.620 --> 11:40.600 I'd like to also thank Neil and Nikita in Darrington for the help that they put forth on making sure that the badge happened, as well as to NellyBot for the assistance on the lanyard artwork as well. 11:40.600 --> 11:49.040 For those of you who are working on the puzzle or recognize that there is a puzzle in the lanyard, obviously, you've been focusing on that there. 11:49.040 --> 11:58.120 The only recommendation or hint I could give at this point in time would be to shave a little closer with Occam's razor. 11:58.160 --> 11:59.700 Don't overcomplicate things. 11:59.700 --> 12:02.020 Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. 12:02.280 --> 12:05.660 Some people have already figured out quite a few clever things. 12:05.660 --> 12:15.640 I would recommend that you check out the forums or talk to some folks in some of the chat rooms here on the Discord for that. 12:16.000 --> 12:25.300 Recently, as you can probably see from around me, I've been really into music and synthesizers, such as this record here, the Happy Moog. 12:25.300 --> 12:27.140 And it is Moog, it's not Moog. 12:27.240 --> 12:29.320 There's a modular synthesizer there. 12:29.500 --> 12:34.640 It seems that synthesizers in the hacker community have that Venn diagram. 12:34.640 --> 12:36.660 It tends to overlap quite a bit. 12:36.660 --> 12:40.980 Same thing with electronics and those that are building things. 12:41.560 --> 12:50.440 I mean, clear back when we had folks like Forest Mims giving us RadioShack books and showing us how to build electronic music instruments. 12:50.900 --> 13:14.320 So along with that, during my earlier years, one of the things that always meant a lot and was a demonstration of a lot of thought and emotion behind it was the concept of the mixtape, which I think the younger generation just won't have a need to understand because you carry all of your music around with you on your phone or you have access to it or you stream it. 13:14.600 --> 13:28.140 But back in the day, you used to have to sit and listen to the radio for hours and then tape your favorite songs in order to get them so you could listen to them when you wanted to. 13:28.580 --> 13:35.100 The cassette tape was the medium that tended to follow right after LPs and records. 13:36.060 --> 13:43.660 There were other tape technologies such as the 8-track, which was a continuous loop tape, which is very interesting if you don't know how an 8-track works. 13:44.040 --> 13:48.980 The tape is wound around a single spool and is fed actually from the middle. 13:48.980 --> 13:53.280 It goes around the roller and the tensioner and then gets wrapped back around the outside and it's self-tensioning. 13:53.280 --> 13:58.540 That's why an 8-track tape doesn't have any access to the winders or the rollers. 13:58.540 --> 14:07.640 I've already seen several people making reference in the forums and on Twitter about the relationship between a cassette tape and a pencil. 14:07.960 --> 14:19.960 For the younger generation, that's because when the tape would get caught up or not be tensioned properly, you'd shove a pencil through here and use it to wind the tape or spin it. 14:21.220 --> 14:26.540 This is, by the way, one of the original test tapes for the Defcon tape. 14:26.540 --> 14:31.340 This isn't the master, but it is one of the original test tapes. 14:31.340 --> 14:33.180 You can see a clear shell there. 14:34.300 --> 14:37.400 One of the early Goon prototype tapes. 14:39.160 --> 14:40.440 Experimenting with different colors. 14:40.440 --> 14:41.500 There's the red one. 14:41.760 --> 14:45.500 This one, if you notice, has no tape in it at the time. 14:45.500 --> 14:53.840 This is just a shell and the spindles have the clear take-up tape, which is connected. 14:54.440 --> 15:01.340 What the manufacturer will do is they'll come in and they'll splice that and they'll splice the other tape to it and then wind it up. 15:01.340 --> 15:02.980 That's how these are made. 15:03.060 --> 15:15.220 The shells for the Defcon badge this year came from Italy and the tapes themselves were fabricated and recorded here in the United States, on the East Coast, actually. 15:15.640 --> 15:19.480 What I was starting to say earlier was the mixtape... 15:20.030 --> 15:28.360 you made mixtapes for friends or family or whoever that showed that you went to the effort. 15:28.360 --> 15:34.980 Not only the order of the songs was important and the emotion behind why certain songs were chosen. 15:34.980 --> 15:37.900 I mean, some mixtapes were like somebody were dating. 15:37.940 --> 15:43.460 Sometimes it was a romantic gesture like, look, I spent all this time focused. 15:43.480 --> 15:49.640 And the thought behind it is I was thinking about you the whole time that I made this thing. 15:49.880 --> 15:57.100 And oftentimes it would be handwritten on there because it would be a blank tape that was recorded on home equipment. 15:57.720 --> 16:03.240 And there were actually... so we all now have... you wouldn't download a house. 16:03.240 --> 16:10.940 Well, back then they used to have advertisements would be like, tapes are killing the music industry, which it hasn't. 16:10.940 --> 16:23.120 Even the original Pirate Bay logo, you've all seen the cassette tape with the crossbones because the tape was really the first medium that allowed us to tape. 16:23.580 --> 16:34.260 It allowed us to record our music and create bootlegs, for example, about the same time you started having videotapes as well. 16:34.260 --> 16:39.980 But it gave people an opportunity to preserve music and have music. 16:39.980 --> 16:44.260 And as we can see, it didn't kill the record industry, unfortunately. 16:44.640 --> 16:46.660 I have my own thoughts on that. 16:46.740 --> 16:54.640 The human badges this year are the purple color tape there that you can see. 16:55.360 --> 16:57.440 We also made two other colors. 16:57.440 --> 17:01.780 The artists all got copies in yellow. 17:02.400 --> 17:03.660 It's kind of a neon yellow. 17:03.660 --> 17:04.780 I like that color. 17:04.840 --> 17:08.640 And all of the goons got a solid red tape. 17:08.640 --> 17:12.980 So the red tapes are actually very rare because, you know, we only made enough for the goons. 17:12.980 --> 17:14.680 Same thing with the artist tapes. 17:17.580 --> 17:21.520 The intent was, you know, people are going to be at home. 17:22.240 --> 17:27.600 They're not going to, we didn't think, sit and wear them around their neck as a lanyard. 17:27.680 --> 17:41.740 But one of the things I wanted to do, and I talked with DT about it, is I want to have kind of a mini contest that we're announcing right now, which hasn't gone public except for when someone on Twitter kind of forced my hand. 17:42.220 --> 17:49.560 We're looking for the most creative way that someone attaches their tape to their lanyard. 17:49.920 --> 17:57.760 Whether that's 3D printing, sculpting, action figure, clay, model, electronics. 17:58.360 --> 18:00.180 Pick a thing. 18:00.480 --> 18:11.320 I'm going to be talking in the badge forum about where you can send pictures or video submission about what you've done to me. 18:11.400 --> 18:20.500 And myself and DT and a couple other people will vote and we'll see who we think the most creative badge holder creator is. 18:20.500 --> 18:27.720 Bonus points if you make it in such a way that can be copied by other people, points for creativity, things like that. 18:27.720 --> 18:32.980 But it's kind of a mini contest that I wanted to do live that I didn't want to start until DEF CON actually started. 18:34.060 --> 18:36.380 Some other interesting facts about the tapes. 18:36.380 --> 18:51.200 So when I was talking to the fabricator, which by the way is the same house that does the tapes for places like Disney, which I thought was interesting, and then I started thinking about it and, well, no, there aren't that many tape fabrication houses anymore. 18:51.200 --> 18:58.400 So those that have the capacity to do a large run and do a professional quality run are limited these days. 18:58.400 --> 19:06.000 So it made sense that we wound up at somebody who would do something like tapes for Disney or for, you know, we kind of have a resurgence . 19:06.000 --> 19:15.140 There's a resurgence in like 80s pop culture interest lately in music too, although certain genres of music have been around for a while. 19:15.600 --> 19:21.380 Groups like Gunship seem to become, have become more popular recently, and kudos to them. 19:21.380 --> 19:27.200 After a live stream that I did, I do a live stream once a week where I talk about music science and hacking. 19:27.880 --> 19:38.920 Immediately following that stream, and I'd like to think I influenced it, although probably not, Gunship announced that you can use any of their music on live streams without worried about being worried about copyright. 19:38.920 --> 19:40.220 So kudos to them. 19:40.220 --> 19:42.100 They understand the next generation. 19:42.600 --> 19:48.680 But the tape, when it's being fabricated, goes through the machine at 60 miles an hour. 19:48.680 --> 19:49.240 Think about that. 19:49.240 --> 19:55.060 It's faster than most, like, most cars on the freeway when the freeway is jammed up. 19:55.360 --> 20:04.220 And the, if you think about the acceleration and deceleration for how fragile the tape itself is, to say that it's going at 60 miles an hour is pretty impressive. 20:04.240 --> 20:09.760 You think about how that, what that machine must be capable of doing. 20:09.760 --> 20:24.200 The other thing is that there is a six hertz tone that they use to tell where the breaks in the tape should be, as opposed to like the 8-track, who uses an actual piece that is spliced onto the tape. 20:24.200 --> 20:34.760 And unlike splicing of audio tape, where you would do it on the back because you wouldn't want it to go over the read head, on an 8-track it actually faces the read head, which I also find interesting. 20:34.780 --> 20:43.520 I keep mentioning 8-track tapes because I don't want to show them yet, but the Uber badge for this year is based on an 8-track tape. 20:44.080 --> 20:59.920 So there will be very, very few of those that DT will be giving out at closing ceremonies to winners of contests, but we made even fewer than we normally do, just because of the nature of where we're at in terms of COVID and everything else. 21:00.400 --> 21:15.380 But I wanted the tape to be something to be representative of thinking of friends, missing friends, wishing we were together, but instead of focusing on that negative aspect of that, something that brings people together. 21:15.380 --> 21:34.900 The contest side, the badge challenge, which for those of you who are new to DEF CON, there are often puzzle crypto slash pop culture slash picketh subject, I've probably ventured into it at least a little bit, puzzle challenges that are involved. 21:35.080 --> 21:40.480 And some are relatively easy, and some are incredibly difficult. 21:40.520 --> 21:45.760 And the range goes all the way from badge challenge up through mystery challenge, which is a separate contest. 21:46.560 --> 21:56.260 This year, specifically, if you get to a certain point, I was going to show you just the splash screen of a particular website that you will eventually get to. 21:56.540 --> 22:03.300 If you happen 22:29.730 --> 22:35.690 to hit that website, you're on the right track. 22:35.890 --> 22:39.790 And so you'll know that you're doing something right. 22:39.790 --> 22:50.550 If you were looking for other people to play the game with, try the DEF CON forums, or we will have some Discord channels that will be discussing badge challenge. 22:51.010 --> 22:57.770 And that might be a place to find other people that you can connect with even remotely to work on the puzzles together. 22:58.530 --> 23:01.930 Kind of like the crossword puzzles from the New York Times, right? 23:01.930 --> 23:04.370 I always wanted to solve and finish one of those. 23:04.650 --> 23:08.790 But again, I'd like to say thanks to DT for letting this happen. 23:08.790 --> 23:13.710 I mean, recently in my life, I've started being really interested in music. 23:13.710 --> 23:19.510 I mean, recently past like five years or so, I've started carrying around one of these guys with me. 23:19.510 --> 23:22.050 This is a Zoom recorder. 23:22.050 --> 23:25.630 You'll notice the XY recording head in there. 23:25.630 --> 23:28.930 I've been carrying one of these around with me pretty much everywhere I go. 23:29.470 --> 23:40.450 And when I hear interesting sounds or things out in the wild, I've been recording them and incorporating them into some music and things that I've been making. 23:40.750 --> 23:43.030 Maybe someday I'll start releasing things. 23:43.030 --> 23:43.910 I don't know. 23:44.170 --> 23:49.310 But again, thank you for coming to DEF CON safe mode. 23:49.310 --> 23:55.470 We hope that we can connect with everybody the best we can in these trying times. 23:55.470 --> 24:00.050 And let's try and have some fun and focus on some positive for a little while. 24:00.050 --> 24:01.610 I think we could all use it. 24:01.850 --> 24:03.830 So now back to you, Jeff. 24:04.550 --> 24:07.610 So if all went well, we're done with the intro. 24:07.610 --> 24:10.690 We're going to move on now to the question and answer session live. 24:10.870 --> 24:17.650 If I'm still here and Lasse is still here, you should see us popping up any minute in Discord in the chat. 24:17.890 --> 24:26.870 And we're ready to take any of your questions on community, history, why we're doing what we're doing, how you can get more out of the show. 24:26.970 --> 24:29.230 And really looking forward to seeing everybody. 24:29.370 --> 24:31.310 And thanks a lot for being here. 24:35.770 --> 24:39.910 Well, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. 24:40.230 --> 24:41.850 Hope you guys enjoyed that video. 24:41.850 --> 24:43.410 I am up in the top corner. 24:43.410 --> 24:53.430 You've got pasties and we are here with Lost and DT to answer some of your questions now that we've got through the video. 24:54.750 --> 24:56.930 Jeff, why don't you get started maybe? 24:56.930 --> 25:02.050 Why don't you tell us kind of maybe where you are, how you ended up where you are, and why you're stuck there? 25:03.050 --> 25:03.930 Yeah. 25:04.410 --> 25:05.550 Hey, everyone. 25:05.550 --> 25:06.930 Hey, thanks for watching that. 25:06.990 --> 25:08.690 Welcome to safe mode. 25:08.690 --> 25:10.030 Thank you for being here. 25:10.330 --> 25:14.650 It's been really cool just to be in LimeCon last week and watch everybody chat. 25:14.650 --> 25:23.130 It's actually been kind of cathartic to see everybody reconnect with their friends and have conversations that they would normally do in person. 25:23.130 --> 25:24.390 So super cool. 25:24.730 --> 25:27.350 Unfortunately, it's midnight here. 25:27.350 --> 25:32.430 I'm still in Singapore trap, but I've been drifting my time two hours a night. 25:32.430 --> 25:35.730 So the last week I've drifted and now this is my morning. 25:35.730 --> 25:36.250 It's weird. 25:36.250 --> 25:37.510 I get up at 11 p.m. 25:37.510 --> 25:40.110 at night to be on Pacific Time. 25:40.750 --> 25:43.110 All for the love of DEF CON. 25:43.830 --> 25:46.610 And I've got with me Lost. 25:46.610 --> 25:51.430 And normally what we do is we talk about the show, but I thought we've got a little bit of time. 25:51.430 --> 25:52.570 Let's do some Q&A. 25:52.570 --> 25:57.070 I'm sure everybody got questions and doesn't want to hear us talk anymore. 25:57.630 --> 26:01.590 So who wants to kick that off first? 26:03.350 --> 26:04.170 Let's see. 26:04.170 --> 26:07.430 I've got one maybe easy question. 26:09.050 --> 26:12.830 Where can we find out more about Lost streaming about music, science, and hacking? 26:12.830 --> 26:15.430 Do you have a podcast or something like that? 26:16.970 --> 26:20.070 I do live streams twice a week on Twitch. 26:21.070 --> 26:23.270 Tuesday nights is Transistor Tuesdays. 26:23.270 --> 26:26.230 It's more electronics and hacking focused. 26:26.730 --> 26:35.610 Lately, I've been teaching people how to build a 4-bit microcontroller from basic logic gates and or not all the way up to how to program an FPGA. 26:35.790 --> 26:46.050 The intention is to teach people where assembly and machine code come from, from a hacker's perspective and why you care, and to teach you the vocabulary to be able to have those conversations. 26:46.050 --> 26:52.390 Friday nights, I do a stream show called Down in the Park, which is an homage to Gary Neumann. 26:52.790 --> 26:58.750 And on that show, we talk about music and hacking and people that I consider music hackers and things like that. 26:58.750 --> 27:04.530 In fact, there will be a DEF CON dedicated Down in the Park crossover tonight. 27:06.990 --> 27:18.610 There is a link to Lost's Twitch in the track one DEF CON talk track channel, for anyone that's looking for more information about that. 27:20.410 --> 27:21.410 Cool. 27:21.410 --> 27:21.890 Let's see. 27:21.950 --> 27:30.570 CryptoCactus asks, are there any plans for making DEF CON safe mode an annual thing to happen alongside the physical event? 27:33.760 --> 27:39.380 So what you're witnessing right here is like all hands on deck. 27:39.660 --> 27:43.240 Everybody on deck for like three months. 27:43.260 --> 27:48.580 And there's no way we can do that on top of the main, you know, physical DEF CON. 27:48.580 --> 27:50.860 So it's either one or the other. 27:50.860 --> 27:52.860 There's just enough people to go around. 27:55.650 --> 28:11.950 There's been some talk about we could drastically reduce the Discord and then have reduced rooms and chat and some of the features that we like, but do it in parallel or use Discord as a sort of organizing tool for on site in Vegas. 28:12.250 --> 28:13.890 You know, all that is totally possible. 28:13.890 --> 28:20.070 It's just we can't have all the villages doing their villages in real life and online at the same time. 28:21.130 --> 28:23.010 I hope that answers your question. 28:23.010 --> 28:28.270 We're going to be making an announcement at closing ceremonies on what we decide to do with the Discord. 28:29.750 --> 28:31.010 Cool, cool. 28:31.010 --> 28:32.770 A question for Lost. 28:32.770 --> 28:37.010 You mentioned an additional Carl Sagan quote on your stream last night. 28:37.010 --> 28:46.650 There's one in plain text on the liner and the one on the site that you just showed in this talk and another in a Pascal case found via the cassette. 28:46.830 --> 28:50.050 Is there another one that somebody should have found already? 28:50.670 --> 28:57.490 There are more that you can't get to yet and it's kudos for using Pascal case instead of camel case correctly. 28:57.510 --> 29:02.830 And a little bit of trivia for you, our badge this year for DEF CON is the cassette. 29:03.350 --> 29:09.470 Carl Sagan wrote all of his notes, took all of his notes for all of his creative works on cassette tape. 29:09.470 --> 29:10.610 Most people don't know that. 29:10.610 --> 29:12.210 He dictated 90. 29:12.210 --> 29:19.870 Even the notes that are in the contact, he still did the original dictation and notes for himself on cassette tapes. 29:19.870 --> 29:24.690 So the cassette in a weird roundabout sort of way is also kind of an homage to Carl Sagan. 29:29.960 --> 29:33.900 So I've got another question about the tapes. 29:34.360 --> 29:37.240 Is the audio distortion unexpected? 29:37.240 --> 29:38.780 Are the tape contents different? 29:38.780 --> 29:41.300 How do we get flax of artist goon? 29:42.640 --> 29:48.620 Just go to media.DEFCON.org and we've got an archive of the lossless versions. 29:48.980 --> 30:00.420 And if you want to play the badge challenge that Lost created, everything you can have, everything you need to play the game or try to solve the puzzle is in an archive file just on the media server there. 30:00.420 --> 30:06.220 Like pictures of the lanyard, the liner notes, and the audio tape. 30:07.120 --> 30:26.800 To piggyback on what Jeff just said too and to answer more of the question, the original master tape that we had, it's no secret at this point, I'm sure enough people have talked about it online, if you stereo channel the XY from the tape into an oscilloscope it does draw things and give you some text and some graphics and things like that. 30:28.260 --> 30:37.080 The original master tape function is just fine, but the cleanest way to get that is to just go to the DEFCON media servers and get the digital copy. 30:37.260 --> 30:39.340 It's just going to work the best. 30:40.140 --> 30:43.820 Well we tried to get the best quality audio tape, right? 30:43.820 --> 30:47.320 I mean there wasn't a grade of tape higher that we could purchase. 30:47.460 --> 30:49.060 Correct, not at this point in time. 30:49.060 --> 30:52.300 It manufactured itself during COVID times. 30:52.460 --> 31:01.040 There were times when I was on the phone with the fabrication house and they just didn't have people on staff at the time to do things because people weren't going into work. 31:04.760 --> 31:06.140 Yeah, that's interesting. 31:07.940 --> 31:11.600 There's one place in the world that would make the audio tape shells. 31:11.600 --> 31:14.380 There's a couple places to get the audio tape. 31:14.380 --> 31:16.660 I mean it's so limited. 31:16.660 --> 31:19.840 The supply chain is so optimized, but it's so fragile. 31:21.940 --> 31:27.500 And there's no there's no real competition not for mass publication of tapes for duplication. 31:28.600 --> 31:34.060 Tell me about the quantity, like how the quantities are so low. 31:34.940 --> 31:51.040 So just like when we did the record, because we're using older media and older formats, when we do a run for DEFCON, we actually technically should chart because we pass the normal quantity of production. 31:51.180 --> 31:56.860 Like most people are ordering two, three hundred tapes, you know, maybe a thousand, and we're blowing that away. 31:56.860 --> 32:05.140 Same thing, like one of the guys that did the record pressing for us the year we did the record said, you made more vinyl this year than Taylor Swift. 32:05.240 --> 32:06.200 Wow. 32:06.360 --> 32:07.500 Because we did. 32:07.500 --> 32:11.380 Because everything's digital distribution or CDs, not vinyl. 32:11.380 --> 32:12.660 It's a niche market. 32:12.660 --> 32:13.420 It's growing. 32:13.420 --> 32:14.880 Same thing with cassettes. 32:15.000 --> 32:19.000 Cassettes are starting to make a comeback, mostly for nostalgia purposes. 32:19.320 --> 32:28.860 One of the things I was going to throw out to watch people have a geek fight about is the discussion and argument about whether or not a cassette tape is digital or analog. 32:32.330 --> 32:36.030 And there is an answer, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. 32:37.290 --> 32:44.850 We were going to try to put an RFID chip inside each case as the cases were being assembled, but it just ran out of time. 32:44.850 --> 32:48.030 Yeah, they didn't have humans on staff able to do that. 32:48.030 --> 32:53.310 So the shells, like Jeff was talking about, in the video you saw, I held up some clear tapes. 32:53.310 --> 33:01.750 The intention of that was that we were going to put RFID tags behind that solid piece, but they just didn't have the manpower to crack the tapes and feed them in. 33:01.750 --> 33:10.270 So it's not like, and kudos to badge life, but when you're making 200 of something versus, you know, thousands, we just didn't have the resource to do it. 33:10.270 --> 33:14.050 And I don't mean in terms of we, like the people just weren't there. 33:14.050 --> 33:17.030 It didn't even have anything to do with cost or anything like that. 33:17.030 --> 33:19.630 It had to do with the fact that we just didn't have the humans. 33:20.750 --> 33:33.210 So continuing along with the questions about the badges, someone wants to know where to submit the badge forum or the badge attachment. 33:34.910 --> 33:39.470 So as people who are playing the game know, there are certain websites that have not gone live yet. 33:39.470 --> 33:49.870 I'm going to drop that information into the DEF CON forums, actually, after we finish this discussion, but I've intentionally held that back because we wanted that to be a secret contest. 33:50.150 --> 33:55.990 And for those of you who follow DEF CON and myself on Twitter, somebody actually started doing it on their own. 33:55.990 --> 33:58.830 And they were like, we're going to do a contest for connecting the tapes. 33:58.830 --> 34:03.410 And El Cantaro actually did a video of using a rubber band origami thing. 34:03.610 --> 34:06.330 And I had to jump in and say, it's really cool. 34:06.330 --> 34:11.470 And I don't want to be the jerk guy that steps on you, but we're kind of going to do that. 34:13.490 --> 34:15.070 That's super cool, though. 34:15.070 --> 34:17.130 I love how the community just kicks off. 34:17.130 --> 34:22.690 So watch the DEF CON forums after this and I get something to drink. 34:22.810 --> 34:24.330 More Mountain Dew. 34:24.450 --> 34:29.510 Or as my daughter calls it, Daddy's Green Drink. 34:31.610 --> 34:34.090 So I've got a question for Jeff here. 34:35.450 --> 34:36.870 This is kind of a big picture. 34:36.870 --> 34:43.430 How has the focus of the CON changed since the CON got started 28 years ago? 34:45.690 --> 34:51.230 Well, 28 years ago, we were quite a different crew of people. 34:51.630 --> 35:02.930 So I would say the analogy I make is imagine you were playing rock and roll in garages in Haight-Nashbury or wherever in San Francisco. 35:03.310 --> 35:06.610 And you're making the music you love to make, grunge and battle, whatever. 35:06.610 --> 35:08.830 You're making the music you love to make. 35:08.830 --> 35:10.490 You're showing it off to your friends. 35:10.490 --> 35:12.050 Your friends are making music. 35:12.090 --> 35:13.290 It's awesome. 35:13.550 --> 35:20.450 And then somebody shows up in a car with a lot of money and says, hey, you know, you can get on a jet airplane with me and we can go to Europe. 35:20.450 --> 35:22.890 And everybody in Europe can hear your music, too. 35:23.190 --> 35:25.650 And next thing you know, there's money involved. 35:25.650 --> 35:29.450 There's jobs and there's prestige and more ego. 35:29.730 --> 35:33.930 And that was I mean, that happened to us, I think, in the early 2000s. 35:34.010 --> 35:40.530 And then it went from being your hobby that you loved and do potentially into a career. 35:40.690 --> 35:43.550 And that was an interesting mental break for a lot of people. 35:43.550 --> 35:51.110 You know, you talk to creative people and they're either professionally creative in the sense that they create nine to five. 35:51.110 --> 35:54.590 They either go to Disney and create or an ad agency. 35:54.650 --> 35:56.890 And there are those that are not professionally creative. 35:56.890 --> 35:59.170 They do it when they feel inspired. 35:59.650 --> 36:03.250 And that sort of forks the community a little bit. 36:03.470 --> 36:06.970 And so I think what we've seen is just the community growing up. 36:07.010 --> 36:15.830 And you can see DEF CON, we're trying to respond to that a little bit over the last four or five years where we keep trying to draw this distinction that we don't want to be info tech. 36:15.830 --> 36:17.570 We want to be hackers. 36:17.710 --> 36:19.470 And there's a difference there. 36:19.630 --> 36:20.730 And it's different. 36:20.730 --> 36:22.650 It's not one's good, one's bad. 36:22.650 --> 36:23.830 It's just we're different. 36:23.830 --> 36:31.310 And we're trying to not be the professionally creative, where it's your job and you have to perform and do the enterprise thing. 36:31.670 --> 36:37.670 We want to be you're here because you're trying to do something exciting and interesting. 36:37.670 --> 36:40.970 And maybe you fail and the whole thing burns down in front of you. 36:40.970 --> 36:43.130 But that sounds fun. 36:43.130 --> 36:44.190 I don't know. 36:44.190 --> 36:45.310 What do you think, Lars? 36:46.470 --> 36:56.370 Yeah, my best memories of DEF CON are always with the folks that, like you said, that are passionate about it and it's more like a hobby. 36:56.470 --> 37:06.030 Although a lot of the folks that are like that have found clever ways of hacking even their professional life to incorporate the things that they enjoy. 37:06.330 --> 37:12.310 And I would say so many of the volunteers and people who work with DEF CON have done that. 37:12.310 --> 37:16.490 They're hackers in every sense of the word, including their own life. 37:20.000 --> 37:28.680 Last question for you, Damon from Meyers Circle asks, how many years has it been since the last mystery challenge? 37:29.020 --> 37:31.920 Do you think this is kind of the final level? 37:32.260 --> 37:35.380 And then they also ask, do you have the glow? 37:36.300 --> 37:37.320 Do I? 37:38.000 --> 37:39.220 We have the glow. 37:39.220 --> 37:40.500 We need the glow to go. 37:40.500 --> 37:41.680 We feel the glow. 37:41.680 --> 37:42.860 Sure enough. 37:44.860 --> 37:52.000 Julius Carey III is who you're referring to there plays, sure enough, in Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon. 37:52.000 --> 37:55.500 Yes, my mind holds all of that stuff, not consciously. 37:55.500 --> 37:57.220 It just happens to be in there. 37:58.600 --> 38:05.540 Mystery challenge in the original incarnation was about eight years ago for the last one. 38:05.540 --> 38:08.080 And then we kind of moved over into the badge. 38:08.080 --> 38:13.140 We kind of did a resurgence for some anniversary years and things like that. 38:13.240 --> 38:16.660 And I wouldn't say final level for the glow. 38:16.660 --> 38:18.380 I would say this is more of an iteration. 38:18.380 --> 38:25.120 And I think of it as the phoenix, you know, a fabulous bird reborn from the ashes of its former self. 38:25.120 --> 38:30.360 Also the tutor of Achilles for those of you who are 2001 and 2010 fans. 38:31.980 --> 38:34.280 If you know that reference. 38:35.740 --> 38:43.080 Kind of on the on a funnier side, we've got one person asking you if it's milkshake o'clock yet. 38:43.300 --> 38:45.460 It's always milkshake o'clock. 38:48.100 --> 38:56.800 I can't tell you how many years at DEF CON where we would do milkshake o'clock and then like three hours later, someone else would come up and we wouldn't want them to feel excluded. 38:56.800 --> 38:58.500 And so we would do it again. 38:58.740 --> 39:06.220 And like one year, I'm sure I'm going to become diabetic in my later life from all of the milkshakes that I've downed. 39:06.380 --> 39:09.780 We have like four milkshakes within the space of six hours. 39:10.100 --> 39:12.740 It's almost like that's a challenge in and of itself. 39:14.660 --> 39:16.640 You're not eating hot dogs. 39:18.000 --> 39:27.160 A fun thing to share is for those of you who were on the live stream last night, somebody actually stole a pair of grifter shoes and got them to me. 39:27.160 --> 39:35.640 And I got them this week, which is part of an homage to the original Mystery Challenge stuff with grifter playing and people trying to steal his shoes. 39:36.680 --> 39:38.260 So that's amazing. 39:39.680 --> 39:40.780 Well, good stuff. 39:40.780 --> 39:43.800 We are about 10 after the hour. 39:43.800 --> 39:53.160 So maybe both of you gentlemen, do you have anything to share with everybody that's come to the Q&A before we get back to the regular schedule? 39:54.020 --> 39:56.640 We have to pick one last question. 39:57.420 --> 39:58.640 Who's going to be? 40:01.100 --> 40:01.900 Hmm. 40:05.300 --> 40:10.980 I mean, this one's a little bit intense, but what do you think the future of hackerdom is? 40:10.980 --> 40:13.840 We've come so far in 28 years and things have changed so much. 40:14.100 --> 40:16.080 When do we hit a critical mass? 40:17.820 --> 40:19.040 You want me to go first? 40:21.700 --> 40:37.920 I think it's... I don't have an answer for you, but after about 10 years of DEF CON, and by then it was like four or five years of Black Hat, I was pretty certain that there's a finite number of people that will get on an airplane and fly to Vegas. 40:38.300 --> 40:39.280 There just is. 40:39.280 --> 40:40.280 They care about this stuff. 40:40.280 --> 40:42.260 There just can't be that many people in the world. 40:42.260 --> 40:48.280 And every year it grew, and it's grown every single year for 20-something years. 40:48.280 --> 40:52.420 And so my opinion doesn't really count because I've been wrong every year. 40:52.420 --> 40:54.560 Every year I just think, well, that's it. 40:54.680 --> 40:56.880 That's as many people as there are in the world. 40:56.880 --> 41:02.960 But also living in Seattle, I think every year Amazon hires a thousand people. 41:02.960 --> 41:04.520 It's just crazy. 41:04.840 --> 41:23.200 So I don't know where the top is, but what I think happens is in the early days, the only people that cared about this stuff was us, and it was network, and then it was banking, and then it was financial and military, and then it was access control, and then it was industrial control systems and physical access control, 41:23.200 --> 41:24.680 and then it's robots. 41:24.680 --> 41:27.660 It seems to be then it's smart cars. 41:28.380 --> 41:30.440 Now it's hack the sea and hack the satellite. 41:30.440 --> 41:32.540 So I don't think we've reached the top yet. 41:32.600 --> 41:35.640 I think what's happening is everybody's specializing. 41:36.140 --> 41:46.020 And so to make a name for yourself and to try to feel like you understand your domain, you're trying to simplify your life and you're trying to specialize to make a name for yourself. 41:46.280 --> 41:49.120 And that means we're squeezing out some generalists. 41:49.860 --> 42:07.600 So I guess if I do have a call for anything, it's yes, do what you have to do to succeed in your career, but please try to also become a generalist because we're now probably year five or six of hackers becoming involved in policy and now decision makers. 42:07.600 --> 42:11.440 Now congresspeople are young enough that they've grown up with computers. 42:11.720 --> 42:24.440 And so I think what's going to happen is we're going to have gone from a specialty to just we're like another component, security and health care, security and automotive, security and policymaking. 42:24.440 --> 42:27.460 So I think there's plenty of room for us to grow. 42:27.460 --> 42:32.140 It's just we have to widen our horizons and think bigger. 42:32.140 --> 42:37.900 I think our influence in society and importance in society is just going to grow. 42:38.360 --> 42:44.720 I'm sorry if I'm taking a long answer to this, but remember when you first started watching TV shows and the hacker would be there? 42:44.720 --> 42:46.500 They'd be like the one hacking character. 42:46.660 --> 42:51.640 And the purpose of the hacking character was to type at the keyboard, find me the car. 42:51.760 --> 42:53.940 Okay, I'll use the kaleidoscope. 42:53.980 --> 42:55.400 Oh, they're in San Diego. 42:55.400 --> 42:56.900 And that was the purpose. 42:56.900 --> 42:58.120 It's like the MacGuffin. 42:58.120 --> 42:59.900 It was to move the plot along. 42:59.900 --> 43:02.600 The hacker would type some keys and move the plot along. 43:02.600 --> 43:04.580 But now you see with like Mr. 43:04.580 --> 43:09.340 Robot, other shows, the hackers or the security people, they're full characters. 43:09.340 --> 43:10.840 They're full people now. 43:10.880 --> 43:12.320 We're getting baked in. 43:12.320 --> 43:14.740 We're not the oddball anymore. 43:14.740 --> 43:16.380 I think that'll continue. 43:17.300 --> 43:21.920 You know that and when we create the Mentat political party, right? 43:25.280 --> 43:36.580 I can't add anything more to what Jeff said from the top down, but what I feel like is my personal mission in life is to go from the bottom up and that is next generation and kids. 43:36.580 --> 43:46.760 I think we are quickly as a society getting to the point where we're teaching kids to not be hackers or tinkerers, whether it's making exploration illegal or tinkering. 43:46.760 --> 43:51.480 We're teaching kids that electronics are dangerous or expensive and that you don't own your device. 43:51.480 --> 43:52.120 Don't open it. 43:52.120 --> 43:53.540 Don't learn how it works. 43:53.540 --> 43:54.940 Don't explore. 43:54.940 --> 44:03.720 And so some of the freedoms that I had as a kid, kids are terrified to do these days because things are illegal or whatever. 44:03.720 --> 44:09.240 And I think things like DEF CON helping to get that next generation to open the door. 44:09.280 --> 44:15.040 And we live in a magical time too, because now we have the benefit of virtualization, both for hardware and software. 44:15.180 --> 44:18.180 And so it's like we should see a resurgence of the tinkerers. 44:18.180 --> 44:22.440 And I'm looking for the next Forrest Mimms because I know he or she is out there. 44:27.200 --> 44:28.920 So we'll be around. 44:29.100 --> 44:32.180 You're going to be around, Lost, in your Mystery Challenge room. 44:32.180 --> 44:35.020 Yep, I'll be all throughout Discord. 44:35.460 --> 44:38.080 Yep, I'll be floating around. 44:38.460 --> 44:39.740 Glad everybody's here. 44:39.740 --> 44:40.980 Have a good time. 44:41.540 --> 44:43.680 Thank you guys both for joining us. 44:43.680 --> 44:47.000 Thank you everyone in the Q&A for asking questions. 44:49.520 --> 44:51.980 We will see you guys around.