This year I did not visit Chaos Communication Congress. But I was watching the streams an the released recordings of the talks. I really liked some talks, so I now share with you which talks I can highly recommend.
Highly recommended talks
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT): Building the biggest optical telescope on earth
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12020-the_extremely_large_telescope_elt
Von Zebrastreifen, offenen Daten und verschlossenen Verwaltungen: Luxemburgs kreative Route zur Amtstransparenz
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11983-von_zebrastreifen_offenen_daten_und_verschlossenen_verwaltungen
Synthetic Sentience: Can Artificial Intelligence become conscious?
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12167-synthetic_sentience
How to build a submarine and survive: Wie wir mit begrenzten Mitteln ein U-Boot gebaut haben und was ihr draus lernen könnt.
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11828-how_to_build_a_submarine_and_survive
Reconstructing game footage from a Game Boy’s memory bus: The GB Interceptor
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11928-reconstructing_game_footage_from_a_game_boy_s_memory_bus
Recommended talks
Euclid – das neue Weltraumteleskop: Mit Milliarden leuchtenden Galaxien den dunklen Teil des Kosmos verstehen
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12182-euclid_das_neue_weltraumteleskop
Operation Triangulation: What You Get When Attack iPhones of Researchers
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_what_you_get_when_attack_iphones_of_researchers
Toniebox Reverse Engineering: Eine Musikbox für Kinder, Maker und Hacker
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11993-toniebox_reverse_engineering
Hacking the Climate: Mit Climate Engineering raus aus der Klimakrise?
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11870-hacking_the_climate
Apple’s iPhone 15 – Under the C: Hardware hacking tooling for the new iPhone generation
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12074-apple_s_iphone_15_under_the_c
Bifröst: Apple’s Rainbow Bridge for Satellite Communication
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11948-bifrost_apple_s_rainbow_bridge_for_satellite_communication
Somewhat recommended talks
„Was sind eigentlich Audio Interventionen?“ – Von Sound Grafitti und Protest-Jingles
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12337-was_sind_eigentlich_audio_interventionen_-_von_sound_grafitti_und_protest-jingles
Demoscene now and then: The demoscene is an underground computer art culture.
https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11846-demoscene_now_and_then
My comments
I found the talks this year pretty good. Operation Triangulation is really the total collapse of the illusion you can have a safe mobile device that is still connected to the internet. It is a shame that this was not yet detected for so many years that a Font-functionality in PDF could be an entry vector for hacking your iDevice.
The Synthetic Sentience talk impressed me and gave me quite some food for thought. What if we can simulate a brain on submolecular level in the future on quantum computers? How can future AI’s and Humans coexist in peace?
The Zebrastreifen talk reflects my observations that governments i.e. politicians usually don’t care at all about the normal life issues. This is actualy what you would wish for every city in germany to happen in regard to digitalization efforts. pretty cool work guys!
The submarine talk kind a blew my mind, but then I thought also, what it would take to replicate this experience and I came to the conclusion, that the presentation was as much a lifestyle choice presentation as it was an engineering venture with lots and lots of time spent – nevertheless very impressive. You find also some more bits abouu this guy here: https://chrismon.de/artikel/52739/selbst-gebautes-u-boot-aus-leipzig and this article on golem. I liked especially the thinking out of the box to just build a pool of water (sandbox) around the submarine for testing. Also the underwater communication solution is really a nice hacking venture to learn a lot about water.
The Game Boy talk by Sebastian Staacks (he has a blog) is a marvel of reverse engineering. You should watch it because it is also a picture perfect template how to present stuff where you need to film your gadget to show to people while you present. Sebastian recommends this talk from 33c3. I would also recommend the video of Sebastian explaining how to create a wooden Game Boy hull.
Short interruption: I maybe should buy one of these games next year. Would resemble a lot of the real thing as a game. But let’s see…
I liked the Hacking the Climate talk a lot, because it made one aspect very clear to me: the only entity which was actively compensating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the past in significant amounts is the ocean with a potential of 37000 GtC (Gigatons of Carbon) bound already.
The Toniebox talk demonstrated to me in an astonishing way, how a community and 4 people can not just replicate but also rebuild a product as an open solution. They actually even rebuilt their own cloud, so the hacker community here demonstrated that we can adopt services for gadgets which suffer from retired-cloud-obsolescence.
I was rather disappointed by the Demoscene talk because there was way to much talking, then the demos themselves were obscured most of the time by weird text messages and I had the impression the guy was just happy to revive his memories of Spreadpoint in public. I will therefore add a list of demos below this post which resemble really excellent demos from the Amiga times and will represent my experience of that time better.
More Amiga
If you would like to have more Amiga stuff, search my blog for Amiga. Or check out the post Retro Computing – Spaß mit Klassikern für den Amiga or Amiga 500 mini: The missing (sane) manual. Have fun!
Best of Amiga demo scene
Spaceballs – 9 Fingers – Amiga Demo (HD 50fps)
I loved especially the digitization of real video movements which was astonishing at that time. And I liked the really nice techno track and the stroboscope effect in lime green at the end. I highly recommend the making of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4M7e79XTYk
Amiga demo Paranoimia crack intro 1989
This sound track just burned into my brain and heart. I love this song. It is minimalism in perfection. Thx paranoimia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSwgZ7wGus0
Unit A – Interceptor cracktro (amiga) 1988
This was kind of one of the most seen intro from me, because I was playing the Fighter Jet simulation game Interceptor a lot. No wonder I loved Top Gun as a movie too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjQM982S6s
Amiga Demo – Crack intro by Quartex – 1996
Quartex was omnipresent in cracktros. I just remember their name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJc6pEYcQM
Red Sector Inc – RSI Megademo – Amiga Demo (50 FPS)
Red Sector also had many trainers and cracktros. Usually in very fine quality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTmpqBn4dfA
Megademo (Budbrain, 1990, Amiga ECS) HQ
This was one of the famous megademos. Those were pure demo disks (on 3.5″ diskette) which just contained all the assets to run the demo. This one was impressive at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXV5-GkKUsk
Spaceballs – State of the Art – Amiga Demo (HD 50fps)
This was also one of those nice demo only contents in that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wq5EoXy-0
RED SECTOR (1990) Amiga Cracktro [ Letter Writer 2.0 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG5oqfvLZr0
But I’d also recommend heavily the Amiga Cracktro Marathon:
Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4
And this Cracktro Playlist.
37C3 in the media
- Hacker-Kongress: Was darf künstliche Intelligenz?, ZDF
- Von Assange über Hacking bis Klima: Heute startet der 37C3 in Hamburg – mit Livestreams, ComputerBase
Why do I blog this? I really wasn’t yet in the mood to visit 37c3 after my Camp 2023 experience. Geheimorganisation expressed that perfectly with „Mein Kopf ist leer“. I loved the talks being streamed, even though I know they only represent a tiny, tiny piece of the c3xp. I was pretty much irritated a lot being addressed with „Sie“ the formal way of addressing people by several talking heads (1, 2, …). Neverthelesse… big thx to the team that made the talks and relive and releases work so smoothly.