rC3 Fahrplan – The Chaos Communication Congress 2021 schedule | Hacker News Reader

rC3 Fahrplan – The Chaos Communication Congress 2021 schedule

rc3.world

129 pointsTepix51 comments

Live streaming: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/

Recordings: https://media.ccc.de/c/rc3-2021

Relive: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/relive

Tickets (none available anymore): https://tickets.events.ccc.de/RC3-21/

It is sad that the C3 is going more and more political, and that actual technical content is apparently being phased out.

There are very few technical "hacking" conferences anymore (i.e. not tied to a particular topic, e.g. Linux)

Inviting a member of parliament just to talk about being a member of parliament is indeed a bit weird. The CCC has always been a political club but airing a 60 minute ad for an individual politician is indeed a new quality that will certainly be discussed inside the club afterwards. https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021/talk/358/

> Inviting a member of parliament just to talk about being a member of parliament

Reading from your linked summary, I get the impression it's not just about being a member of the parliament

I have read it. It's filled with the usual politicians keyword stuffing but it's literally about being a member of parliament. If you want to be cynical you can call it an unpaid ad placement. The politician will use it afterwards to tout her expertise in "digital matters" because she held a speech at a renowned hackers conference and it will help her advancement in her factions caucus etc. I just don't see what benefit it has for attendees.

To be fair, she's been a political activist partially focused on internet/tech for quite a while (her husband was part of Wikileaks, then founded OpenLeaks). I don't know whether she's a member, but she's very socially progressive and economically very far left, so her values are strongly aligned with the CCC. I don't think it's just a gift for her to speak at a CCC event, it's essentially one of them speaking about the things they like to hear.

She is also very likely a CIA mole in the green party. So she's a person of interest

I hope you are watching the streams not to get into any details in particular. lol

This is a person who was close to the community long before she became a politician. And she gave a similar talk 2 years ago: https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-50-als-netzaktivistin-im-bundest...

This year is different. There are no official tracks and therefore no official call for paper. Thats why only the local CCC Clubs (erfas) offer talks.

A lot of these talks are held by people that are closely related to the CCC. I expect that once the congress is taking place offline again, there will be a official track with selected talks.

Also please note that the ccc was founded in the TAZ headquarter on the table that previously belonged to the Komune 1. CCC was political from day one. I maybe wasn't so present in the earlier days but as "the internet" got more intertwined with politics the CCC followed.

> here are no official tracks and therefore no official call for paper. Thats why only the local CCC Clubs (erfas) offer talks.

There was a CfP process and speakers could pick one or more channels they'd like their content to be with (channels are not just individual Erfas too, many streams are run by many different groups together), and the channels coordinated who picks up what talk. At least the channel where I have insight in the process, the majority of talks is by people who aren't "members". So while there are no "main stages", the other channels are open to all (just as many usually are at congress).

EDIT: CfP announcement for reference https://events.ccc.de/2021/11/10/rc3-2021-meta-cfp/

To save somebody else a Google search: taz is a left-leaning daily newspaper in Germany, and kommune 1 was a student community against conservative thought.

That's true, if you have time, read the book "The Cuckoo's Egg" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) to see how the ties between CCC and Left was always present.

I have no problem about it being left biased. That's was always like that. What makes me sad is how left became "lifestyle left" and consequently the "lifestyle left" became too present in the CCC congress.

This point is being made each year again and again, that it is getting more and more political. I also had that impression myself.

However, I was surprised to see some actual statistics that it was already political right from the beginning (sorry, no ref, I barely remember).

And there are always also a lot of technical talks. It is not really phased out. Maybe just some of the political talks get more attention. Or the attention to political content increases. Or maybe my own attention to political topics, and I just ignored that earlier. But when you look for technical content (at least on a regular C3), there is plenty.

I believe the argument isn't that there was zero politics before, but that it was creative/technical, and oh, we also have some political talks. And now it's politics, and oh, yeah, we still have a few technical talks.

I had a technical talk I was planning on giving, but am saving for when I can be in person. I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't alone in that.

The distribution of topics really seems to be about the same. What seems to be missing are the "hacker celebrity" and research talks. But as far as I have seen the bulk of talks have always been similar to those this year. They just don't get the big crowds.

the problem is that you are pretending to care now. it was always the fact especially if you take in regards the founders like Wau holland. I don't even know what you really expect from the ccc since it's very first datenkrake it was left leaning. Maybe the Club isn't something for you.

> the problem is that you are pretending to care now.

No need to be hostile. I haven't attacked you or anyone else.

I never said they didn't have political opinions, it just didn't seem to be politics first. That has changed over the last decade or so, I'm guessing it's a generational shift. I'm fine with that and I'm not asking anyone to change anything. Calm down.

There is always this huge perception difference of people that only attend congresses online or per streaming. If you would have been on location for any of the congresses you know how the overall vibe would be rather political than not.

I'm depressed about rC3. I totally get that we can't meet up in person and hack all day but this year I've been so unexcited about rC3 that I didn't even bother to get a (free) ticket.

Of course, I value everybody's enthusiasm towards continuing a tradition. I'm happy the scene continues to do their best and I'm grateful to be able to listening in the talks.

But it still feels off. The congress and other chaos events are so much more than what the live streams portait. It's exhibition halls full of nerds. Waves of applauses and cheering of everyone's excitement. Pixelflut, tschunk, blinking LEDs and having an awesome time with my haxor friends for 3 days a year.

Fingers crossed that we can meet in person next year!

Some related events took place normally this year, e.g. Camp++. Hackerspaces in some cities are also active, open and provide some of that atmosphere.

Don't passively expect the real Congress to come back (I think it's dead). Work towards finding substitute events that suit you instead, they will grow and eventually replace what Congress used to be.

Dude, I think you forget about the pandemic.

There's no way any other event could be a in-person event right now.

Yeah, if congress happened in say, August instead of late December, I'm sure it would have happened in person.

There were multiple of the European hacker camps scheduled for this year and all the large ones had to cancel, I very much doubt Congress would have been able to happen either.

There is no reason to assume that the meatspace Congress is dead. It's no more dead than any other event with large crowds. The demand is there and the will to organize it is there as well.

Not dead at all - there would've been a "real" Congress this year, had the situation allowed for it.

I miss the sound system. :(

I liked club music okay, but had never experienced a proper German 8(12?)x18" thumping club system until CCC. I went back to America and built my own folded horn, 6kW system after that, but it's still not the same..

yeah agreed. The disco areas they had in 2019, the sound was so super crisp. I wish I could reproduce the high fidelity clicking they played in some tracks

Function one soundsystems are the crisp bomb

Will be giving a rC3 talk about a new collaboration project: Frisson Waves tonight 22:00 CET (6:00+1 JST)

Talk info: https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-fem/talk/RXUW8B/ Stream Link: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/fem

Work was also presented at Siggraph Asia the last weeks, https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3476122.3484847

Thanks for your talk. It was completely out of my scope but really interesting. How can one get ones hand on the hardware? Is it open?

Thanks a lot :) We are thinking about opensourcing. Not really any experience with it. It's quite easy to build yourself (ESP32 with EDA and heartrate attached).

Can ask the hw team for the schematics (or just the sensing setup, I guess easy to replicate with most embedded platforms).

We might still have a couple of bands in the lab somewhere ... If you have a cool idea what to use it for, could send one out. (Yet, might take a while before I know, Just ping me by mail).

I was watching this presentation https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg-418-wir-b... and I was surprised to see that actually the "expert" has actually no expertise in that matters https://katja-diehl.de/vita/ and abuses widely of Loaded language. Really bad that CCC became that.

https://streaming.media.ccc.de/rc3/csh/hls

Just me or are the talks this year mostly in German? Also, what is it like to attend in person?

I noticed that too. However there is realtime translation by volunteers, and they seem to do a good job.

https://c3lingo.org/

Some of the live streams allow you to select an English audio stream.

There is no in-person conference this year.

When it was still on-location, many people focussed on interacting with other folks, having a drink (see: Tschunk) rather than stand in line to get into one of the Leipzig trade fair halls. Think of it as a big makerspace (Back in Hamburg, both activities were generally intermingled, due to that location being more approachable for such a "living room" atmosphere)

Yes, when it was still in Hamburg it was fabulous.

My talk / performance on https://ossia.io the 30th will be in english :)

Cheers, look forward to it.

> Just me or are the talks this year mostly in German?

The German talks appear to be largely political, concerning issues one probably wouldn't care about anyways if one does not speak German. For instance there's a talk about making Hamburg ad-free.

With few exceptions the things that may be interesting to an international audience are in English.

I don't think making cities ad free in general isn't interesting to anyone who's not a German, let alone lives in that specific city

One thing to watch for is that some of the German talks confusingly have English titles.

is there a simple table representation of talks available somewhere?

https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/rc3/2021/Fahrplan/

That's the same one as the linked table. It's not very usable on mobile phone browsers for example ...