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Comment by upwardbound | Hacker News Reader

Is there any smaller conference that's more focused on white-hat illegal hacking, like DEFCON used to be?

Regional conferences like bsides, but the punk/counterculture vibe of early defcon is lost to time and will never be back. Cybersecurity is a big industry now.

Sad but true. It’s as if the last ounce of hacker authenticity died with Kevin.

I think hacker authenticity lives on, but not in the form of a massive con that has become a pop culture event.

We're living in a golden age of burgeoning counter cultures. It's just never easy to see in the moment.

It used to be, but maybe I'm old.

The events in Europe: All the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) events, or then also OHM/SHA/MCH (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Contain_Hackers) etc.

There are lots of regional conferences that are really great: NolaCon in New Orleans, THOTCON in Chicago, ShmooCon in D.C., just to name a few :)

The hacker community is alive and well (even at DEF CON), but in my experience you have to look harder to find it.

A former colleague of mine had a good impression of BSides in this regard, but I can’t remember which location/year it was (& there seems to be a lot)

From what I've experienced BSides aims to be as close to Alexis Park DEFCON as possible. It does a good job.

DC @ AP was probably peak 'con. You can't even reference pool numbers with kids these days...

The AP _hated_ us but they had a multi-year contract.

AP was the closest thing I can imagine to "what if the Hell's Angels were a bunch of nerds into computers?"

tHOTCON is pretty cool, I'm not sure if I'd consider it White hat as much as it is non-corporate.

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