I'll never get people who say that there is too much politics at a god damn hacker conference like the CCC, considering The Chaos Computer Club was founded in 1981 specifically to be a political watchdog.
more so especially since the very act of "hacking" is a political statement because it involves redistributing power over information.
Code is law, remember?
That would be like complaining about "too much law" at a constitutional convention.
It seems that no modern comment section is complete without the complaint "too much politics", then followed by "but everything is political". Some talks do not even try to draw a line from politics to computers, and I think that is what people feel unhappy about.
The first two talks are in the "Ethics, Society & Politics" category, and the third in the "Art & Beauty" category. Why would they need to be about computing?
It's a big organisation, and politics is wrapped up in what they do, along with the post-WWII Antifaschism culture in Germany.
Even if it weren't the case, I don't get why attack them for helping stand up for democracy, something in dire need of advocacy these days
Unrelated to this conference I've often heard the "everything is political" argument, and mostly with a passive-aggressive "or else.." (you're up for a political fight) undertone. I once enquired on very mundane things in life, and yes "those too are political act". Well, if everything is bleakly political in that sense, we may make it universal, just call it Newspeak.
Especially as congress has, for as long as I remember, been about the superset of infosec, society, art, etc. IMHO it's more along the lines of complaining about any ride that isn't a roller coaster at a theme park--no one is forcing you to go on any rides, other people clearly enjoy them, they're not taking anything away from your roller coaster, and having them increases the diversity of the crowd in an ultimately positive-for-everyone way.
Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground. That is the real problem.
> Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
You could never do that. A few years ago, some activists tried to make a fuzz with stuff like creeper cards, intervention teams and codes of conduct. But those were never needed in the first place, almost nothing ever happened at CCC that would have warranted those things. But "those white male hackers are certainly sexist raping pigs" is a firmly entrenched stereotype in certain circles.
The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out. Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't "hooray, more refugees", "hooray, more EU dictatorship" or "hooray, down with everything right of Rosa Luxemburg".
The problem has been the continuous purposeful rightward shift of the overton window as part of a wider strategy by the far right.
You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left". You see the far-right decrying our democratically elected government as "dictatorship", a classic Putinist propaganda move.
Don't let the right wing extremists set the narrative! Don't listen to their complaints about things being too "political" or "far left". It's all just a tactic in their march towards fascism.
> You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left".
No, things have changed in CCC as well. Back in the day, free speech (in the US definition) and a firm opposition to any censorship were consensus on CCC. Nowadays, censorship is totally OK if it targets the right. And any kind of remotely right-wing opinion is declared "not free speech, not an opinion, thus not protected". This is also evidenced by quite a few talks on the topic, and cooperation with far-left activist groups like "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" sabotaging right-wing speech on several occasions.
If San Francisco is what you get when you embrace the left, and opposition to that is fascism, I think a lot of us have just decided we must be fascists.
I get your arguments. In my opinion the core of the problem is that a lot of the "political" taks are about political topics that are outside the core of the kind of politics (?) that are related to hacking. These talks are what people are complaining about as "too much politics".
That's fine but technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, you can't talk about (for example) facial recognition technology without mentioning the social groups it affects the most or is used against. Same for plenty of others topics directly or indirectly related to hacking and computers.
If you look at the history of the CCC, they also don't see a line between technical freedom and social freedom, because you can't have a free internet in an unfree society.
The 'outside' topics you mention are often just the hackers' way of applying their methodology to the world beyond the screen. Society is a larger system with its own bugs and exploits that inevitably affect the computers you use and the code that run them, and hackers like to apply their methodology to analyze that to understand the consequences.
Moreover, if you actually want meritocracy, you have to address the social barriers that keep people out of the room, and you can't do that without addressing the outside world.
For many hackers, it is just a game, a technical puzzle. The interesting part is overcoming the obstacles, the information or bounty money they get in the end is just the reward, its nature doesn't matter much. Even when there is no reward, people do it because it is fun.
Like with lockpicking, many pickers work with the cylinder in a vise, and the lock is just a mechanical puzzle. That the lock can be attached to something one would want to secure is just a distant thought.
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
The US is a large, well connected country with a lot of hackers, for all definitions of "hacker", it is even the country that created the term.
And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
Anyways, it is the CCC, and they are doing it in Germany, of course, because they are German.
> And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
I would say that with the current US administration, it is similar hard to get to the USA as to Russia.
The difference rather is that in Europe's hacker scene there exist quite some people who, if they stated their opinions openly, would get in much worse trouble if they stated their opinion in Russia than in the USA (because in the USA these opinions are currently "more acceptable"). On the other hand, for Russian hackers likely the reverse holds: I can easily imagine that quite a lot of Russian hackers, if they stated their opinions in the USA, would attract quite a lot of trouble.
Just to be clear: I consider it to be quite plausible that in 5 years, the situation might be similarly bad in the USA as it is today in Russia.
I’m not sure you think otherwise, and are just calling on the US as an example since the HN crowd is heavily US skewed, but just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a German event.
The shape of the politics changed, though. From civil rights, questioning authority and cypherpunk, which inherently has a libertarian bent, there's now much more identity politics and social justice / grievance culture with only tenuous connections to tech.
For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI. It's a very conservative degrowth movement nowadays, all in all.
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
Hacking was always against centralization and central control (and towards decentralization) - which is why any lecture celebrating the bigtech AI companies would strongly be against the whole culture.
While for various reasons AI is a controversial topic, I would say that if someone gave a great talk about how to decentrally train some AI model efficiently as some volunteer computing project, this would be perfectly fitting for the C3.
I am happy they are careful with new technologies, especially one like AI, and also set the right impulses. Enough non-political reasons to have that stance, especially taking in societal implications and how technology affects everyone and not just stakeholders and techbros. In a time when tech in the US is just accelerating by the top-down agenda of figures like Andreesen, Thiel & Co., that is very much needed imo.
All talks will be live streamed, and right after the talk is done you have a rough cut available instantly under "re-live" you can watch until the final recording is available; https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/relive
I should note that some talks will not be recorded, and only available at the congress. These are clearly marked on the congress hub website, but not easily available on the fahrplan view.
I made https://fahrplan.cc where you can filter the [not] recorded sessions, categories, and titles.
I've mostly made it for myself to skip the recorded sessions when on-site and to see what's coming up at the current time of day. It therefore tries to include all the self organized sessions, workshops, meetups, music programs, etc. I've been running it for a few years and people use it for all kinds of use cases, including sitting at home and watching the streams.
Ah, the filterable schedule would be even better if you could filter on multiple categories at once. I just want security/hardware/science, and then I would have to constantly switch around, which is worse than looking at the full schedule with the other categories included.
Me and some friends used to attend the CCC some 15-20 years ago. Back then, we just showed up at the entrance on the first day and bought our tickets there.
This year we were toying with the idea of going for a revival. But man, did we underestimate how much this event has grown...
Tickets in the second presale round were gone within 1-2 seconds. We didn't stand a chance. I feel like we failed the entry exam tbh.
Anyways, to everybody who did score a ticket: have phun, and happy hacking!
I've one ticket for sale (€190-255), since I bought two tickets (one € 255 supporter for myself and € 190 for partner) but also got a speaker ticket (https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...), since speaker announcement was after the first round of sales via vouchers.
So let me know if someone is interested in this ticket, see my GitHub for mail address. I know other speakers where even unaware of this (so I might know another ticket for sale).
Tickets are sold (to the first email that arrived at 10:25 CEST, and the second ticket of a friend who's also a speaker to the second mailer at 11:11 CEST).
The easy way to get tickets is via local hackspaces that are somewhat (not necessarily formally) associated to the CCC. There is a ticket contingent for people active in and around the wider chaos community that gets distributed via the hackspaces. They all handle things slightly differently, but the way to get tickets is usually to show up at a hackspace once in a while (or knowing someone who is active there) and getting tickets from there in the presale phase.
The other guaranteed way for tickets is to volunteer enough as an angel at the Congress the year before to get an angel voucher. But you obviously need a ticket for a Congress in the first place do to that.
Since 22C3 I really enjoyed watching online and chatting with a small irc community about it. I had this notion that if I ever lived in Europe I’d go myself. Well for the last three years it seems I haven’t gone - the ticket situation was a shock at first but makes sense. The number of unrecorded talks does feel like it’s gone up though which has been regrettable.
If you still have old friends from those times, ping them and ask if they have any tickets for friends. Most times I've gone, it's been via local/social associations and people I've known from those, only managed to buy a ticket once, but it's short of impossible normally.
Going to CCC changed my life last year and really opened up my eyes. So sad I'm not able to attend this year, but hoping I am able to return soon. Anyone who understands why technology cannot be viewed in a vacuum without considering the humans who use it will fit in immediately. Do yourself a favor and go.
Some talks which sound really brilliant. I love [0] exploiting a memory leak for years before it's fixed. Also [1] I'm really curious about the custom crypto used in Chinese apps. Oh and curious about the found [2] GPG vulnerabilities. I think some of the politics ones are actually also very interesting. Looking forward to the streams.
Personally I'm most excited about "Don’t look up: There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites" with Nadia Heninger & Annie Dai. Harald Welte's "ISDN + POTS Telephony at Congress and Camp" covers how they're doing telephone infrastructure at congress/conference itself, and will surely be interesting too:
> Just like at this very event (39C3), the last few years a small group of volunteers has delpoyed and operated legacy telephony networks for ISDN (digital) and POTS (analog) services at CCC-camp2023 and 38C3. Anyone on-site can obtain subscriber lines (POTS, ISDN BRI or PRI service) and use them for a variety of services, including telephony, fax machines, modem dial-up into BBSs as well as dial-up internet access and video telephony.
Some of the more "celebrityish" talks tend to be popular by reputation, but content is often reused a lot, e.g. "10 years of Dieselgate" kind of falls into that. Watched the original, and the followup, and I think also the followup-followup, eventually it's worth checking out new topics instead, even though the presenters could not be faulted in any way.
Yes. They record almost every talk. You’ll find the relive (unedited recording of the live stream) on https://media.ccc.de and some time later the edited recording also on media.ccc.de and also on YouTube.
There also also live translations to English (and some other languages) for talks in german.
It ends at 1am their time. The conference itself never stops there are people there around the clock. (I wish I could go!! I went to 28c3 in Berlin and 29c3 in Hamburg they were amazing)
Probably. In previous years there were streamdumps available immediately somewhere (though figuring out where took me usually a day or so) and a re-live version on media.ccc.de a bit later. (Usually hours, but from time to time a day or so.)
Hacking and politics was always deeply intertwined in Germany/Europe. Especially the CCC has always been at least as much a political organization as it is a hacker community.
Hey, at least you can reasonably argue that the political content has been headed downhill since the more aggressive days of the past. Do we see wikileaks or the likes anymore? Not really.
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
There has been plenty of direct action in recent years, but I can't really think of any on a global scale. Lots of smaller things on a German level, like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
Sure, but it is unarguably much more boring stuff than it was years ago. I attend almost every Congress with a variety of groups, and there's certainly been a culture shift over the years from lots of anarchists who had no qualms with breaking the law to much more corporate scaredy-cats.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
I'm not just referring to the talks, but the whole event. But we used to have groups like wikileaks heavily featured, they certainly weren't worried about too many eyeballs.
The user had more arguments than just "it's all politics". What level of scrutiny does his statement have to hold up to? Because as far as I am concerned this is not here to find scientific truths.
I don't know man. It's always the same debate: It's either "too much politics" or
"no change at all" whenever this issue comes up and the "nothing changed" crowd keeps on reminding everyone that C3 "was always like that". I'm not requesting a scientific study but if you're this convinced that nothing changed despite may old school attendees chiming in to confirm the opposite, perhaps it would be helpful to compare old and new schedules.
I find it strange you didn't latch on to the original comment, which has the exact same problem you complained about, but reacted to the response. The best action is to ignore threads and sub-threads you don't care about and leave others who do to their fun.
well, it has a lot to do with people growing up during cold war and german reunification.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
this wasn't the point ... the point is that the whole thing is getting more and more political and less technical and fun.
I was at the camp and some congresses in the past and they where always fun but nowadays it seems like it's like a political movement event for certain strands and ideologies and way less fun and interesting things (thou there are gems) and it seems that you have to think a certain way or at least accept certain positions even if it's not your position because otherwise you are silly or something else.
IMHO, CCC is completely defanged as a political institution. They went along with contact tracing because the local app was open source and somewhat secure and many of the regulars in local spaces people will cause lots of drama if you don't wear a mask in 2025.
Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals. If that's what you're looking for, great, I'm not judging, it just doesn't click with me. I used to visit hackerpaces during my travels but regardless of how open and kind I approach a new place, once they ask me to mask up or inquire for my pronouns things just don't end well, even if I'm really polite in explaining my position. That's not the tolerance and open mindedness I encountered around 2009 during my first C3.
Still, I wish everyone attending the best of times. There's so many people there that I imagine you'll be able to find the right folks if you're there and look around.
Not looking for a debate or inciting hate towards anyone here.
Culture changes. Hacker culture in Europe changed too, young people are moving up and taking positions in local organizations. You didn't change with it, and you're not open to accepting that change, so you are feeling out of place - that's simply how this works.
A lot of those people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else. They decided to embrace that, it comes at a cost - like you feeling weirded out and not showing up - but they're probably fine with that being your problem to figure out.
I've moved on, all good, change is perfectly fine. I just think they lost something that made CCC special. Got my own decentralized trusted circles now. I think I made it quite clear that I wish anyone still attending these events and spaces all the best regardless.
CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
I think it would be fair to say that the club as a whole has become more open about that, I think that's more owed to a lot of folks driving initiatives feeling like the walls are closing in on them though and I can't exactly fault them for that :)
I can fully relate ... back in the days there wasn't much (at least I don't remember) of "this kind" of ppl and everything was just hacking. However I can imagine what you mean.
At the end this growing craziness does not change any time soon so you are right ... "finding the folks that fit you" is maybe the best advice (and this hasn't to be the CCC).
Fortunately the interesting talks are often recorded so nobody has to attend who don't want in order to get the interesting stuff.
I really do appreciate your willingness to live and let live. Too many people from all perspectives are missing that ability when it comes to non-critical things, and forget that they can just… not hang out with the people they disagree with.
The other comments below you seem to be willingly ignoring that you did the mature/kind thing and just wished them well and moved on, whereas a less mature person would have caused a ruckus.
No problem. And FWIW, I’m what I’d consider a highly left-wing person. I only say that to give a sample that not all of us are like that. But I recognize that the loud ones get the attention.
I draw the line on live-and-let live only when the other person’s ideology poses a physical threat to me or my liberties, or those of other folks. But what you describe is how things ought to be - if you don’t feel like hanging around leftists, who the hell cares? I probably wouldn’t want to hang out in a highly conservative space, but I also don’t care if they hang out without me.
Yeah, it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space.
The fact that your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks that's been running those spaces for decades doesn't help either.
They didn't change. You however became something they always despised.
>it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space
On the other hand, there is a discongruency when people who are against control and surveillance start implementing control and surveillance because the particular purpose sanctified the means. Something that previously seemed non-negotiable, culturally fundamental even, was toppled.
> using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics
Why not use secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections in general?
Isn't it also clear who benefits from this decreased trust in politics, or the apathy in politics? It is always the same group: the far right authoritarians.
You just gave the best example of how these interactions usually play out. You know basically nothing about me and yet you assume to know exactly "what I've become" and that I deserve to be "despised" based on 2 statements that don't tell you anything about me because I never explained my positions in depth.
I spent more than a decade in and around 2-3 local hackerspaces and some of the best practices and infrastructure I introduced/built are still in place. You really know nothing about me to arrive at this conclusion, thereby proving my point that the culture has shifted - not me.
> Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals.
So what? You’re not being asked or expected to feel empathy - just show tolerance. Which is the easiest virtue to develop - just ignore behavior which doesn’t threaten you.
If someone is doing their own thing - wearing a MAGA hat, a rainbow t-shirt or carrying a fluffy toy - it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Why does it bother you unless they’re getting in your face?
What is "so what" supposed to mean that isn't covered already by the exact sentence afterwards? Why even come at me with "tolerance" when that's exactly what I haven't been receiving, as I laid out in the paragraph you selectivity quoted. What's your point exactly?
> Synonyms of bigot
> a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices
especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership
I merely shared a behaviorial observation of something I find odd. At no time did I react with prejudice or hate towards any particular group.
We might be the same age; I remember that defacing conservative websites was already a C3 thing about 20 years ago. Back then, it felt good to punch up against authoritarianism. Hackers hated Bush and his Patriot Act just as much as many hate Trump now. In Germany, the CDU is of course the perennial enemy.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction: East Germany was an "anti-fascist" totalitarian state as recently as 40 years ago.) Sadly, I think we have been slowly moving in this direction since Covid, where I was genuinely shocked that many of my "leftie" friends had turned into government drones (from my perspective), while they were deeply disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
The more aware they become of how unpopular some of their politics are, the less they believe in democracy as a concept, while I'm still jealous of countries that have proper referendums and freedom of speech. Hate Speech laws are accelerating this divide.
Anyway, I think that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed in decades. The CCC is still doing a lot of great work, but I do feel it drifting away from me because it is not so much about punching up than about punching right.
Not really, look at the schedule for 34c3. Much more interesting things and less politics.
And it also has felt more and more forced in the last couple years
How is it computer adjacent, keep in mind, it's a talk about how the media communicates things...
Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There are also other unrelated things which do not have a lot to do with computers, like "all creatures welcome".
> Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There is one important difference: surveillance is a deeply computer-/hacking-related topics while migration isn't.
So I would say a talk about surveillance (as long as it is relevant for hacking topics) typically has its place while it is much harder to find a reason why a talk about migration has relevance for a hacking conference.
Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight), so I can understand why the organisers decided to include this talk in the schedule: they considered it to be a good idea that the audience should also get a "non-computer perspective" on a topic that is highly relevant to hackers.
But I agree that for the decision to include or not include this specific talk, the organisers have to apply an exceptionally good judgement: if they make a "wrong" decision here, people will immediately (rightfully) complain that the talks are too political (or if they "wronged" by non-inclusion of this talk, the other side will complain that important topics are omitted).
Not sure the number is up from last year (I think there are fewer O/T talks this year even) but there are many talks that have nothing to do with hacking even if some of them might pigue my interest, such as the following:
Then there are topics merely having "computer" in them like everything in this day and age but aren't about hacking, and it's disappointing because I know for a fact other talks had to make room for these:
But yeah to me it seems these "antifaschistisch orgs" acting like thugs and then thinking they're immune to prosecution because they're antifaschistisch (according to themselves) of course
Okay, that's it. i think i will do some data analysis and do a talk at some place next year about the outcome of the analysis which talks are there and if there's really a trend. :D
Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the many talks from the „politics“ category. You have the wrong mindset.
Originally, I wanted to enjoy the cringe fest of privacy related grandstanding while the „community“ was absolutely silent during the dystopian Covid overreach.
But then I spotted, between the many „Nazis everywhere“ vibed talks, one spectacular Antifa affiliated talk about the „Budapest-Complex“.
> Der Vorwurf der … steht in keinem Verhältnis zu den verhandelten Vorkommnissen
Roughly translated: The claim of … is completely disproportionate relative to the discussed events.
„Discussed events“ as in? That some random pedestrian almost got killed because someone decided he‘s a neonazi? Hammers are nowhere to be mentioned. I mean, my knowledge of this is a little bit rusty, but somehow I get the feeling it’s going to be an inspiring leadership class in bending the meanings of words.
By the way, the Antifa-Ost which this talks seem to be concerned with is afaik exactly one of those groups mentioned in the recent US admin‘s update to the list of terrorist groups.
I'll never get people who say that there is too much politics at a god damn hacker conference like the CCC, considering The Chaos Computer Club was founded in 1981 specifically to be a political watchdog.
more so especially since the very act of "hacking" is a political statement because it involves redistributing power over information.
Code is law, remember?
That would be like complaining about "too much law" at a constitutional convention.
It seems that no modern comment section is complete without the complaint "too much politics", then followed by "but everything is political". Some talks do not even try to draw a line from politics to computers, and I think that is what people feel unhappy about.
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
The first two talks are in the "Ethics, Society & Politics" category, and the third in the "Art & Beauty" category. Why would they need to be about computing?
It's a big organisation, and politics is wrapped up in what they do, along with the post-WWII Antifaschism culture in Germany.
Even if it weren't the case, I don't get why attack them for helping stand up for democracy, something in dire need of advocacy these days
Unrelated to this conference I've often heard the "everything is political" argument, and mostly with a passive-aggressive "or else.." (you're up for a political fight) undertone. I once enquired on very mundane things in life, and yes "those too are political act". Well, if everything is bleakly political in that sense, we may make it universal, just call it Newspeak.
Especially as congress has, for as long as I remember, been about the superset of infosec, society, art, etc. IMHO it's more along the lines of complaining about any ride that isn't a roller coaster at a theme park--no one is forcing you to go on any rides, other people clearly enjoy them, they're not taking anything away from your roller coaster, and having them increases the diversity of the crowd in an ultimately positive-for-everyone way.
Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
Congress has become a radical leftist politics playground. That is the real problem.
> Some people just like to complain that they have to take a shower and can't harass women like they used to like they could when congress was at the BCC and that kind of nonsense didn't immediately get you thrown out like today.
You could never do that. A few years ago, some activists tried to make a fuzz with stuff like creeper cards, intervention teams and codes of conduct. But those were never needed in the first place, almost nothing ever happened at CCC that would have warranted those things. But "those white male hackers are certainly sexist raping pigs" is a firmly entrenched stereotype in certain circles.
The one thing you cannot ever do is go to CCC and express any idea that isn't very far left. That is a very certain way to get thrown out. Your talk won't ever be on the Fahrplan if the topic isn't "hooray, more refugees", "hooray, more EU dictatorship" or "hooray, down with everything right of Rosa Luxemburg".
The problem has been the continuous purposeful rightward shift of the overton window as part of a wider strategy by the far right.
You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left". You see the far-right decrying our democratically elected government as "dictatorship", a classic Putinist propaganda move.
Don't let the right wing extremists set the narrative! Don't listen to their complaints about things being too "political" or "far left". It's all just a tactic in their march towards fascism.
> You see it in action here, where the politics of the CCC, despite not having changed since their founding are suddenly decried as "very far left".
No, things have changed in CCC as well. Back in the day, free speech (in the US definition) and a firm opposition to any censorship were consensus on CCC. Nowadays, censorship is totally OK if it targets the right. And any kind of remotely right-wing opinion is declared "not free speech, not an opinion, thus not protected". This is also evidenced by quite a few talks on the topic, and cooperation with far-left activist groups like "Zentrum fuer politische Schönheit" sabotaging right-wing speech on several occasions.
You could use exactly the same rhetoric to make the opposite argument.
Sure, but you would be denying reality. Look at the political reality in Europe and the US.
How many countries are led by the far right? What about the far left?
There's no point arguing with delusional far-left regime bootlickers.
If San Francisco is what you get when you embrace the left, and opposition to that is fascism, I think a lot of us have just decided we must be fascists.
Never been here, huh?
You mean the epitome, the nerve center, the capital and apex of 21st century entrepreneurial capitalism? That left-wing bastion? Ridiculous.
San Francisco is a right-wing, pro-capitalist place.
The left would be public ownership of the means of production.
Maybe it's that people disagree with the politics, but also don't see a room for discussion.
In my experience, you are right - that is what most complaints of "too political" really mean.
I get your arguments. In my opinion the core of the problem is that a lot of the "political" taks are about political topics that are outside the core of the kind of politics (?) that are related to hacking. These talks are what people are complaining about as "too much politics".
That's fine but technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, you can't talk about (for example) facial recognition technology without mentioning the social groups it affects the most or is used against. Same for plenty of others topics directly or indirectly related to hacking and computers.
If you look at the history of the CCC, they also don't see a line between technical freedom and social freedom, because you can't have a free internet in an unfree society.
The 'outside' topics you mention are often just the hackers' way of applying their methodology to the world beyond the screen. Society is a larger system with its own bugs and exploits that inevitably affect the computers you use and the code that run them, and hackers like to apply their methodology to analyze that to understand the consequences.
Moreover, if you actually want meritocracy, you have to address the social barriers that keep people out of the room, and you can't do that without addressing the outside world.
Take this as example: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
For many hackers, it is just a game, a technical puzzle. The interesting part is overcoming the obstacles, the information or bounty money they get in the end is just the reward, its nature doesn't matter much. Even when there is no reward, people do it because it is fun.
Like with lockpicking, many pickers work with the cylinder in a vise, and the lock is just a mechanical puzzle. That the lock can be attached to something one would want to secure is just a distant thought.
Politics is a game too. With far less fun rules, unfortunately.
Having any hacker conference in the USA is a political choice, because it deters any non-US citizen from entry. The bars to enter the USA are high, including the coercion to hand over your accounts from social media.
The US is a large, well connected country with a lot of hackers, for all definitions of "hacker", it is even the country that created the term.
And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
Anyways, it is the CCC, and they are doing it in Germany, of course, because they are German.
> And it is not that inaccessible to non-US citizens. Sure, the current administration is not very welcoming, but it is easier than, say, Russia (where a lot of hackers also live) if you want to attract an international audience.
I would say that with the current US administration, it is similar hard to get to the USA as to Russia.
The difference rather is that in Europe's hacker scene there exist quite some people who, if they stated their opinions openly, would get in much worse trouble if they stated their opinion in Russia than in the USA (because in the USA these opinions are currently "more acceptable"). On the other hand, for Russian hackers likely the reverse holds: I can easily imagine that quite a lot of Russian hackers, if they stated their opinions in the USA, would attract quite a lot of trouble.
Just to be clear: I consider it to be quite plausible that in 5 years, the situation might be similarly bad in the USA as it is today in Russia.
I’m not sure you think otherwise, and are just calling on the US as an example since the HN crowd is heavily US skewed, but just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a German event.
The vagueness and sheer breadth of the word "politics" is doing the heavy lifting in your argument there.
The shape of the politics changed, though. From civil rights, questioning authority and cypherpunk, which inherently has a libertarian bent, there's now much more identity politics and social justice / grievance culture with only tenuous connections to tech.
For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI. It's a very conservative degrowth movement nowadays, all in all.
> For a hacker conference, they also are pretty Luddite against new technologies like AI.
Hacking was always against centralization and central control (and towards decentralization) - which is why any lecture celebrating the bigtech AI companies would strongly be against the whole culture.
While for various reasons AI is a controversial topic, I would say that if someone gave a great talk about how to decentrally train some AI model efficiently as some volunteer computing project, this would be perfectly fitting for the C3.
Addendum: There is an AI talk (as pointed out by wunderwuzzi23 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390959): https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/agentic...
I am happy they are careful with new technologies, especially one like AI, and also set the right impulses. Enough non-political reasons to have that stance, especially taking in societal implications and how technology affects everyone and not just stakeholders and techbros. In a time when tech in the US is just accelerating by the top-down agenda of figures like Andreesen, Thiel & Co., that is very much needed imo.
https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3
All talks will be live streamed, and right after the talk is done you have a rough cut available instantly under "re-live" you can watch until the final recording is available; https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/relive
The final recording will appear under a day or two after the talk is held: https://media.ccc.de/c/39c3
EDIT: A different variant of the schedule with better filtering is available here: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/en/schedule
I should note that some talks will not be recorded, and only available at the congress. These are clearly marked on the congress hub website, but not easily available on the fahrplan view.
I made https://fahrplan.cc where you can filter the [not] recorded sessions, categories, and titles.
I've mostly made it for myself to skip the recorded sessions when on-site and to see what's coming up at the current time of day. It therefore tries to include all the self organized sessions, workshops, meetups, music programs, etc. I've been running it for a few years and people use it for all kinds of use cases, including sitting at home and watching the streams.
I like your tool, but the schedule in the "hub" can now also filter for "recorded":
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/de/schedule?mode=lis...
Ah, the filterable schedule would be even better if you could filter on multiple categories at once. I just want security/hardware/science, and then I would have to constantly switch around, which is worse than looking at the full schedule with the other categories included.
You can have multiple tabs open.
Excited! It's such a great event.
I'm currently on a plane towards Hamburg and will be speaking on Day 2.
"Agentic ProbLLMs - Exploiting AI Computer-Use and Coding Agents"
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/agentic...
Really enjoyed your talk two years ago :)
Me and some friends used to attend the CCC some 15-20 years ago. Back then, we just showed up at the entrance on the first day and bought our tickets there.
This year we were toying with the idea of going for a revival. But man, did we underestimate how much this event has grown...
Tickets in the second presale round were gone within 1-2 seconds. We didn't stand a chance. I feel like we failed the entry exam tbh.
Anyways, to everybody who did score a ticket: have phun, and happy hacking!
I've one ticket for sale (€190-255), since I bought two tickets (one € 255 supporter for myself and € 190 for partner) but also got a speaker ticket (https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...), since speaker announcement was after the first round of sales via vouchers.
So let me know if someone is interested in this ticket, see my GitHub for mail address. I know other speakers where even unaware of this (so I might know another ticket for sale).
Tickets are sold (to the first email that arrived at 10:25 CEST, and the second ticket of a friend who's also a speaker to the second mailer at 11:11 CEST).
The easy way to get tickets is via local hackspaces that are somewhat (not necessarily formally) associated to the CCC. There is a ticket contingent for people active in and around the wider chaos community that gets distributed via the hackspaces. They all handle things slightly differently, but the way to get tickets is usually to show up at a hackspace once in a while (or knowing someone who is active there) and getting tickets from there in the presale phase.
The other guaranteed way for tickets is to volunteer enough as an angel at the Congress the year before to get an angel voucher. But you obviously need a ticket for a Congress in the first place do to that.
It is no longer the same. It went from somewhat exclusive dining experience to full blown nuclear junk food chain vibe.
I've stopped attending it about 10 years ago. I rather prefer to watch some few interesting topics online, and skip all the wanna-be political junk.
Since 22C3 I really enjoyed watching online and chatting with a small irc community about it. I had this notion that if I ever lived in Europe I’d go myself. Well for the last three years it seems I haven’t gone - the ticket situation was a shock at first but makes sense. The number of unrecorded talks does feel like it’s gone up though which has been regrettable.
If you still have old friends from those times, ping them and ask if they have any tickets for friends. Most times I've gone, it's been via local/social associations and people I've known from those, only managed to buy a ticket once, but it's short of impossible normally.
Going to CCC changed my life last year and really opened up my eyes. So sad I'm not able to attend this year, but hoping I am able to return soon. Anyone who understands why technology cannot be viewed in a vacuum without considering the humans who use it will fit in immediately. Do yourself a favor and go.
If you can't make it to Congress go to one of the hacker camps in the summer.
Some talks which sound really brilliant. I love [0] exploiting a memory leak for years before it's fixed. Also [1] I'm really curious about the custom crypto used in Chinese apps. Oh and curious about the found [2] GPG vulnerabilities. I think some of the politics ones are actually also very interesting. Looking forward to the streams.
[0] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... [1] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... [2] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
The first one is indeed fascinating...almost deserving of its HN post :-)
It has been submitted six times in the last 10 months, with a grand total of 1 comment...I though this site had Hacker in the title...
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgfw.report%2Fpublica...
First time without fefe :-(
Is there actually anything known to his wellbeing?
https://mastodon.social/@oec@infosec.exchange/11474011506716... https://mastodon.social/@oec@infosec.exchange/11483544044249...
time to use chaospost to send him a get-well card! :-)
Honestly, I'm surprised he's still alive.
Hope he gets well soon.
I see a lot of great talks whose topic is worth attending.
Are there any talks whose speakers are known for their expertise that one should pay attention to?
Personally I'm most excited about "Don’t look up: There are sensitive internal links in the clear on GEO satellites" with Nadia Heninger & Annie Dai. Harald Welte's "ISDN + POTS Telephony at Congress and Camp" covers how they're doing telephone infrastructure at congress/conference itself, and will surely be interesting too:
> Just like at this very event (39C3), the last few years a small group of volunteers has delpoyed and operated legacy telephony networks for ISDN (digital) and POTS (analog) services at CCC-camp2023 and 38C3. Anyone on-site can obtain subscriber lines (POTS, ISDN BRI or PRI service) and use them for a variety of services, including telephony, fax machines, modem dial-up into BBSs as well as dial-up internet access and video telephony.
I've seen this satellite thing before - it's already been published as a paper.
https://satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu/docs/dontlookup_ccs25_fullpap...
Two big names that jump out, the CEO of Signal Meredith Whittaker and Cory Doctorow. They both frequently give thought provoking talks.
Some of the more "celebrityish" talks tend to be popular by reputation, but content is often reused a lot, e.g. "10 years of Dieselgate" kind of falls into that. Watched the original, and the followup, and I think also the followup-followup, eventually it's worth checking out new topics instead, even though the presenters could not be faulted in any way.
All of these looked good to me this year: https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/#e72b9560a7c729d1b38c93ef18a5...
stacksmashing is a good bet for sure
I made a matrix room for the HNers being there and to prevent polluting this thread.
https://matrix.to/#/%23hn-at-39c3%3Arustch.at
hope to see fefe back on the speaker list at some point in the future <3
Anyone got any news on his recovery? I was glad to see a new post on his blog this month.
Holy hell, I had missed that post
> Holy hell, I had missed that post
Here it is:
> http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=97cd29cd
> http://blog.fefe.de/?mon=202512
(note that https currently does not work).
that post made me worry more tbh :(
I damn love CCC, so excited to be there this year. God bless!
See you there!
Lots of ai this year, but I didn't happen to see a console hacking segment this year.
Are there any streams working? https://streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3 says 'has not started yet'.
That's because it hasn't. You wrote this on Dec 26, the event starts on Dec 27, 9:30 UTC.
it's because the congress has literally not started yet.
opening is tomorrow 10h30 CET
Should I assume the times on this site are UTC+1?
If you see the Opening Ceremony starting at 10:30, then yes.
Noted, thanks! Will there be recordings? I'd love to watch but it starts at 4 AM for me.
Edit: the youtube playlist for 38c3 seems pretty comprehensive. Thanks to whoever is doing that, it must be a pain.
Yes. They record almost every talk. You’ll find the relive (unedited recording of the live stream) on https://media.ccc.de and some time later the edited recording also on media.ccc.de and also on YouTube. There also also live translations to English (and some other languages) for talks in german.
> but it starts at 4 AM for me.
It ends at 1am their time. The conference itself never stops there are people there around the clock. (I wish I could go!! I went to 28c3 in Berlin and 29c3 in Hamburg they were amazing)
Probably. In previous years there were streamdumps available immediately somewhere (though figuring out where took me usually a day or so) and a re-live version on media.ccc.de a bit later. (Usually hours, but from time to time a day or so.)
A lot if not most of the talks will be recorded, yes.
All talks will be recorder unless the speaker(s) don’t want it to.
CET, yes
As always, lots of cool content.
From year to year more politics and less interesting stuff.
Hacking and politics was always deeply intertwined in Germany/Europe. Especially the CCC has always been at least as much a political organization as it is a hacker community.
Hey, at least you can reasonably argue that the political content has been headed downhill since the more aggressive days of the past. Do we see wikileaks or the likes anymore? Not really.
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
There has been plenty of direct action in recent years, but I can't really think of any on a global scale. Lots of smaller things on a German level, like journalists reporting about infiltrating a Great Replacement conference hosted by the second biggest political party here.
Sure, but it is unarguably much more boring stuff than it was years ago. I attend almost every Congress with a variety of groups, and there's certainly been a culture shift over the years from lots of anarchists who had no qualms with breaking the law to much more corporate scaredy-cats.
Congress seems to keep growing so perhaps this is just serving a broader audience. But knowing a lot of long-time attendees, I'm certainly not alone in thinking Congress is starting to be less interesting than it used to be. I'm certainly not trying to say the event sucks though, there's still a plenty of interesting stuff happening.
Love that you complain about not enough people breaking the law and somewhere below complains about to many people breaking the law
Let's be real, the videos get far to much eyes to break the law. There are smaller talks and groups where it looks different.
I'm not just referring to the talks, but the whole event. But we used to have groups like wikileaks heavily featured, they certainly weren't worried about too many eyeballs.
again this myth. look at past fahrplans, there was always quite some political stuff. you just agreed with it and therefore it was not inconvenient.
In terms of the extent, no.
So you did a comparative analysis of previous events and there's no indication that there's more politics?
The user had more arguments than just "it's all politics". What level of scrutiny does his statement have to hold up to? Because as far as I am concerned this is not here to find scientific truths.
I don't know man. It's always the same debate: It's either "too much politics" or "no change at all" whenever this issue comes up and the "nothing changed" crowd keeps on reminding everyone that C3 "was always like that". I'm not requesting a scientific study but if you're this convinced that nothing changed despite may old school attendees chiming in to confirm the opposite, perhaps it would be helpful to compare old and new schedules.
I find it strange you didn't latch on to the original comment, which has the exact same problem you complained about, but reacted to the response. The best action is to ignore threads and sub-threads you don't care about and leave others who do to their fun.
okay thanks for explaining how to internet comment to me.
CCC was always political (very left to far left). Never understood why hacking has to be political in the first place.
well, it has a lot to do with people growing up during cold war and german reunification.
There were many stories where people lost faith in politics (e.g. after Chernobyl), so people gathered together to do stuff on their own. I think being "social" (to all people), decentralized and mistrusting authorities is just a left thing. so that's just a natural thing imho
Interesting, the same came to my mind when reading the fahrplan.
read up on the history of the CCC, it might blow your mind
People come for the technical talks and leave for for the politics.
Every year you got new people who find out the hard way that the CCC is a place for ardent activism, not for critical thinking.
The people who stay do it to meet their friends there.
Not true, better line up than ted AI or Next
Hard to ignore in these times...
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> Shit for Future: turning human shit into a climate solution
LOL, never change CCC, never change...
I used to look up to C3 but honestly not anymore
Too much naive activism and I'm not sure what importing more of the 3rd world has to do with C3 honestly
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I see this comment every year, and I am confused every time.
There was no point in time where ccc or c3 was not an political event/organisation.
this wasn't the point ... the point is that the whole thing is getting more and more political and less technical and fun. I was at the camp and some congresses in the past and they where always fun but nowadays it seems like it's like a political movement event for certain strands and ideologies and way less fun and interesting things (thou there are gems) and it seems that you have to think a certain way or at least accept certain positions even if it's not your position because otherwise you are silly or something else.
IMHO, CCC is completely defanged as a political institution. They went along with contact tracing because the local app was open source and somewhat secure and many of the regulars in local spaces people will cause lots of drama if you don't wear a mask in 2025.
Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals. If that's what you're looking for, great, I'm not judging, it just doesn't click with me. I used to visit hackerpaces during my travels but regardless of how open and kind I approach a new place, once they ask me to mask up or inquire for my pronouns things just don't end well, even if I'm really polite in explaining my position. That's not the tolerance and open mindedness I encountered around 2009 during my first C3.
Still, I wish everyone attending the best of times. There's so many people there that I imagine you'll be able to find the right folks if you're there and look around.
Not looking for a debate or inciting hate towards anyone here.
Culture changes. Hacker culture in Europe changed too, young people are moving up and taking positions in local organizations. You didn't change with it, and you're not open to accepting that change, so you are feeling out of place - that's simply how this works.
A lot of those people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else. They decided to embrace that, it comes at a cost - like you feeling weirded out and not showing up - but they're probably fine with that being your problem to figure out.
I've moved on, all good, change is perfectly fine. I just think they lost something that made CCC special. Got my own decentralized trusted circles now. I think I made it quite clear that I wish anyone still attending these events and spaces all the best regardless.
Culture changes, that’s true. However, “change” doesn’t normalize the far left/green initiatives.
CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
I think it would be fair to say that the club as a whole has become more open about that, I think that's more owed to a lot of folks driving initiatives feeling like the walls are closing in on them though and I can't exactly fault them for that :)
> CCC always has been explicit far left/green, looking at its history, as other people in here have mentioned.
Yes, but what has shifted is "the left", to a point were it has basically been taken over for very specific agendas.
I can fully relate ... back in the days there wasn't much (at least I don't remember) of "this kind" of ppl and everything was just hacking. However I can imagine what you mean. At the end this growing craziness does not change any time soon so you are right ... "finding the folks that fit you" is maybe the best advice (and this hasn't to be the CCC). Fortunately the interesting talks are often recorded so nobody has to attend who don't want in order to get the interesting stuff.
I really do appreciate your willingness to live and let live. Too many people from all perspectives are missing that ability when it comes to non-critical things, and forget that they can just… not hang out with the people they disagree with.
The other comments below you seem to be willingly ignoring that you did the mature/kind thing and just wished them well and moved on, whereas a less mature person would have caused a ruckus.
Appreciate the kind response. At least someone read the entire comment before responding. :)
No problem. And FWIW, I’m what I’d consider a highly left-wing person. I only say that to give a sample that not all of us are like that. But I recognize that the loud ones get the attention.
I draw the line on live-and-let live only when the other person’s ideology poses a physical threat to me or my liberties, or those of other folks. But what you describe is how things ought to be - if you don’t feel like hanging around leftists, who the hell cares? I probably wouldn’t want to hang out in a highly conservative space, but I also don’t care if they hang out without me.
Merry Christmas!
Yeah, it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space.
The fact that your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks that's been running those spaces for decades doesn't help either.
They didn't change. You however became something they always despised.
>it's really not wierd that people thinking that using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics would also strongly support using a firewall to defend themselves from disease in the physical space
On the other hand, there is a discongruency when people who are against control and surveillance start implementing control and surveillance because the particular purpose sanctified the means. Something that previously seemed non-negotiable, culturally fundamental even, was toppled.
> using secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections on their electronics
Why not use secure technologies, firewalls and privacy to defend against infections in general?
Isn't it also clear who benefits from this decreased trust in politics, or the apathy in politics? It is always the same group: the far right authoritarians.
That have to be the tolerance they're everywhere talking about
You're most likely mixing up different political communities :D
You just gave the best example of how these interactions usually play out. You know basically nothing about me and yet you assume to know exactly "what I've become" and that I deserve to be "despised" based on 2 statements that don't tell you anything about me because I never explained my positions in depth.
I spent more than a decade in and around 2-3 local hackerspaces and some of the best practices and infrastructure I introduced/built are still in place. You really know nothing about me to arrive at this conclusion, thereby proving my point that the culture has shifted - not me.
> your opinion usually comes together with other incompatible political opinions of folks
> You however became soemthing they alway despised.
Holy strawman
Really matches my experience. Sometime during covid they really moved off the rails
> Most local hackerspaces I visited are basically green and leftist queer safe spaces where adults run around with stuffed animals.
So what? You’re not being asked or expected to feel empathy - just show tolerance. Which is the easiest virtue to develop - just ignore behavior which doesn’t threaten you.
If someone is doing their own thing - wearing a MAGA hat, a rainbow t-shirt or carrying a fluffy toy - it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Why does it bother you unless they’re getting in your face?
What is "so what" supposed to mean that isn't covered already by the exact sentence afterwards? Why even come at me with "tolerance" when that's exactly what I haven't been receiving, as I laid out in the paragraph you selectivity quoted. What's your point exactly?
> where adults run around with stuffed animals.
Nice to see something as simple as this is enough to filter bigots away!
> Synonyms of bigot > a narrow-minded person who obstinately adheres to their own opinions and prejudices especially : one who strongly and unfairly dislikes or feels hatred toward others based on their group membership
I merely shared a behaviorial observation of something I find odd. At no time did I react with prejudice or hate towards any particular group.
Why so antagonistic?
I've been there like 2 decades ago and even then it was a deeply political event.
There never a time where German hacker clubs, which are the lifeblood of this event, weren't very political - and very explicitly left wing political.
Even if it was equally or less political than before, it could still be too political for someone that would be worth including.
We might be the same age; I remember that defacing conservative websites was already a C3 thing about 20 years ago. Back then, it felt good to punch up against authoritarianism. Hackers hated Bush and his Patriot Act just as much as many hate Trump now. In Germany, the CDU is of course the perennial enemy.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction: East Germany was an "anti-fascist" totalitarian state as recently as 40 years ago.) Sadly, I think we have been slowly moving in this direction since Covid, where I was genuinely shocked that many of my "leftie" friends had turned into government drones (from my perspective), while they were deeply disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
The more aware they become of how unpopular some of their politics are, the less they believe in democracy as a concept, while I'm still jealous of countries that have proper referendums and freedom of speech. Hate Speech laws are accelerating this divide.
Anyway, I think that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed in decades. The CCC is still doing a lot of great work, but I do feel it drifting away from me because it is not so much about punching up than about punching right.
>But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? (Not a contradiction:
That's the whole thing of the "political compass" both a left-to-right wing axis and a perpendicular authoritarian-libertarian axis:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2
You might align less with the points brought forward, but the amount of politics has not changed much in my perception.
The amount of politics may have stayed the same but the topics have definitely shifted
I mean, yes... Topics in politics shift
Or perhaps you changed over the years?
The comment is about how political it is, and that it's getting too much. For example this talk: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
Every year the needle gets moved more
Such talks have been part of ccc for decades?
I am getting more and more confused
Not really, look at the schedule for 34c3. Much more interesting things and less politics. And it also has felt more and more forced in the last couple years
The event that starts with "die Sprache der überwacher"
That's non political?
Its regardlessly still computer-adjacent, not like the talk linked from 39c3
Ok let me rephrase then if you didn’t understand my point: Its getting too filled with politics that don’t have anything to do with computers
How is it computer adjacent, keep in mind, it's a talk about how the media communicates things...
Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There are also other unrelated things which do not have a lot to do with computers, like "all creatures welcome".
> Surveillance was the political topic of 2020, so there was quite a few talks about that, migration is the political topic 2025, so there are a lot of talks about that
There is one important difference: surveillance is a deeply computer-/hacking-related topics while migration isn't.
So I would say a talk about surveillance (as long as it is relevant for hacking topics) typically has its place while it is much harder to find a reason why a talk about migration has relevance for a hacking conference.
The linked surveillance talk has nearly 0 references to computers and is all about media/reporting
> The linked surveillance talk has nearly 0 references to computers and is all about media/reporting
(link to the talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8969-die_sprache_der_uberwacher )
Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight), so I can understand why the organisers decided to include this talk in the schedule: they considered it to be a good idea that the audience should also get a "non-computer perspective" on a topic that is highly relevant to hackers.
But I agree that for the decision to include or not include this specific talk, the organisers have to apply an exceptionally good judgement: if they make a "wrong" decision here, people will immediately (rightfully) complain that the talks are too political (or if they "wronged" by non-inclusion of this talk, the other side will complain that important topics are omitted).
> Surveillance has relevance to core CCC/hacking topics (privacy is a central topic against which hackers fight)
Great, who exactly is making those rules for all hackers?
People have complained about this for atleast the last 15 years where I have been active, to political, not political enough.
Stop complaining, start creating.
> Great, who exactly is making those rules for all hackers?
For example the Hacker Ethic by Steven Levy is very well-accepted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hacker_ethic&oldi...
> Stop complaining, start creating.
Who says that I don't do?
Can you point to some?
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... (already mentioned)
and from last year:
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/K...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/S...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/W...
In comparison, the only talk linked above was "die Sprache der überwacher", a talk about actual surveillance.
Not sure the number is up from last year (I think there are fewer O/T talks this year even) but there are many talks that have nothing to do with hacking even if some of them might pigue my interest, such as the following:
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
Then there are topics merely having "computer" in them like everything in this day and age but aren't about hacking, and it's disappointing because I know for a fact other talks had to make room for these:
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
and there are a couple more.
Not everything in "Hacker News" is on-topic either I guess.
The talks by e-celebs also don't bring in anything novel, like at all.
Complex data analytics of political relevant topics have nothing to with hacking? With source code and data available to play with?
I would love to know what you would think would be more fitting talks?
Looking at the 34c3 Fahrplan, like a solid third of the talks are explicitly about politics
I don't get your point
I think you just became a righty and are only just now noticing that CCC folks always hated righties with passion.
Not supporting violence = "righty"?
wait, where did that come from? Your original comment was about politics, not the violence of certain groups. I think that shifts a goal post.
Using right dogwhistles == righty.
Genuinely, what do you mean
That example is a really good one I also stumbled upon. Feels like a Indymedia meeting.
I was trying to understand what this is about, and this seems to have more context https://digit.site36.net/2025/09/09/first-german-trial-on-th...
But yeah to me it seems these "antifaschistisch orgs" acting like thugs and then thinking they're immune to prosecution because they're antifaschistisch (according to themselves) of course
Okay, that's it. i think i will do some data analysis and do a talk at some place next year about the outcome of the analysis which talks are there and if there's really a trend. :D
Do it. I'm really interested.
Everything is political, always has been.
The "apolitical" is just an implicit endorsement of the status quo.
Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the many talks from the „politics“ category. You have the wrong mindset.
Originally, I wanted to enjoy the cringe fest of privacy related grandstanding while the „community“ was absolutely silent during the dystopian Covid overreach.
But then I spotted, between the many „Nazis everywhere“ vibed talks, one spectacular Antifa affiliated talk about the „Budapest-Complex“.
> Der Vorwurf der … steht in keinem Verhältnis zu den verhandelten Vorkommnissen
Roughly translated: The claim of … is completely disproportionate relative to the discussed events.
„Discussed events“ as in? That some random pedestrian almost got killed because someone decided he‘s a neonazi? Hammers are nowhere to be mentioned. I mean, my knowledge of this is a little bit rusty, but somehow I get the feeling it’s going to be an inspiring leadership class in bending the meanings of words.
By the way, the Antifa-Ost which this talks seem to be concerned with is afaik exactly one of those groups mentioned in the recent US admin‘s update to the list of terrorist groups.
Highly recommend this talk!
you mean too much politics you disagree with
also everything is political, whether you like it or not
no, too many politics that have nothing to do with computers
computers are political
Not what im talking about
that's because you have a very narrow definition of what political means
True