HOPE — Hackers On Planet Earth

[HOPE XV] Welcome to Hackers On Planet Earth!

www.hope.net

The Hackers On Planet Earth conference is a month away.

I attended the first two HOPE conferences, and had a good time except for the horrible 1990s air quality in Manhattan. Subsequent HOPE conferences always came during a lean year, and spending a weekend in New York City is not cheap.

I moved back East in 2018, and was going to submit a proposal for 2020, but COVID got in the way. Ironically, after avoiding it for the official duration of the pandemic, I popped positive just before the 2022 HOPE (I was scheduled to speak) and couldn't attend.

I won't be attending HOPE this time around simply due to another event that's happening that weekend which I had previously committed to. The conference site shows a whole bunch of interesting talks. If enough of the talks look interesting to you, you should consider attending if you can. 

Writing Woes

I got my first modem at Christmas, 1983. Found the H/P BBS scene shortly thereafter, and started posting up observations I made and tricks I discovered. 2600 Magazine came out in January of 1984, and soon I found myself on the Private Sector BBS. Sent in a couple submissions to 2600, and finally had a review of a scanner frequency directory published in 1987. Had my first ever manuscript published by Consumertronics in the same year, and I was up and running. That was 37 years ago. My closest competition (they really aren't) was still in diapers at the time, and in elementary school when my editor and I worked the Rodney King protest/riot in New York City, my first (and successful) attempt at private sector SIGINT. No, I didn't do any SIGINT in the military. That's a good thing because then I would be restricted from disclosure by way of a TS/SCI classification, and wouldn't have developed my own material from scratch (with a little help from the few unclassified sources I found over the years). 

Back in 2010 I called my friend Kurt Saxon, and asked him if he would write a few up to date things for The Dystonaut. He declined, simply saying "I've already written everything there needed to be said about survivalism." I disagreed with him, and continued writing regularly on my own (under multiple pseudonyms) with occasional outside help for the next 11 years.

( Collapse )

A Day In The Life

The roads were a hot mess today. Downed trees, downed power lines, flooding. There's still a dampness in the air that sucks all the energy and motivation out of you...  Rain finally eased off for a bit. Went out with Vivian to hit the grocery stores. We needed a few things. Stopped at the local Dollar Tree. Can't help to think about Dave Wildflower when I visit a Dollar Tree, Harbor Freight, or an Ocean State Job Lot. Those were his favorite places for picking up stuff to hack around with. I'm pretty well stocked at the moment, but still couldn't help myself, and picked up a box of kitchen matches and 4-hour emergency candles for the princely sum of $2.50.

Wildflower's Doomsday Disks

So I'm doing a periodic OSINT run, and find this obscure, probably unmaintained, prepper forumn where someone is asking about Wildflower's Doomsday Disks that he used to pass out at various prepper meetings in New England.  You see, I mentioned them off-handedly in a past writing, but also mentioned how much of a PITA they were to get if you didn't live in New England, or Wyoming.

Anyway.

https://cybertekzine.com/2020/03/2…

Once you hack, you can't go back.

Started learning a new language today. Just sat down with that C book I found at Goodwill and my laptop, logged into a shell, and used Nano to enter in a quick "Hello, World!" program. Ran gcc and unsurprisingly it compiled correctly the first time. Tomorrow I'll probably play around with ddd a bit. This is what happens when you watch Tron, and manage to get back to the place where All Things are possible.

Wildflower's Last Notes, Goodwill Obtainium, and Random Musings

Spent the weekend among ghosts of years past cleaning the lab, and came across Wildflower's Notebook that he used when working here. It was one of those inexpensive sketchbooks you buy at Ocean State Job Lot. The basement damp had started getting it, but I removed and scanned the pages he had written in. He only managed to use 15 pages before his health had gotten to the point where he couldn't make it up any more. A lot of it was about our junk hacking experiences. Maybe one of these days I'll upload a PDF, but just not yet.

I found a Goodwill that's on the work commute route, and happens to be in a fairly affluent community. So far managed in the past couple months managed to get some books and a Linksys WRT54GS. The Linksys was the most expensive item at the princely sum of $5. We'll see what else shows up there.

( Collapse )