Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

forum.defcon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 408 posts

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#291

Post by tptacek »

wkat4242 wrote: post #234
tptacek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black Hat is the largest North American venue for vulnerability research. It's one of the closest things in the industry to a serious, peer reviewed conference, at least at this scale. It's certainly not the social scene Defcon is (indeed, it replaces that social scene with an enterprise sales hookup scene), but it's definitely not a "totally boring business conference". Black Hat talks are generally much better than…

> It's certainly not the social scene Defcon is (indeed, it replaces that social scene with an enterprise sales hookup scene), but it's definitely not a "totally boring business conference". It's the enterprise sales hookup thing that attracts most visitors though. The people from our company that go there go mainly for that. They're all VPs and other suits that have no interest in specific vulnerabilities. They just…

If you're not a practitioner and you're looking for a social scene, you want Defcon, not Black Hat. But if you are a practitioner, the lobby conference at Black Hat is better than the Defcon scene. The talks are much better at Black Hat, but the guts of the important ones are public immediately and all of them are published eventually. Nobody should have FOMO about Black Hat, but to dismiss it as a commercial event (like RSA is) is to misunderstand it.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#292

Post by mp05 »

prmoustache wrote: post #138
killjoywashere wrote: post #105

You know, why the fuck is DEFCON in August, in Vegas? Like, you know a nice place to visit in August? Kodiak, Alaska. Portsmouth, Maine. Sydney. List of places I would never want to visit in August? Vegas. Houston. Vegas. New Orleans. Vegas. Mumbai? Maybe. Baghdad? Definitely not. Also, Vegas. My friends in Christ, why, does anyone, think Vegas is a good idea in August?

Why Vegas in the first place really. This city should not even exist.

Humans shouldn't be flying 600mph at 30,000 feet yet here we are.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#293

Post by aaravchen »

kqr2 wrote: post #3
Spodera wrote: post #2

Forum servers are being overloaded, from DEF CON's homepage: After a great 25 year relationship Caesars abruptly terminated their contract with DEF CON, leaving us with no venue for DC 32, and just about seven months to Con! We don’t know why Caesars canceled us, they won’t say beyond it being a strategy change and it is not related to anything that DEF CON or our community has done. This kind of no-notice cancellati…

What happens to all the previous Caesar hotel bookings? Have they negotiated with other hotels for a conference rate?

From the forums (paraphrased):

You can cancel up to 72 hours before the reservation. New room blocks are still being negotiated and will be posted at (link) as they become available. Please help us negotiate rates by booking rooms in our reserved blocks.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#294

Post by ghaff »

Sort of a weird story. I have never heard of a convention venue randomly canceling a conference with less than a year to go and I was very involved with events at one point. Obviously lots of atypical stuff happened during COVID but I've literally never seen something along these lines as it supposedly went down. Barring some anomalous event, conference venues don't suddenly decide some event just isn't a good deal for them.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#295

Post by jefftk »

huytersd wrote: post #163
killjoywashere wrote: post #105

You know, why the fuck is DEFCON in August, in Vegas? Like, you know a nice place to visit in August? Kodiak, Alaska. Portsmouth, Maine. Sydney. List of places I would never want to visit in August? Vegas. Houston. Vegas. New Orleans. Vegas. Mumbai? Maybe. Baghdad? Definitely not. Also, Vegas. My friends in Christ, why, does anyone, think Vegas is a good idea in August?

That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard. It’s nice and hot in Vegas in August. Alaska? At best it’s fucking 50F, that’s deeply uncomfortable. Walking around in that feels like I’m dying inside. Also, it’s a goddamn convention not a business meeting. People want to drink, watch some shows, gamble a little bit, walk around on the strip. Have a good time in general. What the fuck are you gonna do in Alaska?

> It’s nice and hot in Vegas in August. Alaska? At best it’s fucking 50F

The average high in Kodiak Alaska is 60F.

(But your parent was mostly being silly.)

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#297

Post by tptacek »

technick wrote: post #201
dash488 wrote: post #125

After the impact of the MGM hack this year Cesars probably revisited their insurance on getting compromised. After the auditors and lawyers looked at all the risks they came across DEF CON and said no because of the wording of how DEF CON is marketed. Their choice was probably to drop them or loose coverage. DEF CON is listed as a "hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada." where Blackhat is "Black Hat is…

Caesars was hacked by the same attackers that pwned Okta, and used the stolen keys and tokens to get into Caesars. It was nothing carried out by Defcon in any way. Anyone that takes this scene seriously knows Defcon is the place to be. Blackhat is a overpriced vendor circle jerk. The only way to make Blackhat relevant again is to kick out all of the vendors and if you can't do that, forbid them from collecting people…

People love saying this about Black Hat and Defcon, but I can't think of an important research result disclosed at Defcon 31 that wasn't a Black Hat talk. More good research gets turned down for Black Hat (which can only accept 3-5 talks per track) than appears at Defcon. Median Defcon talk quantity is approximately that of a good regional conference.

And that makes sense. Talks aren't really the point of Defcon, and they are (besides the lobby conf) the sole point of Black Hat. Black Hat is also a vendor circlejerk, but that fact confuses people who don't actually practice in the field.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#298

Post by jghn »

Eji1700 wrote: post #142
c0pium wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly a lot of DefCon attendees who think that this describes them. In my observation they are all very incorrect, usually humorously so fortunately.

Vegas makes a fuckload of money off everyone who thinks they’re smart but doesn’t understand statistics

Or people who understand the statistics but find it to be fun and do it anyways

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#299

Post by tptacek »

busterarm wrote: post #285
technick wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caesars was hacked by the same attackers that pwned Okta, and used the stolen keys and tokens to get into Caesars. It was nothing carried out by Defcon in any way. Anyone that takes this scene seriously knows Defcon is the place to be. Blackhat is a overpriced vendor circle jerk. The only way to make Blackhat relevant again is to kick out all of the vendors and if you can't do that, forbid them from collecting people…

BlackHat isn't a con you attend. You go there for the training sessions that are required to obtain/upkeep your certifications. The infosec industry sorta runs separately from the rest of tech in that it's entirely a status economy. Name recognition, certification and publication are the most important things to maintain stable employment. On the other hand none of the planned programming at DEFCON has any profession…

Trainings run days before Black Hat and are not part of the conference proper.

Re: DEF CON 32 Was Canceled. We Un-Canceled it

#300

Post by busterarm »

tptacek wrote: post #299
busterarm wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BlackHat isn't a con you attend. You go there for the training sessions that are required to obtain/upkeep your certifications. The infosec industry sorta runs separately from the rest of tech in that it's entirely a status economy. Name recognition, certification and publication are the most important things to maintain stable employment. On the other hand none of the planned programming at DEFCON has any profession…

Trainings run days before Black Hat and are not part of the conference proper.

Clarification not needed -- the trainings are the only sensible reason to be there.
Post reply on HN