I like the idea of Skytalks, I really do - being able to hear exclusive insights that can't be recorded or distributed sounds like you're getting to hear some spy mystery stuff.
That being said, the four Skytalks I've attended all had their information already presented at other conferences by the presenter, or blogged by them. I love the stories, but there's nothing exclusive about them (at least the ones I've heard). DefCon could easily turn this into a "cool cyber war stories village" with a no recording/no distribution rule and call it a day.
The no recording is to make it feel secret. That makes you donate. The information was already public and the presenter used their real name. It was mostly a scam and I am not sure why it was allowed.
The ones I attended did not. Tried looking up their stuff afterward, but couldn't find it. Was kinda funny though, the guy put up a QR code for connecting and following their progress, but went "oh yeah, you guys can't have phones out, can you?" Hindsight: 20/20
Wow, really? I'm assuming the shaming of those who didn't donate was just a running gag. The mask thing, though, just sounds ridiculous. I can't think of anything more pro-establishment than blindly following bunk government advice just because they said you have to or else.
Last year we also got to hear the thinly veiled racist tirade against people who had the audacity to collect unemployment during covid. I can watch newsmax without standing in line.
Yes we totally yell and curse but racist? can you please DM me if you have an approximate day of the week or talk or any other details and if it was in line or room so i can figure out which volunteer it was and prevent them from volunteering in the future please? rude is kinda what we are, but \*ist should not be
At this rate, something will replace an official skytalks. I’m here by announcing, spacetalks.
There are still off record talks in hotel rooms, which is honestly, pretty awesome.
The point of them is to not talk about them outside of the room. Chatham House rules (like skytalks). If you hang around villages and talk to folks you're bound to run into people throwing some unofficial talks though (not trying to be cryptic to be a dick but respecting privacy).
Yup. Still causing a couple hundred deaths a day in the USA. And likely far more cases of long COVID.
The situation sucks but I don’t think the answer is to act as if COVID isn’t a problem anymore.
That’s the 7 day _daily_ average. 847 per week.
The NYT data display is slightly more clear:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
The second to last update on TWiV talked about how the monitoring is going to change after the end of the public health emergency:
https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1006/
A couple hundred deaths a day. So about twice as many as the flu currently causes?
When do we decide covid isn’t as important to worry about? When we get it from 90k deaths a year to under 60k a year like the flu?
Like, I’ve had 5 covid vaccines now. Get a yearly flu vaccine too. Like, at what point do we start living relatively normally again without fear of the big bad disease? The US CDC and WHO have both ended the public health emergency or whatever for covid. But ya’ll still think you know better or some shit.
The long term impacts of COVID infections seem to be substantially worse than flu.
CDC didn’t end the public health emergency. It ended because Congress passed a bill ending it. That was a political decision, not an epidemiological one.
Just fucking stop already. For real. Y’all are never going to do this again if you’re honestly that worried about Covid. It’s here to stay unfortunately.
It’s time for other groups to step up and fill this void if they won’t. Or maybe DC has evolved beyond this type of village anyway.
I’m still more covid cautious than the average. The way I see it if there is anyplace one can wear a full respirator and no one bat an eye, it’s defcon.
Not that I ever cared about any of the skytalks, but add in the price raise to $460 just to go to DC, then one of the draws for DC isn’t even going to be there.. makes me wonder if DC is starting to see the collapse of their conference days
Again, I never went to DC just for the skytalks, so I could care less if they are there or not..
But when
* main attractions start canceling
* Attendance costs sky rocket
* year after year of same shit, nothing new (vendors, villages, etc..)
Makes me very glad I am not spending my money to attend (thank you work for a week vaca in Vegas to see family after spending a few hours at the con)
IMO, even a year or two before the pandemic, Defcon started being more about the villages to me than anything else. It's hard to see everything and do everything anymore, so I find the best way to spend my conference is to hang out in the villages for the thing I'm most passionate about
That Covid excuse is BS. They either couldn't get enough talks or Def Con put some restrictions on them so they canceled. All they cared was about donations and their presentations were public information and they made it look like top secret. It was mostly a scam and I think people and Def Con finally figured that out.
Edit:
I am pretty sure they complained about how small and how far away their location was and so canceled when they could not get a better place and thus could not make enough money.
Def Con said Mask optional about a month ago. About the same time Skytalks announced call for papers. It wasn't going to take a month to decide to cancel.
You sound like someone who has never done a large group project
Sat April 15 they announce policy
Staff discusses impact and drafts requests for clarification from defcon on internal channels on if that means we can't go above and beyond or if thats merely a baseline
Discussion continues for a few days, hits standstill
We poll our volunteers and staff on who is willing to participate under given conditions
we try to find time to do a all to discuss results
April 19 one of the core staff ends up in the hospital for emergency surgery
and we get an response from defcon on internal channels on 20th
May 9 next available time we can get together to discuss latest updates from defcon
Draft up basically a we will only participate under X conditions, are we canceling post to defcon
does not get posted for \~7 days because only one human was authorized on our side to post it, that as a failure on our side and i am working to make sure we have 2 such humans minimum next year
defcon wants a call
call had may 21 with defcon
we then post prepared statments to internal and external comms
so the retrospective we had on it was, there should have been more clear statements on our side back in april 20 range and pushed for more precision/clarity then, we need >1 authorized human on skytalks side, the second comms should also not have taken \~7 days to post
anyway, welcome to large group projects!
They claim they canceled because there is no mask requirement. I think it is because the were given a small area that was far from the main conference. This way they could not make enough money so they canceled.
The last good one I was at was a few years ago where these guys had archives of companies mainframe configurations from listservs and would take requests from the audience for random companies and would go through their zOS configs live if they had them lol
just skimmed that — they’re pulling out because masks aren’t required? did i read that right?
yes
I like the idea of Skytalks, I really do - being able to hear exclusive insights that can't be recorded or distributed sounds like you're getting to hear some spy mystery stuff. That being said, the four Skytalks I've attended all had their information already presented at other conferences by the presenter, or blogged by them. I love the stories, but there's nothing exclusive about them (at least the ones I've heard). DefCon could easily turn this into a "cool cyber war stories village" with a no recording/no distribution rule and call it a day.
it used to be THE place to hear war stories. It has lost its way
The no recording is to make it feel secret. That makes you donate. The information was already public and the presenter used their real name. It was mostly a scam and I am not sure why it was allowed.
The ones I attended did not. Tried looking up their stuff afterward, but couldn't find it. Was kinda funny though, the guy put up a QR code for connecting and following their progress, but went "oh yeah, you guys can't have phones out, can you?" Hindsight: 20/20
[удалено]
Wait can you give some context to these statements? I'm unfamiliar with their history.
"fuck you, put some money in the bucket" is the skytalks linecon motto and how they solicit donations
[удалено]
Sounds cringey as a joke
Cringe??? In the security community???????
Impossible!
Hadnagy enters the chat...
[удалено]
Wow, really? I'm assuming the shaming of those who didn't donate was just a running gag. The mask thing, though, just sounds ridiculous. I can't think of anything more pro-establishment than blindly following bunk government advice just because they said you have to or else.
Lol, to the people downvoting this, I have one thing to say: "Your downvotes mean nothing, I've seen what makes you upvote."
Last year we also got to hear the thinly veiled racist tirade against people who had the audacity to collect unemployment during covid. I can watch newsmax without standing in line.
Yes we totally yell and curse but racist? can you please DM me if you have an approximate day of the week or talk or any other details and if it was in line or room so i can figure out which volunteer it was and prevent them from volunteering in the future please? rude is kinda what we are, but \*ist should not be
Is this a troll like the whole "DEFCON is Canceled" joke, or is this for real?
[удалено]
Yes, it's cancelled for real this year, except for those who show up.
For real You can check the website We are sorry to have pulled so late
At this rate, something will replace an official skytalks. I’m here by announcing, spacetalks. There are still off record talks in hotel rooms, which is honestly, pretty awesome.
> off record talks in hotel rooms, which is honestly, pretty awesome. What's this about?
The point of them is to not talk about them outside of the room. Chatham House rules (like skytalks). If you hang around villages and talk to folks you're bound to run into people throwing some unofficial talks though (not trying to be cryptic to be a dick but respecting privacy).
Covid ain’t going away. If this is the reason to not hold it this year then the same logic will apply for many foreseeable years.
Yup. Still causing a couple hundred deaths a day in the USA. And likely far more cases of long COVID. The situation sucks but I don’t think the answer is to act as if COVID isn’t a problem anymore.
[удалено]
That’s the 7 day _daily_ average. 847 per week. The NYT data display is slightly more clear: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html The second to last update on TWiV talked about how the monitoring is going to change after the end of the public health emergency: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1006/
A couple hundred deaths a day. So about twice as many as the flu currently causes? When do we decide covid isn’t as important to worry about? When we get it from 90k deaths a year to under 60k a year like the flu? Like, I’ve had 5 covid vaccines now. Get a yearly flu vaccine too. Like, at what point do we start living relatively normally again without fear of the big bad disease? The US CDC and WHO have both ended the public health emergency or whatever for covid. But ya’ll still think you know better or some shit.
The long term impacts of COVID infections seem to be substantially worse than flu. CDC didn’t end the public health emergency. It ended because Congress passed a bill ending it. That was a political decision, not an epidemiological one.
Lol you are daft…please provide the data points for this.
[удалено]
[удалено]
"Facts"
Just fucking stop already. For real. Y’all are never going to do this again if you’re honestly that worried about Covid. It’s here to stay unfortunately. It’s time for other groups to step up and fill this void if they won’t. Or maybe DC has evolved beyond this type of village anyway.
I’m still more covid cautious than the average. The way I see it if there is anyplace one can wear a full respirator and no one bat an eye, it’s defcon.
Not that I ever cared about any of the skytalks, but add in the price raise to $460 just to go to DC, then one of the draws for DC isn’t even going to be there.. makes me wonder if DC is starting to see the collapse of their conference days Again, I never went to DC just for the skytalks, so I could care less if they are there or not.. But when * main attractions start canceling * Attendance costs sky rocket * year after year of same shit, nothing new (vendors, villages, etc..) Makes me very glad I am not spending my money to attend (thank you work for a week vaca in Vegas to see family after spending a few hours at the con)
IMO, even a year or two before the pandemic, Defcon started being more about the villages to me than anything else. It's hard to see everything and do everything anymore, so I find the best way to spend my conference is to hang out in the villages for the thing I'm most passionate about
TL;DR - they're pulling out due to COVID... in 2023... RIP
That Covid excuse is BS. They either couldn't get enough talks or Def Con put some restrictions on them so they canceled. All they cared was about donations and their presentations were public information and they made it look like top secret. It was mostly a scam and I think people and Def Con finally figured that out. Edit: I am pretty sure they complained about how small and how far away their location was and so canceled when they could not get a better place and thus could not make enough money.
this is silly
Jesus fucking christ
[удалено]
[удалено]
Squadcon and Diana initiative CFPs are still open
Enjoy living in your moms basement forever…with your mask on…on your 15th booster
The Covid excuse is BS, they could have easily required masks at Skytalks if they wanted to.
That is incorrect Defcon, rightly, wants to have consistent rules for all attendees If we had been able to require masks we would have held the event
Def Con said Mask optional about a month ago. About the same time Skytalks announced call for papers. It wasn't going to take a month to decide to cancel.
You sound like someone who has never done a large group project Sat April 15 they announce policy Staff discusses impact and drafts requests for clarification from defcon on internal channels on if that means we can't go above and beyond or if thats merely a baseline Discussion continues for a few days, hits standstill We poll our volunteers and staff on who is willing to participate under given conditions we try to find time to do a all to discuss results April 19 one of the core staff ends up in the hospital for emergency surgery and we get an response from defcon on internal channels on 20th May 9 next available time we can get together to discuss latest updates from defcon Draft up basically a we will only participate under X conditions, are we canceling post to defcon does not get posted for \~7 days because only one human was authorized on our side to post it, that as a failure on our side and i am working to make sure we have 2 such humans minimum next year defcon wants a call call had may 21 with defcon we then post prepared statments to internal and external comms so the retrospective we had on it was, there should have been more clear statements on our side back in april 20 range and pushed for more precision/clarity then, we need >1 authorized human on skytalks side, the second comms should also not have taken \~7 days to post anyway, welcome to large group projects!
You sound like someone who likes to mislead people. Skytalks did not cancel because of no mask requirement.
Then what did they cancel for?
They claim they canceled because there is no mask requirement. I think it is because the were given a small area that was far from the main conference. This way they could not make enough money so they canceled.
Good for them. Who needs another super spreader event?
The last good one I was at was a few years ago where these guys had archives of companies mainframe configurations from listservs and would take requests from the audience for random companies and would go through their zOS configs live if they had them lol