Mastodawn

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

Every trip to @defcon - the massive annual hacker-con in Las Vegas - is a delight. Partly it's the familiar - seeing old friends, getting updates on hacks of years gone by. But mostly, it's the surprises, the things you never anticipated. Defcon never fails to surprise.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/14/hidden-worlds/#making-the-invisible-visible-and-beautiful

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Pluralistic: Open Circuits (14 August 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

I got back from Vegas yesterday and I've just unpacking my suitcase, and with it, the tangible evidence of Defcon's cave of wonders. My gear bag has a new essential: #Hak5's malicious cable detector, a little USB gizmo that lights up if it detects surreptitious malicious activity, even as it interdicts those nasty payloads:

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/malicious-cable-detector-by-o-mg

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Malicious Cable Detector by O.MG

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

(In case you're wondering if it's really possible to craft a malicious USB cable that injects badware into your computer and is visually indistinguishable from a regular cable, the answer is a resounding yes, and of course, Hak5 sells those cables, with a variety of USB tips:)

https://shop.hak5.org/collections/omg-row2/products/omg-cable

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O.MG Cable

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

But merch is only a sideshow. The real action is in the conference rooms, where hackers update you on the pursuit of their obsessions. These are such beautiful weirdos who pursue knowledge to *ridiculous* extremes, untangling gnarly hairballs just to follow a thread to its origin point.

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

For the second year in a row, I caught a presentation from #JosephGabay about his work on #Warshopping: slicing up shopping cart wheels and haunting shopping mall parking lots during resurfacing to figure out how the anti-theft mechanism that stops your cart from leaving the parking lot works:

https://www.begaydocrime.com/

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Hack this Shopping Cart

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

And of course, I got to give one of those presentations, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification," to a packed house. What a thrill! It was livestreamed, and if you missed it, you'll be able to catch it on Defcon's Youtube page as soon as they upload it (they've got a *lot* of uploading to do!):

https://www.youtube.com/@DEFCONConference/videos

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DEFCONConference

This is the official DEF CON YouTube channel. What is DEF CON? Check out https://www.defcon.org/ We'll be posting videos and pictures from past conferences here, starting with DEF CON 20 and working backwards. If you have a DEF CON related video you want us to include in this channel please email us / fb / tweet and we'll get it added. Please remember, all content is copyright DEF CON Communications, Inc. You can share it for educational purposes, but you can not make _any_ money from doing so. If you do that would be a violation of the copyright as well as the spirit of DEF CON.

YouTube

After my talk, I went back to the #NoStarchPress booth for a book signing - which was *amazing*, so many beautiful hackers, plus I got to share a signing table with @micahflee. As I was leaving, #BillPollock slipped me a giant hardcover art-book, and said, "You're gonna love this."

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

I did. The book is *Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components*, by @oskay and #EricSchlaepfer, and it is a drop-dead gorgeous collection of photos of electronic components, painstakingly cross-sectioned and polished:

https://nostarch.com/open-circuits

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Open Circuits

A photographic exploration of the tiny design wonders hidden inside everyday electronics.

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

The photos illustrate layperson-friendly explanations of what each component does, how it is constructed, and why. Perhaps you've pondered a circuit board and wondered about the colorful, candy-shaped components soldered to it. It's natural to assume that these are indivisible, abstract functional units, a thing that is best understood as a reliable and deterministic brick that can be used to construct a specific kind of wall.

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

But peering inside these sealed packages reveals another world, a miniature land where things get simpler - and more complex. Inside these blobs of resin are snips of wire, plugs of wax, simple screws, fine sheets of metal in stacks, wafers of plain ceramic, springs and screws.

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

Truly, quantity has a quality all its own. Miniaturize these assemblies and produce them at unimaginable scale and the simple, legible components turn into mystical black boxes that only the most dedicated study can reveal. Like every magician's trick, the unfathomable effect is built up through the precise repetition of something very simple.

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

A prolonged study of *Open Circuits* reveals something important about the #HackerAesthetic, a collection of graphic design, fashion and industrial design conventions that begins with this realization: that the crisp lines of digital logic can be decomposed into blobby, probabilistic lumps of metal, plastic, and even wax.

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Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

It reminds me of #GeorgeDyson's brilliant memoir/history of computing, *Turing's Cathedral*, where he describes how he and the other children of the scientists building the first digital computers at the #PrincetonInstitute spent their summers in the basement, hand-winding cores for the early colossi their parents were building on the floors above them:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/03/12/george-dysons-history-of-the-computer-turings-cathedral/

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George Dyson’s history of the computer: Turing’s Cathedral – Cory Doctorow's MEMEX

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

You can see my hacker aesthetic photos in my #Defcon31 photo set:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe_search=1&tags=defcon31&user_id=37996580417%40N01&view_all=1

In this video, Eric Schlaepfer illustrates the painstaking work that went into decomposing these tiny, precise components into their messy, analog subcomponents. It's pure hacker aesthetic, and it's mesmerizing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKyJ0b04Lo

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Flickr Search

Flickr

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

But *Open Circuits* isn't just an aesthetic journey, it's a technical one. After all, Oskay is co-founder of @emsl, one of the defining places where hardware hackers gather to tear down, pick apart, mod, improve and destroy electronics. The accompanying text is a masterclass in the simple machines that combine together to make complex assemblies:

https://www.evilmadscientist.com/

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Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories | Making the world a better place, one Evil Mad Scientist at a time.

Cory Doctorow Aug 14, 2023

Defcon is a reminder that the world only seems hermetically sealed and legible to authorized parties with clearance to crack open the box. From shopping cart wheels to thermal fuses, that illegibility is only a few millimeters thick. Sand away the glossy outer layer and you will find yourself in a weird land of wax-blobs, rough approximations, expedient choices and endless opportunities for delight and terror, mischief and care.

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David Emmett Aug 14, 2023

@pluralistic @oskay @arclight this book looks like it might be right up your street. Exposing the gizzards of electronics hardware

arclight Aug 14, 2023

@motomatters @pluralistic @oskay It is a thing of beauty

Yael Grauer‪Aug 15, 2023

@pluralistic @micahflee two amazing people!