Fahrplan – 39c3
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The 39C3 conference schedule is out, sparking discussions about the event's tone, with some commenters noting it seems less activist-driven than usual. As attendees and enthusiasts dig in, they're clarifying practical details like time zones – CET is the standard – and reveling in the fact that most talks will be recorded and live-streamed, with recordings available on media.ccc.de shortly after. The conference's around-the-clock vibe has also drawn excitement, with one commenter wistfully recalling past events and bemoaning the early morning start times. Meanwhile, links to live streams and recording archives are being shared, fueling anticipation for the event.
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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)
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.
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'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.
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/de/schedule?mode=lis...
Are there any talks whose speakers are known for their expertise that one should pay attention to?
> 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.
https://satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu/docs/dontlookup_ccs25_fullpap...
All of these looked good to me this year: https://halfnarp.events.ccc.de/#e72b9560a7c729d1b38c93ef18a5...
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!
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).
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.
But listening to pep talks of political opinions that are very opposite to yours does not seem productive, either.
It skews a bit more German, but it's essentially a smaller "summer congress" that used to have free attendance until this year (tickets now cost 10€ to cover the breakfast, IIRC). A lot less people there, but the general vibe is very similar.
Here it is:
> http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=97cd29cd
> http://blog.fefe.de/?mon=202512
(note that https currently does not work).
Without direct action it's just nerds reading out their blog posts about politics, which couldn't be less interesting.
But sure, 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.
Nowadays you cannot do that anymore, because most visitors are non-technical. Nobody respects the photo policy. Everyone judges your actions through their political lens. Instead all the "action" happens elsewhere and CCC became much more about social stuff, talking and politics. And of course about policing and judging other peoples' politics.
And making stuff up that was never talked about there to start a political movement to get that party banned? Yeah nice democracy and journalism there.
https://rsw.beck.de/aktuell/daily/meldung/detail/lg-hamburg-...
But what does this have to do with your suggestion that I should ask the court whether you were at the meeting?
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
But chernybyl isnt the only or primary reason.
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.
There was no point in time where ccc or c3 was not an political event/organisation.
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.
But what happens when authoritarianism does not come from the right, but from the left or center? 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 disappointed that I was now a "right-winger" (from their perspective).
European Hate Speech laws are accelerating the trend. 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.
Anyway, I feel that these are the dynamics that are driving many people apart who all simultaneously claim to not have changed one bit. The CCC is not lost, but I do feel it drifting away from me.
Back in the Bush days it was about defending freedom but being to invasive about doing it. Nobody was talking about Bush they do about Trump. And the CDU of old is certaintly not the modern AfD.
Claiming the lefts action in covid even approches the lines of thought out of Trump, AfD or Putin isnt a serious argument.
As to why, I'd argue it is always easy to be anti-authoritarian when you are in the opposition. The AfD reliably votes against Chat Control and other power grabs because it makes them look good and they have nothing to gain from it right now. Conversely, over the last decades, the left has become a dominant force due to its long march through the institutions. So it is just natural that the left is now splitting into people who want to use all institutions to fight the enemy (police raids for milquetoast internet comments, debanking, direct calls to violence), and those of us who look at the internet compass from your sibling post and decide we'd rather hang out with people in the libertarian right than with _any_ kind of authoritarian.
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
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.
A lot of other people will feel welcomed and will be treated with respect that they don't usually get everywhere else.
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 :)
Yes, but what has shifted is "the left", to a point were it has basically been taken over for very specific agendas.
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 soemthing they alway despised.
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.
> You however became soemthing they alway despised.
Holy strawman
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.
Nice to see something as simple as this is enough to filter bigots away!
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?
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?
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.
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?
Merry Christmas!
Every year the needle gets moved more
I am getting more and more confused
That's non political?
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/...
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.
I would love to know what you would think would be more fitting talks?
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...
https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/... (already mentioned)
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.
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".
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.
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
also everything is political, whether you like it or not
The "apolitical" is just an implicit endorsement of the status quo.
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!
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...
Hope he gets well soon.
opening is tomorrow 10h30 CET
especially since the very act of "hacking" is a political statement because it involves redistributing power over information.
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.
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/...
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
https://matrix.to/#/%23hn-at-39c3%3Arustch.at
LOL, never change CCC, never change...
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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