Assembly 2010 is over and done. Thursday through Sunday was spent at Hartwall Arena, the biggest hockey arena in Finland. Assembly is, to my knowledge, the biggest demo-scene party in the world. It’s also basically (and some would say today, more) a LAN party. Imagine 3000 geeks hauling their computers, audio gear and other doohickeys to a single location with near limitless bandwidth and power to make music, socialize, play games and above all else, watch demos and music produced by others; competing in different categories. These are collectively called compos, short for competitions.

*disclaimer* I’m not involved in the demo-scene, even though i greatly admire it. I also did not start computing with Charles Babbage in the late 1800′s, and am not familiar with most of the older hardware. Some terms might be wrong, because i simply don’t understand everything, but i try. *disclaimer*

The wildest part of the event are the compos. It’s a demo scene event, not a LAN party. There’s a separate event called Assembly Winter, which is focused on gaming. But still, i would say most attendees are there to play games. And while i did my fair share of gaming, demos are what i come there for. And my friends.

So what’s so special about demos, and what are they? Well, demos are interactive, or non-interactive multimedia presentations, that have to abide by certain guidelines. Some demos are called intros, and are shorter, and smaller in size than full demos. There are two kinds of intros at assembly, the 4K and the 64K intros. The K refers to Kilobytes, as that is the sizelimit for the compressed intro. Intro are all executable, so whatever you see and hear are created by the program as it is being run. It’s not a drawn animation or a set of ready made frames.

Now imagine 4KB. 4096 characters. Try to include music, moving graphics and text, and if you have any concept of memory, you will be blown away. My Suunto T3 digital watch has multiple times this amount of memory. Heck, your SIM card has more memory to use! Though, it has to be mentioned that libraries and such are not included in the compressed demo. With libraries included, the size is considerably larger, but.. still. They are awesome, and the people making them are total demi-gods at their craft.

The entries in general were good, and surprisingly plentiful. Quality was high in the 4k and 64K intros, while the demo category was a bit of a letdown, compared to the last two years, at least.

I met some great people. you know who you are. Met some current and ex-colleagues, most of whom hard at work organizing the whole thing for the rest of us. Thanks to you guys.

—-

Updates

—-

Jacob Appelbaum, whom i mentioned in the HOPE posts, was recently arrested arriving to the US. Interrogated, his laptop confiscated and then returned (because he refused to hand over encryption keys). So i guess, the FBI didn’t really like the stunt he pulled at HOPE. I’m not sure what the current situation is, but i hope he’s alright. He seemed like a nice fellow, who does not deserve to be persecuted.

In other news, the Pentagon has threatened Wikileaks. They are demanding they take down all the material stolen (they mean leaked by their own people), or else. I wonder what the fuck they are going to do about it, huh? Bomb every colocation center in the world? Well it wouldn’t be the first time you just shoot at everything to prove a point. But i double dare them to do anything. Wikileaks isn’t going anywhere, and since the materials are already on the tubes (the internet for the rest of you!), they are never ever coming back to them again. Removing wikileaks, though this will never happen, will change nothing. It will merely fuel the fire, and for every mirror taken down, five new ones will come out. The files are available as Torrents, and already on numerous other sites. “Taking back” or “returning” content does not work like the on the internets, guys. If person A steals a missile, you can demand to have it back. If person B copies files that you inadequately protected, and walks out with them, and posts them on the web, it is a copy, therefore un-returnable, especially when it’s been distributed.

So in conclusion, do not threaten people when you do not have the slightest fucking idea of what you are talking about. Second of all, secure your shit if you don’t want it to get out. Third of all, i hope you burn in hell for the stuff you’ve done all over the world. You do not run the world, even if you have all the bombs.

That is all.

So what else could one say about The Next HOPE? Well, a few things to be sure.

Interesting talks i attended/filmed

As i was working with the AV volunteers, i couldn’t be in many places at once, at times. Sometimes, i would be filming a talk, even if it wasn’t the talk i wanted to see. But luckily, i didn’t go or film a single boring talk! Sure, some may have been closer to my heart than others, but let’s face it: we had some great speakers. Some of the talks i attended were the keynote on Friday by Dan Kaminsky (that guy is a fucking rockstar, and funny as hell on stage!), the GPS talk by Cheshire Catalyst, The Social Engineering panel with Emmanuel, Kevin Mitnick (got to exchange a few words with him as well; great guy!), Not-Kevin, Bernie S. and.. a social engineering dog? Anyway.

Other hot topics included the talk by Lazlow on.. well, media, radio, freedom and all manner of subjects. Also got the chance to talk to him, and he seemed like a really cool cat. I complimented him on his work in the GTA games, where he has been making and producing the different in-game radio-stations. The talk-radio ones (often hosted by him) are fucking hilarious, and have been my favorites in all the games so far.

Of course the big controversy was with the Saturday keynote, scheduled to be held by Julian Assange of Wikileaks. He, of course, did not show up, and in his place was Jacob Appelbaum, who, against all odds, pulled off a great keynote, finishing off with a viewing of the Collateral Murder video (that started part of the Wikileaks controversy in the first place). There were no cheers, no applause when the video ended. It’s some grim stuff, i tell you. Go watch it if you haven’t. You can find it on the webs.

This talk was very interesting not only due to it’s topic, but due to the fact that at least 3 federal officers in civilian clothing attended the conference/talk. Jacob started out by saying he doesn’t know where Julian is, or how to reach him, and that there would be no point in arresting him. Despite all this, measures were taken to ensure lulz and safe exit for Jacob. Decoy Jacob was deployed and actual Jacob made it out fine, and tweeted he was on the airplane to Europe only a few hours later. Hilarity ensued.

Another great talk was the one that dealt with Trolling and internet culture. It had examples of memes from 4chan, and stuff that ‘Anonymous’ has been doing. Including a mention of operation.. Slickpubes. The content of which was undescribed during the talk, but let’s just say it involved going to various bookstores in New York and placing pubic-hair inside various religious (mostly Scientology) books.

Spot the Fed, HOPE edition?

Well as I said, there were at least three federal agents assigned to the conference. I personally saw at least one, or that i am fairly sure fits the bill. He stood out quite clearly, and picked his seating position quite precariously, as to view the entire room. He was also not interested in any of the talks, and wore iPod earbuds all the time. His clothes were so untarnished, they could have been bought that same morning at Macy’s. Also, the biceps on that guy was something a geek can only dream of.

Other volunteers reported seeing three “obvious FBI agents” during the Wikileaks keynote, and i was told later that three people were also seen following decoy Jason down to the lobby, until they noticed the ploy and split off. I can’t verify the validity of this, but, i have no reason to distrust my fellow volunteers.

Stuff i bought

During the conference, i spent most my money (actually, during the entire vacation i suppose) on conference merchandise. The things i bought include:

• The Book of PF (OpenBSD packet filter bible)
• The three Wizzywig comic-books by Ed Piskor (signed too!)
• A Manga physics book for a friend
• Several T-Shirts
• a black 2600 mug
• some back issues i missed because my subscription ended
• ….and a crapload of cool stickers, some of which adorn my Thinkpad X41 at this very moment!

Conclusion

In all, i had one heck of a time, and i can’t wait to get back. Sadly, HOPE is only held every two years, and next time might have to be somewhere else, seeing as Hotel Penn is probably getting torn down. There was a petition being signed at the conference, and i hope many people did, to save the hotel. But seeing as the owner of the hotel is also somehow involved with the development company that wants to build the 67 story office building, the future of Hotel Pennsylvania is looking grim indeed.

But then, we’re hackers. Hackers always find a way to make things work, and with the people i saw; attendees, organizers and volunteers alike, i am certain that HOPE will rise again.

Next year though, i might be going to Germany, seeing as the CCC folks host their thing sometime in the summer…….

The Next HOPE, Hackers on Planet Earth, held in New York, at the Hotel Pennsylvania Jul 16-18th. HOPE is a bi-annual conference, which concentrates on technology and other subjects (..everything?) that interests the hacker mind. This year’s event was my first, and my first time in the United States. I’ll try to sum up, in fairly chronological order what happened during the last week.

I flew to New York via Amsterdam, on KLM / Delta. Security was a main concern from the get-go. To start off, you had to fill out a form on the web, where you basically state that you are a good person, and not up to bad things. Or that you were involved in Nazi activity during the second World War. Normal questions such as that. Completing the form gives you a 12 month permit to travel to the USA; this does not however stop them from turning you back if they don’t like you for any reason. ESTA is something that Visa Waiver countries have to fill out these days. No I-94 forms though, which makes traveling a bit easier, i suppose, since you don’t have to physically fill in forms, and keep part of it for flying back…

The ride to Amsterdam was largely uneventful, but in Amsterdam, security was ramped up. First you had to pass regular Airport Security, to get into Terminal .. C? to fly to the US in the first place. When I got to the gate, there was a secondary security checkpoint, set up just for that gate. Each traveling party is asked individually to come talk to an official about who you are, who packed your bags and where you are going. Kind of a personal interview. After that, you’re taken through a standard security checkpoint, though everyone was frisked and patted through, no matter what the metal detector said. Some people had their carry-on bags opened and checked separately.

The interesting part about this security checkpoint was the fact that they had two of the full-body scanners present. They were not used however, which was curious. Two phone-booth sized things in the middle of the floor, which could be closed around a passenger, and supposedly, used to “nude-scan” a person. It would have been nice to see that in action.

So, get on the plane in Amsterdam (767-300ER), and during the 8 hour flight, you fill in the US Customs form, which declares what you are bringing (and leaving) in the US, whether you are carrying samples of biological material, whether you’ve had contact with farm animals (yeah, right), and such questions. The form was collected by customs agents at the airport when you arrive.

We flew into Newark. Upon landing, we were taken through a security checkpoint, and then sent to queue for the actual Border Control checkpoints. Here, we are once again asked the same questions (Who are you, why are you here..), and then given the final go-ahead to step on US soil. They had ominous looking “Screening rooms” for people who looked suspicious, or who just wanted to have their assholes probed, i guess. Didn’t see anyone get taken in there, but i did see Border Patrol agents, or whoever, DHS-people looking at travelers, supposedly for signs of nervousness etc.

Take the Airtrain (a monorail system) to a train station, and then the NJ Transit train into Penn Station. 15 dollars for the entire trip, which wasn’t bad at all. Trains were fairly clean and air-conditioned, which was nice, because the heat was nigh unbearable.

At Penn Station, we had at least three different agencies at work, all with different uniforms, weaponry and bad-assery. The Department of Homeland Security had these bad-ass looking guys in tan BDU’s, thigh-holsters for their pistols and sunglasses inside. The National Guard had standard beige camo, and assault rifles. NYPD had their guys in blue and whatnot, and i think the Transportation Security Administration had some officers as well, though not armed. There were “soldiers” everywhere. I felt like, if i was running for some reason, i would just have been shot.. No incidents to report though.

There were signs everywhere at Penn Station, in the style of “See something suspicious? Report it”, with pictures of “abandoned bags” and other such horror. Just felt like they were creating an atmosphere of fear, instead of an atmosphere of security.

Hotel Pennsylvania was at the corner of 33rd street and 7th avenue, opposite Penn Station / Madison Square Garden. A central location in midtown Manhattan, with easy access to all areas of New York, either walking, by buss or by subway. Everything seemed to flow through midtown. The Empire State Building was a few blocks away, and so was Time Square.

The Hotel had an offer for conference visitors, which made the place even cheaper, and for midtown Manhattan, 129 dollars per night *is* cheap. The rooms were pretty basic, some would even say run down. Paint had chipped on many walls. There was a disgusting black splotch of mold on the roof (probably below the A/C device in the room above), and a missing lock (i mean there was no lock, no mechanism, and the handle was lose) in the bathroom door. The good things were: Clean and comfortable bed, hot shower, working A/C and a working TV. I was pleased, and after i got off the initial shock, i had a pleasant stay. Hotel personel was nice and polite, and the services of the hotel in general were good.

The Conference

The conference started in earnest on Friday. I however, decided to take the elevator up to the 18th floor, where the main speaking areas were, and sign up for some volunteer work. I walked up to the desk, “manned” by Lindsay (Nick Farr’s right arm during the conference), and signed up to do some AV work. I took the elevator down to the Mezzanine level, where the Vendor and workshop areas were going to be, and started helping out by unloading trucks and carrying stuff. Later that evening, we put down some (read: a lot!) of cable for speakers, video, light and whatnot. By the end of Thursday, things were looking awesome and we were ready to start the conference the following morning! We had lots of people “from different walks of life” helping out with all kinds of stuff. As for the AV and lighting stuff, guys from Carnegie Mellon university (college?) were present to co-ordinate stuff, and they had lent/rented most of the equipment from different places. I met loads of interesting people during the volunteer work, including Lindsay, Nick Farr, Rudy, Daydreamer, Slowpoke, Kelly, and loooads of other people whom i can’t even start naming here, due to the sheer volume.

Volunteering was a great job, as you got to see the inner workings of the conference, meet people, and see the hotel “backstage”. As a hacker, seeing how something works is always interesting. Helping out and learning new things in the process is even better! I learned a whole bunch about AV-tech, and ended up doing a bunch of the video work. In all, i clocked in nearly 30 hours of volunteer work, most of that spent either building or tearing down the conference, and the rest video-taping the different talks. They will all be online later at the HOPE website, at http://www.hope.net.

In all, there were close to 100 talks, running on four different tracks, in four different rooms, all named after significant inventors and innovators in the technical field: Bell, Tesla, Lovelace and Morse. There was no way to see them all, as they ran in parallel, but that’s why there will be audio and video (some of it filmed by me! so when it sucks, you know who to blame ).

The Mezzanine level had the vendor and workshop areas, as well as the “administrative” areas, such as the Information desk, the Security desk, and the noc NOC. You could try out Segways, solder some stuff in the hackerspace area, grab a Club Mate or just chill out on the hammocks. Later in the evening, there were some “chiptune” concerts and movies being shown. You could learn how to lockpick, buy some books, pick up cool stickers or just talk to people. Just sitting down on Saturday evening with some people, i had an 8 hour discussion about all kinds of issues ranging from the Metrocard system in Finland, to politics to mandatory military service. These were people i didn’t know from before! Spontaneous contact with nice people was… nice. Just sit down, and start talking.

Oh boy… there is so much to say..  I’ll probably split this post into two or more pieces. Too much to say. Still jet-lagged, and tired from the whole ordeal.

So as many of you have heard, my wife of 6 wonderful (no sarcasm here.) years has left me. She moved out yesterday, and left me here in this god damn 4 room apartment alone. This means, it’s time to look for a new place to live (still in progress), and do some redecorating. The lab will undergo extensive rework, and i’ll try to pull a “Didak” and document the process here. My old corner-desk is going to B, and i’ve already bought a 160cm x 80 cm desk for my lab. I’m also replacing my 2×22″ screens with one FullHD 24″ screen (one to start off, more later), and possibly an Ergotron LX arm for the screen. Those are really hard (or slow) to come by here in Finland, so we’ll have to see about that.

So what i’ve bought so far is the Galant desk (man i feel like watching Fight Club again…), with T-shaped legs from IKEA – 169€, and a BenQ G2420HDBL screen from Jimm’s PC-Store – 188€.

Pics will come later today as i get some help to move stuff around. I hope i can get cables done in a smooth operating fashion. No more tangles on the floor, thanks.

Today’s blogpost is inspired by the problem with our dear Finnish people. Or maybe it’s a global thing, humanity itself.

I’m talking about a) tolerance b) being a fucking sheep. Let me present to you a problem that i’ve been having lately.

VR is the state operated railway here in Finland. It operates all trains, and is responsible for collecting ticket fees, operating the stations, platforms etc. They have steadily been increasing prices of train tickets, due to uh.. inflation and rises in operating costs. However, trains don’t seem to go on time during the winter, which makes me a bit angry. My problem is, that i’m constantly paying my ticket, and yet, the trains i count on to get to work and back are never on time when there is a little snow on the ground.

Granted, this winter has been exceptionally bad, with more snow than in any previous year since the 1960′s, but none the less. Where is my money going? It sure as hell isn’t going to improving the reliability of trains in “extreme” weather

Winter is not a new concept in Finland, and many places operate trains far more north than Helsinki, in southern Finland. We get snow, which starts gathering in the machinery of the train, the wheels, the gears and whatnot, which is preventing trains from moving. At least this is according to VR. Also we are having problems with tracks freezing so badly, trains can’t switch tracks as they have to to reach the correct places.

This to me seems like an engineering problem. If you throw enough money at a problem it usually goes away. Increase the amount of plows on the tracks. Put heaters in places where icing is a problem. But this isn’t happening. Why?

Traditionally, when consumers (that’s you and me) have a problem with something, they start complaining. This is happening now with the trains. Inneccent complaining results in either a) the company shutting down because they can’t or can’t afford to fix the issues that the complaints are about, b) the company fixing the problem c) company lowering prices or offering compensation due to lost revenue/time or whatever or the consumers. This isn’t happening either.

VR could shut down their customer support, and stop notifying people of late trains, and what would we do? We’d keep complaining, and keep traveling, because that’s what we do. That’s all we do. We have no other option but to keep traveling. They could just lay off 90% of all their staff, send them to Bermuda or where ever, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it. We either accept the problems, or we stop using trains. Which isn’t happening. So we make like sheep.

Why i keep paying for tickets during winter, i don’t know. There should be no ticket fees at all. But they just keep raising the prices, and we keep paying. If a ticket inspector came on any of these late trains (i waited 45 minutes this morning), i would probably punch him the fuck out. But there’s a problem with those guys too. Inspectors get paid from the inspection fees (80 euro, or.. what, 120 dollars?) from everyone traveling without a valid ticket. When they increase the inspection cost, it doesn’t go toward anything else, except paying for more inspectors.

It’s like traffic cameras in Helsinki. The fines sent out by traffic camera pictures, are used to invest in new cameras, so more fines can be had, so more cameras can be bought…

So how is this organisation still operating? Because we are sheep and we don’t really care. We just accept what the news is telling us, what VR is telling us and accep that there is nothing anyone can do. This is 2010. We are a nothern country. We have had winter here since the planet was created, oh, 4.6 billion years ago. This is not a new thing. This is an engineering problem that isn’t being dealt with, because frankly, they don’t need to.

So it’s been a long while since i last wrote anything. So what’s been happening lately. Well, a few things.

Dorsia has been replaced by a “slightly” less powerful machine, namely an old P3 rig. Dorsia is my shell machine that i’ve used to hand out shells to people i know. Nothing really special here, it does the same job as before, but with less overhead. The previous Dorsia machine was a G4p HP Proliant, with dual Xeon’s, so it’s best off doing something else. In this case, something else is installing VMware ESXi on it, and using it as a test bench for numerous virtual machines. It’s better suited for that task. This project is stil pending, but, the server hardware is compatible with ESXi, and i should get on that with P at some point. Our plan is to build a kind of virtual lab environment, where we can have different server operating systems, such as Windows 2003 and 2008, among others, and then run a hostile machine,perhaps with the recently released Backtrack 4 final. As soon as we have time..

I’ve ordered a netbook. So yeah, i became yet another sheep and got myself a netbook. Yes, i’m aware they are very slow etc. etc, but i’m just interested in surfing the web and writing stuff down, and for that, i think it’ll be just fine. The one i got was a Samsung N140, which is a 10″ netbook, with a 1.6GHz Atom 270 processor, 2 gigs of memory, a 320 gig hard drive (5400rpm), and various other parts of lesser interest. There are a few things that are of concern. 1) Is the machine powerful enough to run some flash content? I’m not talking about some multimedia extravaganza, but simply youtube and such? 2) The resolution is small, and i know this. But, it has a VGA out, and where i’ll be using it “proper”, i’ll have an external screen to hook up to it.

Basically, i’m not expecting much, but it’ll be interesting to see how it compares with my previous “netbook”, my Thinkpad X41, which has developed some problems with the battery and charging. This puppy has a 1.6 GHz Centrino,  with 2 gigs of memory. I’ll be running some benchmarks to see how the Atom fares against this 5 year old machine. Should be interesting, as there aren’t a lot of benchmarks that compare older hardware with netbooks, and as M pointed out, there are so many different architechtures; comparison becomes difficult on a larger scale. I’ll be reporting on this as soon as i get the machine, which should be next week.

I’m also trying to find out what the perfect linux distro would be to install on this. I’m taking suggestions, if you have them.

Adobe presented me with an interesting perdicamen this week at work. I was fiddling around with trying to get the Adobe PDF printer working under Windows 7. This proved to be a bitch. After countless hours of testing, i found out that Adobe Acrobat version 7, works just fine under windows 7. This is an old old version, from like 2003, which doesn’t even have support for Vista, let alone Windows 7. Adobe 8, which was used in this particular case, just didn’t work, not even with the latest patches. It installed the printer, but you were unable to use it, as Acrobat claimed the product was unactivated (it worked otherwise just fine, so i think that’s just a bogus error message). Again, version 9, the latest version (patch 9.3 released 14th of January) has official Windows 7 support as of 9.2, and that worked fine from the get go.

So Adobe, why doesn’t version 8 work, when the older technology of version 7 works just fine? You wouldn’t be out to get Windows 7 users to buy Acrobat 9 now would you? Tsk tsk.

Glamorama, the recent book by author Bret Easton Ellis (notably of American Psycho-fame), is what i’m reading next. Hopefully, even today. It was shipped out from Jersey, at play.com last week, so i should be getting it either today or tomorrow.I hope it’s as good as American Psycho! I think i’ll be reading his entire bibliography, since i very much like his topics (glamour,  yuppies, decadence and horror), and his writing style.

Ham radio. Me and B decided we were going to become ham radio operators during the year of 2010. We haven’t started yet, but i’m definately going through with this. I have a few ham friends who i’ll be talking to about where to take the exam and so on. The basic level exam isn’t too hard, plus i was in the signals battalion during my one-year army stint, so this shouldn’t really be a problem by any stretch of the imagination.

I’ve posted some pictures that i took from the roof of our building of the Helsinki International Air Show here in Helsinki. Check them out from the header-bar pictures link, or here.

Last day here at the Hartwall Arena in  Helsinki. Just finished Left 4 Dead on Normal (yeah, big whoop). Before that, we saw the rest of the compos, such as Demo and 64k , and the second price ceremony.

The ceremony had some traditional hijinks by the Netcrew, as they were dressed in Star Wars costumes (with awesome lightsabers), threatening the other organizers. Awesome display, but i have to say, even as a megageek, the geek-o-meter was hitting a high fucking note on that one.

So, L4D done, new graphics card working like a charm. Uh. Time for a late night snack, and more cafeine so i can last until the morning. We’re leaving before noon, since there’s not too much to see anymore. Last price ceremony and ending ceremony, but i’m not too big on those. Compos are cool, but.. other than that, i don’t need it.

Music compo underway. Some nice electric tunes, such as Pump My Porn, by renoise.

Just went out to Jimm’s Pc-Store to get a new graphics card, an ASUS Ati Radeon 4850, 512MB DDR. It should serve me well, considering the fact that i have a crossfire motherboard, meaning that i can just get another one later. This isn’t as good as the GTX 260 that i was going to get, but on the other hand, this is 50 bucks (at least) cheaper, and is better supported by my motherboard. I’m not too sad about my choice.

I was looking in to GPU cracking of WPA keys, and found that using a tool called Pyrit, which utilizes ATI Stream, and NVIDIA CUDA technology, you can do about 7800 PMK’s per second where as on the 260 you can do about 9000. In 3DMark 2006 there’s about a 1000 point difference between the two, which is reasonable.

I could have gotten a similarly priced 250 Nvidia, but that’s basically a hopped up 8800 or something. Which i have now. This card is going to my dad.

I’ll install the card once this compo is done.

Some pictures from Day 2

[View with PicLens]