It looks like Joscha Bach [0] is continuing his "From Computation to Consciousness" series. I've enjoyed some of his older talks so I'll probably check out this new entry as well.
A few of the science talks related to biology also seem really interesting, although it reminds me of how much I'm lacking in understanding and knowledge of the topic. It looks like there's a big focus on mixing generative AI with biology research, and I don't know enough to disambiguate whether there truly innovative work happening or if this is an attempt to ride the AI hype cycle. Does anyone here have experience and knowledge on the topic to suggest whether the talks are worth checking out?
[0] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/3...
Can’t believe I have to ask that these days
Many talks are usually available in the live stream and on demand.
If you don't know anyone in the community, purchasing a ticket online is a crapshoot. IMO this is a feature not a bug.
2) Hackerspaces get a number of tickets with priority, thru replicating tickets (you can only buy one per day). The amount of replicating tickets given depends on size of area (a hackerspace can be tasked with giving vouchers to relevant people in their city). There's a limited quantity of these tickets, separate from amount of vouchers.
The main point of the congress is primarily to bring the chaos crowd together, then the rest of interested parties. That model may not fit your vision, but chaos events year after year succeed at not leaving out the core crowd.
Also, this year I have bought 2 tickets on public sale for friends without issues (best way to get tickets is to group up with your friends).
It's always taken high effort to buy tickets for c3, needing to be exactly on time (not 30 seconds late) to each sale round.
37c3 was an exception due to low sales, caused by skepticism in the event returning after years of not happening. This year that trust was regained and buying tickets became hard again.
But it's ok, I can watch it online. I don't like travelling during this busy period anyway.
Now is the first year that seems to me where demand picked up it was not a given to get a ticket. This might have contributed to find the system unfair.
I did go to 36c3 (end of dec 2019, right before pandemic) and the difficulty of buying tickets was the same as this year.
refresh the browser a few milliseconds too late, and you will not be able to get a ticket.
The "slide the slider" captcha is an accessibility barrier.
> I’m blind/I have problems with my visions and I can’t navigate your captcha.
> Please contact us.
I don’t think that it is bad to demand that. The whole event is organized by volunteers and it is massive yet well done. I have been a volunteer too.
Otherwise joining their IRC and asking there could also be an option.
The only way accommodate more attendees and grow would have been to move permanently to a fairground like Leipzig. Unfortunately, there seems to be no willingness to do so. I found the Leipzig events phenomenal and would like to understand the reasons behind this decision, but can only find speculation.. maybe fairgrounds are simply too expensive?
Leipzig’s hotel situation is worse due to having to connect to the fairground outside town. However, due to Leipzigs location at the intersection of two major historic European trade routes (fyi: via imperii and via regia, still has the largest head railway station in Europe), it has much better connections than Hamburg to the rest of Germany and Europe, including Berlin. Also Leipzig (and the fairground itself) have train connections to three airports including BER..
As far as I know people don't like the huge space and I agree. The magic of the Congress in Berlin or Hamburg wasn't there in Leipzig.
Also the logistics center of the CCC is somewhere around Berlin.
The size of Leipzig also motivated a few not so fitting people to that conference too.
But getting a ticket this year was very easy, I got three on two separate occasions.
I feel like if there is any organization trying to make the conference audience as broad as possible, it's probably CCC.
Great design. Too often sites force me to temporarily whitelist their JS to get basic info.
Again, this is much better than nothing. I'm just pointing out that this design pattern isn't as good as it could be, and if someone reading this wants to implement full support for the NoJS users they can do so by just making the NoJS landing page be the default and replacing it with the interactive app's content root.
I had to be the first to line up to a mic to give them a piece of my mind. I asked them have they even been to the US(many Europeans just cannot internalize the true scale of the country)
Also asked what are they going to do when the populations starts to lash out against these forced proposals and turn to the far side of the other aisle in response. They didn't seem convinced and got applause for their response.
Well given that a year has passed and the political shockwaves we have seen all around the world, I had the last laugh (unfortunately).
I also realized how much of a bubble these 'enlightened hackers' are in. They are so convinced of their intelligence that they just totally reject what the populations of the world are really thinking. It was really an eye opening moment for me as I have been a fan of CCC for decades since I was a little kid.
Why is this suprising? The hacker culture is rooted in anti-establishment philosophy, spun off from the hippy movement of the 1960s. This is not a regional thing.
It's more than a bit ironic that this site is called "hacker news", yet is hosted by a company that holds opposite ideals. :) The term "hacker" has largely lost its original meaning, most notably from being vilified by mainstream media.
Hack the planet! \m/
CCC also has a strong history of debuting talks in the social track that really moved the needle in the 2010s. Think about the Wikileaks talks or Snowden or how about the Snowden Angels?
Recently this has not been the case in the social tracks (they got this past years political changes extremely wrong) and so the question is where is the conference making a mistake and how to course correct?
I love all languages great and small, natural and formal and so I'm conflicted on subjects like this. I find young German speakers to be generally both good at English and pragmatic about choice of language and I'm glad to see that they haven't ceded the ground entirely.
On the other hand you might consider a language as a network whose utility grows with number of nodes. Or you believe in the inevitability of Gresham's Law driving out good currency with bad. I have sympathy for this point, and in an emergency in a mixed nationality group would certainly shout "fire" in English first.
As an example I'll be interested to watch this one about data protection for age verification: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2024/fahrplan/talk/S... but feel it would be a shame if the reach was limited by the choice of language. AFAIR they don't do multilingual restreams (automated or otherwise) like some other online events.
(Übrigens kann ich doch Deutsch, trotzdem mein Standpunkt bleibt.)
Having CCC talks translated to and from English/... is fine, as it's actually done.
https://events.ccc.de/en/2024/11/26/call-for-interpreters-tr...
says:
> We interpret ALL talks in the three main halls and the two community stages live and in real-time. German talks are interpreted into English, and vice versa. Our work is transmitted live in the lecture halls, streamed to the Internet, and recordings are published on CCC sites and YouTube. We have another channel where we interpret into more languages, this is transmitted and published in the same way.
They do. There's a team of interpreters at CCC who translate most talks between English and German, and to some other languages. As with most things CCC, it's all volunteer-driven and done on a best-effort basis, but it's there.
When interpretation is available, I prefer talks that are given in whichever language the presenter is most comfortable in. Presenting in front of a large audience is stressful enough as it is, so IMO it makes a ton of sense _not_ to worry about doing that in a second/third language, and delegating that part of the presentation to someone else instead.
As in, I'm aware there's good points to it, but it's not an entirely clear picture, and some alternative things existing is probably good. How many 12-year old Germans who dislike English for one reason or another found CCC and had major positive changes occur in their lives, ya know.
German persists for good reasons.
English just adopts all the good German words. Every time I, a native German speaker, have struggled to express something in English it was either because my personal vocabulary was lacking or because of societal differences, never because English is somehow inferior.
- Talks in German feel slightly less, hmm, professional? Maybe it's the field I grow up in (physics). Like, ok, in your studies you speak German, but when you grow up and go to big-boy conferences, it's English. The Congress should be big-boy league.
- Also, realistically, many technical terms are English, so the a German talk might have to make hard choices. CPU, not "zentrale Recheneinheit"
- At the same time, I like that it lowers the barriers for entry. Speakers and visitors who are not fluent in English can participate.
- Personally, though, I prefer a good fluent German presentation from a cringy English one. As a German native speaker, typical German mistakes in English irritate me more than others, I think, so I found some talks given in English hard to follow. Pet peeve: Technology. I think that's a better Shibboleth than Flash-Thunder-Welcome.
- Realistically though, the congress is a worldwide phenomenon, and important, and as English is the current lingua franca (hah), I think they should encourage English presentations, or at least English slides. (Because they provide translated audio in the recordings!)
- Lastly, I can only encourage everyone to learn more languages, at a young age. I kick myself I didn't. But even in languages which are relatively close, like English and German (compared to, say, Japanese), I found that one language has concepts the other one doesn't, and that changes how you think about things. For example, English has accuracy and precision, with, at least in physics, different meanings. In German, it's both "Genauigkeit".
(Edited: Formatting)
Actually it is an open meeting of the German members of the CCC. What you see online is an important part of the congress, but it is only a part of the whole thing. Much more it is a gathering of activists. Thus its from the CCC for CCC. Guests are welcome. Since the talks maybe interesting to a larger audience they are streamed and translated in real-time.
Visit the congress in Hamburg and you are beamed to an alternate reality for four days and nights, meeting all kinds of interesting people in person. That experience is a bit more mind-blowing than seeing translated talks online. ;-) People from outside Germany are visiting the congress.
Congress is a gathering ground for likeminded people from all sorts of interests. Talks can be watched at home (except for ones that are not recorded at the request of the talk-givers), but being in the room with likeminded people, talking with them, learning from them is IMO irreplaceable.
My point exactly! International people want to take part, best in-person, and they are more able to take part if as much as possible is available in the common-denominator language. I applaud CCC for all the effort they put in to make it such an awesome and accessible event! Maybe they do this already: I'd ask all presenters to prepare slides in English, either as primary, or as a backup. So that the English stream could show the English slides. Hey, I'd even volunteer to help translate!
I may be too used to physics conferences. The German physics society (btw the largest physicists society in the world) has a yearly conference (well, multiple, split by topic), and they tend to be attended by many non-Germans. So many of the talks are in English, especially the main ones. But there are many many parallel session filled with short talks. Many of these are "my first talk at a conference" type of talks, and are in German. That's perfectly OK. That's part of the role of that conference: Every student submission is accepted. Some are good, most are not great, both from content (because you don't present world changing news in a short talk in a parallel session) and style (because giving good talks requires experience). That's all OK, and important. And it's important to lower the stress level by not also requiring English. Of course, as a "grown up", you go there to support your students, to chat and meet colleagues, and it's great for that. But I am also a lot at "higher level" conferences, with a more robust vetting of talks or even only invite only talks. The talk quality is much better. They are 100% in English. So in my brain, I connect "talk is in German" with "everybody can give a talk", and "my-first-talk-ever", but not with "guaranteed super high quality talks".
But CCC has to sort out many talks, AFAIU, so "everybody can give a talk" isn't true.
I'm not sure how many people actively involved with the community who agrees with this. It's a grassroots movement and I'm fairly sure many (most?) people want it to remain as such.
I'm all for giving a presentation in the language you're best at. Let machine translation (or manual translation) pick up the slack, not one person's possibly-mediocre ESL skills.
I also can speak German but I avoid doing so when technical accuracy is paramount, because sometimes, small details really matter.
Now some of these guys weren't amazing presenters in German either, but my point is that they should not have to be. Some people simply are dry explainers and they don't naturally entertain. Nothing wrong with that at all, especially with such nerdy topics. But in those cases, I'd much prefer a lengthy blog article, or maybe a podcast interview with a capable host. Please, CCC, don't send these people on a stage that they don't enjoy when you could also work with them to get their stuff across.
And with how much is consumed as VOD, I don't think the live talk brings a lot to the table anymore. There could be live Q&A sessions for those who read article or heard the podcast interview.
(I'd argue the same for an academic context by the way - anything above seminar size is either a celebration or a sermon, but not a discussion.)
My best experience at CCC was to literally stumble over bunnie on the side of a hallway where he was sitting against the wall, introducing his own ARM laptop to a dozen of people or two.
And don't tell me this doesn't scale - he has also gotten his message across in ways that scale. But there was finally a natural way of asking questions in a back and forth manner that wasn't in front of a 500 people audience.
Hmm, maybe this is actually a problem the community can address. For our conferences, people who are new to giving talks normally have a practice run or two at their universities with local people. Then they get feedback how to improve the talk. It doesn't work wonders, but it does help quite a bit. Not only does the feedback help improve the slides, the style of presentation, it also builds confidence.
Maybe CCC/somebody could organize optional "training sessions" where people can give test-runs. I'd volunteer to listen and give feedback. Or maybe a tutorial: "How to give a good congress talk"
The speakers are not selected by the CCC; they have to apply with a synopsis of their talk.
Perhaps you could do us all the service of making a blog post for each of the CCC talks this year? :D
I find it arrogant to think that presenters should speak a language other than German.
There surely us a kind of arrogance that demands Germans speak English, but I don't see anyone in this thread expressing that.
(I won't even begin to talk about the variety of dialects and identities contained within the modern German state, except to say that there is plenty of arrogance to be found there for those who seek it.)
I think I'm happy that there is still content in other languages out there.
I think you got the causation wrong; the dominance of English is due to the US having cultural power, not the other way around.
If this were true, you'd see Ireland, Canada and Australia also having significant cultural power, and this just isn't the case.
(The US's economic dominance is, at present, unrivalled, however.)
There’s generally live translation (into English, German, and sometimes French). The translations are also available for download (eg https://media.ccc.de/c/37c3/).
Personally I think it's good you are not forced to present in English. I know enough people who are not comfortable enough with English to present in it. There are also some niche topics that have a focus on Germany. For these sometimes German brings a bit of nuance/local flair that you can't really translate. For these I'm happy that German is available as the original and then the translators will do their best to provide an English second best.
To some degree I find it inevitable that conferences situated in countries that are not native English speaking will have some program points in the local language. As long as they offer help with understanding the content, I don't see an issue with this, regardless of how big/influential they are.
May it serve as a warning, I put myself in mortal danger recently by referring to Plattdeutsch as a dialect (rather than a language). I have no skin in that game but some people feel strongly about it.
I'm general though I'd say that:
> a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot[0]
(Here I've rendered the Yiddish in Latin rather than Hebrew for emphasis.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
Anecdotally, I've never had passable German conversationally, but have studied the language a fair bit, and watching so many German talks with translation (both remotely and in-person) actually passively brought up my understanding of the language that I could understand most of what was being said; to the point that I felt comfortable over the years passively understanding the German language outside of the congress in most situations. Sure, being able to to speak in another language comfortably is ideal, but being able to listen, even just passively, in another language really feels like a superpower.
Another argument put forward is the existence of English dubs for every video. I have found the quality of these dubs varies a lot, since they are run by volunteers and not people experienced in live translation. In some talks there can be segments without any translation, and in one case the translator even "gave up" because the speaker was talking too fast.
"biggest European hacker gathering" -> still most participants are from Germany, that's where the Chaos Computer Club is located. The club itself is organized into local groups all over the country (plus some in neighbor countries).
Professional interpreters cost a lot of money, and as such it's done by volunteers. There's little to be done while maintaining the spirit of the event.
Nothing prevents people from redubbing talks either, which may honestly be a good community effort.
We aim to interpret live 100% of the talks in German (* we do not always interpret things that aren't strictly speaking talks, like poetry readings or performance art, although we try to make these as accessible as we can). We also interpret various talks into other languages - we have a sizeable team working on French and Spanish interpretation, and depending on volunteer availability, we are keen to be target any spoken language. For this talk you are interested in, I'm very confident it will be interpreted into English.
You can find our work on media.ccc.de both on the streams and recorded talks. If you're attending live we have lower latency audio streams available on-site, check out c3lingo.org.
I have accessibility needs (screen reader user) that make subtitles less fun to use than they would otherwise be, and I speak no German, so those interpreted recordings would be really great for me.
I assume you don't publish on Youtube? That's how I usually consume CCC content, mostly due to YT's recommendation algorithms and excellent cross-device "continue playback" support.
I know in previous years talks were published on YT, I assume this will still be the case this year. Normally the VOC team does miracles to publish incredibly quickly too, so you should be able to have the recorded talks online same-day.
Maybe it will change this year, though!
I have quite a few recordings I'd like to watch
Interesting talks e.g.
"Breaking NATO Radio Encryption"
