I want to get y'all's opinion on something. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm using "hack" to mean "making something do something it wasn't originally intended to do." (I'm intentionally leaving the Black Hat vs White Hat aspect of "hacking" out of this.) Similarly, I'm using "make" to mean "intentionally designing something to do something." They're very similar, and someone good at one can often do the other. The key difference tends to be mindset more than skill set.
Tangent started DefCon as a "Hacker Convention" mostly in the sense of the word as I describe it above, and to me that's still its heart. However, I have much more of a Maker mindset than a Hacker. In the context of Computer Security, I've always justified that disconnect by arguing that I'm learning how to prevent someone else from making my something do something I don't want it to. This has served me well in the last 20-ish years as a sysadmin and neteng.
But I'm having a harder time bridging the Hacker/Maker disconnect when it comes to hardware. Most of what I make for hardware doesn't have other people hacking on it trying to make it do something else. And since I am usually designing and building my own stuff as opposed to modifying something already built by someone else, I hesitate to call it "hacking" as I have defined the term above.
Makers have places like Maker Faire, more and more of which are popping up all over the place all the time. By way of analogy, we don't have any "How To Program in C" talks at DefCon; we assume that you already have the Maker skill set for software before you show up. Many (most? all?) of the other events are pretty clearly hacking in one way or another. For example, the lock-pick village is, pretty much by definition, Hacking. :-)
But the HHV has a fair amount of "How To Program In C" type stuff in it. There have been various kits in the past, most of which are microcontroller based (thanks, Parallax!) Yes, you can use a microcontroller for both Making and Hacking, but most of the kits have centered around "Here's how to get started with a microcontroller!" or "Here's a servo!" or whatever. It's very Maker, not very specific to Hacking. It's not ONLY Maker, that's for sure, but I'd say there's a higher ratio of Maker:Hacker in the HHV than anywhere else in DefCon.
I ask you: Should we keep strict "Making" out of DefCon, a place originally for Hacking? Should we keep the Hacking spirit in the HHV, concentrating on insecurities in devices and how to make them do what WE want rather than what the original designer wanted, rather than that cool new circuit I just designed?
Or, it there enough cross-over between Hacking and Making that it's appropriate to allow more Maker-y things in the HHV? The original intent of the HHV was to take a community of mostly software folks and introduce them to hardware. Since it is an "introduction" for most people, it makes sense to go back to first principals and teach Making before Hacking. It helps to know how to write a program (design a circuit, solder a board) before you can figure out how to hack a program (circuit) to do something else.
Personally, I'm all for bringing more Maker into DefCon, but that's because I'm more a Maker than a Hacker. What do you think? Am I the only one who has this problem? Should I just shut up and start soldering?
Tangent started DefCon as a "Hacker Convention" mostly in the sense of the word as I describe it above, and to me that's still its heart. However, I have much more of a Maker mindset than a Hacker. In the context of Computer Security, I've always justified that disconnect by arguing that I'm learning how to prevent someone else from making my something do something I don't want it to. This has served me well in the last 20-ish years as a sysadmin and neteng.
But I'm having a harder time bridging the Hacker/Maker disconnect when it comes to hardware. Most of what I make for hardware doesn't have other people hacking on it trying to make it do something else. And since I am usually designing and building my own stuff as opposed to modifying something already built by someone else, I hesitate to call it "hacking" as I have defined the term above.
Makers have places like Maker Faire, more and more of which are popping up all over the place all the time. By way of analogy, we don't have any "How To Program in C" talks at DefCon; we assume that you already have the Maker skill set for software before you show up. Many (most? all?) of the other events are pretty clearly hacking in one way or another. For example, the lock-pick village is, pretty much by definition, Hacking. :-)
But the HHV has a fair amount of "How To Program In C" type stuff in it. There have been various kits in the past, most of which are microcontroller based (thanks, Parallax!) Yes, you can use a microcontroller for both Making and Hacking, but most of the kits have centered around "Here's how to get started with a microcontroller!" or "Here's a servo!" or whatever. It's very Maker, not very specific to Hacking. It's not ONLY Maker, that's for sure, but I'd say there's a higher ratio of Maker:Hacker in the HHV than anywhere else in DefCon.
I ask you: Should we keep strict "Making" out of DefCon, a place originally for Hacking? Should we keep the Hacking spirit in the HHV, concentrating on insecurities in devices and how to make them do what WE want rather than what the original designer wanted, rather than that cool new circuit I just designed?
Or, it there enough cross-over between Hacking and Making that it's appropriate to allow more Maker-y things in the HHV? The original intent of the HHV was to take a community of mostly software folks and introduce them to hardware. Since it is an "introduction" for most people, it makes sense to go back to first principals and teach Making before Hacking. It helps to know how to write a program (design a circuit, solder a board) before you can figure out how to hack a program (circuit) to do something else.
Personally, I'm all for bringing more Maker into DefCon, but that's because I'm more a Maker than a Hacker. What do you think? Am I the only one who has this problem? Should I just shut up and start soldering?
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