It's been a very busy end of the year, I saw a lot of places and met a lot of people recently:
From Denmark to Spain and back to America.
Loved northern Spain, the food, and the warmness of its people.
Did not loved Denmark so much, quite the opposite.

But regardless of my food taste I noticed that all of the people that I met are making some difference, some for good, and some of them are making the world a worst place to live. I have been noticing opposites lately.

Recently at work I found some risky software installed at one of the computers of the C-suite of one of our clients, when we investigated it turned out that the CISO of that company had installed it, he declared that he used the software to download "things" from pirate bay. It was his computer, so all that we did was advise him that it was a high risk behavior... he nodded uninterested and changed the subject.

It wasn't his first time putting the whole company at risk.

Needless to say it shocked me to the point of asking myself for a few days if my work makes a difference at all in the world. I felt like a "cyber"-Sisyphus pushing a stone to the top of a mountain, or a dishwasher at a high school cafeteria.

Some months later I was invited to give a lecture in a super-small-hacker-venue-Conference , one of the organizers said to me:

-I was kind of disappointed when I noticed that we don't have anything like the CCC or DEFCON, here on town, nothing.
-So we organized this little conference, if we don't do it, nobody will come here and make it for us.

There where around 20 people.

We both already have some salt-peppered beard, nobody will organize nothing for us, we are now the "grown ups" of the hacker scene here. So if we want something, anything, we have to make it ourselves.

There's a lot written about free will across history. I really like the opinion of Jordan Peterson that we just have to try to leave the world in a better shape before we die, even if it's in a really small proportion. "Start, even badly!"

We don't have all the options, our cards where already dealt... but we can try to play the best we can on what we have.

Or as General Maximus (supposedly citing Marcus Aurelius) said in Gladiator movie:
"Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back"

Think globally but act small and locally. Maybe just in your own life. Today.

See you around 1337 Glider...
👾