The producers and even Angelina Jolie showed up at the NYC 2600 meeting during production to get a feel for the culture. So much of that movie is still a part of what we do every First Friday of the month in the same location.
The Hack The Planet tv show was based on the very real Off The Hook radio show, which is still on the air at WBAI every week (you can find the back catalog of shows on 2600.com going back decades).
It's amazing to me that more people don't still show up to 2600 meetings. I get that interests groups fragmented out into things like Linux User Groups, professional infosec groups, and other "meetups," and people only have so much time to go to these things, but the real deal original is still happening.
If you're in NYC or a lot of other big cities on the First Friday of any given month, check out the Meetings list on 2600.com (or in the back of 2600 Magazine: The Hacker Quarterly, which is still in print).
There are still people hanging out every month who play with the broad spectrum of technology and other systems for the absolute joy of it.
The long-running NYC hacker conference, HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth), is set to take place at The New Yorker Hotel in August (14-16), back in Manhattan following a long absence from midtown prompted by the demolition of the hacker community's beloved and long-neglected Hotel Pennsylvania (HoPe) location and an odd residency at a college campus way out in Queens for the last few years.
No giant keynote announcements yet, but the event's past headliners have included The Woz (Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak), Corey Doctorow (coined the term "enshitification"), Edward Snowden, Dead Kennedys front man Jello Biafra, and Adam Savage (MythBusters).
In the event's 3 days of 3 tracks of presentations, expect seminars you won't find anywhere else in the world.
Some of the listed talks include...
- "Real-Time Ad Blocking via HDMI Man-in-the-Middle"
- "Inside North Korea’s Underground Tech Resistance: How Smugglers, Defectors, and Technologists Are Outmaneuvering the World’s Most Locked-Down Information System"
- "Esolangs as AI Resistance"
- "How to De-Google Your Org"
- "Spacesuits, Mars Boots and Vegan Roots in the Desert Regolith: Field Testing the Tardigrade v.1 EMU Under Pressure in the Badlands"
- "Cybersecurity for Space Systems: Integrating Offensive Methods, Defending System Vulnerabilities, and Space Law"
On top of that, there will be vendors, workshops, HAM Radio licensing exams, and you're basically hanging out with 2000+ of the smartest people in the world for an entire weekend at a round the clock party in the middle of the greatest collection of restaurants and off-beat entertainment venues in the Western Hemisphere.
I've been going since 2002, and this is by far my favorite hacker event. The first time I went, by the end of it I felt like I had learned more than I did in an entire year of college, all in the span of three days. I cannot overstate how mind-blowing this thing can be.
Despite being basically a block and a half away from the old location, this is a significantly different venue in terms of event space, so I don't know if there are as many tickets available as there have been in past years. If you want to go, grab one now, don't wait to get one at the door.
The Hack The Planet tv show was based on the very real Off The Hook radio show, which is still on the air at WBAI every week (you can find the back catalog of shows on 2600.com going back decades).
It's amazing to me that more people don't still show up to 2600 meetings. I get that interests groups fragmented out into things like Linux User Groups, professional infosec groups, and other "meetups," and people only have so much time to go to these things, but the real deal original is still happening.
If you're in NYC or a lot of other big cities on the First Friday of any given month, check out the Meetings list on 2600.com (or in the back of 2600 Magazine: The Hacker Quarterly, which is still in print).
There are still people hanging out every month who play with the broad spectrum of technology and other systems for the absolute joy of it.