Episode: 201
Title: HPR0201: phreaknic
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0201/hpr0201.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 13:39:53

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Welcome everyone to Hacker Public Radio.
This is Drupes and today I have Skydog with me and we're going to be talking about Freaknick.
And I believe this year's the first year of Mr. Skydogs in charge of Freaknick.
That is correct.
This is the first year.
Last year I was the Vice President, so I got to sit second seat and learn how it's done
from Dolomite and this is the first year I'm in charge.
Now how many years has this convention been going on and where is it?
This is actually the 12th year.
It's Freaknick 12.
It's held in Nashville, Tennessee of all places if you can imagine.
It is a place called the Days Inn, oddly enough the last hotel in Nashville that will
allow us to have a con there.
We've been blacklisted everywhere else for having too much fun, so this is it.
Good deal.
Good deal.
And you've obviously been going since con one?
Actually I joined at the melee at Freaknick 2.
I have the t-shirt and also have the badge from Freaknick 2 and I have everyone from
there on and I think the first Freaknick that ever took place is more like a bunch of
guys getting together, similar to Defcon and Freaknick 2 is when it started to pick up some
speed and you had a lot more people show up and it's all been downhill from there.
Good deal.
Good deal.
As an interesting con, I enjoy going to it more than any of the others I've been to and
it's not particularly the quality of the speakers or the niceness of the hotel or the, it's
just a good time to get around and talk to your friends.
There's only one track so you're not going to miss one talk to see another.
It's just a good time to sit around and hang out and learn things and hang out, I don't
know if it's that hang out 20 times.
Maybe we should make that a drink in game.
Yeah, there's a lot of hanging out going on.
The nice thing about Freaknick is it's a smaller con.
Actually the Bruce and Heidi Potter from Shmootcon show up and they enjoy coming to it because
it's a small con.
You can meet pretty much everyone there in a single weekend.
Typically you can have a drink with everyone there in a single weekend.
It's not very difficult to do.
We do have a single track.
We've tried to do a lot of interesting events and parties and impromptu contests and things
like that to kind of make things fun for everyone that shows up.
We want to have a little bit of everything for everybody.
We're not just a vulnerability type of conference.
We don't just sit around and discuss about computer security.
You kind of have a wide range of topics that people are talking about.
So a little bit for everyone if we can.
And a lot of people bring their wives and girlfriends and kids and things like that
also.
Yeah, yeah.
We had some guy that showed up with his kid last year, Root, I think was his name, something
like that.
You know, I've had another word since then.
Oh, the state lets you procreate again.
See you have to have a license to do pretty much anything like to open a business or to
drive a vehicle, but not to have a kid just anyone he can do it.
I, you know, some people have hobbies, I guess, well, never mind.
We'll let you go on that one.
Yeah, it's kind of odd to get an email from someone who wanted to bring his three daughters
and kind of panic at that one, but they were younger and he wants to get them involved
in the computer scene and said, you know, what can I expect when I come out?
And I came, you know, gave a pretty, you know, realistic estimate of what was going to
take place.
So let him know that the wise and how for is what you should do and what your kids shouldn't
shouldn't be available for.
And he was pretty impressed by that.
I believe he's still going to bring him much, much after all of the warnings I gave him.
He decided to bring him anyway, but it's, we don't mind having younger kids there.
As long as they're supervised, as long as you understand, there's going to be some wild
and craziness here and there in some movies.
So you have to keep that in mind.
Good deal.
Good deal.
Do you have a list of the talks in front of you or do you know them off the top of your
head?
Do you want to talk about a few of those?
As much as everyone thinks that I know everything about the kind of stuff I had, I don't.
I do have a list in front of me.
I can kind of give you a rundown.
We've got some pretty wild stuff in store.
Some guy named Drew.
So I don't know who this guy is, but he keeps showing up there and there.
He's going to do a talk with Morgan Moregelen on our do we know is the open source.
A little programmable pick chip forward system, I think that's going to be a really nice
one.
We've got a lot of guys in hack consortium interested in checking that information
out.
Another guy doing a talk on the live open source video editor.
One of our local guys trip squires going to do a talk on the legality of war driving.
We do have one that does kind of scare me.
We have one called open source AK-47s, and if you can imagine this is actually a group
of guys who are making their own parts for AK-47s outside of the receiver.
As long as you purchase the receiver outright, you can build the components of a rifle around
that and they'll be bringing in parts that they've made and they actually have custom
forming presses and things like that, so it's pretty much completely different from
anything we've ever known at Freightknit, but it's open source and we thought we'd
include it, and it's probably going to get a lot of press, I think.
But that sounds really awesome.
It should be fun.
It should be fun.
It will make me nervous to have, well, we do the Geek Shoot on Sunday after the con,
so there are typically firearms in the hotel that they're locked away, the actual thought
of having an AK-47 in the ballroom and have someone explain how to build one scares the
willies out of me.
But it should be good though.
It should be good time.
We had hacking the mind body connection, which is another talk that I thought would be
interesting, that kind of gives a little bit about hacking your body from the standpoint
of not mutilation with piercings and things like that, but sort of the body energy and things
like that.
But that would be interesting.
Have another talk about Russell Butterini, one of our sort of local guys on the HAC-5,
U3 Switch Blade, and using it as an instance response in forensics tool.
Actually, on that, I was talking to Mr. Mubix, Mubix, I never can say right.
He looks very interested in that talk.
Yeah.
Mubix is one of the guys that appears on HAC-5, and he's got his own podcast, so he does.
He and I have run in each other many times, both Shmoo and Deathbound, he's a really good
friend.
And, yeah, this should turn out to be a very good talk also for all of us who walk around
with a piece of home drives in a pocket, it'd be nice to have something for a live instant
response tool in your pocket next to your keys.
So.
Yeah, Mubix will be there also, I think we've got a couple of open slots and we're talking
about having him do a talk also.
Good deal.
I got Tim White, but in addition to doing some actual real talks, we have a little bit
of fun.
The theme for this year is actually escape from a fallen planet.
You have to hit the website to kind of see what the scoop is on that, but we're having
Friday night at six o'clock, we're having the escape feast in the parking lot.
Dolomite will be out cooking hamburger, actually cooking hot dogs and things of that nature
for us to consume.
Then at eight o'clock, we're getting together for Dolomite and a buddy of his and a Marin
Shelton to do a talk on beer hacking.
We figured it's late enough in the evening, it's time to have a drink or two, and they'll
be doing some real world examples if I understand correctly.
They'll be making some, it's a cider, but it's a certain type of cider, apple vine.
They'll be making apple vine on stage in real time, so if I get to see that take place.
If you've been to a Freaknake before, Desius does a drunken rant and it is actually a real
live drunken rant, we get him plastered and then he picks a topic sometime during the day
and then we're sitting loose for an hour or so.
Usually pretty entertaining is a very knowledgeable gentleman and usually when he's plastered,
it's a lot of fun.
After Desius does his rant, Duacore gets up and Duacore is a nerd core rapper.
I'm sorry, it's not Duacore.
He's with Duacore, it's Entity.
He's performed at Schmoocon, he's performed at Defcon, he's been all over the place.
He actually performed with a gun named Keith in Schmoocon.
We all go out to a bar afterwards and everything and he got on stage and I really rocked the
house.
We had a good time and that gets pretty late into the evening.
We will be doing Ashley Schwartow, the daughter of Winne Schwartow, is showing her documentary
Hackers for People 2, which should be a pretty good time.
I've got a copy of the DVD and I've watched it.
It's really interesting, a lot of good information there and that pretty much closes out the
Friday night running of things.
If you make it up sometime at 90 o'clock on Saturday morning, we do the Wi-Fi race.
If you go to Wi-Fi-race.com, we have the fourth annual, I believe at this point, the fourth
annual Wi-Fi race that I sponsor.
It's a race inside an 11 square mile area in Nashville.
You have to track down a fox, it's got an access point in their vehicle and you can see
the details there.
I've got video and all kinds of fun stuff like that but it's just kind of a bizarre mix
of things going on.
We have Scott Molting showing up this year.
I just took his data recovery class in Atlanta.
He's doing a talk on at least 10 things you didn't know about your hard drive.
I went to his class.
It was like being fed from a fire hose.
The guys got a lot of good information and definitely good stuff.
I'll be doing a talk with a bunch of crew from here in Nashville about starting your own
hacker space.
One of the side projects, we have the hacker consortium, which if you can spell it out at
attacker consortium.com, but it's the best we can tell.
The third largest hacker space in the United States is nonprofit.
We'll be talking about how we got that started out.
Let's see.
Cowboy Danston in the talk on software defined radio.
I've had a lot of good feedback on people wanting to see that.
Iron Geeks doing the talk on hardware keyloggers.
Anyone who's ever seen Iron Geek talk knows this is an awesome talk coming out.
We did have some fun stuff.
Bruce Herman is going to do the talk on the art of the approach to steps to attract women.
So I'm kind of keen to see on whether this is going to be a fun little hang out kind
of talk or whether they're going to heckle him.
But hopefully one way or the other, someone will pick up some good hints and tips on that.
Later in the evening on Saturday, Bruce Potter is going to get up and talk about free
cool security technologies you've never heard of.
And if you've ever seen Bruce talk, very animated, very funny, but a very, very knowledgeable
and intelligent guy.
So we usually pack the room whenever Bruce gets into talk.
Nathan Hamill and Sean Boyer actually did this talk, a similar talk to this.
Satan is on my friend's list attacking social networks, which has to do with my space
and a few of the other social networks out there.
Nate has done a lot of work with those groups and found some interesting flaws available.
I think probably the most controversial one outside of the AK-47 talk is David Hickman
and Joshua with Steve O. Brune to a talk on the government account, child portal on PC,
what now or now what, which is, I think the title to that one makes me cringe a bit
but after reading what they're going to talk about, it should be a really interesting talk.
We do have after that, there's an open space, Billy Hoffman has run into some scheduling
conflicts.
He was going to do a talk and unfortunately he's not going to be able to this year.
So his slot kind of opened up and I've got some people I'm going to see that putting
in there.
But typically he is the last person to talk on the weekend and one of the really engaging
talks and I worry every year that I'm going to get my first season to sit for the con
but haven't yet.
We also have a lot of other things that go on.
We have the presentation of awards for all of the different contests and things we have
going on.
We will have rewards this year, not Larry's put together a rewards contest, Lady Mirling
and Shorthal are doing the scavenger hunt this year.
It's been off and on.
We had them last year.
The guys who did the last year don't want to do it this year.
So Lady Mirling stepped up and took care of that.
So in the evening we're going to do the presentation of awards for that.
Then comes the classic Why You Suck, which Nia Tera pretend ball and Michael and actually
get up and do the Why You Suck and it is a absolute hint if you get caught in the
Why You Suck, you get to get on stage and defend your honor and get a beer for it.
After that the parties begin and all goes downhill, you get to meet the party with everybody
there.
So if you can make it through that and get up on Sunday morning, you've got the geekshoot
that most people just want to go home, go to sleep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would love to go to one of the geekshoots one year but we always have to turn around
and come home that day.
Yeah, there's a lot of people who want to show up.
The geekshoot is sort of separate from Freaknick because of the liability standpoint but we are
talking about going to computer control range this year where we'll only shoot pistols.
We have anything from 22 caliber pistols to a 50 caliber desert eagle which is an absolute
interesting gun that's a hole that looks kind of cartoonish, it's so large, but we'll
have 15 people show up and a lot of ammo, everyone gets to shoot everybody's gun.
If you're looking to get into shooting, it's a good way to kind of be introduced because
you have people that know what they're doing and can teach you what's going on and it's
kind of our own crew so you don't have to worry about.
People sometimes get embarrassed when they go on the range and they're not shooting correctly
and people correct them but when you have our crew around, we're very accommodating,
we want to help you learn and do it the right way.
I can't talk.
One of the things that we're going to talk about in our Arduino talk is how to build
your own computer control range because I'm sorry you said you're going to.
We're going to talk about building pistol ranges with our do we knows.
Oh, excellent, excellent, dude, that would be awesome.
I live out in the middle of nowhere, really like to shoot stuff.
You know, that's the best place to go do it or no one will bother you.
The hacker consortium, you might be interested in this, the hacker consortium is going to sponsor
a airsoft gun shooting range that'll be on the night floor so we'll have 10 cans set up
and it's basically to raise money for our hacker space but we're hoping to see how many
people will come up and actually grab a gun and knock off a few rounds so to speak.
It'll be a good time.
I'd love if we could computer control it but you know, we haven't really gotten into
art.
Do we know the shit?
You definitely will once you see the talk, they're addictive, worse than cigarettes.
Well, you know, honestly, earlier today, TripSquire and now we're talking about which version
to purchase.
We want to make sure we don't single source ourselves on something and have to learn
another set of instructions for a different device but we're looking to purchase a handful
of them before the con comes up so we can actually sit down and start playing with them.
Well, you need to go to a modern device and get some of the really bare bones boards.
They're the cheapest ones and they, they're, you know, they all do the same thing.
So if I were to show up with two or three of them in hand, I could have a good fun time
over the weekend building something.
You certainly could.
I could tag you and make you sit down with me and show me the ropes with them and not
a problem at all.
Actually, several vendors including them gave us some stuff that we can little kits to put
together and give out.
Oh, that's excellent.
So we're going to be sitting down with a lot of people, hopefully, and showing them how
to solder and build little electronic things.
That sounds like a good time, man.
I'm ready for it.
Well, buddy, we're really looking forward to it too.
One other thing I'd like to bring up about Freaknik is that Freaknik's all volunteer
run, but it's even more than most like I think you get a T-shirt if you help out and volunteer
and you'll meet really, you talk about it, you know the con.
I don't know what I'm talking about anyway.
Freaknik started off as just a bunch of guys getting together and everybody kind of took
their part and someone built the network and someone kind of arranged for security and
things like that.
And it got to the point where we had to have some more formal organization.
And instead of just shaking the hand of somebody that volunteered during the weekend, we decided
that you have to pay to get into the con just because we have to do that.
We're not large enough to get away without doing that.
But in return for you spending four hours over the weekend helping us, either the registration
desk and the hospitality room, if you happen to work on the security team, things like
that, we'll give you a T-shirt for that and every year try to make sure that we thank
the people that actually have spent the time over the weekend to man a post or to help
out in some way that we give our appreciation because without the volunteers there's no way
we could pull this off.
There's just too much to do to me things going on.
Once you stop in and kind of check out the conference, you can see that a lot of work
goes into it.
A lot of love goes into it also.
We wouldn't do this if it wasn't fun because it's definitely not a money maker.
It's just there to get everybody together and have a good time and share knowledge and
your experiences and to help other people out.
If you can come out and be a volunteer, it's the panel on the back and the T-shirt are
well worth it.
And it's not tricky stuff to do either, it's just don't be scared and you'll meet lots
of interesting folks doing it.
Yeah, pretty much the most intense thing is to be on the security staff and there's
a stringent background check, not really.
We just want to make sure that anyone with the security team has some past experience
doing things like that.
If you're bonded, that's great, but people that can stay on their feet all day long and
don't mind running around with the radio and taking care of business.
But working the registration desk is a couple of hours of saying hi to people running
in cash register, getting t-shirts, people that deal with the hospitality area and just
making sure that the food stays stocked and things of that nature.
So it's not very difficult work.
You kind of have to tell us what time you want to be available and things like that.
But it's just, you know, four hours to give back to the community to make sure the con
goes on.
It's very easy to do, but it's a lot of fun.
Meet a lot of really interesting people that way.
Awesome.
Well, I think that's a good intro to Freaknack.
We're going to have to do this after the con and see how it went.
Give me a couple of days after the con.
Okay.
We're all going to need a little time to recover and think about what really happened.
Yeah, I typically find out from the pictures after the con.
What really went on.
So I have to have a few days to look those over.
Definitely.
Well, thank you for being on the show.
Absolutely.
I appreciate it.
And I hope we can hear more from you and we're all looking forward to Freaknack.
Anytime.
We'll see you there.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio.
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