Normally around this time of year is the Chaos Community Hacker conference otherwise known as C3, and if you have seen a hacker talk about hacking consoles it was probably from this conference, though there is so much more to see and learn in such things. Owing to global travel being tricky at this point they have once more decided to hold it online and is going under the name rC3 2021: NOWHERE. At time of posting it has been going on for a while already with a few days left to go. Most of us will have experienced it via streams or recordings for years now anyway so no great difference there (though some live streams might see you need to sign up unlike previous years, and signing up will allow you some access to other things).
Barring something in the lightning talks then there are no scheduled talks for game hacking or discussions of old consoles (see the "ultimate" series like The Ultimate Gameboy Talk and "The Ultimate Amiga 500 talk"), though some things on game music are scheduled and there is a new twist on can it run Doom?. Even without that though there are several things on first steps in generating 3d models; ever wanted to make your own controller or replacement shell? This is how that starts. This in addition to general hacker talks that are sure to be of interest to some and primers on things you never knew you wanted to know about. Or if you prefer it is often asked around here "how do I learn to hack?" with watching these sorts of talks being a very good place to start.

The fahrplan (schedule) is available
https://rc3.world/2021/public_fahrplan#_
Do bear in mind this is a German group putting it all together so there will be several talks in German, and times listed are similarly those of Germany.
You can click on any of those talks to get a description of what they are about.

Recordings of talks can be found on https://media.ccc.de/ with this year's talks gradually being made available on this link.

You can see also see the old conferences on their CCC youtube channel as well and a lot of good stuff is there.

Any talks you are interested in seeing this year?

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Merch isn't as nice as last year imo

 

[FAST6191]

Merch isn't as nice as last year imo

Curious thing to note, or at least I don't think we have ever discussed such things in the past, but I did see some of it while investigating the site (for others playing along https://merch.rc3.world/products , archive.org is not playing nice for me for last year's to compare against). I quite like the greyscale/untextured/light engine only 3d model style of art and in what will be a complete turn up for the books someone on hacking site likes dystopian techno futurism styles as well.
Some of it does less for me but that is probably always going to be the case with more than 3 things.


Anyway talks wise.
https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-xhain/talk/H8QBPR/
Using AI to generate music has long fascinated me.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/RHE3AD/
Vapour phase soldering with a deep fryer? Count me in and while I can't say I have ever done a circuit board on a hot plate as I have always had better options I can certainly respect the ethos.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/L9ZBAU/
I have tried FreeCAD a few times and it is not necessarily my thing, though an intro to it might change that compared to the I know other CAD options and am fiddling with this/the intro manual.
Similar talk in https://cfp.franconian.net/end-of-year-event-2021/talk/B8DZVN/

I already mentioned the Doom hardware talk
https://cfp.franconian.net/end-of-year-event-2021/talk/MGMDUF/
The backwards approach to designing things I always like to contemplate, and if nothing else those that have to design things to interface with existing items (aka those that make the big money/have the best job security) tend to have an interesting approach to the world not always seen.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/3BFEMG/
Hacking implanted pacemakers and such like, and privacy concerns thereof. Applied medicine meets hacking is always fun.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/7VTNK8/
Maths for hackers. In general I like to consider maths for ? where I can as you can find some fascinating things that way.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/XUMJUH/
"Howto grok an experiment at an FEL". XFEL do fun things with very short (short has massive perks as far as seeing super small things) and super intense xrays, this is set to cover a bit of that and how the data from such hobbies (into the petabytes at times) gets wrangled.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/SK8Q7M/
Intro to FPV aka drones with cameras and you getting some nice VR goggles. I was walking past a small airfield once where some people were doing it and it looked fascinating.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/QVSGUY/
Software architecture talk. I come mostly from a nuts and bolts world where not having a specification to work to is pretty much heresy, and many of my greatest failures have been when I forwent such a thing. Every time I see a game design talk then it seems that is an alien concept, or someone might just have reinvented the reader's digest as read over the shoulder of someone on a train version of such things. It certainly seems to be showcased in the sorts of bugs I see/find, failures in design and code when I pull it apart.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/UGZY8B/
Post quantum crypto. Most people that spend more than 5 minutes reading about quantum computing will be introduced to Shor's algorithm, aka how to factor a lot of numbers at once, aka how to break most cryptography out there and certainly most of the practical ones (one time pad is of limited use in the real world so tends not to be for your everyday things). In a world where quantum computing becomes a practical thing (seems likely within the lifetime of most reading this) then some crypto would still be nice to have, this hopefully details what goes for that one.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-fem/talk/ZXAPAA/
Talk on floating point numbers. It is something I have had a hard time teaching others where most bit level operations are fine, hopefully this ends up being something I can point to or get some ideas on how to teach others from.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-xhain/talk/78MWXF/
While ostensibly on securing things for activists I generally find surveillance and counter surveillance a fascinating subject. By similar token https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/TZTE93/ is a talk on how wikileaks ran into something the CIA was doing, building on a talk from last year.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-r3s/talk/E9BQBU/
Talk on TPM aka trusted platform module, what it is, failings thereof, history and Windows 11 requiring it.

There are many others that interest me there, that is but a few.

 

[zoogie]

The pickings are kinda slim this time out, but here are some talks that could be interesting:

Math for hackers -- https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/7VTNK8/
Practical bruteforce of military-grade AES-1024 -- https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-r3s/talk/QMYGR3/
Doom on "ICE" -- https://cfp.franconian.net/end-of-year-event-2021/talk/MGMDUF/

Edit: well it seems FAST got the 1st and 3rd ones already. Name fits

 

[gbadl]

Damn. Another year with no Switch hacking announcements.

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Curious thing to note, or at least I don't think we have ever discussed such things in the past, but I did see some of it while investigating the site (for others playing along https://merch.rc3.world/products , archive.org is not playing nice for me for last year's to compare against). I quite like the greyscale/untextured/light engine only 3d model style of art and in what will be a complete turn up for the books someone on hacking site likes dystopian techno futurism styles as well.
Some of it does less for me but that is probably always going to be the case with more than 3 things.


Anyway talks wise.
https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-xhain/talk/H8QBPR/
Using AI to generate music has long fascinated me.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/RHE3AD/
Vapour phase soldering with a deep fryer? Count me in and while I can't say I have ever done a circuit board on a hot plate as I have always had better options I can certainly respect the ethos.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/L9ZBAU/
I have tried FreeCAD a few times and it is not necessarily my thing, though an intro to it might change that compared to the I know other CAD options and am fiddling with this/the intro manual.
Similar talk in https://cfp.franconian.net/end-of-year-event-2021/talk/B8DZVN/

I already mentioned the Doom hardware talk
https://cfp.franconian.net/end-of-year-event-2021/talk/MGMDUF/
The backwards approach to designing things I always like to contemplate, and if nothing else those that have to design things to interface with existing items (aka those that make the big money/have the best job security) tend to have an interesting approach to the world not always seen.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/3BFEMG/
Hacking implanted pacemakers and such like, and privacy concerns thereof. Applied medicine meets hacking is always fun.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/7VTNK8/
Maths for hackers. In general I like to consider maths for ? where I can as you can find some fascinating things that way.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaosstudiohamburg/talk/XUMJUH/
"Howto grok an experiment at an FEL". XFEL do fun things with very short (short has massive perks as far as seeing super small things) and super intense xrays, this is set to cover a bit of that and how the data from such hobbies (into the petabytes at times) gets wrangled.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/SK8Q7M/
Intro to FPV aka drones with cameras and you getting some nice VR goggles. I was walking past a small airfield once where some people were doing it and it looked fascinating.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/QVSGUY/
Software architecture talk. I come mostly from a nuts and bolts world where not having a specification to work to is pretty much heresy, and many of my greatest failures have been when I forwent such a thing. Every time I see a game design talk then it seems that is an alien concept, or someone might just have reinvented the reader's digest as read over the shoulder of someone on a train version of such things. It certainly seems to be showcased in the sorts of bugs I see/find, failures in design and code when I pull it apart.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-cwtv/talk/UGZY8B/
Post quantum crypto. Most people that spend more than 5 minutes reading about quantum computing will be introduced to Shor's algorithm, aka how to factor a lot of numbers at once, aka how to break most cryptography out there and certainly most of the practical ones (one time pad is of limited use in the real world so tends not to be for your everyday things). In a world where quantum computing becomes a practical thing (seems likely within the lifetime of most reading this) then some crypto would still be nice to have, this hopefully details what goes for that one.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-fem/talk/ZXAPAA/
Talk on floating point numbers. It is something I have had a hard time teaching others where most bit level operations are fine, hopefully this ends up being something I can point to or get some ideas on how to teach others from.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-xhain/talk/78MWXF/
While ostensibly on securing things for activists I generally find surveillance and counter surveillance a fascinating subject. By similar token https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-chaoszone/talk/TZTE93/ is a talk on how wikileaks ran into something the CIA was doing, building on a talk from last year.

https://pretalx.c3voc.de/rc3-2021-r3s/talk/E9BQBU/
Talk on TPM aka trusted platform module, what it is, failings thereof, history and Windows 11 requiring it.

There are many others that interest me there, that is but a few.

Too bad there's no console hacking talks this year. Maths one sounds interesting though.

 

[Jayro]

Damn. Another year with no Switch hacking announcements.

We would y want Nintendo to patch something if we get a coldboot hack or a hack on latest firmware.