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.