
29C3 Live Stream from Hamburg (Keynote: Jacob Appelbaum) - rdl
http://saal1.rtmp.29c3.fem-net.de/
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cvursache
People like Jake Appelbaum that manage (or actively try) to stay in the
spotlight also educate the general public about security. That is something
very valuable for a community: to have evangelists going around and spreading
the word while getting all the attention. Just look at people like Noam
Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan, and so on. They could
have all been doing science instead of working for months on television
programs. They didn't because they believed educating the public is a
worthwhile task. I sure hope we never run out of people that share the same
opinion.

~~~
maradydd
If Appelbaum is trying to educate the general public, he's doing a piss-poor
job of it. Sagan, Dawkins and Chomsky approach[ed] the general public via the
media and reach[ed] hundreds of millions of people. (Cosmos alone: over 500
million. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage>) Appelbaum
found himself a community numbering in the tens of thousands, rode the
coattails of actual researchers to prominence by making minor contributions to
their work and overplaying his role, and now rests on other people's laurels.
He's only a big fish because this pond is so small.

~~~
cvursache
I am not as informed about Appelbaum as you seem to be, but regardless of his
actual contributions to the field, maybe it's not so clear about whether or
not he's doing a poor job educating the general public. The numbers of minds
captivated with stories told by the likes of Carl Sagan are, as you mentioned,
orders of magnitude bigger than what Appelbaum could accomplish. But take
Mikko Hypponen or Moxie Marlinspike - great speakers with great things done -
would you say that they come even close to what Noam Chomsky reaches with his
talks? I don't have concrete data on this, but I do believe the answer to be a
clear no. And that's maybe because the majority of the population of the world
isn't as interested in computer security as they are in debates about
religion, science, politics, sports, consumer electronics or whatever. Maybe
this field is just too young to be a permanent part of day-to-day concerns or
to have more than a couple of tens of thousands of people interested in it.
And maybe that's why it's probably worth considering supporting the few public
figures this field has.

~~~
sneak
Jake talks about politics, not computer security.

------
sneak
Jake Appelbaum is an attention-whore who wished for the wrong thing and got
it.

The type of fight he's fighting, which, indeed, was foretold by the
cypherpunks years before he ever compiled a program, is one of vast asymmetry.
He's the source of the quote "the government has a monopoly on violence, but
violence can't solve math problems".

The problem is, when you function within an outlawed organization using your
above-ground identity, you choose to have your own life destroyed, rendering
you unable to be effective in doing the things you talk about being so
important. We're talking, here, about a guy who gives sensationalist
interviews to Rolling Stone about how he can hack into anything on the
internet.

They don't need to break your crypto. They can just break you.

When fighting the surveillance state, you can be famous, xor you can be
effective. Period.

I wrote about this some time ago:

    
    
         https://eeqj.com/20110113/wikileaks/
    

Don't believe the hype.

Every single person paying attention knows Wikileaks would have been way more
effective if it had been fronted by a signing key instead of Julian Assange's
haircut. They might have even been able to continue functioning instead of
being extrajudicially harassed into oblivion.

These people serve as examples of how _not_ to effect meaningful change.

PS: It also speaks volumes about the current state of the Chaos Computer Club
and their conference that they chose such a meaningless sycophant as their
keynote speaker.

~~~
magikarp
I should probably mention that this guy has been following Appelbaum around
the Internet for literally years, commenting like this on every post about him
that he can find. He's @sneakatdatavibe from Twitter, IIRC.

~~~
axusgrad
Based on sneak's HN posting history, it would be weird if he let this one go
by without commenting.

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rdl
Doh -- I didn't realize the URL was just to whoever was currently in Track 1
(which was Jake's keynote at the time). A better URL for the whole thing is
<http://29c3.fem-net.de/>

There seem to be some technical difficulties; I hope the talks end up on
YouTube afterward.

~~~
janerik
All videos will be uploaded after the congress.

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dexcs
For all not german-speaking: He's literally talking about how politicians and
media use words and sentences to not blame themselves... Really funny...

~~~
Inufu
I believe you are referencing "DIE WAHRHEIT, WAS WIRKLICH PASSIERTE UND WAS IN
DER ZEITUNG STAND" (the truth, what really happened and what the newspapers
said)
[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5181.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5181.en.html),
which is the talk after the keynote.

Jacob's talk was in English.

~~~
dexcs
strange... your're right.... I just followed the link and saw this stream...

~~~
nickik
It was the link to a live-stream.

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haakon
Talk has been posted here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl5OQz0Ko8c>

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haakon
I guess it's over by now; is a recording available yet?

~~~
janerik
The talks will be published 1-2 weeks after the congress (so expect it in mid-
january)

