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Security United States

In-Person DEF CON 28 Event Is Canceled (theregister.co.uk) 23

Annual Las Vegas hacker gathering DEF CON has officially called off its physical conference for this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Register reports: In what was pretty much a foregone conclusion, the organizing team today said the in-person event would not be held in 2020. It had been slated to take place in August. This comes after the more formal Black Hat USA event, usually scheduled to run the same week as DEF CON in Sin City, was shelved as an in-person shindig, due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic forcing everyone to stay home where possible. Both shows will tentatively take place as web streaming affairs this summer. For DEF CON 28, this means a 'Safe Mode' online gathering, with video streams and a Discord server, between August 6 and 9. "Even if a vaccine were to be discovered tomorrow it would not be soon enough to test, manufacture, distribute and administer in time for people to safely to travel by August," explained Jeff "The Dark Tangent" Moss.

"Too many states have stayed open or are reopening, people partied for far too long, and the lack of federal coordination gives me no hope that things will get back to normal this year. I also worry that the conferences that postponed to later this year will be caught up in the 'second wave' after restrictions start to ease and they will end up having to cancel. Because of this, postponing for DEF CON was not an option."
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In-Person DEF CON 28 Event Is Canceled

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  • by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Saturday May 09, 2020 @05:04AM (#60040022)

    That isn't gonna work. Everything will get hacked, cracked, and shut down or otherwise compromised. If not just flat-out DDoSed.

    • That isn't gonna work. Everything will get hacked, cracked, and shut down or otherwise compromised. If not just flat-out DDoSed.

      So it is gonna work.

      • For the black hats who like to nuke their own convention (of which there are more than a few), yes. But one of the things that keeps DEFCon running is that they can't completely pwn meatspace (yet). Online they can kill the whole thing, possibly in minutes.

        • by gsdfa ( 6545090 )
          DEFCON cancellation has been a running joke for the last 20 years. Good luck convincing everyone that it is in fact cancelled.
  • Here's proof (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Saturday May 09, 2020 @05:48AM (#60040060) Homepage Journal

    If the ultimate tin-foil hat crew is taking Covid-19 seriously, you might want to believe it's true, instead of a liberal conspiracy to take the Donald's rightful crown away from him.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      instead of a liberal conspiracy to take the Donald's rightful crown away from him.

      its not like Dark Tangent isnt a former Obama administration, left leaning foreign policy think tank wonk.

      Sucks when facts don't back up your Trump basing huh?

    • you might want to believe it's true, instead of a liberal conspiracy to take the Donald's rightful crown away from him.

      It's a conspiracy to make us get vaccinated, haven't you been keeping up? This "plandemic" was masterminded by John D. Rockefeller who had the foresight to figure out how to get people addicted to medicine. He keeps getting paid to this day living on his island in Eyjafjallajoskull.

      • It's almost like the CIA planned a conspiracy disguised as a vaccination campaign to discover the hiding place of Osama Bin Laden. Oh wait, that's exactly what happened.
        • So which terrorist are we going to trick with the Covid-19 vaccine? Seems like a lot of trouble to find one terrorist.

  • Can someone answer this before modding it off-topic? I have !movies as a tag. What does that mean? If it means I don't see movie posts, how do I get rid of it?

  • "Even if a vaccine were to be discovered tomorrow it would not be soon enough to test, manufacture, distribute and administer in time for people to safely to travel by August," explained Jeff "The Dark Tangent" Moss.

    this was supposed to be about *health care capacity*...like we don't want to have a spike in demand for health care capacity (beds, ventilators, tests) so we quarrantine and shut down to "flatten the curve"

    we shut down do "flatten the curve" of health care demand

    the idea of a vaccine being requi

    • Really, it's because of systemic mismanagement of civil infrastructure in the name of "INCREASED QUARTERLY PERFORMANCE!!"

      Or-- that, as it pertains to slamming into an actual pandemic, since then the actual costs of pulling up the foundations to build penthouses suddenly manifest with vengeance.

      Let me explain:

      Right now, yes-- we instituted the quarantine to prevent the healthcare system from overloading. The US healthcare system was operating at borderline capacity (because that is what is "efficient!") dur

      • I should mention:

        Availability of a vaccine would be a strong catalyst toward being able to legitimately restart "normal" business operations, because it would artificially increase baseline immunity, and drive down R0. It would give you much of the benefit of the social distancing (people not contracting, and then spreading the virus), without the devastating economic costs.

        THAT is why there is such a strong push to get a vaccine out to the public as quickly as possible.

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