>and, especially, keeping a community eye on law enforcement and conference security to help ensure our friend Dmitry’s safety in the last 48 hours.
Has there been anything in all this that would suggest anyone was in danger at the conference?
This kind of comment about safety is pretty standard among very progressive communities anytime anyone disagrees with them.
Depends on how much you danger you consider someone making unwanted physical contact and restraining your movements.
Not only did they have law enforcement intervene in his removal, but goons continued to threaten his removal and he was banned from the discord.
Obviously as a private group DEF CON’s organizers have every right to contract with whatever companies they want to. In the same way, obviously the private individuals paying DEF CON’s organizers have every right to criticize them when they treat their contractors so poorly. However , I think it’s short-sighted and self-defeating to suggest that they shouldn’t ALSO have the right to criticize their choice of companies they work with when it impacts the quality of what they’re paying for.
This is not a sexist, anti-POC, or anti-trans criticism. Deciding on contractors for the reasons they claimed they did would be illegal in the public sector under France’s anti-discrimination laws, under Germany’s Grundgesetz, under Japan’s GPA, under the UK’s Equality Act in many cases, etc.
If I remember correctly there are some laws about discrimination by sexual orientation etc
To explain myself, try to imagine that they said to have been picked because white cis men
They could have easily rephrased that sentence to simply say “They expressed interest in working with us” and the point they’re making is the same.
It could easily be that multiple teams looked qualified during bidding for the job and that this was the distinguishing factor.
That's because "ability to do the project" is a given. It is always a requirement, outside of specific corruption scenarios.
If it was meant to be a point then it can make people think that those with that societal lean are poor performers. It’s not helping their cause.
If I look at the Defcon30 badge from 2022. It's the same thing. A small random engineering shop is selected and gets the order. And you get a nice little badge that can do stuff.
For the Dutch hacker camps we look a bit more long term and the engineers and designers have been part of the core team since 2017. And for 2025 we're already well underway.
There's a nice overview website with all the events around The Netherlands. https://hackeropuit.nl/
How can you say that when badges were on time and working at the end of the day?
But this breakdown in trust, too short timescales, using a new chip, not backing it up with extra funding and choosing this engineering company remains Defcons responsibility for running the project and realising a product.
Without full payment of the development costs, the IP for the PCB probably was still owned by EE and they could have stopped production. This shit show could have been prevented.
[0] the boring version without moving obstacles, PVC pipes, or fiberglass dinosaurs - further adding insult to injury
"They expressed that they specifically wanted to work with us as a woman-owned, queer- and POC-driven engineering firm to develop an electronic badge with a gaming element for this year’s conference."
I would have expected the core criteria to be ability to execute on time. Choosing an engineering firm based on the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the owner is foolish, and DEF CON is ultimately to blame for introducing superfluous criteria and missing the core criteria.