With the command “Enter” and the appeal “Follow the white rabbit”, already known from “Alice in Wonderland”, the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) started its first rC3 (remote Chaos Communication Congress) in uncharted territory on Sunday afternoon. In addition, there was a hint from the director about the use of the online world that had been put into operation for four days: “There are still various construction sites, but the biggest corners and edges have already been sanded out.”

Popular online tickets the CCC, there is the dictum that the intergalactic hackers force with the establishment of the Congress even in the physical world it is never finished before dismantling starts. So this year initially there is not much more than the start screen available for logged-in visitors of the “remote chaos experience” from the planned “2D world”. This should enable a video chat with friends, participation in virtual workshops or the creation of a personal list of favorite presentations.

“The last bits & bytes are just falling into place,” it said on Sunday morning in an email to the lucky visitors who were able to get hold of one of the coveted online tickets for the inner halls of the platform. “The online structure is clearly different, but here we are slowly getting to the point where the gates of the rC3 are opening.”

From 8 to 16 Bit: Virtual rush too big The “Community Content” is already available with over 16 own stages, self-organized discussion groups and 256 Meetings in the form of so-called assemblies. “We had planned it as an 8-bit world,” joked the hacker “blubbel” at the official start. In view of the virtual rush, an upgrade to 14 bit was carried out, so that there is now enough space for everyone.

Bubble

(Image: CC by 4.0 rC3 media.ccc.de)

The program in the form of the “timetable” and the streaming portal are traditional for all those interested, even without a congress ticket freely available, via which the lectures are broadcast live on various online stages and then quickly made available for later retrieval. The “Video Operation Center” (VOC) had announced that “the cloud had been greatly expanded” and now offered enough storage space for all recordings. The recording management announced: “Satellite connection to Chaos Studios established”. The teams for translations and subtitles, the “Heralde” for the moderation and 256 “Engel” also stood out as more or less ready to go Heavenly helpers.

“There is also the Internet” Until In view of the comparatively low number of infections at the time, the CCC had hoped for the summer that the major event would be called “37 even in times of the coronavirus pandemic. Chaos Communication Congress “(37 C3) in Leipzig. But even then, angels, who worked full-time in hospitals, signaled that the intensive care units were full and that only smears and tests were being made.

At the beginning of September, the hackers decided with a heavy heart that a ” Superspreader event around Christmas would be irresponsible “. There is also “the Internet, where we all know our way around”. So the motto was: “We are chaos, we are nerds, are hackers. Reality has to be hacked”. Bring the caffeinated Club Mate fizzy drink, hit the keyboards, “solder, stick, flash”, we spat into our hands together.

Obligatory fax In between there was “a minor problem” with the first tickets and the long online queue. But now the master of ceremonies could make the announcement: “We have something prepared” after really hard work. Even the cat content and the mandatory fax worked. The “Infrastructure team” is ready and has “polished the fiber optics”. Fortunately, the Internet scales infinitely and it “isn’t bluetooth either,” explained Blubbel with a lot of hacker’s irony. The team for the “critical infrastructures” disinfected the hard drives themselves using a plentiful amount of anti-virus solution, so that hardly anything could go wrong.

At the beginning, however, the streaming platform had problems, initially it was not accessible. A talk planned for 14 clock only started with 20 Minutes delay.

(tiw)