Tech News Radio

A detailed conference report of the sessions attended has been posted: DEFCON22 (PDF).

In addition, here is a summary of DEFCON 22 related news articles of potential interest:

• Founder of America’s Biggest Hacker Conference: ‘We Understand the Threat Now’ [Time]
• Black Hat, Defcon Conferences: From Hackers to Pwnie Awards [eweek]
• DEFCON's Latest challenge: Hacking altruism [itworld]
• DEFCON 22: HACKING AIRPORTS, AIRPLANES AND AIRWAVES [tripwire, scmagazine#1, scmagazine#2]
• Blackphone isn’t insurmountable, hackers prove at Defcon [technewsnow, itporportal]
• Taiwan hackers win 2nd prize in Las Vegas [taiwantoday]
• McAfee sideshow eclipses Defcon's real security breakthroughs [infoworld]
• The clash of cultures between Black Hat and Defcon hacker events [venturebeat]
• At Defcon, hacker coalition calls for safer computer systems in vehicles [computerworld]
• DefCon: Bug bounty programs continue to evolve [scmagazine]
• Hacker Couture At Defcon [forbes]
• DefCon: Stolen data markets are as organized as legitimate online businesses [scmagazine]
• Propeller 1 on the DEFCON 22 Badges in Las Vegas! [parallax]
• Hackers Were Busy at Black Hat [PC Magazine]
• With Black Hat and DefCon comes spike in Vegas-based attacks [SC Magazine]
• Cyber Attacks From Las Vegas Spiked During Black Hat, Defcon [SecurityWeek.Com, site.co.uk, itsecurityguru.org]
• SensePost demos WiFi attacks at DefCon [ITWeb]
• DefCon 22: Home Automation Security, Personal Wrist Computer Badge and How To Buy Online Anonymously [Revision3 Part 3, Part 1]
• Inside Defcon: What Happens At The Annual Hacker Convention [nbc-chicago]
• EFF's T-Shirt Puzzle
• More info on OpenDNS's DEFCON presentation

Here are pointers to previous reports: DEFCON 18, DEFCON 19, DEFCON 20, and DEFCON 21.

I recently picked up via Craigslist a "new in the box" Asus C720-2802 Chromebook to use as my new primary system for TechNewsRadio.com.  The main reason was that DEFCON22 is coming up soon in Las Vegas and I needed a "relatively" secure system to attend sessions and take notes for ~8 hours a day.  

My previous note taking system was relatively old ThinkPad that I had 3 sets of extra batteries for. So, I dropped about 6 pounds by moving to the C720.  And I don't have to configure a fresh system to take to DEFCON and then scrub after.

This version (2802) seems like the middle build release (~Feb2014) from the original that was in late 2013 and the most current $199 version that uses the Intel Celeron 2955U processor (2848).  There is also a newer more expensive C720 with an Intel Core i3 processor available.

The positivies:

1. Keyboard is great.
2. Integration with my Google account was flawless.
3. Integration with all my core online services was flawless.
4. Working offline seems to work as expected.

The negatives:

1. Can't seem to check IMAP email with an extension or a native Chrome application.

The still to be determined:

1. Will it get hacked at DEFCON?
2. How to edit audio?
3. Will it let me take notes all day at DEFCON?

POST DEFCON REPORT: There is now an IMAP client - CloudMagic.  I am pretty sure I didn't get hacked at DEFCON.  I was able to take notes all day long at DEFCON without any issues.  I have not found a good solution for editing audio.