Do you really have nothing to hide? Prove it.

CCC Sputnik, SocioPatterns.org, and the OpenAMD project from 2600‘s The Last Hope are teaming up to provide a real mass surveillance experience at the 25C3. What are the problems and possibilities behind these panopticon dreams of certain politicians? For only 10 EUR you can find out!

Using RFID technology, congress attendees can elect to participate in a massive human tracking network. Building on the success of previous efforts with Sputnik at 24c3, and at the 2007 CCC camp, this year’s project will use advanced visualization to allow you to see …

The registration for your personal phone number at the 25C3 is now up and running. Excerpt from the eventphone page:

If you want to create a phone number for one of the upcoming events, you have to sign up first and give yourself a username.
You will get an email to confirm your account. Then you can choose a phone number for your cordless phone.
That is all you need to phone other people at the event for free. You can make friends or retrieve them, when they got spread over the whole area.
If you already have an account for eventphone.de you only have to click login.

Currently you can create …

Now is the time to find a place to stay at the 25C3. Fortunately, you still have a lot of good options left!

If you’re on a tight budget, The Gym is the most affordable place to stay for the congress. It is available from the 26th to the 31st and is only 5 Euros a night! Be sure to get your tickets at the main cash desk at the BCC. Tickets go fast. Without a ticket, you won’t get a place to sleep at the gym.

If the gym is not your style, you could also check out housing offers on the 25C3 wiki. If you have some space to spare, why not make an offer to help a fellow hacker? Lots of great …

We have a huge problem: Couches. We need couches for the 25C3. The more the better. Everybody loves to sit on a sofa with his computer and there can’t be enough couches for all the computers.

But organizing couches is hard work. Buying them on the internet, scheduling the pickup with the former owners, finding nerds who are willing and able (!) to lift and carry them three flights down, storing them, … you get the picture.

Here is your chance to contribute: Bring your own sofa. If your sofa is somewhere in Berlin we can pick it up and bring it to our storehouse. After the 25C3 we take care of …

We’re now on version 0.2 of the schedule. However, there is still some shuffling that needs to be done, so expect more updates soon.

You should have noticed by now, but I think it was never mentioned on this blog: The design for 25C3 is complete. Now is the time to get your banners and desktop background pictures at the appropriate wiki page.

Jetlag Bargainer asks: “Which will I regret more, sleeping through everything that happens early in the morning or sleeping through everything that happens late at night?”

Fortunately, there’s no need to worry about that! At the 25C3, the first talks begin at 11:30, and generally wrap up by 0:00. This means you have plenty of time to catch lots of great talks, have an awesome time partying at C-base and get a good 8 hours of sleep.

However, if you’re feeling sluggish, you can always catch an hour long nap between 15:00 and 16:00 and between 19:30 and 20:30 each day. (Some folks choose to call …

“Digital Fabrication … is going to change the nature of how we design and produce items in much the same way that personal computers transformed software development and the way we transfer information. Its going to rock.”

If Zach Hoeken has his way, one day we’ll all be able to print 3D objects as easily as we print on paper today. Digital Fabrication is at the core of Objects as Software: The Coming Revolution, his talk at the 25C3.

Like other speakers in the “Making” track, he’s hard at work designing, building and evangelizing the tools and techniques we can all use to create our own …

“Hackers and crafters do the same thing with different materials. There’s a lot of awesome cross-breeding going on and it’s rad, but I think each community finds the other a little mysterious. Also, crafters are mostly girls. Hackers are mostly boys. Match made in heaven?”

From hacking on a knitting machine one minute to hacking code the next, NYCResistor’s Kellbot is hard at work bringing the worlds of Hacking and Crafting back together. She will be covering this convergence and helping encourage its growth in “Crafting and Hacking: Separated at Birth”, her talk at the 25C3.

Craft has been a …

The very first version of our schedule (we call it “Fahrplan”) is out. Have a look.

The conference will present talks ranging from eVoting, a discussion of Methods for Understanding Targeted Attacks with Office Documents, to an overview about RepRap in the talk Objects as Software: The Coming Revolution. Phones and micro controllers will be a very big topic this year, but not all talks are fixed by now.

You will see a lot of empty slots, but it basically means that these talks are not 100% confirmed. The good thing: You still have something to wait for in the next couple of days.

Like every year, assigning seats and table space for projects is quite challenging. We don’t want to be unfair and we’d definitely like to prefer activists working on cool projects much more than just assigning this scarce resource to people merely using it for hanging around and watching movies.

If you’d like to reserve space on 25C3, please have a look at the projects page in the wiki. We want you to document your project and tell us, how much space you need and what else is required. Therefore you’ll need to create a wiki page before Friday, December, 5th, containing at least a common …

“There is a special addictive feeling to manifesting the objects of your imagination. It’s a much more powerful feeling than acquiring consumer goods. It feels really good.” – Bre Pettis.

Bre Pettis wants you to make things.

You’ve seen his DIY videoblogging for Make: Magazine and Etsy. You shouldn’t miss a chance to see his History Hacker TV show. If you know how to make an LED blink, you’ve almost certainly seen the work coming out of his hackerspace in New York City, NYCResistor. If Bre hasn’t inspired you yet, he will soon!

At the 25C3, you can find out about his latest passion for …