Every year for the past 35 years, the German Chaos Computer Club has met just after Christmas for a few days of “Spaß am Gerät” — having fun with the machines. And that’s everything from trying to bring an old PDP-8 back into running condition to forging new software to replace the old and busted social media platforms that permeate our lives. The sum total of around 17,000 people doing the nerdy stuff that they love, and sharing it together, is both amazing and inspiring. Four days of little sleep and much socializing later, I bet there was still another four days’ worth of stuff to see.

[Dave Darko] had a slew of his custom badges on hand, including one that he made for the conference. In true Chaos spirit, it didn’t have any firmware written yet — it was just a blank, multi-radio slate. So he handed a bunch out to [SpaceHuhn] and the rest of the Insecure crew for them to hack on. Let’s see what they come up with. [Alex] was working on layout and parts sourcing for even tinier LED matrixes!