We are processing a whole lot of talks and we have room for more! Below are selections from the first batch of accepted submissions.
The Present and Future of Online Discourse
Harper Reed
Today’s technologies greatly empower individuals and groups, while simultaneously creating tremendous risks to freedom and privacy. How can major forces like big tech, artificial intelligence, and political governance be guided towards pro-social outcomes? What can individuals do? Is there hope for social media to heal divisions, rather than amplify discord? These and other topics will be addressed during this lively and far-ranging presentation.
Hacking Search: Kagi’s Revolt Against the Ad-Tech Machine
Vladimir Prelovac
You know the drill: search for official travel info, get an overcharging third-party site. Look for a hotel, get a misleading aggregator. “Free” search costs you time, money, and trust. Kagi is the revolt - a paid, obsessively user-centric search engine architected to serve you, not the advertisers. This session reveals how Kagi sidesteps the surveillance model, leveraging diverse sources and AI tools (under your control) to deliver clean, customizable results. Founder Vlad Prelovac will detail the tech choices enabling genuine user agency (blocking SEO garbage, elevating trusted sources via filters), the challenge of building viable alternatives outside the ad-tech ecosystem, and the fight to restore user agency against data-hoarding monopolies. If you’re tired of being the product on the web, join the resistance.
Hardware Hacking Meets Art: How Movie Special Effects Are Made
Davis DeWitt
Step into the world of movie magic with Davis DeWitt, a filmmaker, inventor, and former Mythbuster and learn how combining hardware hacking with art creates objects that do more than function: they evoke emotion and tell stories. From blowing up cars to building robots with personality, this talk will explore why it’s important to tackle projects that blur the lines between disciplines.
PrivacyTests.org: Web Browser Leak Testing
Arthur Edelstein
PrivacyTests.org is an open-source privacy audit of popular web browsers. The project subjects web browsers to automated leak tests and regularly publishes the browsers’ test results head-to-head on a website and on social media. The goal of PrivacyTests is to encourage all web browsers to mend their ways and comprehensively protect everyone’s privacy. By thoroughly exposing the leaks in web browsers, the website helps users choose a more private browser, and thereby puts pressure on browser makers to fix their privacy leaks. In his talk, Arthur will give some details about the project’s approach to testing and presenting test results, and show how browser privacy has evolved over the past four years.
CRXaminer - Deep Dive Into Chrome Extensions (Plus Tool)
Mark El-Khoury
You spend your time configuring HTTP headers and hardening your containers. Meanwhile your CFO just downloaded a Chrome extension to make the font in Gmail Comic Sans. What are Chrome extensions, exactly? This talk will dive into details, including format, contents, static analysis with custom rules, threat modeling (when does this even matter?), and some of the unique challenges of building a security scanner. A tool will be demoed that has just been released for this: CRXaminer (crxaminer.tech). You will learn how you can immediately start using it.
Design for Neurodiversity: Creating Neuro-Inclusive Spaces
Dorothy Howard
This talk will explore the concept of neurodiversity and its implications for designing events and spaces with neurodivergent people’s diverse needs in mind. The neurodiversity paradigm promotes embracing neurological differences, emerging from the autistic rights and disability justice movements of the 1990s. Accessibility guides and resources rarely focus on neuro-inclusive design. The presentation will highlight strategies for creating neuro-inclusive environments informed by research in education, including examples such as low-sensory rooms in libraries and conferences. Attendees will be encouraged to reflect on how neuro-inclusive design can benefit the communities they engage with.
New Journalism: Reimagining Information Networks From the Ground Up
Patrick Boehler
This presentation explores how communities are developing resilient information-sharing systems that outperform traditional journalism. Drawing from research on independent journalism in China, Patrick will examine how these organic networks function as advanced social technologies that challenge conventional understanding of information distribution. The talk invites the HOPE community to reimagine information infrastructure that can withstand authoritarian control, resist corporate manipulation, and genuinely serve community needs through collaborative problem-solving and the application of security expertise in distributed systems.
The Quantum Curtain
Ed Ryan
High technology has taken on a new meaning. As AI technologies grow increasingly creepy and quantum computing catches major headlines, the U.S. government is scrambling to cover its posterior. Recognizing that these technologies pose a significant security risk, the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security has imposed export controls on AI and quantum computing technologies in an attempt to limit their spread. This talk will discuss the history of export restrictions, touching on cryptography and the Playstation 2, before moving on to explain the new restrictions and their implications for those working in impacted fields. The idea of a “deemed export,” which limits who is even allowed to learn about certain technologies, will be addressed.
Hacking for Social Justice
Danacea Vo
“How can my hacking skills become a force for advancing social justice?” Those who ponder this question often know what they’re up against - oppression, inequality, enshitification.... But the path toward building meaningful change can feel unclear or overwhelming. This talk draws from years of experience working alongside activists, human rights defenders, and digital organizers, and offers a practical framework for lasting, meaningful change. You’ll gain social impact strategies that will help you align your technical skills with the movements and communities you care about. If you’ve ever felt the call to do more - with purpose, with clarity, with community - this is your invitation.
Aphantasia: A Personal Reflection
Dr. Earl Brown
Imagine a mind without mental images, where “picture this” has no meaning. Aphantasia - the inability to form mental images - is a little-known, rare condition that affects around one to four percent of the population. In this presentation, Earl will talk about aphantasia and how it has impacted his professional life as a pathologist and a teacher with more than 35 years of experience. He will explore its impact - both good and bad - on everyday experiences such as chess, piano, drawing, reading, memory, and learning, finally speculating on how aphantasia may affect creativity and the hacker mindset.
Invisible Ink of Compression
XlogicX
When you pop the hood of RFC 1951 (DEFLATE), there lies an interesting playground that would be otherwise unseen in the context of compression use cases. This talk will address many aspects of the ubiquitous DEFLATE compression, none of which involve compressing data! “Designer Compression” scenarios will be explored, such as blocks of DEFLATE data that can be fully ASCII printable, contain no data, buffer underflow access of nulls, and even apply forms of recursion. We will also see forensic data extraction from compressed fragments, employ difficult to detect watermarking, demo a covert channel PoC (deflate in http), and forever-cookies. The presentation style will take a high-level first pass and then dig into the technical details with the time left.
How a Handful of Location Data Brokers Actively Track Millions, and How to Stop Them
Bill Budington, Lena Cohen
In the past year, a number of investigations have revealed the outsized role of a few select companies in gathering, storing, and selling the location data of millions of devices - and by extension people - worldwide. These companies largely use technologies which power the online advertising industry in order to collect and disseminate this data. To make matters worse, this data has been both provided to private investigators on the mere assurance that they plan to work with law enforcement, and has been subject to data breaches which put the privacy of millions at risk. This talk will elaborate on the technologies, data flows, and industry players which comprise this complicated ecosystem. Most importantly, it will cover some basic steps you can perform to protect yourself against the wide array of location privacy harms your device subjects you to. The presenters will show tools and techniques they’ve developed to allow users to take back ownership of our devices, rather than our devices owning us.
The Shape of the Legal Battlefield for InfoSec Professionals at Work
Ken Vedaa
It is no secret that sometimes there can be tension between InfoSec professionals and the organizations that they work for. Security professionals spend their days (and sometimes nights and weekends as well) buried in the dirty laundry that others pretend does not exist. These tensions can bubble up in unexpected ways. As an InfoSec professional, what are the common legal concerns that you need to be aware of at work? How do these challenges change over time? What should you keep in mind when considering a new job?
Activism, Hactivism, and the Law
Alex Muentz
Protest has become more important and more dangerous in the U.S. It’s harder to know where the line is between safe, lawful protest and actions that can get you sanctioned, arrested, or deported. Alex will discuss how to assess the risks you face in online and in-person protests, ranging from pickets to dropping docs.
The Future of Email Is Open
Dejan Štrbac, William Lessard
Email is one of our most essential tools, yet it’s controlled by a handful of corporations that scan, monetize, and gate-keep our communication. In this talk, the presenters will introduce OpenEmail, a ground-up re-imagining of async communication built on a radically simple, open protocol. Designed for privacy, integrity, and interoperability, OpenEmail combines end-to-end encryption; decentralized delivery; and a public, extensible architecture to give users true ownership of their communication, and developers the freedom to build on top of an open social protocol. They will explore how a spam-free, surveillance-free inbox, where messages are trustworthy by design, can reclaim the Internet as a space for open, human connection, free from Big Tech. More than just a talk, this is a call to arms: to take back control of our communication and build a digital future that serves people, not profit.
Build a Tech Community in Your Neighborhood, One Hackathon at a Time
William Hutson
This talk chronicles the journey of creating a vibrant tech community through short, accessible two-hour mini-hackathons that lower barriers to participation. The speaker shares their experience of building Flushing Tech’s successful bi-weekly hackathon program, and provides a practical roadmap for you to try this at home in your own neighborhood. Leave with actionable guidelines for starting similar initiatives that emphasize the importance of creating an inclusive environment that welcomes participants of all skill levels while maintaining enough technical focus to drive meaningful project development. This talk is ideal for community organizers, tech enthusiasts, and anyone interested in fostering grassroots innovation in their local area.
The Five Pillars for Rewriting History and Culture
Alexander J. Urbelis, Daniel Nowak, Roel Schouwenberg
From printing press to blockchain, technological advances reshape historical narratives across five pillars: finance, governance, faith, communications, and consciousness. Influential entities employ sophisticated cyber and information solutions to manipulate resources and power. Governments, corporations, and NGOs manage narratives, shaping opinion and obscuring truths as they manage perception. Religious groups use digital platforms to spread doctrine, blurring traditional faith boundaries. Social media and emerging technologies amplify disinformation worldwide. These operations exploit cognitive vulnerabilities, reshaping collective memory and fueling evolving consciousness. This talk will examine how technology-driven psychological operations can unmake historical canons, normalizing new realities and marginalizing dissent. The presenters will highlight ethical dilemmas and stress the urgent need for transparency, critical awareness, and decentralization across all pillars. Lastly, they will offer recommendations for how the individual can remain resilient in the face of these existential threats and multifaceted Manichean devils.
The Trials and Tribulations of Building Your Own Phone
Wesley Appler (aka lamemakes)
Over the last two decades digital surveillance has become baked into our daily lives. Your current and past location, who you’re in contact with, habits/interests, sensor data, and a trove of other personal information is constantly being sent to third parties by the smartphone that is nearly always carried on us. What would it look like if we reconsidered the mobile phone entirely, putting extra emphasis on privacy and intentional disconnection via open source hardware and software? This talk will follow Wesley’s journey to do just that, starting at the conception of the idea, getting acquainted with mobile networks/operators, obtaining proprietary datasheets, designing hardware, failed/successful prototypes, the current state of the project (along with demos), and how any interested parties can get involved.
Bitpart: 5-In-1 Platform for Activism Over Signal
Josh King
Signal is one of the most critical tools we have for secure communication amongst activists, journalists, and human rights defenders. As of 2024, Signal has over 70 million active users and over 220 million downloads, with no signs of slowing down. With the global rise of the far-right and corresponding attacks on human rights, the ability to securely organize via Signal against these forces is more important than ever.
To that end, Throneless Tech has embarked on an in-depth research project that resulted in the creation of Bitpart: a Rust-based software platform that allows for the creation of dynamic organizing tools on top of Signal. Depending on the end-users’ tech capacity, Bitpart can be run on organizers’ own self-hosted servers or through Throneless-hosted servers. The project builds on experience gained from past Signal chatbot projects, and new research conducted with targeted groups such as current organizers, activists, and journalists around the world.
In this session Josh King, developer of Bitpart, will demonstrate how the platform is being used to create bots that activists can use as secure, anonymous tiplines, digital helpdesks, broadcast lists, a tool to distribute eSIMs, and a tool to share VPN download codes. Participants will come away with an understanding of how Signal can be utilized in novel ways, how to think through the threat model and risk assessment for creating secure tools for activists, and how Bitpart can be expanded upon and applied to their own communities.
Data Autonomy: Counter-Surveillance Strategies for Civil Society
Marlon Kautz
The surveillance apparatus in the West is going critical, and civil society is not prepared for the fallout. Political leadership is explicitly targeting NGOs and social movements using surveillance capabilities that have been perfected over the past decade. This talk will evaluate the merits and limitations of different counter-surveillance approaches from the vantage point of grassroots organizers, and go beyond the stock advice of “use Signal and a VPN” to offer proposals for defeating state surveillance through technical infrastructure development and political organizing.
Hack the Violin Part 2: The Advanced Stuff - This Time There’s AI
Andrew Morican, Ebmbat
This is a follow-on from “Hack the Violin: A Hacker’s Approach to Learning, Playing, and Teaching the Violin” from Hope XV.
This will be a look at technology, most notably AI and hacking the violin. You will learn what’s out there and what the presenters were able to achieve with their own AI project regarding practicing and engagement. You will also learn about AI with live performance and creation, as well as AI and string sampling - and see how sampling may be altering the stringscape.
