A Lifetime of Disobedience

The keynote argues that disobedience is central to hacking, comparing it to a tool that can build or harm depending on how it is used. The speaker ties this to first principles and to the roots of hacker culture, citing early zines, bulletin boards and the hacker manifesto of the 1980s. From a hardware perspective, he describes operating a chip outside its published limits, such as higher voltage or clock speed, as a core technique, and he contrasts that with vendors who treat such research as criminal.

The middle of the talk traces his own path. As a teenager he pulled pranks and got into trouble, which pushed him toward more constructive work. He describes a hacker group that published vulnerabilities, clashed with vendors over disclosure, and testified before the United States government. He recounts leaving a consulting firm when money started shaping its members' ethics, then working on a television engineering show and designing electronic badges for a large hacker conference. Recent years brought cryptocurrency wallet recovery work, which he found valuable but repetitive, prompting him to set boundaries to avoid burnout and exploitation.

He closes with examples of ingenuity under constraint, such as improvised tools made in prisons and skate-built multitools, and argues that people can make their own paths. His takeaway is to try the uncomfortable step, question rules that fail people, and keep hacker history recorded and shared.