WHYcast transcript episode 26
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Transcript 26
Nancy: Hi and welcome to the WHYcast episode 26. I’m Nancy.
Ad: I’m Ad.
Nancy: And we are the hosts of the only podcast about a hacker camp in the universe.
Nancy: This volunteer-run event will take place this year in the Netherlands, approximately 42 kilometers north of Amsterdam from August 8 to 12, 2025.
Nancy: So Ad, what are we talking about today?
Ad: As every week, we are talking about the news. We are talking about where to hack.
Ad: We still have an interview from when we were at Hacker Hotel.
Ad: And also one, I think, from Hack42, the in-person Orga Meet.
Ad: We still have a vacancy, which has been dragging on for a little bit.
Nancy: More than one, but this is most definitely a vacancy.
Ad: An important one as well, yeah.
Ad: And unfortunately, no listener questions.
Nancy: Oh. Nancy: Yep.
Ad: Okay. But that’s okay. Keep those coming. Keep those coming.
Ad: But first, let’s dive in. Let’s get into the news.
Nancy: Yes. So did you have a good Pi Day, Ad?
Ad: I did have a good Pi Day.
Nancy Cool.
Ad: Because 3-14 is Pi Day.
Ad: And we do like numbers here.
Nancy: Friday, WHY-Day, Pi Day.
Ad: Yes. It all rhymes.
Ad: And what I saw on the social media is there are more people who like numbers.
Ad: So that’s a good thing. Nancy: Yep.
Ad: And if we’re talking about Friday, today is a Friday. It’s a WHY-Day. But it’s also a CTF Day because the CTF Teaser Round is starting today. So get over to CTF.WHY2025.org and see how you can participate in this Teaser Round for the big CTF event.
Ad: Also, if you look back at episode 24, we have an interview with Thijs and he tells everything about the CTFs and how that works.
Nancy: And there’s also a short on our YouTube channel in which Thijs explains—in minutes—what a CTF is. If you have never heard of it or never have participated in one, that’s a great place to start. From what I remember, it is beginner-friendly. So if you like puzzling games, escape rooms, quests, things like that, please consider joining in, because you will probably have loads of fun. So look at the full episode or look at the short and start playing today.
Nancy: Cool.
Ad: Yes, absolutely.
Nancy: And let me check the ticket sales. At the moment of recording, we have less than 900 tickets left—886 for now—and probably when this episode comes out, even less.
Nancy: So grab your tickets.
Ad: Yes.
Nancy: And also, we had someone saying in the last Orga Meet, “I’m missing out on the merch on the main page of the website, the home page of the website.”
Nancy: It might be on there right now. I’m not quite sure yet. But if it’s not on there, you can find the merch in the ticket shop as well. So if you go to tickets.WHY2025.org, you can find all the amazing, amazing merch over there.
Ad: It’s really cool. It’s really cool. Yeah. Yeah. There is quite a bit to choose from. But beware, it’s only a pickup at the event. So you also need a ticket to be able to get your merch.
Nancy: Yeah.
Nancy: We are not sending things to anyone. So you can buy merch when you’re at the event to pick it up at the event.
Ad: Yes.
Ad: And somewhere at the end of April, maybe the beginning of May—but then the merch will actually get ordered—so make sure you order it before that, because otherwise they don’t have enough time to manufacture it for us.
Nancy: Yes. Nancy: So if you want merch, be swift in ordering it.
Nancy: There are some glow-in-the-dark elements. There are kids-themed items. There are numerous cool things, hats, bags, and whatnot. So most definitely go and check that out. Definitely. Definitely.
Ad: You said people were mentioning this, so we are going to have a little bit of a surprise at the Orga Meet. And this is something that sounds a bit spooky, perhaps, but we do have a biweekly online Orga Meet, which is for all the teams, for all the members of the teams. And if you think, “Well, I’m not a member of a team, but I am very curious and I might want to join a team,” feel free to also join in. All the information is on the wiki. If you open the wiki—wiki.WHY2025.org—there’s “Meetings” on the top left in the menu. There you will find wherever, whenever the meetings are, a link to the new Jitsi server and also for the 5th of April, because the next Orga Meet is the 26th of March. But then the 5th of April is a very special one, because that is a field day—a physical meetup. We’ll go to Geestmerambacht and we’re going to check out the field and also just get all the teams together and get stuff done, because that is something that really works well when you’re actually physically all in one location and able to talk to each other.
Nancy: And if that’s too far away for you in the future, let’s have a look on where to hack. Each week, we will share where you can find wise-minded people—where to hack.
Ad: So as mentioned before, the local hackerspaces in your area will probably also participate in the Open Hackerspaces Day on Saturday, the 29th. So make sure you look up your local hackerspace and go visit, or maybe visit another space that you don’t regularly visit—
Ad/Nancy: Maybe take a look at a city over or the other side of the country.
Ad: What they are doing.
Ad: Yeah. Make it a road trip.
Ad/Nancy: Visit three. Why not? Awesome.
Ad: Talking about three. Number3.
Nancy: Number3.
Ad: Number3. Robert, that was on the episode last time. Together with Florian, they also did an interview at Hacker Hotel, interviewing each other.
Nancy: Yeah.
Ad: And from what I understood, you had a bit of editing to do there.
Nancy: I had loads of fun editing it. Yeah. They were speaking to me often in this interview, like, “Nancy, can you please cut this out?”
Ad: So it was interesting.
Nancy: Breaking the fourth—The fourth wall.
Nancy: Luckily enough, they had a lovely conversation about all the things surrounding Family Zone and what that entails. Thank you—that was the word I was looking for—so what that entails. Also, I gave some ideas on there will be talks for kids. You can send in a talk through cfp.WHY2025.org. That “Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old,” but for real, I think that’s amazing. So let’s also have—you have some content for four kids in the interview, which has been a month ago. They were talking about 10% of the tickets is sold to children under 16, which still stands because in the interview, they’re talking about 200 tickets. I think it’s approximately 230 right now—so there are 200 tickets—I think it’s approximately 230 visitors that are younger than 16 at WHY. I think that’s amazing.
Nancy: Also, they’re trying to figure out if kids can help being an angel—so volunteering on the terrain as well, helping out with maybe some cooking or, I don’t know, in the volunteer kitchen or so. If you listen to this and you are a part of a team in the organization and you know that you have some shifts that can be done by kids, please reach out to the volunteer team—or at least something that can be done with a kid present.
Ad: So it could be that the parent is doing the thing and the kid just joins in, because that would foster the sense of participation, which is one of the cornerstones of this event.
[crosstalk] It’s not just be there and consume.
Ad: It’s also being created—or create, exactly. And get the world—they’re young, right? So if we can start them off volunteering and doing cool stuff when they’re young, and by that enjoying the event even better, let’s make that happen, because this will be the future organizers of the next camps. So I think it’s a great idea to involve them as much as possible.
Nancy: So let’s listen to Florian and Dex.
Number3: Welcome to WHYcast at Hacker Hotel 2025. We’re here with Florian, doing something for Family Zone, but you can share that yourself.
Florian: Yeah. So the idea is that we want to make all of these hacker camps inclusive to all age groups. And to do that, we’ve been organizing a family area of sorts at a couple of camps. These last couple of editions, we’re calling that Family Zone these days, not “village,” because that’s kind of a nuance—but the essence is we have a major field where families and their kids can just roam around, and we’ll arrange all sorts of fun stuff. In the past, we’ve done sand pits, ball pits, bouncing castles—exactly all of that. So it will be loads of fun, and we will also try and do hacker-type workshops for young kids as well.
Number3: So that was Dex. Since when was that? When was he coming to these camps?
Florian: Dex has been with us since SHA, so he was quite young at the time, and the sand pit was awesome, but he’s learning and he’s doing new stuff every edition.
Number3: That’s cool. So you were telling us that this all started—do you remember when the Family Zone thing started? Do you have any recollection?
Florian: To be fair, I don’t, because I started getting involved with it since I had a kid, and I think that’s true for most people. But I’ve been around, and started at SHA in 2009 already, so that was the first time we had a family zone (family village) to make the events more family friendly.
Number3: Do you know how many tickets have already been sold for kids under 16?
Florian: Oh, that’s a good question, and I don’t know the number off the top of my head, but it’s around 9% to 10% since the last couple of editions.
Number3: Yeah, so yesterday we looked at the numbers, and it’s already 200 under-16s, so it’s growing strong. So will there be workshops and other talks by kids, two kids, or four kids?
Florian: There most definitely will be. I don’t know by kids, but for kids—there will. There is a special section in the CFP that we can flag for child-friendly or child-targeted content, so we’ll be looking at that together with the Teen Content group.
Number3: So if you have anything you want to share with kids, and you can make it kid-friendly, then please do it. Put it in the CFP and make sure that it gets in. Do you need any help yet with organizing the village or the Family Zone?
Florian: Yeah, that’s going to be something to work on.
Florian: Okay, so what we really are looking for now is we have the main lines of things that we’ve planned already going. What we need to add now is more ideas—people who have cool ideas, kids that want to do a specific thing, however odd it may be. Just come up with it and put it on the wiki so we can look at it and see if we can make a budget for it. In the past, we’ve done scavenger hunts, balloon-folding workshops with Frank, rocket launching, bamboo building things—whatever you can think of, put it out there, and if enough people like it, we’ll make room for it. That’s the main thing.
Number3: If there’s 200 kids, then there must be 200 parents. So the zone—how big is it? And can they go to bed early? How does that work in that area?
Florian: That’s a good question. Over the last couple of editions, we’ve had quite the experience together with Terrain and Logistics to actually think about how audio and noise work so that we can accommodate even the young kids going to sleep a little bit. You know, it’s a camp—there will always be noise—but it’s definitely something we keep in mind and try to keep a little bit away from the really noisy party areas.
Number3: So let’s skip to the next part. You’ve been going to these events for many years. Could you share your first camp experiences? What was your very first camp that you did?
Florian: Oh, we have to go way, way back because I’m already gray. Our first camp was HIP ’97, and I was there together with a lot of guys from the university—the Data and Adrenaline crew. We had a lot of fun there. We hauled in lots of projects, two of which I think are really fun to mention. We had a “Hack Me” machine hooked up with a siren.
Number3: We’re here with Florian at Hacker Hotel, going back into history to his very first camp. What do you remember?
Florian: HIP ’97 was a lot of fun. I was there with the Data and Adrenaline club. Two mentionable projects: one was a Hack Me server with a flashing light on top. Once you elevated your rights to admin, you could make that thing do stuff. It was smothering hot in that tent; a couple of times I thought we might faint from all the heat, but it was very exciting to see what was happening on that machine. I’m not sure whether that thing was even made to flash, but some people got really close. Otherwise, there was lots of digital tinkering—attaching stuff to the printer port and trying not to blow it up.
Number3: So you said you had two recollections there. What was the second one?
Florian: The second was crowdsourcing our costs to go there. At the university, we had storage beneath the student flats and lots of serial terminals. We loaded a van full of them, hooked them up to a Linux machine, and sold them off for, like, 25 guilders apiece. It was such a hit that we had to go back for a second run mid-event—but we covered most of our costs in the end.
Number3: How many did you end up selling, then?
Florian: To be fair, I don’t remember, but it was way too many. One of those nine-cubic-meter vans was fully loaded.
Number3: So that was your first event. Did you go to all the other events after that?
Florian: I missed a few in between. In 2001, we had Hackers at Large at the university campus—it felt like a home game. And then there was Observe Hack Make in 2013, many others, and hopefully many years to come. It’s cool to see how it keeps evolving and growing bigger every time.
Number3: So thank you, Florian, for your stories. Let’s continue with other stuff.
Nancy: So Florian also dove into some of the old-fart stories, as I love to call them—not trying to bug anybody.
Ad: But I mean, it’s been a while.
Nancy: We’re not saying Florian is an old fart.
Nancy: No, no, no. Only the stories are.
Nancy: We wouldn’t dare.
Nancy: But he already shed some light on HIP ’97. Last month I spoke with Koen and Koen also had some stories to tell about HIP and the one after that—2001. So let’s listen to some stories by Koen.
Nancy: Koen, tell us some more stories.
Koen: There was no mate—it didn’t exist yet. Nope. There was some Jolt Cola, but it was really small. The main thing we drank was beer. Instead of crates of mate, there were crates of Grolsch. HIP ’97 was also really hot. We had a party tent, and in each corner of the tent we had two pesticide plugs. When you walked in, you walked into a fume of pesticide, and those long-legged insects—mosquitoes—flew in, dropped dead, literally. A few weeks after camp, those plugs were forbidden because they were so toxic. If I die of cancer, that’s probably one of the reasons.
Nancy: Must have been very healthy.
Koen: Tell us another old-fart story.
Koen: At HIP ’97, there were no cool electronic badges—just printed badges. I arrived without one. The next day, I came back and got mine printed. Then I lost it and got another. Each time I went up, they made me do a new pose—had to hold still for the camera. I still have the last badge at home—it’s a blue one with a weird picture.
Nancy: If you can send me the picture, I’ll drop it into the YouTube channel.
Koen: Awesome.
Nancy: So that’s HIP ’97.
Koen: Hey, Nancy.
Nancy: Hi—nice to see you again. It’s so spontaneous. We’re still at Hack42.
Koen: Old-fart stories.
Koen: I was at HAL ’01. It was in my hometown—or it felt that way. I lived in Delft, not Enschede, but the campus in Enschede is like a camping ground—you know all the places, you can pull open any door. Fifty nerds, just chill out. The Datanet Drienelo guys built a monolith—16 by 8 terminals in a wooden frame with thermal concentrators for a large ASCII-art screen. It wasn’t that hot—it rained a bit. A guy brought Pan Galactic Garble Blaster—small tins with energy drink. Security team imported it and yelled, “It’s here! The Pan Galactic Garble Blaster is here!” People cheered—but it was gross. Sugar crackled your teeth—direct attack on your aorta with sugar, guarana, caffeine. Much too much of it. I wouldn’t recommend it. If you still have a can, send us your picture.
Nancy: Well, this week we actually have two vacancies, because there’s one I also like to mention which isn’t in the show notes yet. Others not aware of this yet. But let’s start off with—you’re searching for someone who wants to coordinate our Arcade Village.
Nancy: That is a wish by Henry.
Nancy: We used to have an arcade village, also called Rainbow Island—old gaming things from the Dutch Gaming Museum. We are looking for someone who wants to arrange this. If you want to arrange it, please reach out to me through the WHYcast or reach out to Henry at Henry@WHY2025.org to become part of it.
Nancy: We’re also looking for a coordinator—Ad?
Ad: Or Team: Parking. No, what a surprise. It’s still Team: Parking. We really, really, really need someone to help Konmei out with arranging about 1,200 cars, because that needs coordination, otherwise it’ll be a mess.
Nancy: Yep.
Ad: We love chaos, but not that much. It’s very important—parking—and we don’t like very inefficient parking. We could really use someone, preferably someone who is actually Dutch, because that is a lot easier with legislation and insurance.
Nancy: Well, let’s hope this is the last time—and we mentioned this vacancy of the month… century?
Ad: Vacancy of the century.
Ad: Pop, pop, popcorn.
Nancy: Yeah, so I guess we’re there, Ad.
Nancy: Yeah.
Ad: Because I don’t think we have a listener question.
Nancy: Nope.
Ad: But if you do have a question, don’t be shy. Put it in the comments down below if you’re watching this on YouTube, or shoot us an email at WHYcast@WHY2025.org. Also, if you have comments or other questions regarding the WHYcast, if you have a cool story to share from former events, also put it in the comments or send us an email. Don’t forget to hit that like button. Make sure you’re subscribed to not miss any future episodes, and share this with all your friends, because we all want them to come to WHY.
Ad: And with that, I think this has been episode 26. I hope to see you next…
Nancy: Half a year.
Ad: Yeah—half a year. And I hope to see you next Friday, because next Friday is another WHY-day. 26