Readit NewsRust is a joke, it's a complete waste of time and effort to try and use it. It's the EU cookie law of native code - well-intentioned nonsense that doesn't work at all in reality
Dead Comment
One day, someone wheeled this approx. 3x3 foot sized box to my door and asked me if I wanted it. It was a SGI Onyx with a giant monitor sitting on top, with a keyboard and mouse.
I plugged it in and it sounded like an airplane taking off. It immediately heated up my entire tiny office. It was the 4th Unix I had ever played with (Ultrix, NeXT and A/UX were previous ones). It had some cool games on it, but beyond that, at the time, I had no use for it because A/UX on my Quadra950, was so much more fun to play with.
I don't even think I ever opened it up to look at it. I don't know what I was thinking. lol.
After realizing it did not have much going for it, I ended up just turning it on when the office was cold and using it as a foot rest.
Oh yea, found a video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3lUw9GUJA
Here's the connotation when someone says "such-and-such AI has been lobotomised": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy
And if you're going to the effort of using a separate controller, you might as well use a separate gaming device.
Summary of the events unfolding by Sargonas on Reddit:
Maybe this will help with a listed summary of the known facts from first hands accounts. I am leaving gaps where there has just been speculation or second hand unverifiable information, and welcome anyone with first-hand knowledge of those aspects to comment below me to fill in the gaps. I'm merely presenting the facts as we have them from first-hand accounts (mostly from reddit and discord), without personal opinion or bias (hopefully, human nature is a tricky thing.)
Entropic Engineering designed and built the circuitry of the badges, physically. They were either only partially, or not at all, paid by DEFCON for this work, contrary to whatever formal agreement they had in place. (Other amazingly talented individuals create the silk screen design, the shells, and the game, but are totally removed from this drama so I'm leaving them out of it.) Subsequently, all references to them have been removed in various materials, and even one of their logos was removed from the silk screen. (apparently small one may be left under the battery? but I can't check because I affixed mine to the board to stop it's shifting.)
dmitrygr wrote the firmware for the badges as well
Somewhere along the way, Entropic was cut out of the process and left to the side by DEFCON in a way that left Entropic feeling burned and under/un paid for their non-trivial work (according to some comments below it is 6 figure sum, but this is second hand info).
Dmitry felt this was unfair, and put an easter egg into the badge code. This easter egg simply comments that Entropic engineered the badges, and had their credits removed everywhere, with an address for donations if you wish to support them. This was entirely Dmitrys doing as a gesture of thanks to the Entropic team.
This easter egg more or less flew under the radar until EoD friday.
Friday evening, after spending most of his day traveling to DEFCON and writing a 1.5 update in his spare time on his flight to fix some issues, Dmitry was up on stage with the other badge creators about to present the usual badge talk, when word of the Easter egg went around (likely due to him including some slides on his portion of the presentation about it.)
DEFCON staff had Goons escort Dmitry off stage shortly before the talk started, delaying the talk some.
during the talk, a comment was made about “unauthorized code“ being on the badges.
Dmitry setup himself on the sidewalk outside the hall, and basically held his own mini talk about the work he did and Entropics contributions.
At some point, LVMPD showed up. It is unclear to me personally who issued the call but second hand info says it was DEFCON staff. They noted Dmitry was simply talking to people (albiet nearly 100 of them) on a public sidewalk, outside a building owned by the county, and nothing was really amiss, and left shortly after.
Dmitry, in his (likely valid) opinion feels this whole situation has not been handled well, and since his code was written free of charge, without any signed agreements with DEFCON or consequently any rights assignments, has announced that he intends to assert his legal ownership of the code (which is his right under us copyright law). As a result, he will gladly issue a non-transferable right to the code to any attendee who asks him for one, but is no longer going to "turn a blind eye" to the fact DEFCON does not have a legal license to his code, and instead look into taking actions that are within his power to take to clarify their lack of ownership of the code on the badges. (I believe in discord he may have gone so far as to say DMCA, but I need to double-check.)
bearing this in mind this does add a curious wrinkle to the statement about “unauthorized code” from DEFCON given… The obvious.