Due to a few people requesting this during Defcon, I'm posting up a full writeup of my talk from Skytalk from Defcon this year. The talk itself was truncated due to time constraints, so this version is expanded to accommodate all the material I didn't get to cover during the actual live talk.

For your further consideration, I present:

When the Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro

In the 1970's, there was one man whose name was tied to the myth of Las Vegas, not the bright lights, big dreams, glamour and glitz Vegas, the Vegas-as-beacon-of-our-weirdness Vegas. That man was Hunter S. Thompson, a man who saw into our dark, weird hearts and saw that the only way to escape our fate in this weird world we had created, was to embrace it whole-heartedly.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

But what of that word.. weird ? we use that word plentifully and fancy-free in the modern day, but that word, I do not think it means what you think it means...

Wyrd is an Old-English word, you encountered it in it's true meaning in Shakespeare's *cough*The Scottish Play*cough*. From the Oxford English Dictionary (the only real Dictionary, thank you very much, *ahem*).

Weird: (Noun): the principle, power, or agency by which events are predetermined; fate, destiny
Weird: (Adjective): having the power to control the fate of human beings

Who here was a weird kid ?

So, next week at Defcon Skytalks (an unofficial extra track of talks at Defcon, operated by 303, for off-the-record talks at Defcon), I'll be opening up the track with "When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird turn Pro", where I'll be trying to entertain (however many hung-over `con attendees manage to make it there in time for its 9am start) with tales of my life as an infosec dweeb, how the world we live in once rejected us as weird, only to become so weird itself that we weirdos ourselves must harness and finesse our own weirdness just to stay ahead of the curve now. I'll be handing out tips and encouragement on how not to become one of the Pinks, while still putting yourself out there to steer the flow of our weird world from within the maw of the beast. Terrible jokes will be provided throughout; those with underdeveloped senses of cynicism or heart problems are advised not to attend.

You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.