If you know what both WSL and Guix System, your first reaction might be a bit of a surprise. WSL is Microsoft’s Linux subsystem for Windows, a proprietary operating system that embeds candy crush ads in the start bar that is less stable than its alternatives, and everything it stands for screams corporate, while GNU Guix System is a free OS trying to be as pure as possible, both in terms of being immutable and also avoiding non-free software (not just proprietary, but also non-free source-available software). Guix is the antithesis of Windows.

Usually, one of the first things a Linux/Unix user learns is to create a shell script. The process generally goes like this:

1. Write a script.sh file.
2. Fill it with

   #!/bin/bash
   echo "Hello world"
   

3. Make it executable with chmod +x script.sh
4. And finally, run it with ./script.sh

Nice and simple, and most *nix users are familiar with this. For an average user, the journey ends right then and there, but if you’re interested, you realize that there’s always ways to use and abuse the tooling.

I went to defcon for the first time, and it was probably one of the best experiences of my life, if not the best. Here are some notes to self for the second time that might help another first-timer next time around.

Talks

I only went to one, and I probably won’t go to that many next time. Most talks are published, and while they’re the sorts of talks that grab 100% of my attention, I feel FOMO watching them versus doing things that I cannot do later.