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• Stealing Benchoff's "Intellectual" Property

  Hyr0n • 08/03/2017 at 18:42 • 1 comment

  Hello There!

  Hey there, this is Hyr0n from AND!XOR, one of the guys that made a well coveted indie badge for DEFCON 25 (second only to the Official Hackaday DEFCON 25 Badge).

  
  

  As you may have seen in the doxxing of the Mr Robot Badge creator and how he created that amazing badge, our team was thanked despite my stealing of Brian's precious IP.  The following account in this log is entirely my story, its words, jokes, offensivisms (thats a word, trust me) do not reflect that of Hackaday or Brian Benchoff.

  Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride

  I would like to take you through my trials and tribulations in doing this, as it isn't the fact that I had this design printed on a shirt which matters, but the journey. The journey which makes me want to stab a ball point pen through my eye.

  I knew I was going to be covered in badges during the con, clanking around and giving me neck problems. Adding just one more of this exquisite caliber could have caused a paradox event and the entirety of Caesars Palace would have imploded. So i decided to make a shirt. In fact if there was any badge design I wanted to rock on a shirt, it was 10000% this one. Seemed easy enough: Load image in Gimp, inverse select, copy pasta on to a transparent background, invert the black to white, and resize. Upload into make your own t-shirt site and click submit. This was a couple weeks before DEFCON so i knew i had time for it to ship to me. Until the next day, i got an email...
  

  <INFURIATING SECTION>

  ...

  "While preparing your order, I noticed that your design uses imagery that is protected material. I'm referring specifically to the artwork of "Hackaday".
  
  Brand names, logos, and images are protected and we need direct permission from a company official to legally print this design.
  
  Don’t worry; there are still a couple of things we can do from here:
  
  Option A: To move forward with your order, we need written permission from the owners of the protected material. Here is a reference to reach out to obtain the permission:
  
  http://hackaday.com/about/"

  ...

  </INFURIATING SECTION>

  Okay, I don't know where to even begin. This is the kind of stuff in my day to day that makes my brain stutter. So, i decided to call their customer support line. Here's my recollection of the discussion, keep in mind this was 3 weeks ago, before I killed 20% of my brain cells during DEFCON, so it's probably 80% correct. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

  KustomEeenk: Hello thanks for calling Tee-Corp how can we help you?
  Hi-Ron: Look up order 1337SHIRT.
  KustomEeenk: Ahh I see, yes your order is on hold because of the use 
  KustomEeenk: of protected material on Hackaday.
  KustomEeenk: We have software which searches the internet for the 
  KustomEeenk: shirt images and it flagged your order as using art
  KustomEeenk: which is protected by Hackaday.
  Hi-Ron: That's a personal project page.
  KustomEeenk: Yes, but it appears its the official Hackaday badge for DEFCON.
  Hi-Ron: Look, its a joke. It was made by Brian Benchoff.
  Hi-Ron: Do you recognize the meme?
  KustomEeenk: Yes
  Hi-Ron: No one owns memes. I don't need permission.
  KustomEeenk: Actually by adding the text it made it original art.
  Hi-Ron: Okay, well i inverted the color and changed the size.
  Hi-Ron: Doesn't that make my shirt original art?
  KustomEeenk: No, you still need to provide written permission from
  KustomEeenk: Mr Benchoff or his estate.
  Hi-Ron: He isn't dead. I don't believe there's an estate.
  KustomEeenk: Then an email from Mr Benchoff will suffice.
  Hi-Ron: ...
  Hi-Ron: Look, he wants people to make as many of those as possible.
  Hi-Ron: The artwork is even provided on the page.
  KustomEeenk: Yes, to make a badge, not a shirt. You still need permission.
  Hi-Ron: (BEGIN SOCIAL ENGINEERING WHEN LOGIC FAILS)
  Hi-Ron: But it says its released under creative commons.
  KustomEeenk: Oh, i dont see that, where does it say that?
  Hi-Ron: Four paragraphs down, you need to be logged in.
  KustomEeenk: Oh well in that case...

  Read more »

• Amazing, multicolor badges

  Benchoff • 06/14/2017 at 17:13 • 0 comments

  After many minutes of work, I'm pleased to present the future of artistic badges: multicolor soldermask.

  We have green, black, and red:

  ORDER NOW FOR THE GREATEST DEFCON BADGE EVER CREATED.
  

• Advanced lanyard technology

  Benchoff • 06/10/2017 at 21:24 • 6 comments

  The prototypes have arrived from OSHPark. I got sticker 0x03.

  There is a secret to this badge: advanced lanyard technology. It's always been very hard to install a lanyard on every single badge at Defcon ever. [1057] can do puzzles, but he can't do holes that fit a lanyard clip. The same goes with the independent and village badges.

  This badge is a revolution. Several, in fact, of a quarter inch drill:

  Holy shit, a lanyard fits.

  With the prototypes confirmed, we can place the real order from China. Several thousand should do.

• When even the board house gets the joke

  Benchoff • 06/05/2017 at 06:47 • 0 comments

  I ordered a few of these from Seeed, ten each in red, blue, and green soldermask. The Gerbers I sent over don't have a soldermask layer. This caused much consternation at the board house

  The issue was resolved quickly, but someone over there actually likes the design:

  Of course, I don't need the respect of others, but it's nice to have.

• Literal minutes of development time

  Benchoff • 05/31/2017 at 23:40 • 0 comments

  I slaved over a hot keyboard for minutes, and what do you do to repay me? Nothing. I can't keep doing this. I'm taking the kids and going to my mothers.

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