Without a Traceroute

The last week has been pretty cool. There turned out to be enough space, so I did get a chance to attend most of the presentations at the You Shot the Sheriff conference. It was at an Australia/New Zealand-themed bar, which was slightly random. But they had a really delicious catered lunch of crepes, and a pretty extensive open bar. So props for the venue choice. I’ll try to write about some of my favorite presentations later. There were a lot of interesting people in attendance, from both Americas. The crowd did tend toward white-hat/IT security professional types—”we’re the sellout hackers,” one guy told me—rather than more underground people. I discovered one way you can tell when a hacker’s going mainstream: they tuck their t-shirts in. Although, I did meet a guy who started one of the first e-zines about the hacker scene in Brazil back in the early 1990s. There was even an American representative from Microsoft’s Security Response Team at the conference. He seemed pleasantly indulgent about the fact that everyone else in attendance spent all their time breaking his software.

Tuesday, there was an afterparty at a Cuban bar, with similar open bar. Wednesday, I went out for drinks with the conference organizers, I recorded a brief interview I’ll try to type up later.  Thursday, I got drinks (again) with a really cool Brazilian hacker/security researcher guy. So basically, my liver probably hates me (I took Friday night off), but I’ve been having an awesome time.

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This is a photo taken inside the Baquedano metro station in Santiago. It’s a little library kiosk, where commuters can pick up books to read on their subway ride. I saw them at several of the larger metro stations in Santiago. It seemed like a really smart idea to me, putting libraries in places where people can access them easily. There’s probably many people who would never go out of their way to visit a library, but who’d be happy to pick up something to read on their way to work. Judging from the books they had on display in the window, it wasn’t all Dan Brown’s airport bookstore fare either. They stocked quite a bit of more serious literature (both Spanish-native and translations) as well.

Here’s some photos from Cerro Santa Lucía, a park on a hill in central Santiago. It’s a really interesting place, with dozens of different levels, narrow passageways, crumbling stone stairways, fountains, statues, a cannon, a church, and lots of secluded corners where Chilean couples go to make out (PDA is huge in this country). The whole place has kind of a Love in the Time of Cholera feel, there’s lots of shady courtyards with ice cream stands, and it’s probably my favorite place in Santiago to hang out and read a book.
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In some ways, Santiago is an attractive city. Air quality, however, is not among them. Santiago is one of the smoggier cities in Latin America. According to a 2004 World Bank study (PDF link), it even beat out former reigning champion Mexico City in “particulate matter,” which are the little bits of crap that make it hurt to breathe (as opposed to gaseous toxins which just quietly give you cancer).

You might think that 4 years in the LA area would have conditioned me to accept a little bit of grit with my oxygen, but you’d be mistaken. Los Angeles, the United States’ smoggiest city, clocks in with with a measly 34 μg of particulates per m³ of air. Santiago boasts a robust 60 μg/m³, but still doesn’t come anywhere close to the big leagues of “developing” [lung cancer] cities. Cairo puts them all (or, really, itself) to shame with a whopping 169 μg/m³, nearly 5 times the level in Los Angeles.

Breathe deep, son!

One of the best things about traveling is encountering totally unusual situations, and having no idea how or why they occurred. Sometimes, it’s fun to try to puzzle out these mysteries of the universe. Other times, you can only shake your head. This is one of those.

Um…what?

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