Welcome back from hacker summer camp!

This month’s IVU meeting featured Varx as a (remote) guest speaker. His talk, Training and Running LLMs, included code, demos, and in-depth explanations on how anyone can build and run their own large language machine learning models from home.

Big thanks to all of the members who helped with the A/V setup this month. We’ll have the proper cables next time.

In addition to Varx’s presentation, ezemar shared some of his audiophile equipment, and one member showed off the latest additions to their wardriving rig.

With both Defcon and IVU back in-person, it only seems fitting to have an IVU meetup at Defcon.

This year, we met for a quiet dinner before going our separate ways to hack the planet.

Our speaker this month was fuzzingpanda, who gave a talk on Security CTFs.

As we are one month from Defcon 31, Yaxis also gave a lightning Defcon 101 talk.

Pappasmurf shared his love of mechanical keyboards at the meeting as well.

IVU’s heating up this June with cryoticbytes’ talk, A Schpeal About The Man.

In addition, several other members brought their own tech and devices to share.

This month, Yaxis hosted an open lockpicking night, with an assortment of locks and tools available for everyone to use. Duald and stringfellow also brought some servers and tech they were working on.

Welcome back to Irvine Underground!

This month, Sloth shared a wardriving setup he’s been working on.

Our speaker this month was duald, who gave a presentation on the Shell on Demand Appliance (SODA Machine) he built for Defcon. The SODA Machine is an entire data center in a soda machine, and all of its parts are 100% dumpster dived, from its servers to the vending machine itself. I’ve attached a picture of the machine at Defcon 30 last year below, courtesy of NUCC.

In addition, here’s a video from DC30 with more information.

This month’s IVU meeting was a quiet one. Rain meant everyone had to sit indoors instead of on the patio.

This month’s speaker was Monica, who presented a deep-sea project she’s working on.

Looking forward to seeing you at next month’s IVU!
Hoping for some clear weather next month.

Another great IVU meeting.

Blackdrako shared his recent projects with the group, including this handmade IVU t-shirt with 3d-printed lighting.

Another member also brought a set of progressive locks to learn lockpicking with.