Troublemakers and Superpowers

[Music] thank you for coming um my name is Joe Grand and this is uh a presentation called troublemakers and superpowers and it's a little bit different than what I normally talk about or normally I talk about technical things um this is something figured I'd mix it up a little bit and uh talk a little bit about some some personal kind of stories and ultimately uh hopefully seeing how we can all kind of you know we all have our troublemakers and sometimes we can take those and and use them to some advantage to like succeed in whatever way we Define that um but just something a little bit different right and leave us with this hopefully a sense of community and and some of the stuff in here I haven't talked about before so hopefully um I don't bum you out and uh we can see some positive stuff that comes out of this so so this book I have to say I stole the the title in a lot of the graphics um from my wife uh key her book just came out a couple days ago called troublemakers and superpowers um this is a book about different types of people that have had struggles in their life whether it's trauma or mental health issues or other things um and we able to use those in some way to to to move forward right and take a step forward and I know a lot of us have troublemakers and and some of them we can use to our advantage and some of them we can't um but it's a part of our story and it's something that's really important especially in like the hacker Community where a lot of us think differently and like we're here for a reason and you'll see kind of how I fell into this as well um it's kind of cool and this is meant you know for for kids uh but also you might find something interesting in there so anyway that's kind of what it's based on um yeah my name is Joe gr and it's it's really hard to actually be up here right so it's actually harder to talk to people that you know than it is to like a bunch of strangers in a big room um and this is very very cool because like we're in Portland and so many people here come every year and like we have such great communities of things going on so this is actually trickier for me especially also because it's not technical right it's like this is this is hard stuff um but hopefully you'll get something out of it oh also yeah so we have everybody here but we are live streaming like the the introduction said to the internet um for people who are are either watching live or watching later so I wonder if we can all just yell High internet and um welcome everybody outside of this room okay ready one two three High internet nice okay good job passed the first test so um this is me I love computers I grew up using computers fascinated by computers um and it's something that you know at the time wasn't cool to do right I think most of you can kind of relate to that of like using computers wasn't something really interesting until maybe like the past what five or 10 years or people like oh use computers you must be smart but back in the day it wasn't that way um a friend of mine had said like you know being involved in computers is a great way to get stuffed into a locker and uh that was kind of what it was like when we were walking into bsides today a group of us um somebody working on campus said you all must be here for bides and it's like how did you know so there must be something about us that that stands out in a good way um yeah this is something that the computer I don't I don't exactly know why I think it was either like having this power to do something with a computer or nowadays you know with technology in some way um that other people didn't have and I thought that was really powerful you know being made fun of in school and and being teased by my family and tormented by teachers and everything it's like yeah but I could still you know steal your credit card information and go spend your money or hack into whatever ever and like it was this power of like trading passwords to systems and doing all these things that normal people didn't do and and and that's probably why I I really liked it and this is one of the quotes these Graphics some of them are from the book and it's like it's me against the world and that was something that um I kind of dealt with for a long time of like kind of having to prove myself um so yeah this is the actual picture I think I was 10 years old at the time in in my computer room so it could have been the power but it also could have just been this sort of um you know being being in like a like the Solitude of being in in the computer room or like being connected to this world of bullettin board systems and people that you might not even know who they are physically but you have this connection to them and as I was working on this presentation even last night I i' messaged key and and I was looking at this slide I'm like I'm literally still doing this exact thing like I'm in my computer room it's quiet Like Nobody's around and I'm working on my computer um so it's funny how like some things don't change and she's like yes you are doing that but you've come along way from you know from this so yeah it was sort of the you know the power and the Solitude um this is my friend Josh who is also in the book for a completely different story and um we met in kindergarten in the timeout Booth he wasn't a nerd but he kind of watched me do nerd things and uh we realized pretty early on right like when we were getting in trouble for some reason in kindergarten um like we didn't we didn't really fit in right it's like who gets in trouble in kindergarten I know that like when our kids got in trouble in kindergarten we're like okay there's there's probably something that they're trying to say or maybe they can't get it out or do something um so we kind of tried to figure that out but in our case we just kept getting in trouble and sometimes we would get in trouble for things that we did and sometimes we would get in trouble for things that we didn't do and we just got blamed for it because that was kind of just our our energy or whatever it was right we didn't fit in um he's done a lot of great stuff a lot a lot different than me but he you know he teaches and he teaches writing at a community college and he uh teaches poetry to inmates and he fights Nazis um and is a you know very defensive of the community and I think that was like really really powerful and for me being somebody who doesn't actively go out and do those things um I you know contribute in different ways and like seeing that is is very like um kind of INSP inspirational for me to see that so it's it's kind of cool how we had these different paths but we connected because of this whatever was in our heads and whatever the troublemakers were that we had brought us together right just like we are here together because of what we love um at the same time as discovered in technology I discovered punk rock and hardcore and I was like 8 years old right so this stuff was so normal to me of like my brother I have an older brother he's six years older he had a friend that had a circle jerks tattoo so the you know was like the skanking guy um from their I don't know one of their one of their albums but he had a huge tattoo on his arm and this was like 19 85 and it's like who had tattoos back then so I was just fascinated with that I just loved everything about it like the music spoke to me in a way that nothing else did besides technology which is kind of weird right because you have this this chaos of punk rock and hardcore and fighting against the system and all this stuff but then at the same time I loved being alone in my room so it was this I guess with everything there's this balance um so yeah I would you know got involved in in in skateboarding in going to shows and I was in a band and all of these things that nobody likes liked like if you were a skateboarder people didn't like you if you were into punk rock or metal or like if even nowadays right you have long hair like people look at you they're like oh he must be a little bit you know they must be doing something a little bit different if they can have long hair uh you know whatever it is and and it really does change people's behavior based on what you look like right and it's very strange to notice that um so yeah you know got involved in this uh and still am involved right like I still listen to to new new bands and the old stuff still really hits me but it's realizing like I didn't realize at the time that this is different but to me it was all normal right just like the hacking was normal and uh the music was normal but I didn't realize until probably like five or 10 years ago of like oh these are like small communities but that's what's important and I felt really comfortable in those communities of just showing up and like doesn't matter what you wear doesn't matter what you do you go nuts at the show and you know you as long as you feel it and believe it and help out and there's a lot of DIY aspects of pkin Hardcore that flow over to the hacker world and like I don't know it made sense to me um at that same time too growing up I build a lot of electronics because I'm a hacker and I love building Electronics most of the stuff I built were things to screw with other people or to you know abuse the telephone system or whatever it was um I built a well this is like a universal garage door opener so basically replacing the um the dip switches with like a 555 counter or 555 and a um a decade counter or whatever binary counter to cycle through all the possibilities um and I wasn't stealing stuff from the garages at that point um but it was it still was a cool kind of hack um what else like different types of uh like blue boxes you know red boxes to screw with the phone system this was like a laser listener this was pre NSA playset um but basically trying to mimic you know what can the government do of spying on somebody through a window so using a laser to modulate um had like you know uh what else this was like a device that you could plug into the phone line and still use the phone as normal but if somebody tried to call in like the teacher or the Secret Service or the phone operator or whatever it would be a busy signal so my parents would never Reed the phone calls that I was you know terrified of them having um and then this was something that I used in school so this was just like a high frequency generator and you know with high frequency sound you can't really tell where they're coming from because they're bouncing all over the place um so I would you know turn this thing on in school this was in like a sucret tin so like a cough drop tin and I'd leave it on the table and then you know everybody would be like what's that sound where's that coming from and it was like it was great I don't think I ever got in trouble for that one um what you don't see here is like the stun gun that I built so I could like shock my friends and and other people um yeah just a lot of a lot of sort of like what I would call technological juvenile delinquency um coupled with being an actual juvenile delinquent and those were things also that I didn't realize until later like I was talking with Josh recently and he had said that we were juvenal delinquents I was like what are you talking about like we weren't that bad he's like really like yes we were juvenal delinquents and there usually comes a reason for that right like if you're doing things again there's usually a reason behind it um there's a long story between that picture and this picture um but we can basically say you know being involved in the hacking community at that time was less about helping the community and more about exploiting everything else against Society right it was sort of like doing what I could against big business and blah blah blah and this I basically got arrested for breaking into a telephone company building to get documentation and materials and things and I was in Michigan with a hacker group at the time um and it's like well why why were you in Michigan as a 15 16-year-old when you're from Boston and I don't know why my parents let me go um but basically a bunch of us who are online doing stuff we had a group called Renegade Legion you can go to textfiles.com and check out all of our awesome uh text files from back in the day um but yeah we thought it'd be like a good idea to break into to this place and this was after like a couple days of other stuff that we didn't get caught for um but this was sort of that that turning point of like oh okay that's a problem um but this is sort of where it's like all right well why do you why do why is Joe even telling us like this bio kind of thing and the point here is like everything that has happened in your life has brought you to where you are and some of that's good some of that's not good um I just read a quote recently that was like if you wish you could have done stuff differently congratulations you're growing right so it's like there are things I look at and it's like oh it would have been nice if I did that differently or like if I wasn't such an and like did other you know constructive things but then at the same time it's like yeah well then I wouldn't have met my wife I wouldn't have had this family I wouldn't be in Portland like there's all these things that if you change one thing it could really affect other things so sort of acknowledging like yeah I had kind of a tormented childhood and in my family I think one of the reasons not getting to like psycho therapy whatever but like looking back at this it's like I had um you know very little emotion in the family nobody was paying attention to me so this was like yeah I was reaching out and trying to screw with people to get attention and now it's obvious to look back at that um my parents kind of disagreed they're like well you had a great childhood like a you know nice house place to go your computer room um but not the emotion and not everybody needs emotion it turns out I did so I was acting out in ways and the same thing like finding those communities the hardcore scene at the time and then the Loft which I'll talk about next those were my communities right like those were where not only I had a tension that I was was seen but I could see other people and we could work together and like that's kind of what this all is so history matters and thinking about your history matters and acknowledging your history matters uh my dad also by the way uh was a doctor and he had just admitted recently of like um yeah we raised you know we raised our kids as um as fellows what are they like research fellows at a hospital so it was a very like mentorship relationship and like that works maybe for research fellows but not quite for kids so anyway it's like kind of realizing all this stuff later and I don't blame them for it obviously like I take responsibility but I understand like they had their things they had their troublemakers and it all comes together right so like we are we are the way we are for some reason and that's okay because we're all different and we all have different things to bring regardless of um you know kind of those those things that have happened as long as we can try to take those goes and turn him into some positive thing the real turning point after getting in trouble was joining The Loft and again this was where Community really came into play of me realizing oh like this is cool I can be a hacker uh and I can do what I love but I can share information and share my passion and work with people that believe the same things um so I'm not going to go into all the details of like the history of this stuff because you can find it online um but these guys were basically six years older than me and I was just a kid joining in this group of people that had a hacker space in Boston Boston area hackers and um I still to this day don't know why they let in a 15-year-old kid um but they did and they had all they said is like well you stopped doing dumb stuff so we let you in but like I know I wouldn't hang out with 15year olds when I was like 20 something um but anyway this became a group where you know we would find security vulnerabilities and and force vendors to fix problems and all these things and go to conferences and share things so that was pretty cool um but still on the inside it was like I still was kind of struggling with building this reputation and like publishing papers and giving talks and all of these things I didn't know why it was like um I started running also after I got arrested U because I had to either do a sport or get a job like to stay busy and I was like I'm not going to work uh so I started running which was a really good outlet for things but I had this desire of like I needed to do well like I needed to win or try to win and like be recognized right so it was still this thing like this baggage um still with me even when people are like legendary hacker group you guys testified in front of Congress and did this and that it's like yeah that's great but is that feeding me like not really um as far as like moving forward from there and I think this is this combination of of of troublemakers and superpowers and and what the superpowers I have or I guess you could say what the troublemakers have left me as um or toward turned me towards as like um you know kind of independent uh kind of taking no sort of thing um also very stubborn and not flexible in what I'm doing and sometimes that can be great like if you're starting a working on a project or um doing you know uh trying to like license a product to a big company where you're negotiating against lawyers like it's always fun to do that but at the same time like those are not traits that are always good um especially if you want to work with other people so it's kind of acknowledging like okay those are great superpowers but like everything is a balance um around the same so after I graduated college kind of around the same time as the Loft I became a professional engineer because you couldn't be a professional hacker hacking was like a fun thing to do and like got some press whatever but it wasn't it wasn't a career path um so became an engineer worked on a lot of products and that was really cool to see kind of be build something that comes from your mind that help people and I'd spent a lot of time working on a portable infusion pump that was the first portable infusion pump you know in hospitals and you have the the the IV bag and everything um before this thing had come out you were stuck at the bedside and then this portable thing gave people some freedom to move around and once we passed like the human testing phase of the product it was really amazing to see because it's like wait I just built something that like will let somebody leave their hospital bed or at least go out into the into the hallways of the hospital like that's a really powerful thing um so I I really loved engineering but at the same time it's like straddling that fence of of being a hacker and the Loft and eventually all of us at The Loft were like we want to be hackers full-time and everyone's like you are crazy uh but we joined forces with some Venture capitalists which was a horrible idea by the way if there's any VCS in the room sorry um uh it changed the whole mentality right if you're a hacker it's very hard to take money from somebody and then continue being a hacker when the person who gave you money wants to make money those two things can't usually go together and I realized that very quickly I was still like 20 something years old and um realized like okay the fun has has left like if if you're being forced to do something it's not it's not the way like The Loft wasn't how it was anymore we were supposed to be this research group within the company didn't work um so I ended up quitting and I think that's part of