The incredibly intricate badges of Def Con

Three days before the 24th annual Def Con hacker event, badge designer and builder 1o57 (aka Ryan Clarke) had a problem. “The lion’s share of the 20,000 badges showed up this year not programmed,” he told Engadget. He gathered up a team and they went into “hell mode” to hand-program blinking pieces of electronic riddled with cryptographic puzzles.