Weeknotes 36(NixCon)
NixCon
Last week was NixCon 2025 in Rapperswil, Switzerland. It was a fun weekend, even though I wasn't able to get as much done as last year. But still seeing people, talking to random other NixOS nerds, great time.
This year I booked my roome late so the only thing in walking distance remaining was the youth hostel, which only had beds in a shared room left. I did think about going to another city, maybe one of the hotels suggested by the organizers, but they were quite expensive and I'd have to take the train each day, adding to the cost. So shared room it was, not my favourite but for 3 nights it was okay.
We arrived on Thursday noon, which turned out was earlier than needed as the conference only started on friday and the host only allowed checking in at 5 pm so we sat around for a few hours. After checking in, we took the chance to explore the town a bit and grabed dinner, which was like 70 bucks for the two of us. But this would be the last time we had to pay for food on this trip so we were fine with that.
Friday the conference itself started, taking place at the OST, basically the local university. Again can't say it's not beatiful. They have a campus directly next to Lake Zürich. You can look out the window to a breathtaking view, and if you're warm you can stand up walk 20m and take a bath in the lake, an oppurtunity many people took. But first we watched the opening ceremony, after which we sat ourselves down in the hacker space, which we then basically only left for food and sleep.
As said earlier we didn't need to pay for the food, it was all financed by the sponsors. Lunch was just regular cafeteria food, while dinner was food trucks or bbq catering. The food was quite good, but the lines were insanely long at times, especially the second day for the bbq.
I'm of the mindset that I go to these conventions to interact with people and do stuff not watch more lectures. So apart from the opening I did not watch a single talk, one or two I regret because they were not videotaped. The rest I'll rather watch afterwards and not live because 3 days is short enough.
In general I would highly recommend you go to a convention, it's great to see so many people passionate about the same things as you. Even if you're a beginner there's a lot of talks suitable for you, and you're never going to find so many people excited to talk to you about nix.
Why no gates
On a completely different note, for the first time in my life I was caught taking the train without a ticket. To be clear I had a ticket I just removed it from my wallet for nixcon, as I didn't need it in switzerland and forgot to put it back in. And since in Munich we still have an insanely complicate system of fares, without any automatic controls you might not notice you don't have your ticket with you until on of the random ticket inspectors stands before you.
Since my ticket is personalized I was allowed to submit it within the next 14 days to on of their customer centers and reduce my penalty payment to only 7€ instead of 60.
But honestly with how infrequent your ticket gets checked it migth be cheaper to never buy a ticket and just eat the fine once in a while.
All in all annyoing stuff and even more reasons to dislike DB or MVG.
Media
Doordash Decadence is Killing Me Great youtuber, great video. Go watch
List of music considered the worst A lot of the songs aren't that bad, but some are real funny.