{"$schema": "https://c3voc.de/schedule/schema.json", "generator": {"name": "pretalx", "version": "2026.1.2"}, "schedule": {"url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/schedule/", "version": "2026-08-09", "base_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas", "conference": {"acronym": "2026", "title": "Nix Vegas @ DEF CON 34", "start": "2026-08-07", "end": "2026-08-09", "daysCount": 3, "timeslot_duration": "00:05", "time_zone_name": "America/Los_Angeles", "colors": {"primary": "#387ca5"}, "rooms": [{"name": "DEF CON Community Stage", "slug": "2-def-con-community-stage", "guid": "66a7cde9-3b7f-50c4-890a-171247951076", "description": null, "capacity": null}, {"name": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "1-nix-vegas-main-stage", "guid": "e8184e4d-a2cd-5139-805f-6c32935a0ea2", "description": null, "capacity": null}], "tracks": [{"name": "Talks", "slug": "1-talks", "color": "#426c76"}, {"name": "Projects", "slug": "2-projects", "color": "#979bd1"}, {"name": "Events", "slug": "3-events", "color": "#aa1d1d"}], "days": [{"index": 1, "date": "2026-08-07", "day_start": "2026-08-07T04:00:00-07:00", "day_end": "2026-08-08T03:59:00-07:00", "rooms": {"Nix Vegas Main Stage": [{"guid": "d556b1ac-7438-55d9-881c-2fda027f5c97", "code": "VDYEYG", "id": 7, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T10:15:00-07:00", "start": "10:15", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-7-nix-vegas-opening-ceremony", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/VDYEYG/", "title": "Nix Vegas Opening Ceremony", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Kickoff and opening of the Nix Vegas space on Friday, and start of the Nix CTF!", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "JYC9UR", "name": "Daniel Baker", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/Y3AS83_EmJJjly.webp", "biography": "Daniel Baker is a developer, engineer, and mathematician passionate about reproducible software. An active NixOS community member and educator, he authored the NixCon NA 2024 Nix module system workshop and nixos-modules-lessons. He serves on the NixOS Marketing Team and helps organize both Nix Vegas and Planet Nix. He believes any system worth building is worth rebuilding, bit for bit.", "public_name": "Daniel Baker", "guid": "abb69a46-2655-5d59-8e1c-409e2e749a8b", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/JYC9UR/"}, {"code": "77M3KN", "name": "Morgan Jones", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/CQTTMZ_3sSpzIU.webp", "biography": "Embedded security engineer who does too many weird things with Nix.", "public_name": "Morgan Jones", "guid": "d6dc9547-9e5b-5be0-b7d7-9dee16af8079", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/77M3KN/"}, {"code": "WUFPDH", "name": "Tristan Ross", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/TQSBA8_z3W4SxD.webp", "biography": "I work on supply chain security at Determinate Systems.", "public_name": "Tristan Ross", "guid": "49aedfa3-f781-5eaf-98ee-a01da7512f60", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/WUFPDH/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/VDYEYG/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/VDYEYG/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "e7899805-a33d-5e4d-8cd3-89b9054cb90d", "code": "BSW8HT", "id": 26, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T10:30:00-07:00", "start": "10:30", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-26-composable-systems-with-nixos-microvms", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/BSW8HT/", "title": "Composable Systems with NixOS MicroVMs", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "MicroVMs make it easy to give every service, project, or person dedicated NixOS machines. We will use `microvm.nix` to build dev boxes, game servers, and sensitive services on hardware we control. Because each guest is simply a NixOS configuration, it can be reused, extended, rebuilt, and shared.\r\n\r\nWe will compare MicroVM isolation with other options, explain its limitations, and show how to compose useful machines from ordinary NixOS modules for yourself and those around you. We will finish with a look beyond a single host: how to preserve and back up these machines, then place them across hardware you own.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "MAPR93", "name": "Alex Decious", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/NHEULQ_VKCG5Lu.webp", "biography": "I work on build systems and CI infrastructure for Shopify's monorepo using Nix, and run my own infrastructure as a systems lab for compute-heavy builds, distributed systems experiments, local LLMs, and hosting for myself and others.", "public_name": "Alex Decious", "guid": "0cf0410c-3275-554e-bc8e-7b02e5817ab3", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/MAPR93/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/BSW8HT/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/BSW8HT/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "e723ac00-77ae-5921-926b-e58a88ea0f1e", "code": "AHEHMM", "id": 15, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T11:30:00-07:00", "start": "11:30", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-15-running-a-homelab-with-nixos", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AHEHMM/", "title": "Running a homelab with NixOS", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Are you looking to own your media again and host it for the family using NixOS? Some learn about doing that on your own hardware!\r\n\r\nThis presentation will cover the basics for NixOS Modules that are also used for these services in nixpkgs. It will also include examples of my configuration files hosted here:\r\n\r\nhttps://gitlab.com/ahoneybun/nix-configs\r\n\r\nPresentation includes showing my setup including how I handle the data in a RAID.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "9HRPTA", "name": "Aaron Honeycutt", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/B97ED8_bgZVxIc.webp", "biography": "a computer nerd who happens to use Linux", "public_name": "Aaron Honeycutt", "guid": "dd664324-d7c0-5c75-8a51-72a5113b1981", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/9HRPTA/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AHEHMM/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AHEHMM/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "11c4ef2c-42c6-5b90-92c2-b565d1dbdc7b", "code": "YFNN7C", "id": 8, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T13:00:00-07:00", "start": "13:00", "duration": "00:45", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-8-whose-pr-is-it-anyway", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/YFNN7C/", "title": "Whose PR Is It Anyway?", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "In this audience participation-heavy session, you can get your PRs to nixpkgs reviewed and maybe even merged... if the build on one of our systems passes. Come with PRs in hand and call them out, and we'll review, build, and maybe even merge them on stage.\r\n\r\nThis is Whose PR Is It Anyway, where the version bumps are made up and the builds don't matter.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/YFNN7C/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/YFNN7C/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "ce4cc6dc-d5cc-5829-83b8-22d840c56715", "code": "SRRBTB", "id": 18, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T14:00:00-07:00", "start": "14:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-18-relocatable-nix-binaries", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/SRRBTB/", "title": "Relocatable Nix Binaries", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Nix\u2019s guarantee of reproducibility hinges on a simple mechanism: absolute, immutable store paths (i.e. /nix/store). While this rigidity guarantees that binaries always find their exact dependencies, it introduces a massive constraint: it binds the entire ecosystem to a single, global directory. If you want to run a Nix binary on a target system where you don't have root access to create /nix, or where you cannot run an unprivileged user namespace, you are forced to rebuild the world To achieve true portability and friction-free deployment across arbitrary infrastructure, Nix binaries must become fully relocatable. What does that mean ? Why is it hard? Who cares (psst me!)? We will discuss what a fully relocatable Nix ecosystem could look like , and how solving this constraint could allow Nix to be run more easily on more restrictive environments..", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "WMXXGJ", "name": "Farid Zakaria", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/YHJPFX_jvl6InA.webp", "biography": "I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong.\r\nYou can find my writings on Nix, build systems and software engineering in general at https://fzakaria.com", "public_name": "Farid Zakaria", "guid": "c58ef054-db7f-581c-a255-da68db2006ac", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/WMXXGJ/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/SRRBTB/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/SRRBTB/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "e494e092-e972-51f5-8a6f-92cb7a68651e", "code": "MLFJWV", "id": 21, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T15:00:00-07:00", "start": "15:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-21-everything-is-nix-when-you-squint-hard-enough", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MLFJWV/", "title": "Everything is Nix when you squint hard enough", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "How I got started with NixOS and how it's going. I'll cover my homelab migration from ubuntu & docker to NixOS & Incus w/ NixOS containers. I'll also go over how a similar process is going at my $job, discussing packaging proprietary software into modules. I'll cover declarative hardware and software in both domains from an SRE point of view.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "JVRNXY", "name": "Jared", "avatar": null, "biography": "I'm an SRE based in $location working for $job.", "public_name": "Jared", "guid": "95d44793-1f91-589e-a1f3-51c6ff47fb64", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/JVRNXY/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MLFJWV/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MLFJWV/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "1c92af2e-be12-52cc-b688-6e42b55d8f05", "code": "RHNRQF", "id": 2, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T16:00:00-07:00", "start": "16:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-2-nixos-workspaces", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/RHNRQF/", "title": "NixOS Workspaces", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Working on multiple projects simultaneously? Display getting cluttered? Agents in a race condition all trying to fight over the same ports and browser agents? \r\n\r\nThis presentation introduces NixOS Workspaces, a method of partitioning environments for local and remote development. Workspaces assist concurrent agentic development workflows by reducing risk and facilitating common environment configurations across projects. NixOS workspaces is backed by nixos-containers, a wrapper on systemd-nspawn.\r\n\r\nPresentation includes a demo of the workflow, architecture, guidance on modes of deployment, security considerations, and installation guidance.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "H3NEMR", "name": "JB", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/MRWPAP_mMJVL5N.webp", "biography": "Josh Brown is an Application Security Specialist with a background in both Penetration Testing and Web Application Development. Josh works full-time with CodeQL in the Microsoft Security Analysis & Fix Engineering (SAFE) team to identify vulnerabilities across the organization and drive remediation.\r\n\r\nJosh has had a highly technical career, previously providing security consulting services as an OSCP and OSWE certified penetration tester to various organizations in the APAC region, including ANZ Bank, Australia Post, and EY before settling into his role at Microsoft in Redmond.", "public_name": "JB", "guid": "ea4dad74-b239-5ec4-8a8c-5e2b785ada9c", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/H3NEMR/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/RHNRQF/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/RHNRQF/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "80aa068f-91f9-5f42-9469-4af9c2824aa2", "code": "MPVUHS", "id": 22, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T16:45:00-07:00", "start": "16:45", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-22-github-rate-limits-got-you-down-fod-s-failing-to-build-let-s-talk-about-caching", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MPVUHS/", "title": "Github Rate Limits Got You Down? FOD\u2019s Failing to Build? Let\u2019s Talk About Caching", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Lightning Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Have you ever experienced being rate limited by GitHub? Has GitHub downtime prevented you from building software that you rely on? Are you worried about supply chain attacks? At Exa, we developed a secure, hostable, tarball cache that insulates us from GitHub outages, decreases our build times, protects us from force-pushes upstream, and increases download speeds.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QKA9E9", "name": "Ethan Carter Edwards", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/XQYW8D_vPRZUEA.webp", "biography": "Ethan is a FLOSS advocate, longtime Nix user and contributor, and engineer. He's an active member of the Nixpkgs CUDA, Darwin, and NGI teams and is involved in various other efforts throughout the Nix ecosystem. \r\n\r\nHe currently works on building the infrastructure for the future of websearch at Exa.ai and studies Computer Science at Harvard University.", "public_name": "Ethan Carter Edwards", "guid": "9a658f8d-f36b-50d2-bc9d-ee826bd7bc2e", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/QKA9E9/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MPVUHS/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MPVUHS/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "0d525113-6496-5d14-94a1-eb777e1bb51d", "code": "HUGNP9", "id": 10, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-07T17:00:00-07:00", "start": "17:00", "duration": "01:00", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-10-lightning-talks-and-unconference", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/HUGNP9/", "title": "Lightning Talks and Unconference", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Give a talk about whatever you want, as long as it's less than 10 minutes! Or just come and chill in the Nix Vegas space for the Unconference.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/HUGNP9/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/HUGNP9/", "attachments": []}]}}, {"index": 2, "date": "2026-08-08", "day_start": "2026-08-08T04:00:00-07:00", "day_end": "2026-08-09T03:59:00-07:00", "rooms": {"Nix Vegas Main Stage": [{"guid": "9b25b7e4-646e-5ae2-92dc-ef974b99f778", "code": "S9DMLF", "id": 28, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T10:15:00-07:00", "start": "10:15", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-28-nix-vegas-opening-ceremony", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/S9DMLF/", "title": "Nix Vegas Opening Ceremony", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Kickoff and opening of the Nix Vegas space on Saturday.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/S9DMLF/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/S9DMLF/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "37cd9b16-a811-5a53-af1a-e96b0131317b", "code": "88PNDU", "id": 16, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T10:30:00-07:00", "start": "10:30", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-16-how-to-piss-off-your-nix-friends", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/88PNDU/", "title": "How to piss off your Nix friends", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Lightning Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Nix is surging in popularity, and with it the community has taken the stance that Nix should be for everyone & their grandparents. I'm here to fight against that idea and share why I think it dilutes the power of Nix itself. By catering to the masses and targeting multiple platforms (MacOS), we weaken the potential of the idea and implementation. When we stop building for the lowest common denominator, we get to push the absolute limits. I will spend this time trying to convince you why Nix should drop support for platforms such as MacOS, diverge even more radically from traditional Linux distros and take on more grand technical solutions to problems at large.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "WMXXGJ", "name": "Farid Zakaria", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/YHJPFX_jvl6InA.webp", "biography": "I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong.\r\nYou can find my writings on Nix, build systems and software engineering in general at https://fzakaria.com", "public_name": "Farid Zakaria", "guid": "c58ef054-db7f-581c-a255-da68db2006ac", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/WMXXGJ/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/88PNDU/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/88PNDU/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "a44a8821-e0a1-59a5-b57e-3d5c76458c56", "code": "ZMF99Q", "id": 29, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T10:45:00-07:00", "start": "10:45", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-29-beholden-to-no-one-the-nix-override-ladder", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZMF99Q/", "title": "Beholden to No One: The Nix Override Ladder", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Lightning Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Home Assistant ships a warning that your install \"will not work after 2026.11.\" DuckStation detects NixOS four different ways and fatally errors your build on purpose. A maintainer won't merge the one-line word-wrap fix you've needed for a year. On most platforms your options are comply or quit. On Nix, everything between you and the source is negotiable.\r\n\r\nThis talk is a guided tour up the override ladder, from module options and `mkForce` to `overrideAttrs`, `fetchpatch`-ing unmerged PRs, overlays, and finally patching nixpkgs itself. The stories along the way are real and primary-sourced: sabotaged npm packages, the `xz` backdoor, the `youtube-dl` DMCA takedown, rug-pull relicensing, and the nixpkgs patch literally named `nixos-was-never-supported.patch`.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "JYC9UR", "name": "Daniel Baker", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/Y3AS83_EmJJjly.webp", "biography": "Daniel Baker is a developer, engineer, and mathematician passionate about reproducible software. An active NixOS community member and educator, he authored the NixCon NA 2024 Nix module system workshop and nixos-modules-lessons. He serves on the NixOS Marketing Team and helps organize both Nix Vegas and Planet Nix. He believes any system worth building is worth rebuilding, bit for bit.", "public_name": "Daniel Baker", "guid": "abb69a46-2655-5d59-8e1c-409e2e749a8b", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/JYC9UR/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZMF99Q/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZMF99Q/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "8bdfa52b-d201-5353-a805-c7d157a95ac3", "code": "P93U89", "id": 9, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T13:00:00-07:00", "start": "13:00", "duration": "00:45", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-9-whose-pr-is-it-anyway", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/P93U89/", "title": "Whose PR Is It Anyway?", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "In this audience participation-heavy session, you can get your PRs to nixpkgs reviewed and maybe even merged... if the build on one of our systems passes. Come with PRs in hand and call them out, and we'll review, build, and maybe even merge them on stage.\r\n\r\nThis is Whose PR Is It Anyway, where the version bumps are made up and the builds don't matter.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/P93U89/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/P93U89/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "92b846df-a6b9-59a0-a428-25fb20654c1f", "code": "AA9JET", "id": 5, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T14:00:00-07:00", "start": "14:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-5-nix-knows-when-the-agent-is-wrong", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AA9JET/", "title": "Nix Knows When the Agent Is Wrong", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "I built a tool to help maintainers patch nixpkgs CVEs faster. But I optimized the wrong thing.\r\n\r\nThe tool - Vulnpatch, is a dashboard. It pulls together CVE intelligence, triages by what is actually being exploited, gives the maintainer the context they need and gets out of the way. The assumption underneath it was that the maintainer is the bottleneck: speed up the workflow and packages get patched faster.\r\n\r\nI no longer believe that assumption. I was already building Vulnpatch to automate the remediation work when Mythos was announced, and it undercut the premise. Building a product to do what a frontier model could now do on its own was the wrong problem to be solving.\r\n\r\nThe difficult part was never automating the work. It is making an agent's output something a volunteer on the security team can actually trust. The work is the evidence: which package is actually affected, which upstream commit fixes it, what the new hash is, whether it still builds, whether the tests still pass and whether a maintainer has any reason to trust it. And that is before the non-trivial cases: the patches that are not simple version bumps or hash updates.\r\n\r\nThis is a talk about that shift. I will discuss Vulnpatch and Trace, an agent-owned nixpkgs fork that produces signed, reproducible CVE evidence bundles instead of drive-by pull requests. And I want to make one argument I think is worth taking seriously: Nix is unusually well-suited to AI agents because it provides strong automated feedback. Reproducible builds and passthru.tests give agents an objective verifier for many changes, whereas most repositories offer much weaker validation.\r\n\r\nPatches are cheap. Proof is not. I will show what it takes to make an agent's work auditable enough to be worth a maintainer's time and I hope, to persuade maintainers that agents belong in their workflow. The workflows we built for human-only contribution will not survive contact with agents unchanged.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "39GR3G", "name": "Jason Odoom", "avatar": null, "biography": "\"Thing Doer\"", "public_name": "Jason Odoom", "guid": "6ed440e3-5015-527f-a331-1339dd4d4652", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/39GR3G/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AA9JET/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/AA9JET/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "3899363e-728e-5f8c-b630-7241a53cd18b", "code": "GDKLPM", "id": 20, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T14:45:00-07:00", "start": "14:45", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-20-securing-nix-builds-using-microvms", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GDKLPM/", "title": "Securing Nix Builds using microVMs", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Recent vulnerabilities like Copy Fail and DirtyFrag have made abundantly clear just how risky it is to run untrusted Nix builds inside your core infrastructure. In response, we at Determinate Systems have begun building every Nix package inside of ephemeral microVMs. This talk covers what microVMs are, how they limit kernel-level vulnerabilities, and how we hope to substantially improve our security posture using this technology.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "WUFPDH", "name": "Tristan Ross", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/TQSBA8_z3W4SxD.webp", "biography": "I work on supply chain security at Determinate Systems.", "public_name": "Tristan Ross", "guid": "49aedfa3-f781-5eaf-98ee-a01da7512f60", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/WUFPDH/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GDKLPM/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GDKLPM/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "6ad366d8-44a3-5d78-ae23-fc40ef4bce14", "code": "GQEMBH", "id": 23, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T15:30:00-07:00", "start": "15:30", "duration": "01:00", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-23-your-infrastructure-is-a-dag-manage-it-with-nix", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GQEMBH/", "title": "Your Infrastructure Is a DAG: Manage It With Nix", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Long Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "One of the hardest problems with Infrastructure as Code tooling is modeling and managing complex relationships. This problem only becomes harder when multiple different tools are introduced, each lacking observability into the other. Then add build systems, application logic, deployments, CI/CD, and it becomes unbearably messy with footguns and CVEs around every corner.\r\n\r\nAt Exa, we take Nix far beyond building packages or development shells. Our entire infrastructure is modeled with Nix as one large DAG that allows us to manage these dependencies and orchestrate deployments across project boundaries with confidence in the process and its security. Join to learn more about Exa's introduction to Nix, how our usage has changed over time, how we think about flakes, and the lessons we've learned to build the future of search.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QKA9E9", "name": "Ethan Carter Edwards", "avatar": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/media/avatars/XQYW8D_vPRZUEA.webp", "biography": "Ethan is a FLOSS advocate, longtime Nix user and contributor, and engineer. He's an active member of the Nixpkgs CUDA, Darwin, and NGI teams and is involved in various other efforts throughout the Nix ecosystem. \r\n\r\nHe currently works on building the infrastructure for the future of websearch at Exa.ai and studies Computer Science at Harvard University.", "public_name": "Ethan Carter Edwards", "guid": "9a658f8d-f36b-50d2-bc9d-ee826bd7bc2e", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/QKA9E9/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GQEMBH/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/GQEMBH/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "834c1b87-58f8-5dcb-a2e3-650026fd5f8f", "code": "ZGTFS8", "id": 11, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T17:00:00-07:00", "start": "17:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-11-lightning-talks-and-unconference", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZGTFS8/", "title": "Lightning Talks and Unconference", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Give a talk about whatever you want, as long as it's less than 10 minutes! Or just come and chill in the Nix Vegas space for the Unconference.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZGTFS8/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZGTFS8/", "attachments": []}], "DEF CON Community Stage": [{"guid": "7ef628b3-4d49-5b60-b314-c70ba4a22832", "code": "MVYVWQ", "id": 4, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-08T11:30:00-07:00", "start": "11:30", "duration": "00:30", "room": "DEF CON Community Stage", "slug": "2026-4-compiling-the-world-a-binary-dataset-built-from-nixpkgs", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MVYVWQ/", "title": "Compiling the World: A Binary Dataset Built from nixpkgs", "subtitle": "", "track": "Talks", "type": "Short Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Reverse engineering binaries is slow, detailed work, but it's one of the few ways we have to verify what some software actually does. Machine learning might help improve some of those challenges, but only if you have high-quality, real-world ground truth to train and evaluate on. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory, we have built a large dataset for machine learning on x86_64 binaries using nixpkgs, taking advantage of Nix's reproducibility, package coverage, and instrumentable build environments.\r\nWe compiled tens of thousands of C, C++, Rust, and Go packages, often multiple versions of each, with consistent compiler flags, captured source files, and debug information. From these, we extracted roughly 50 million functions and aligned with their source code and short descriptions. Possible applications include fine-tuning large language models for various binary tasks or training custom, highly efficient models for binary code understanding.\r\nI'll walk through what it takes to wrangle nixpkgs in an HPC environment at this scale and show how open build tooling like Nix can help us to better understand and analyze the software that we all depend on.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ATVPTN", "name": "Chris Connelly", "avatar": null, "biography": "Chris Connelly is a Senior Technical Staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Cyber Security and Information Sciences Division.  Since joining the Laboratory in 2002, he has contributed to or led research, development, and evaluation programs in several areas, including malware analysis, vulnerability discovery, systems analysis, test automation technologies, large-scale distributed systems, and software architecture.", "public_name": "Chris Connelly", "guid": "6949ae6b-91b0-5684-842c-61067ee99b03", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/speaker/ATVPTN/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MVYVWQ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/MVYVWQ/", "attachments": []}]}}, {"index": 3, "date": "2026-08-09", "day_start": "2026-08-09T04:00:00-07:00", "day_end": "2026-08-10T03:59:00-07:00", "rooms": {"Nix Vegas Main Stage": [{"guid": "be507990-fb3c-5aa6-954c-58c757eed02b", "code": "XDD8L8", "id": 13, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-09T13:00:00-07:00", "start": "13:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-13-nix-vegas-closing-ceremony", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/XDD8L8/", "title": "Nix Vegas Closing Ceremony", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Closing out Nix Vegas at DEF CON 34", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/XDD8L8/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/XDD8L8/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "b966d9ca-de9b-5fd0-aad8-bc2a69d56a0f", "code": "ZLWX9N", "id": 14, "logo": null, "date": "2026-08-09T13:30:00-07:00", "start": "13:30", "duration": "01:00", "room": "Nix Vegas Main Stage", "slug": "2026-14-unconference", "url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZLWX9N/", "title": "Unconference", "subtitle": "", "track": "Events", "type": "Event", "language": "en", "abstract": "Come and chill in the Nix Vegas space for the Unconference.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZLWX9N/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://cfp.nix.vegas/2026/talk/ZLWX9N/", "attachments": []}]}}]}}}