These days it seems like any hacker worth their salt cares about AT&T's microwave long distance network. Microwave is neither the beginning nor the end of long distance telephony, though. In this talk, we'll discuss the other kinds of Long Lines - long distance telephone leads that used hundreds of miles of copper. Along the way, we'll learn about AT&T's extensive program to build a coast-to-coast coaxial cable hardened against nuclear attack, complete with an underground fallout shelter every 150 miles. You'll learn to recognize historic telephone infrastructure that you can find throughout the US.

We've all done it, you walk out of the store and the exit portals start beeping.... So you just keep walking. Tag-based retail anti-theft systems have been with us for decades, and there are several distinct generations of technology in use. Some of them rely on interesting physics, others use state of the art RFID technology for integrating into point of sale and supply chain systems. All of them are, almost universally, hated and ignored. We'll learn about magnetostriction, visibility networks, and shopping carts that form mesh network swarms while they wait in the parking lot.