PLUG's Upcoming Events

Virtual Meeting Topic for meeting on 4/8

Published: 06 April 2021

Ben Cotton: Fedora and Future of Operating Systems

Join the Meeting for going to https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx on Apr. 8th at 7pm MST

Description:
Operating systems are not boring, but they’re no longer the end of the Linux development pipeline. As interest shifts up the stack to containers and other abstraction technologies, what are operating system makers to do? This talk describes how the Fedora Project views the future of the Linux distribution, why it’s still relevant, and how we’re going to get there. The operating system may not get the attention it used to, but it still plays an important role in providing the foundation that modern applications are built on.

About Ben:
Ben is a meteorologist by training, but weather makes a great hobby. Ben works as the Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. He is a member of the Open Source Initiative and a supporter of Software Freedom Conservancy. Ben is an Opensource.com Correspondent Emeritus and an Open Organization Ambassador. Find him on Twitter (@FunnelFiasco) or at FunnelFiasco.com.

Topic for the March Virtual Meeting

Published: 09 March 2021

Dawn E. Collett: The Privacy Tax: How tracking and hacking affect
Join the meeting by going to https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx

Description:
Surveillance is everywhere. From CCTV cameras on the streets to cookies that track users around the web as they browse, the vast majority of human activity is monitored in some form. The burden of being watched disproportionately falls on marginalised groups, and people with disabilities are no exception in this regard. If your medical records contain sensitive information that you've discussed with your doctor to get appropriate treatment, information security suddenly becomes far more important to you. And if your only method of communication is connected to the Internet 24/7, and thus vulnerable to hackers, true privacy is a great deal harder to achieve.

In this talk, we'll examine how data-driven systems view disability, and look at how accessible technology can be exploited to reveal information about its users. We'll break down ways that disabled people can - and do - avoid tracking and hacking, and find out why paying a 'privacy tax' isn't always feasible for everyone. Finally, we'll discuss open-source software that's already reducing the impact of surveillance and security risks on people with disabilities, and examine what technologists can do to make the privacy tax less necessary.


Biography:
Dawn is a DevOps/Site Reliability Engineer who started out as a freelance developer, and realised that learning about infrastructure and release systems would save time and money for everyone involved.
As well as accidental accessibility advocacy, Dawn is on the organising team for the Melbourne AWS Programming and Tools meetup, and can regularly be found sharing knowledge within the Melbourne cloud infrastructure and DevOps communities.
Outside work, Dawn is an occasional author and kitchen alchemist.

Topics for our Virtual Meeting on 1/14

Published: 12 January 2021

We'll have 2 presentations this month, A conversation with Bradley Kuhn about the Software Freedom Conservancy and (ab)Using DNS

Attend the meeting on Thursday November 12th at 7PM by visiting: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx

Bradley Kuhn: A conversation with Bradley Kuhn about the Software Freedom Conservancy

Description:
We're going to start the new year off with an interview. Bradley and our host will chat about the Software Freedom Conservancy, Free Software and licensing and his history in the Free Software movement.

Biography:
Bradley M. Kuhn is the Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy and editor-in-chief of copyleft.org. Kuhn began his work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an early adopter of Linux-based systems, and began contributing to various Free Software projects, including Perl. He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kuhn's non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF. As FSF's Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kuhn led FSF's GPL enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. Kuhn was appointed President of Software Freedom Conservancy in April 2006, was Conservancy's primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and has been a full-time staffer since early 2011. Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. Kuhn's Master's thesis discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free Software programming languages. Kuhn received the O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2012, in recognition for his lifelong policy work on copyleft licensing. Kuhn has a blog and co-hosts the audcast, Free as in Freedom.

Donald Mac McCarthy: (ab)Using DNS

Description:
Let's take a look at DNS from a new perspective. In this presentation we will discuss using DNS for cost savings and speed increases in datastore operations. We will also take advantage of DNS's unique architecture and capabilities to improve redundancy and increase distribution for near zero cost. Finally, I will show how to push security farther toward the entry into the technology stack and make our applications a part of our security posture.

Topics for the Virtual Meeting on 11/12

Published: 09 November 2020

We'll have 2 presentations this month, QubesOS: a toolkit for secure applications and Space Night Talk Show

Attend the meeting on Thursday November 12th at 7PM by visiting: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx

Kevin O'Gorman: QubesOS: a toolkit for secure applications

Description:
SecureDrop is a whistleblowing system designed to protect the anonymity of sources against highly-capable adversaries. It's also not exactly user-friendly. FPF is building a next-generation SecureDrop workstation for journalists using the Qubes OS (https://qubes-os.org/) as a base. This presentation covers some of the properties of Qubes that make the workstation possible while preserving the level of security that SecureDrop has historically provided.

About Kevin:
Kevin is a Newsroom Support Engineer at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, based in Toronto, Canada. His involvement in digital security stems from his time spent working in various roles with media organizations including the CBC and The Globe And Mail, where he led security workshops for journalists and worked with FPF to implement the first Canadian SecureDrop instance.

Nathan Cluff: Space Night Talk Show

Description:
PLUG is hosting it's first ever talk show. Tune in as Hans asks guest Nathan Cluff about FLOSS in space and other geeky topics.

der.hans will interview Nathan Cluff for PLUG's first ever talk show as they talk about throwing things at other planets, our first spacecopter and whatever else comes up

First Space Night video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnxge96YO3A
Perseverence: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Spacecopter: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
Planetary Society: https://www.Planetary.org/
NASA: https://www.NASA.gov/
Mastcam-Z: https://mastcamz.asu.edu/

About Nathan:
Nathan is the Lead Systems Administrator for the Mastcam and Mastcam-Z cameras on the Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020 rovers in addition to supporting operations for various other missions such as the Luna Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-map) mission. Nathan has been involved in various Linux administrative positions for the last 18 years and has been in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU for the last 4 years.