From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Jan 4 19:54:45 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2019 19:54:45 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday (NOTE LOCATION): Windows Subsystem for Linux, Tiling Window Managers Message-ID: <20190105005445.GE1215@nb-heartburn> IMPORTANT: we have had a last-minute change in our meeting location. This month we will meet at our old location: St John's Kitchen (https://kwlug.org/sjk) . Stay tuned for information about where we will meet in the future. Maybe you made a New Year's resolution to increase cooperation and reduce divisiveness in the world? Or maybe you really, really want to run a Linux program in Windows? Boy, does Jason Eckert have a presentation for you. If you have a Windows 10 installation you can enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux, an API layer that allows Linux to run directly on the Windows kernel. Does this mark a new era of peace and harmony, or is it the old ethos of "embrace, extend and exterminate"? We'll find out! Maybe you made a New Year's resolution to use your screen real estate better this year? Maybe you are sick and tired of desktop wallpapers? All of those flowers and landscapes are such a waste of space! Why not put non-overlapping program windows all over your screen? Boy, does Lanny Cox have a presentation for you. He uses a tiling window manager called i3. Will this revolutionize your computing productivity, or cost you hours twiddling configuration files? We'll find out! Here are a few other things going on this month: - the StarCon conference (starcon.io) is happening on the weekend of January 19 and 20. It looks as if tickets might be sold out, but if not you can register here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/starcon-2019-tickets-51364393283 . There are a number of interesting talks happening, including lightning talks on ethical telemetry, writing a backdoor in Rust, and the Curv design language. See https://starcon.io/talks for more information. - I can't figure out whether this is FLOSS-friendly or FLOSS-hostile, but it involves open data, so here goes: the Region of Waterloo in competing for a $50 million prize to develop something related to smart cities. They are focusing on some project related to healthy children and youth. They have done some consultations, and are holding a prototyping night on Jan 9: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/help-smart-waterloo-region-win-50-million-tickets-53657483979 . You can find more about the project here: http://smartwr.ca - There is an effort underfoot to revitalize our OpenStreetMap presence by mapping local resources, especially as they pertain to climate change. If you are interested contact me offlist and I will get you in touch with the organizer. Want more? Check out watcamp.com for other events and meetings of interest within Waterloo Region. That's it for this month's announcement. Remember that we are meeting at St John's Kitchen this month: St John's Kitchen 97 Victoria Street North (at Weber) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/sjk for photos and maps. This location is very close to our KWIC meeting location -- it is across the street, at the corner of Victoria and Weber. Doors will open around 6:30pm. Setup help is always welcome. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Feb 1 19:50:11 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2019 19:50:11 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Game Emulators, Bottleneck Detection (NOTE NEW LOCATION) (February 2019) Message-ID: <20190202005011.GB1182@nb-heartburn> LOCATION NOTE: This month's meeting will be held at TriOS College in Market Square, at the corner of King and Frederick Streets in Kitchener. The staff at Market Square tend to lock the doors at 7pm sharp, so get to the location early if you can. We will also have people watching the doors and a phone number you can text to get in, but you are better off safe than sorry. Here we are in the balmy days of February. What better way to entertain ourselves as our digits freeze off than flipping some bits? You can bask in the warmth of your childhood memories as you boot up a game emulator in Linux, and then (maybe?) indulge in the 8-bit memories of your youth. Or you could play one of the many new games engineered for old consoles. Brent Clements will show us the why and how of game emulation on Linux. Our second offering this month will either be a presentation or a group discussion or both. Tim Laurence is good with computers, and he knows how to make slow things fast and buggy things pest-free. In this segment he will talk about some tools and techniques for troubleshooting bottlenecks in systems. Maybe after attending this discussion you will be able to answer the perennially-awful question "Why is my computer so slow?" In other news, KWLUG is looking for a few helpers. We have some content updates to work on, and some additional sources of events for watcamp.com. If you would like to help, please email me offlist. As mentioned above, this month's meeting will be held at a new location: TriOS College Market Square 110 King Street East (at Frederick) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for building information. There is a paid parking garage at Market Square, and gratis parking in downtown Kitchener after 6pm. -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Mar 1 23:54:31 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2019 23:54:31 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: UEFI, Pop!_OS (March 2019) Message-ID: <20190302045431.GB3872@nb-heartburn> LOCATION NOTE: This meeting (and probably future ones) will be held at TriOS College at Market Square. See below for more. Let's get started, by which I mean: let's get booting. Back in the antediluvian days of the 20th century, our input/output systems were basic. We hobbled around in our text-interface menus, setting DMA interrupts and identifying our operating systems as "Plug and Play" and who knows what else. We were masters of our boot records, logically extending our primary partitions to fit those sweet dual boot (triple boot, quadruple boot) setups. Time has marched on, and so have the mechanisms we use to boot and partition our computers. In our first presentation, Chris Irwin will regale us with information of UEFIs, GPT partition tables, and the many terrible things you can do with them. (And if you think a talk on partition tables and extensible firmware interfaces make for a boring talk, you have never attended a presentation by Chris before.) In addition to partitioning fun, Jason Eckert will give us a tour of the Pop!_OS distribution, produced by System76 (perhaps best-known for selling laptops with Linux pre-installed on them). Pop!_OS focuses on security and developer productivity. This talk will be beginner-friendly. In other news, there are so many things happening around Waterloo Region these days. It is overwhelming just looking at them all. Here is one that does not seem as if it would apply to Linux users, but boy howdy it probably does: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/you-are-insufficiently-persuasive-with-sandi-metz-tickets-56678140845 You know where to find more events: watcamp.com (and the associated email newsletter). As always, if you are organizing something FLOSSy that you would like to see mentioned in this space, let me know. This month's meeting will be held at TriOS college, starting at 7pm: TriOS College Market Square 110 King St E Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for pictures, maps, and parking information. Please try to arrive on time, but if you are late there should be a sign on one of the front entrances with a cell number you can call to get inside. - Paul -- http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Mar 29 17:50:36 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 17:50:36 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: OpenVAS, NixOS (April 2019) Message-ID: <20190329215035.GB1237@nb-heartburn> April Fools! No, wait. Monday may be April 1, but we are still having our meeting. Computers are scary, and you would have to be an April Fool to avoid thinking about computer security. OpenVAS is a tool (forked from Nessus) that you can use to scan a network for vulnerabilities. Bob B will lead us through a walkthrough on OpenVAS. Along the way he might tell us a few things about Proxmox, the virtualization distribution he used to set up his test environment. It is usually better to be functional rather than dysfunctional, and as the cool Haskellers will tell you, functional programming languages have a lot of advantages over their imperative competitors. The Nix package manager takes a functional approach to package management -- you write a specification of the system you want and then Nix carries it out. In addition, package upgrades on Nix are atomic, so you will never be left with half-configured things. Victor Kofia is excited about Nix the package manager and NixOS the distribution, and will tell us a little about them both. Our meeting will start at 7pm. It will be held in our new home: TriOS College 110 King St E (At Frederick, in Market Square) Kitchener It seems that the staff lock the doors awfully early, so please arrive by 7pm if you can. If you are late there should be a phone number you can text or call to get in, but better safe than sorry. See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and photos of the location. - Paul -- Sign Up for the WatCamp Newsletter: https://da.gd/wtcmp-news (Also http://pnijjar.freeshell.org still exists) From pnijjar at uwaterloo.ca Sat Mar 30 16:18:02 2019 From: pnijjar at uwaterloo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2019 16:18:02 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday, 7pm: OpenVAS, NixOS (April 2019) (repost) Message-ID: <20190330201802.GA3729@nb-heartburn> (Apologies for the re-post. Apparently the mailing lists are acting up, and a bunch of people are not getting emails from Yahoo addresses. So I will try from this address.) --- April Fools! No, wait. Monday may be April 1, but we are still having our meeting. Computers are scary, and you would have to be an April Fool to avoid thinking about computer security. OpenVAS is a tool (forked from Nessus) that you can use to scan a network for vulnerabilities. Bob B will lead us through a walkthrough on OpenVAS. Along the way he might tell us a few things about Proxmox, the virtualization distribution he used to set up his test environment. It is usually better to be functional rather than dysfunctional, and as the cool Haskellers will tell you, functional programming languages have a lot of advantages over their imperative competitors. The Nix package manager takes a functional approach to package management -- you write a specification of the system you want and then Nix carries it out. In addition, package upgrades on Nix are atomic, so you will never be left with half-configured things. Victor Kofia is excited about Nix the package manager and NixOS the distribution, and will tell us a little about them both. Our meeting will start at 7pm. It will be held in our new home: TriOS College 110 King St E (At Frederick, in Market Square) Kitchener It seems that the staff lock the doors awfully early, so please arrive by 7pm if you can. If you are late there should be a phone number you can text or call to get in, but better safe than sorry. See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and photos of the location. - Paul From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sun May 5 12:47:02 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sun, 5 May 2019 12:47:02 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: IPFS, Curv (May 2019) Message-ID: <20190505164650.GA1560@nb-heartburn> I am skeptical whether the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) has been empirically shown to work between planets, but it has been demonstrated to be an interesting mechanism for distributing files in a decentralized way. Like Bittorrent, it spreads chunks of files across many computers. Like git, it supports versioning. Instead of specifying a server location for the file you want, you specify the hash. Nathan Fish will tell us more about the system, and how it could potentially replace HTTP (!). I am not at all skeptical about Curv, the 3D mathematical modelling software developed by our own Doug Moen. Doug will follow up his successful 2017 presentation, further demonstrating the language and telling us of new developments. If KWLUG was a Communitech peer-to-peer group then I guess I would be promoting the upcoming (and somewhat pricey) True North Conference at https://truenorthwaterlool.com , but we aren't, so I won't. Instead, I will remind you of our meeting location: TriOS College 110 King St E (At Frederick, in Market Square) Kitchener The meeting starts at 7pm. I use the outer doors to get in. They will be locked, but there will be somebody minding the door until 7pm, and there will be a sign with a number to text/call to get in. (Check all three sets of doors.) Apparently you can also get into the building via the parking lot, but if you get lost just use the outside doors at King and Frederick. Maps and photos of the location are here: https://kwlug.org/trios-college - Paul -- Sign Up for the WatCamp Newsletter: https://da.gd/wtcmp-news (Also http://pnijjar.freeshell.org still exists) From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jun 1 01:39:22 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2019 01:39:22 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: LaTeX at the Law Library, GDB (June 2019) Message-ID: <20190601053921.GA9079@nb-heartburn> \documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage{hyperref} \begin{document} \section{KWLUG Announcement} \emph{Hello everybody!} Do you like lots of slashes in your markup language? Do you like debugging things? If so then this is the meeting for you! \footnote{That is not to say other meetings are not also for you.} \subsection{\LaTeX\ in the Law Library} I may only be on board with \LaTeX\ about $\frac{1}{3}$ of the time, but it has its uses. It has gained wide acceptance as a mathematical markup language, and it definitely has its adherents. John Kerr will be making an arduous journey all the way from Guelph to tell us about how he has integrated \LaTeX\ at the law library where he works, and will demonstrate some of the ways he uses it there. He will also show us what \LaTeX\ has in common with Gaelic. \subsection{GDB} Sergio Durigan Jr will be making an arduous trek all the way from Toronto to tell us about GDB, the GNU Debugger. Sergio packages GDB for Fedora, and hacks on it in his spare time. He will illustrate some basic usages of the tool, and tell us about some of GDB's cooler new features. \subsection{Other Announcements} \subsubsection{Linux Journal Call for Papers} The Linux Journal relayed a message to us (and other LUGs) asking for article submissions. In particular, they are publishing a "Cool Projects" issue and is looking for interesting stories from LUG members. The deadline for this issue is July 10, but apparently they are always looking for stories. You can read more about the article submission process here: \url{https://www.linuxjournal.com/author}~, and if you are interested in submitting something you can contact the editors at ljeditor at linuxjournal.com . In addition, the Linux Journal wanted to offer LUG members access to their ``Deep Dive'' ebook, which is apparently over 800 pages long? Since you are reading this email I guess you are a LUG member, so here are the download links: \begin{itemize} \item EPUB: \url{https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/lj-podcast/Linux+Journal+Deep+Dive+Edition+-+Linux+Journal.epub} \item MOBI \url{https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/lj-podcast/Linux+Journal+Deep+Dive+Edition+-+Linux+Journal.mobi} \end{itemize} \subsubsection{CyberCityConf} Our friends at the KW Cyber Security Meetup \footnote{which, incidentally, is one of the best meetups around these days : \url{https://www.meetup.com/KW-Cyber-Security-Meetup/} } is organizing a local cyber security conference, to be held on October 1. They are currently looking for speakers. If you have a compelling topic related to cybersecurity that you would like to present, please contact them: info at cybercityconf.io . The conference will not be gratis, but they say they are trying to keep ticket costs reasonable (\$40-60). More details of their conference will be published on their website as they are decided: \url{https://www.cybercityconf.io/} . In addition, they are trying to create a list of Twitter handles of all cyber security companies AND cyber security professionals in the region, so if you know of some (or are some) and are not on their Twitter lists, please contact them about that as well. \subsection{Location} Once again, we will meet at our new home: \noindent TriOS College \\ 110 King St E \\ (At Market Square) \\ Kitchener The venue usually locks its doors early. Somebody will be minding the door until the meeting starts at 7pm, so try to be on time. If you are late there should be a cellphone number posted that you can call or text to get in. If you would like maps or photos of the location, see \url{https://kwlug.org/trios-college}~. - Paul \end{document} % WatCamp Newsletter: https://da.gd/wtcmp-news % Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sun Jun 2 15:22:58 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2019 15:22:58 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Update: No LaTeX presentation on Monday Message-ID: <20190602192258.GE6214@nb-heartburn> Apologies for the second post, but there has been a last-minute change. John Kerr just contacted me to let me know that an urgent family situation came up for him, so he will be unable to present his "LaTeX at the Law Library" presentation. Sergio Durigan's presentation on GDB is still a go, and we are going to see whether we can fill in another presentation (possibly "Life in a Terminal Window"). Keep an eye on https://kwlug.org for updates. - Paul -- WatCamp Newsletter: https://da.gd/wtcmp-news Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Jul 6 06:36:31 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2019 06:36:31 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Docker Swarm, Life in a Terminal Window (July 2019) Message-ID: <20190706103631.GA1285@nb-heartburn> Containers, containers, everywhere. Containers for your apps, containers serving maps. Containers in the trees, container availability. See these containers sing! They orchestrate everything! Oh no! This container is stuck! Haul another out of the truck! Containers power DevOps. Containers for your moms and your pops. Containers are the hot new (not so new?) way to deploy applications at scale in the cloud. But managing swarms of containers can get tricky. In previous KWLUG meetings[1], we have heard about Kubernetes as one solution for container orchestration. This month, Mikalai Birukou will tell us about another: Docker Swarm, brought to you by the same people who make Docker itself. Docker Swarm does a bunch of management things, such as scaling and high availability, and it abstracts everything as if it was one computer. You might remember Mikalai's great presentation on LXD[2], and with any luck he will be able to deliver the entirety of his presentation indoors this time around. My computer is old and slow, and doing something as simple as running a web browser on the modern internet can be a real chore (hello, Slack). Much of the time I try to do what I can within a terminal window, and over the years I have discovered some workflows and tools that help me get by. On Monday I will drag my old and slow computer to the meeting and give a broad overview of these tools, focusing on end-user applications. This presentation is intended to be beginner-friendly and useful for those getting started with Linux, but I hope even experienced users will learn one or two tricks they had not known about before. In other news, we are looking for a 40 minute presentation for August. Do you have something you have been waiting to present? Do you know of some topic (or want to learn about some topic) that might be of interest to the broader group? Let us know via email, the website contact form, kwlug-disc, or in person. Even though it is summer, there are interesting computer-related things happening in town. At long last, Marc Par? is starting up his LibreOffice user group. Their first meeting will be held in conjunction with the Nonprofit Sysadmin meeting on July 15, at Conrad Grebel college. See https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/261987213/ for more information. I told you about the CyberCity conference last month, and I have a few updates. Firstly, they are still looking for speakers, and applications have been extended to August 1. Secondly, tickets for the conference are now on sale. Prices range from $25 to $50. See https://cybercityconf.io for more information. We will once again be meeting at TriOS college: TriOS College 110 King St E (in Market Square) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and photos of the meeting location. The outer doors are often locked by 7pm, so try to be prompt or bring a cellphone so you can text/call to be let in. - Paul [1] See https://kwlug.org/node/1111 [2] See https://kwlug.org/node/1156 -- Tech Events Newsletter: https://da.gd/wtcmp-news Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Aug 10 13:31:41 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2019 13:31:41 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday, 7pm: WRDashboard, Vim (Aug 2019) Message-ID: <20190810173141.GD1267@nb-heartburn> Andrew Cant is on a mission to take the pulse of Waterloo Region. For years he has been gathering information about all the neat things being produced in this area -- the blogs, the podcasts, even the free software repos -- and now he is aggregating those resources into a one-stop shoppe of information feeds: https://wrdashboard.ca . Furthermore he is putting the site together IndieWeb style, using open standards instead of depending on our social media overlords. During his presentation Andrew will tell us about the tools, technologies, and choices he has made in putting WRDashboard together. Jason Eckert is on a mission to edit text files. In this world of fancy IDEs and cloudy computing you would think poor old vi(m) would be obsolete, but just try SSHing into a GUI-free containerized Linux node sometime. Jason has been using Vim for decades and will give us a crash course on how to work with the editor (beyond :q!). These presentations will begin at 7pm. In other news, Colin Knapp is on a mission to replace Google Forms with IndieWeb-style, self-hosted forms. He is involved with taking over maintenance of a project called OhMyForm: https://ohmyform.com . He is not ready to present the project (yet!) but he invites you to visit the project and give it a star, because if he gets enough stars then he gets sponsored hosting? See the repo here: https://github.com/ohmyform/ohmyform/ . Do you like Rust? Are you looking to get into the eternally rewarding and incredibly lucrative world of organizing user group meetings? Mark and Sanjay at RustKW (https://www.meetup.com/Rust-KW/) are looking for some organizing help to keep their group going. If you are interested email Sunjay (varma.sunjay) and Mark (mdsherry), both at gmail. That's all I have for this month, except to put out a call for some more presentations. We are looking for people to talk about whatever free-software topics they are passionate about. We need presentations from October onwards, and like to mix more technical topics with more beginner-friendly ones. Contact me offlist (or use the website contact form) if you are interested. This month's meeting will be held at TriOS: TriOS College 110 King St E (at Market Square) Kitchener See the https://kwlug.org/trios-college for photos and maps. You should either arrive early or bring a cellphone so you can call/text to get into the building. - Paul -- Sign up for tech events: https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Fri Sep 6 21:22:53 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2019 21:22:53 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday, 7pm: Home Networks, PrivacySafe (Sept 2019) Message-ID: <20190907012253.GB1311@nb-heartburn> Well, summer's over. It's time to go inside and shiver, desperately trying to fend off the relentless cold. But as we desperately try to thermoregulate, we might as well get together and network. In that spirit, this month's KWLUG meeting is all about home servers and networking. First, Sandeep Johri will give a beginner-friendly demonstration of how he set up and secured his home network. His hope is to show you how you might network your home, and to gather tips for how to make his own network better. Secondly, Mikalai Birukou will unveil the details of his secret project PrivacySafe, which is intended to help you provide private and secure servers in your own house, as opposed to the houses of giant tech corporations sucking up all your data. (Sorry, giant tech corporations.) These presentations begin around 7pm, after initial announcements. In other news, we are in moderately-dire need of presenters for the next little while. In particular, we are looking for some people to present for October. If you know somebody who has something interested to say about a free software project (or you are that person!) please invite that person (possibly you!) to present. Use the contact link on our website, post to the kwlug-disc list, or contact me directly. This will be my final announcement for the CyberCity security conference happening on October 1. This is not gratis but (based upon my experiences at the excellent KW CyberSecurity meetup) should be pretty good. Get tickets here: https://cybercityconf.io Since summer has ended, tech meetups are ramping up again. There are so many! You know where to find them: watcamp.com or https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp . This month's meeting will be held at our newish home: TriOS College 110 King St E (at Market Square) Kitchener See maps and photos of the site at https://kwlug.org/trios-college . You will want to arrive by 7pm if you can, because the doors get locked early. Alternatively, bring a mobile communication device so that you can call or text to be let into the building. - Paul -- Get tech event listings: https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Oct 5 04:14:35 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2019 04:14:35 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Syncthing, Blockchain (Oct 2019) Message-ID: <20191005081434.GC1287@nb-heartburn> Synchains. Blockthings. Who can keep all the terminology synchronized, without double-spending our attention? It can all be a little cryptic, but fortunately this month's meeting features overviews of technologies that sometimes feel like magic. If you have things to sync or chains to block, this meeting is for you. Last month Sandeep Johri showed us how he set up his home network. This month he will demonstrate how he keeps his data synchronized across devices. Syncthing is a peer to peer distributed synchronization system that aims to work across devices, be safe, secure, and easy for end users to set up and use. Sandeep will show us what it is and how he makes use of it in his network. This will be the beginner-friendly talk of the evening. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-resistant databases useful for storing ledgers. Or maybe they are the future of money? Or maybe they are a trendy bubble? I don't know, but maybe Gheorghe Curelet-Balan does? In addition to being KW's unofficial tech videographer he has been following Bitcoins and blockchains, and will give us an overview of the fundamental concepts behind them: distributed ledgers, transactions, mining, proof of work, incentives, governance and more. Speaking of blocked things, we are looking for some beginner-friendly presentations. Do you have something to share that would be appropriate for people just getting started with Linux? Come to KWLUG and speak about them. We are a friendly audience, and can schedule you from November onwards. Contact me (paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca) if you are interested. You are probably tired of me plugging the Watcamp calendar and newsletter, so why don't I hype up the competition this month? Alex Kinsella produces a newsletter called TL;WR. In addition to tech events, Alex promotes a selection of entertainment and community events in the region. Get it at https://www.alexkinsella.com/tlwr/ . The LibreOffice group is up and running. It will have its first independent meeting this Wednesday, October 9, at Conrad Grebel University. If you are interested in LibreOffice (or would like to promote its broader use in the community) then Marc would love it if you attended: https://www.parentreprise.com/index.php?module=news&type=user&func=display&sid=33 That's all I have, except for the meeting location: TriOS College 110 King St E (in Market Square) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and directions. Try to get there on time so you can get in the doors, or bring a mobile communications device so that you can call/text the number at the door. - Paul -- Get tech event listings: https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Nov 2 00:04:13 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2019 00:04:13 -0400 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Beginner Git, Matrix (Nov 2019) References: <20191102040413.GD2433.ref@nb-heartburn> Message-ID: <20191102040413.GD2433@nb-heartburn> Yes, git, we know. You won the version control wars and now all of us are ensconced in your tangly branches. But you aren't always easy to love, y'know? It takes a fair amount of work to understand the world you want us to commit to. Masters, indexes, hashes, forks, pulls, pushes, bare repos vs clothed ones -- there is a lot of terminology to understand before we know what we are doing, and it can be intimidating for new git users to git started. It has been four years since our last git talk at KWLUG, and it is time to revisit the subject. Paul Nijjar (wait. who? what??) is going to give us a beginner-friendly talk that demonstrates just enough git to submit a pull request on Github (alternatively, a merge request on Gitlab). If you are a beginning git user, know any beginning git users or would like to contribute to open source but are intimidated by version control, this might be the presentation for you. On an unrelated note, can't we just sit down and talk? Why is it so hard for us to communicate without somebody peeking in to slurp up all of our personal data? Do we really need giant tech companies with centralized servers just to have a conversation? Hubert Chathi does not think so. He has put his livelihood where his mouth is: he works on Matrix, a federated, end-to-end encrypted communications protocol with a host of clients and bridges to more proprietary channels. Hubert will tell us a little about the project and its goals, and then he will answer all of your questions. As usual, these talks will begin around 7pm, after meeting announcements. Speaking of meeting announcements, Stephen Paul Weber is organizing a satellite LibrePlanet conference to be held in conjunction with the one in Boston. He describes LibrePlanet as "an annual conference about software freedom, user rights, philosophy and technology." A date has not been set yet, but you can follow progress at https://2020.libreplanet.ca/ . At this point he is looking to spread the word (especially to those outside Waterloo Region), for volunteers, and for sponsors. Speaking of maps, some people at CycleWR are reviving local OpenStreetMap initiatives, focusing on finding low-carbon ways to get around Waterloo Region. They do not appeared to have a dedicated website for this initiative, but you can follow them on (proprietary!) Twitter here: https://mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/mappingwr Our meeting wull be held at the new usual location: TriOS College 110 King St E (inside Market Square, at Frederick/Benton) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and photos. Try to get to the site before 7pm so that you can get in, and/or bring a cellphone so you can call and be let in. - Paul -- Get tech event listings: https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org From paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca Sat Nov 30 16:24:19 2019 From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca (Paul Nijjar) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2019 16:24:19 -0500 Subject: [kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Computer Vision, systemd (Dec 2019) References: <20191130212419.GD1300.ref@nb-heartburn> Message-ID: <20191130212419.GD1300@nb-heartburn> Chris Blasko has a vision. He wants computers to recognise objects in the world. Unfortunately, computers have to translate still images encoded in binary and somehow interpret them. In this month's meeting, Chris will lead us through the field of computer vision, from interpreting pixels to recognising faces. Along the way he promises some cool live demos of object recognition. This presentation will be beginner-friendly Nathan Fish also has a vision. He would like to get away from clunky shell-based init scripts to a format that is more compact and elegant, and fixes some of the limitations of old SysV or BSD init systems. Oh, and along the way he will reimplement most Linux system utilities (including a DNS resolver??), rename our network interfaces, and in the process introduce philosophical conflicts that are still tearing communities apart[1]. Oh wait. Maybe that isn't Nathan's vision at all. Maybe Nathan's vision is to set aside the cultural controversy and look at systemd in terms of its technology: what it can do, how it works, and how you can use it. In any case, we will hear all about it during this month's meeting. The presentations will begin around 7pm, after meeting announcements. This month's meeting will be held at TriOS: TriOS College, 110 King St E, (Market Square, where Frederick and Benton meet) Kitchener See https://kwlug.org/trios-college for maps and photos of the location. Try to arrive before 7pm so we can let you in, or bring a mobile phone so you can call/text to get in. - Paul [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 -- Get tech event listings: https://off-topic.kwlug.org/watcamp Blog: http://pnijjar.freeshell.org