Free Software

We have a couple of presentations lined up this month for you to enjoy from the safety of your home.

Attend by going to: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx

Adrian Cochrane: What is the small web And Why Is It Important?

Description:
To support the creation of "webapps" web browsers have become increasingly complex, to the extent that even major corporations can no longer continue keeping up.

There's been a growing community concerned about this direction the web's been taking and wanting to do something about. This talk will show that this is possible and vital to do.

About Adrian:
Adrian started programming when he was ten years old, when he'd sleep with a Python book under his pillow. Since then he continued studying programming eventually graduating from Victoria University of Wellington with a BSc Computer Science, now running a contracting business with his father supporting the establishment of open standards.

He started developing his own browser to explore an increasing fascination with how to (re)discover valuable webpages, occasionally contributing code to related projects. And frequently studying all the code he can about how elementary OS works.


Kevin Tyers: BASH - Practical Tips

Description:
Kevin will be sharing 6 of his most beloved tricks for using Bash. These simple, yet practical tips should be immediately useful, or at least inspirational for you to develop your own set. This talk is for people of all skill levels.

About Kevin:
Kevin Tyers is a SANS Instructor, the head of cyber intelligence engineering for a Fortune 250 company, and the head of infrastructure for iCTF. Throughout his 15-year career, he has worked in the government, telecom, health care, and financial industries focusing on network engineering/security, incident response, and tooling. Kevin is the cofounder of the Information Security group DC480 in Phoenix Arizona. He has spoken at a variety of public and invite-only conferences such as BSidesLV, CactusCon, and SANS Hackfest. He has been a Linux user for as long as he can remember and is passionate about sharing the tips and tricks he has learned for using Linux.

We've got a couple of presentations for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own home.  Just go to https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx at 7pm on Thursday, Aug 13th and enjoy.

der.hans: FLOSS and you: a user freedom investigation

Description:
User freedom addresses software licensing from the perspective of those using the software.

What are advantages and disadvantages of different licensing models in relation to user freedom?

How does licensing impact individuals, organizations and businesses as we use software?

How does software distribution ( packages, cloud, bundled in a product ) impact user freedom?

The presentation and ensuing conversation is about user freedom and the impact of the software we choose to use.

It's a consideration of the everyperson relationship with software licensing.

Attendees will consider how the following relate to them:

* software usage models
* the four freedoms of Free Software
* the open source development model
* strong and weak copyleft

About der.hans:
der.hans is a technology and entrepreneurial veteran.

He is chairman of the Phoenix Linux User Group (PLUG), Promotions and Outreach chair for SeaGL, BoF organizer for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) and founder of the Free Software Stammtisch. He presents regularly at large community-led conferences (SCaLE, SeaGL, LFNW, Tübix, OLF, TXLF) and many local groups.

Currently a Customer Data Engineer at Object Rocket. Public statements are not representative of $dayjob.

Mastodon - https://floss.social/@FLOX_advocate

Plume - https://fediverse.blog/~/LuftHans

Tom Perrine: Retro-computing in the cloud - or how to run 70's era UNIX and Multics in GCP

Description:
I'm going to talk about SIMH, software that can emulate dozens of historically interesting CPUs and demonstrate automation that lets you launch V6 UNIX and Multics in the Google Compute Platform.

About Tom:
Tom Perrine is a life-long system administrator. Open source has been part of his life since the 80's beginning with Emacs, and leading to 4BSD, Slackware and Centos.

He recently finished 17 years at Playstation, where he managed several IT teams who created the first online game servers, and ran IT infrastructure for the 14 internal game studios. His final assignments were global IT strategic planning and IT transformation programs.

Before Playstation, he was the first CSO of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, handling all operational security as well as funded research for NSA, FBI and others. Before SDSC, he was a contractor doing infosec research for the intelligence community related to security kernels and trusted computing.

He's given testimony to the US Congress on privacy, and presented multiple times at USENIX, DEFCON and other conferences. His hobbies include SCUBA diving, Toastmasters and whisky, but rarely on the same day.

Austin Godber: Python and Kubernetes

Description:
Austin will briefly introduce containerization and Kubernetes. Show an example of a containerized Python application and then show how to interact with Kubernetes through it's API using Python.

You can attend on July 9th at 7pm by visiting: https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx

Donald McCarthy: Introduction to pfSense

Description:
In this presentation I will demonstrate the installation of pfSense from a USB stick including some basic configuration. There will also be some video and live demonstration of many of the features of pfSense. pfSense is more than just a firewall, it is a capable networking Swiss army knife which is generally only limited by the hardware and imagination of the user.

Andrew Harris: Why Your MTA Should Be Your CMS

Description:
There are many options for CMS solutions out there, but it's a tall order to select one and maintain it so that it's stable, performant, and secure. Website operators, sysadmins, and content creators are constantly having to deal with the same old problems of authentication, spam prevention, and general CRUD functionality. In this talk, I go through my journey in creating my own email-based CMS, and posit that many of the features we work so hard to build into our CMS solutions are already present in the MTA.

About Andrew:
Andrew is an SRE with a background in sysadmin and a love for the esoteric. He enjoys finding cheap, novel solutions to problems, and takes pride in his bash scripting skills. Once a resident of Phoenix and organizer of West-side PLUG Stammtische, Andrew now resides in Austin, TX with his partner and their small horse-like dog.

Attend the meeting by visiting https://lufthans.bigbluemeeting.com/b/plu-yuk-7xx on June 11th at 7pm MST