Hey there Libre-tarians
This month the Free Software Working Group kicks back into action for 2017 and unfortunatly we find ourselves without a home base for the Working Group meetings... but never fear it's FREE SOFTWARE to the rescue!
Damien Zammit has kindly set us up a Matrix/Riot room on a federated server at #freesoftwaremelb:matrix.zammit.org (you can access the room through https://riot.im/app) and I've seen a demo of the desktop web client being used for video conferencing ... so why not give it a road test this Thursday the 2nd at 7:00pm
If everything goes smoothly I'd like to get around to reviewing the Free Software Melbourne website addressing some recent issues with the wiki and ensuring that important information is updated and accessible.
That being said we may just spend the evening trouble shooting issues with video conferencing issues so let's keep our fingers crossed. Hope to see, hear or read you there everyone
Time: 7:00pm Thurday 2nd March
Venue: https://riot.im/app
Directions: Search for "#freesoftwaremelb:matrix.zammit.org"
Map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=0%2C%200#map=2/0.0/0.0
Hey there Free Software Melbourne, we're kicking off a new year with a bit of serious fun, we'll be joined by Rosie Williams from the Little Bird Network. Rosie is an Open Data Consultant, programmer and one of the new generation of journalists covering issues like #CensusFail and #NotMyDebt
SnitchHunt is a game that teaches the public about metadata: what it is and how it can be used to identify and track individuals. Come and test the open source beta version of SnitchHunt with Free Software Melbourne so the developer can see how different people handle the game. Numbers will be limited. Please bring your own laptop & internet connection to play although some may be accommodated by teaming up with others. https://whistleblower.network/snitch/index.php
After our playtest of SnitchHunt we'll be having our regular Gnews review of the last couple of months. Hope to see you at 6:30PM on Thursday 16th at Electron Workshop (31 Arden Street, North Melbourne) for the monthly Free software Melbourne meetup followed by our usual stroll down Errol st to find somewhere for dinner and continued chatter
Event details
Thursday 16th Feb, 6:30-8:00pm
31 Arden St, North Melbourne, Victoria, 3051
Map: http://osm.org/go/uG4HWyqEz?m=&node=2556615434
Travel tips by Electron Workshop
Running late or can't find us? Call Ben on 0419 390 496
Happy new year Free Software Melbourne,
Hello Freedom Lovers,
Hello Freedom Lovers,
Earlier this month we had our "Free Software Show and Tell" session at FSM. As usual there was a bunch of really great software on show and just I wanted to put together a post wrapping up some of the highlights for "Best FOSS Software of 2016"
First off the blocks we had L.D.A.P. or the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol which had helped a business integrate new (or was it old) hardware into an existing infrastructure with a mixture of Windows and Linux software
I mentioned that HtTrack was my best hope for empowering government with a tool for web scraping on account of it having an Android client and the departmental restrictions on software is less strict for the time being
Ben S. talked about Riot which is a team based communications platform built on Matrix. Apart from all the usual benefits of a team communications platform, Riot has the added benefit of allowing connections to an old school IRC chat but with all the added benefits of persistence we have come to expect with IRC bouncers and modern web apps
Ben S. also mentioned an often missed benefit of OwnCloud/NextCloud which is the ability to use it as a data store for large email attachments. Just install the ThunderBird add-on and the next time you try to email a large file Thunderbird/NextCloud will offer you the opportunity to upload the file to NextDrive and include a link in the message
Michael showed us a website he's been passionately working on over the past weeks: Boycot Amazon, take a look if you want to support local businesses and tell this conglomorate "Not here!". You could even support local growers by buying local too
Damien demoed a new tool he's been working on to create a very specific kind of binary image. He's been developing and utilising this tool to create binary images based on templates specifying which bits should be set. The software is still in development but Damien is planning on releasing it once it's up to snuff and will be of use to others
Paul also noted that SQLAlchemy had been of great use to himself and someone mentioned a friendly tutorial that was available. I'll have to take the readme at it's word when it says that it's "suite of well known persistence patterns, designed for efficient and high-performing database access, adapted into a simple and Pythonic domain language". Which I think is the long way of saying "It makes databases behave like Python" and in Pauls case this translates to shareable and reproducible results in scientific research
You can also check out the Gnews presentation to look closer at any of the issues we discussed at the meetup or SIGN the PETITIONS!
Hope I haven't missed anyone out almost as much as I hope to see you all in a couple of weeks for our December Holiday Dinner