LUV status (& online meeting possibilities)

Robin Stephens asked:
Is luv-main still the primary place for discussion of all things Linux in Victoria?
It kind of is (to my knowledge). As you perhaps observed, it's reasonably active, with over a dozen postings over the course of July. I'm going to return to your point via a seeming digression, so please bear with me: Point 1. My friend Michael Paoli has been doing fine work collecting a list on Bay Area Linux User Group's (San Francisco) wiki of all known recurring virtual LUG meetings, during the pandemic era. It's here: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19 You will note there's nothing (yet) from Oz: not Vic, not NSW, nothing. This is perhaps accurate, perhaps not. Truth to tell, I was just now double-checking all of LUV's public mailing lists and Web site to see if there were mention of a LUV online meeting. (There is not - yet.) As I find time, I intend to check other Australian Linux sites to see if any ought to be added to the page. Please, if you (plural) have a chance, kindly do likewise. That was the _initial_ point I wanted to make. Point 2: Hmm, one silver lining of the slow trend of rolling out online meetings (on Zoom, Jitsi Meet, or others) is that suddenly physicality is less important. I have lately been attending a number of organisations' Zoom or Jitsi meetings that are thousands of kilometres away from me. (Yr. humble servant is 60 km south of San Francisco, and his time zone during this season is UTC-7: Locals call it PDT = Pacific Daylight Time.) Recently, for five days at the end of July, I helped run the annual World Science Fiction Convention ('Worldcon'), a volunteer-owned/run literary and fandom event, held this year in Wellington, Enn-Zed. But, of course, 2020 being the dumpster fire that it is, few of the ~2000 attendees could be in Wellington, so this was the first-ever virtual Worldcon, held using a mix of Zoom, Discord, WordPress, Jitsi Meet, and some other technologies. (I did the buildout & administration of Jitsi Meet for the Worldcon.) Starting during staff planning and running through the event, I kept a browser tab open to https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ , to keep an eye on the two timezones: I came to think of NZ, being on NZST = UTC+12, as five hours behind me plus a day ahead. (It seemed humourously fitting for the Worldcon to be held in the future. ;-> ) LUV / Melbourne / Vic, being on AEST = UTC+10 during these winter months, I would naturally think of as seven hours behind me plus a day ahead. As a mnemonic, you see. (I also switched to 24hr clock notation, as it makes the maths easier.) To sum: The jiggering of time differences is irksome but one quickly finds heuristics & tools to cut the annoyance value, and reduce error. The conclusion: How about other LUV people joining me in showing up at select virtual LUG events with little regard to distance or national borders? (I _am_ a longtime LUV person, even if I am Yet Another Bloody Yank.) Point 3: Also, please consider looking into occasional and perhaps regular LUV meetings on Jitsi Meet (like: meet.jit.si/luv) or on Zoom. Then, you (or I) can add them to Michael Paoli's list, and (for better or worse) gain international attendees with peculiar accents. I would be glad to give a virtual lecture on the construction, care, and feeding of Jitsi Meet for LUV. (I could be LUV's first monthly speaker to ever give a presentation to LUV's audience from 12,600 km away.) (If Russell or another LUV officer considers this posting appropriate for luv-main, great. I didn't want to presume.)

Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
Point 2: Hmm, one silver lining of the slow trend of rolling out online meetings (on Zoom, Jitsi Meet, or others) is that suddenly physicality is less important.
"Suddenly"? I mean, this was a thing during perestroika. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/communications/logs/report-ussr-gorbatch... AFAICT all that's happened is that neurotypical people -- who benefit from being able to see facial expressions and hear voice inflection -- were forced to try it, and realized it's not so bad. Although THEIR version needs something huge like 128Kbit/s and Expedited Forwarding DSCP :-) PS: obligatory caution that Zoom is not just sousveillance evil, they are also "my first TLS library" level bad at security. (serious mode) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_pr_1.html (snark mode) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/zoom-wont-encrypt-calls-so-they-can-sell-yo...
Starting during staff planning and running through the event, I kept a browser tab open to https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
FYI, this is the lofi Debian-specific world clock I've used since about 2014: alias u_sleeping_bro_p='zdump America/{Los_Angeles,Mexico_City,New_York,Sao_Paulo} Europe/{London,Berlin,Moscow} Asia/Calcutta PRC Japan Australia/{Perth,Melbourne}' $ u_sleeping_bro_p America/Los_Angeles Tue Aug 11 02:02:43 2020 PDT America/Mexico_City Tue Aug 11 04:02:43 2020 CDT America/New_York Tue Aug 11 05:02:43 2020 EDT America/Sao_Paulo Tue Aug 11 06:02:43 2020 -03 Europe/London Tue Aug 11 10:02:43 2020 BST Europe/Berlin Tue Aug 11 11:02:43 2020 CEST Europe/Moscow Tue Aug 11 12:02:43 2020 MSK Asia/Calcutta Tue Aug 11 14:32:43 2020 IST PRC Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 CST Japan Tue Aug 11 18:02:43 2020 JST Australia/Perth Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 AWST Australia/Melbourne Tue Aug 11 19:02:43 2020 AEST I could *just about* do this in my head, except that some polities still haven't repealed the Wartime Emergency Daylight Rationing introduced during the Great War. At least we no longer have to worry about Higgins Time: https://sources.debian.org/src/tzdata/2020a-1/asia/#L3349
The conclusion: How about other LUV people joining me in showing up at select virtual LUG events with little regard to distance or national borders? (I _am_ a longtime LUV person, even if I am Yet Another Bloody Yank.)
Personally I never bothered to go to the LUV meetings before, either :-) I mostly hang out with "emacs pople" or "debian people" or "zfs people", and I only keep LUV around for stuff that *is* geographically specific, e.g. "How do I put money on the EastLink e-tag bipper without executing non-free javascript?"
Point 3: Also, please consider looking into occasional and perhaps regular LUV meetings on Jitsi Meet (like: meet.jit.si/luv) or on Zoom. Then, you (or I) can add them to Michael Paoli's list, and (for better or worse) gain international attendees with peculiar accents.
FWIW I've been using https://meet.ji.si/$(xkcdpass) a few times for customers who won't just let me have SSH access, because their suggestions (Zoom and MS Teams) were Too Hard. It was too heavyweight for 10-year-old chromebook, but apart from that, it Worked Fine. I haven't audited its security model yet, or stood up my own trusted server. Allegedly the latter is straightforward (as in apt-get from Debian's QA'd repos, not as in https://curlpipesh.tumblr.com/).

Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
AFAICT all that's happened is that neurotypical people -- who benefit from being able to see facial expressions and hear voice inflection -- were forced to try it, and realized it's not so bad.
Point taken. It's also been comical to see some local perpetual computer novices going through a more cheerful analogue of Kübler-Ross's stages, concerning videoconferencing. As they suddenly realise that intoning endlessly 'I couldn't possibly do that' and all solve their silly little microphone and speaker problems _once_, it slowly dawns on them that they now have a basic skill they can use for the rest of their lives, too. I've pointed out to some, with only mildly malicious intent, that the world has now changed and online meetings are going to be a fixture even after they're no longer obligatory. Naturally, the force of confirmation bias is strong in these padawans, so I heard instant denials. ('Nah, nobody's going to keep doing this.') Three steps forward, 2.9 steps back.
PS: obligatory caution that Zoom is not just sousveillance evil, they are also "my first TLS library" level bad at security.
(serious mode) https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_pr_1.html
(snark mode) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/zoom-wont-encrypt-calls-so-they-can-sell-yo...
Already both included in the Dept. of Web-Search Juice infobox on the front page of http://linuxmafia.com/ , FWIW. (That started out as the 'Dept. of Google Juice', until one day when I was particularly annoyed at the second-most nosy corporation.)
FYI, this is the lofi Debian-specific world clock I've used since about 2014:
alias u_sleeping_bro_p='zdump America/{Los_Angeles,Mexico_City,New_York,Sao_Paulo} Europe/{London,Berlin,Moscow} Asia/Calcutta PRC Japan Australia/{Perth,Melbourne}'
$ u_sleeping_bro_p America/Los_Angeles Tue Aug 11 02:02:43 2020 PDT America/Mexico_City Tue Aug 11 04:02:43 2020 CDT America/New_York Tue Aug 11 05:02:43 2020 EDT America/Sao_Paulo Tue Aug 11 06:02:43 2020 -03 Europe/London Tue Aug 11 10:02:43 2020 BST Europe/Berlin Tue Aug 11 11:02:43 2020 CEST Europe/Moscow Tue Aug 11 12:02:43 2020 MSK Asia/Calcutta Tue Aug 11 14:32:43 2020 IST PRC Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 CST Japan Tue Aug 11 18:02:43 2020 JST Australia/Perth Tue Aug 11 17:02:43 2020 AWST Australia/Melbourne Tue Aug 11 19:02:43 2020 AEST
Aces, Trent! Swiped. Tusen takk.
FWIW I've been using https://meet.ji.si/$(xkcdpass) a few times for customers who won't just let me have SSH access, because their suggestions (Zoom and MS Teams) were Too Hard.
It was too heavyweight for 10-year-old chromebook, but apart from that, it Worked Fine.
I actually used it, about a month ago, to 'meet' my biological mother -- a rare and cheering case of technology facilitating a human connection.
participants (2)
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Rick Moen
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Trent W. Buck