FOSS Meeting Dates: |
Agenda Topics: |
Unless otherwise noted, meetings run 3PM to about 5PM (following a 2:45-3PM help session) on the first Thursday of most months (second Thursday in January, July and September)
DURING THE PANDEMIC, WE'LL BE ON-LINE.
When it becomes logistically possible we hope to combine On-line participation, and to again meet in person at the Natick Community-Senior Center, 117 East Central Street (Rte.135), Natick MA
To get announcements, send "Please subscribe me to the NatickFOSS e-mail list." to: algot.runeman@verizon.net |
Future agendas are subject to change because, with FOSS, good news arrives on a daily basis. |
August 1, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
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FOSS Meeting Agenda TBD
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July 8, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
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FOSS Meeting Agenda TBD
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June 6, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
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FOSS Meeting Agenda TBD
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May 2, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
Or, to actively
PARTICIPATE, use open-source
Firefox or
Chromium (rather than, say,
Chrome or
Edge or
Safari; no add-ons needed for
Jitsi Meet!)
- Join our
meeting https://meet.jit.si/natickfoss
- Opens at 2:45PM for FOSS Help. - Mute your
microphone except as needed. - You can download
and print this 5-page
Jitsi Meet Help Sheet with Keyboard Shortcuts.
As fans of FOSS and an inclusive, open Web, we will try to find, and link to, sources with limited or no ads. That may not always be possible. When we do need to link to sources with many ads (especially animated ones) with an icon.
Some web links are paywalled! You need to subscribe/create an account. We will attempt to avoid those sources for our links, but in case there's just one we will try to warn you.
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FOSS Introductory Slide Talk: Newcomers: Welcome! For help, be online about 2:45PM (NY/Boston time).
- The FOSS News:
- Ubuntu 24.04 “Noble Numbat” Available - Once was the NatickFOSS recommended distribution for GNU/Linux - Users of Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur) will be offered an automatic upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) soon after the release. However, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) users will be able to upgrade (officially) on August 15th, 2024, when the Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS point release arrives.
- Bobby Borisov Noble Numbat article on Linuxiac (Dick Miller)
- Ubuntu flavors to consider, as “minimum” Ubuntu 24.04 LTS doubles in size:
- Linux Mint 21.3, Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS from Rudra Saraswat, [Ubuntu Lomiri (testing) 24.04 LTS](https://ubuntuunity.org/ from Rudra Saraswat. (Dick Miller)
- Deb822 Source Format the modern Apt-readable format for sources, intended to replace the one-line source format used earlier. Always improving the plumbing.
- CentOS 7 End of Life linuxexperiment video
- Metaverse Losing Money $3.85 Billion in reported losses for first quarter of 2024
- FOSS History:
- World Wide Web software released to the public domain by CERN at the urging of Tim Berners-Lee
- RSS turned 25 years old in March a way to keep track of news on the Web
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Loops.video a federated Tiktok for short-form video (ActivityPub, Mastodon Related)
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
- Science on State Street How did it go?
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April 4, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- Large Language Models and AI
- FOSS Fun:
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
NatickFOSS will have a presentation at Science on State Street at Framingham State University on Saturday April 27 from 12:00PM - 3:00PM. We invite anybody in the area to visit us to ask questions and get answers about Free Software, no matter what platform you use.
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March 7, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on Youtube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Fotoxx-to-Fotocx name change (Dick)
- Making Custom Wallpaper using FOSS Tools - Demo by Dick Miller
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- Mathias Wandel Youtube Account Hacked - A Timeline
- How storing passwords let hackers bypass two factor authentication Youtube video (Algot)
- AI cannot be used to deny health care coverage, feds clarify to insurers (Ars Technica, February 9, 2024)
- Canada declares Flipper Zero public enemy No. 1 in car-theft crackdown (Ars Technica, February 9, 2024) (Device is built with open-source hardware and software.)
- Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo (TechCrunch, February 13, 2024)
- ChatGPT goes temporarily “insane” with unexpected outputs, spooking users (Ars Technica, February 21, 2024)
- Leaner, Image Generator Koala is its name
- Generative Video Is this the beginning of totally fake videos?
- Sora Generative Video some example “trailers”
- Wordpress LLM Opt-out Bloggers using Wordpress.com can opt out of content being used for LLM training
- Facial Recognition Vending Machine found at University of Waterloo
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
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February 1, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- Popular Youtuber, Mathias Wandel, gets Hacked (video) - a timeline of how it happened and got resolved
- OpenAI Claims It’s ‘Impossible’ to Train AI Models Without Copyrighted Materials (ExtremeTech, January 11, 2024)
- The Software Engineer Profession is Under Threat from AI and Intense Competition (TechSpot, January 12, 2024)
- YouTube begins new wave of slowdowns for users with ad blockers enabled (9to5Google, January 13, 2024)
- Google Adds Disclaimer to Chrome After $5 Billion Web Tracking Lawsuit (ExtremeTech, January 22, 2024)
- Digital Poisoning of Online Art Site limits # of free views (MIT Technology Review, October 23, 2023)
- Nightshade a poisoner for Generative AI of art
- Glaze designed to protect human artists by disrupting style mimicry.
- Patreon: Blocking platforms from sharing user video data is unconstitutional (Ars Technica, January 23, 2024)
- Ads, Push Notifications Are Being Used to Create Billions of Phone Surveillance Profiles (ExtremeTech, January 29,2024)
- Generative AI and Large Language Models
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
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January 11, 2024 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Floppy.Cafe technical information about reading old floppy disks
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- AI and Large Language Models
- FOSS Fun:
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
- Updated version of OpenWeather or alterntive to?
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December 7, 2023 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
Technical issues: Apologies, the recorded version of the meeting did not start until the FOSS News section had happened. However, the links lead to information which we hope you will find interesting.
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- Google forced to reveal user search history in Colorado court ruling
- Chrome not proceeding with Web Integrity API deemed by many to be DRM (9to5Google, November 2, 2023)
- As YouTube Declares War on Ad Blockers, Google Sponsors Ad Blocking Conference (404 Media, November 3, 2023)
- YouTube’s plan backfires, people are installing better ad blockers (Android Authority, November 3, 2023)
- YouTube’s ad blocking crackdown is facing a new challenge: privacy laws (The Verge, November 7, 2023)
- Internet voting remains a risky method of casting election ballots (The Hill, November 10, 2023)
- YouTube facing criminal ‘spying’ charges for ad blocker detection (Android Authority, November 13, 2023)
- VSStudio Designed to Fracture FOSS Development - Microsoft at the “embrace, extend, extinguish” game
- Large Language Models and General AI:
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
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November 2, 2023 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
Some of the links to web pages of information on which there are intrusive amounts of advertising. While we will try to find sources with limited or no ads, that may not be possible. We are thinking of labeling such links with an icon.
Some web links are paywalled! You need to subscribe/create an account. A Boston Globe link illustrates the issue this month. Please let us know what you think.
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- What is Debian? the very stable community GNU/Linux distribution (a blog post) (Algot)
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
- What about using Ad Blockers?
- Is there a volunteer to take over maintenance of the Introductory Slide Show so we can move it onto the NatickFOSS.org site (and make it easier to use for people who don't have or know about LibreOffice Impress). As of now, the link leads to an Impress (odp) file at millermicro.com.
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October 5, 2023 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- FOSS Fun: Godot Funding; Game of the Month: Acid Flight (Dennis Payne).
- Recommended Reading:
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
- Should we have a page listing recommended software? – Consensus: Yes – Please email us your favorite regularly-used FOSS applications and reasons for your choice.
- Should we have a page listing board members’ background? – Referred to Board group for consideration
- New:
- We will attempt to avoid providing links to paywalled articles, and will attempt to note those sites heavily littered with advertising.
- Correction: Dick Miller’s mention of AI-generated “stickers” should have referred to Meta (Facebook, etc.), not Google as heard in the recording.
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September 14, 2023 (3-5PM*) VIEW us (live or
later) ONLINE at Youtube. Thanks to Dennis Payne.
(in spite of some network technical difficulties during the live meeting, you should be able to review this meeting's recording.)
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Rhino Linux has released version 2023.2. Also watching BlendOS (by young author of Ubuntu-Unity) and 'Mantic Minotaur' Desktop (Ubuntu-Unity at Ubuntu) - and, for smartphones, Phosh. All these can be tested easily in RAM by booting from a Ventoy thumb drive. (Dick Miller)
- Widen too-thin scrollbars in gtk-based applications – a demo based on this and this solutions. (Bob Primak)
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- Large Language Models, etc.
- FOSS Fun:
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
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August 3, 2023 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
*- 2:45PM: One-on-One Help ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne). |
- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- FOSS Fun: Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail:
- Spam “from FedEx” (Jill Miller)
- Check SPAM folders to ensure you are getting NatickFOSS emails.
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS & EXTRAS:
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The Next Monthly BLU Meeting is Wednesday, August 16, 2023 at 06:30 pm Online at Jitsi
The meeting will demo and discuss AlmaLinux OS, the community-supported alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (Jerry Feldman)
- Software Freedom Day is the third Saturday in September (the 16th), and it will be 20 years old this year. At how many Town Public Libraries might we staff a NatickFOSS demo table with at least two volunteers? Ask that, and solicit other ideas, on this August agenda?
- Corey Doctorow's blog Pluralistic contains the following "EULA":
READ CAREFULLY
By reading this website, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Compare to the version Dick Miller has posted on the MMS Money is not Wealth page:
READ CAREFULLY:
By reading this website, you agree, on behalf of your employer and yourself, to release us from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that we have entered into with you, your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to our ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release us from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
(Dick Miller)
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July 13, 2023 (3-5PM*) ONLINE.
VIEW us (live or
later) on YouTube (thanks to Dennis
Payne).
The links shown in the topics to the right are discussed in the meeting's video and are valid links at the time of the meeting. Over time, websites may change or even disappear, and the older the links are, there is a chance they'll no longer work.
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- The FOSS News:
- FOSS History:
- Hot Software:
- Hot Hardware:
- Hot Internet:
- Computer Security, Privacy and Freedom:
- FOSS Fun:
- Game of the Month: (Dennis Payne).
- How to ID Junk mail: Samples from Dick’s Junk Mailbox (Jill Miller)
- QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
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Original Archive (March 2011 to June 2023)
Web page standards have changed through the years. The information in the earlier archive is still good, but the file has grown in ways that made it too difficult to bring it all up to more recent standards.
Please follow the link to get to the past meeting notes. Thanks for your understanding.
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