Hello nixers,
I'd like to announce the very first edition of the nixers.net conf.
We will host the conference on Sunday the 1st of November between 2-4pm UTC depending on the number of talks.

The call for proposal is now closed.
The presentations has to fulfill these criteria:

• Fit within a time limit of 15min
  
• 3-5min for Q&A
  
• The topic should be anything that is usually posted on nixers: a project you are working on, a unix story, some research about a topic, some lesser known unix tool, stuff you've discovered on unix, etc..
  
• The slides should contain the logo of the conf. You can find a version for light background and a version for dark background.
  
• The presentation should be under CC-0 if recorded and sharing the slides.
  

You can either choose to have your talk recorded or not.
Contact me on IRC, email, or on the forums with your ideas to reserve a spot. Send me your slides, general title, and ideas. Try to finalize it as much as possible before contacting me, and let me know how you'd like to be addressed.

Be sure to share you slides and content at least 4 days before the conf to be included in the schedule. Otherwise, you can always geek out with members after the "official" talks and present whatever you want to present. Let's make it fun and games.

You can propose any platform to host the conference, so far we've tested jitsi and bigbluebutton. Bigbluebutton is perfect, however we'll need to record the conference ourselves as bigbluebutton format is composed of a mix of slides and audio only. We'll go with BBB, bigbluebutton, with the help of faimaison and the link will be shared here and on IRC on the day of the conference.
Only presenter will join with the mic, everyone else should join as listen only.
A tutorial of the UI will be given at the start of the conference.
Beware that this uses webrtc, and your browser should support it.
https://test.webrtc.org/


Please note: The event will be recorded for our use. Any comments, chats, or voice recordings by attendees may be used as part of the final recorded and published conference.

Updates about the conference will be found in this very post.
Cheers!

---

Current List of Talks:

Schedule.

• Everything about embedding static data in UNIX binaries — mort
  Description: Our programs contain all sorts of static data; text strings like usage information, HTML templates, graphics shader programs, etc. We will take a deep dive into how, exactly, this works on UNIX, and the ways in which you can embed static data into your own programs.
  
• Introduction to diskless boot — freem
  Description: PXE is Preboot eXecution Environment, how computers can boot without having any OS on local storage
  
• What does it take to resolve a hostname — venam
  Description: Resolving hostnames (DNS?) might not seem like it, but it's complicated. Let's take a moment to see if we can at least demystify what happens on the client side instead of seeing it as a big tangled mess of configurations, libraries, and tools.
  
• How I try reallly hard to only read.emails — z3bra
  Description: My email setup got somewhat complicated over the years, to adapt to the clusterfuck that "modern" emails are today. I read my emails in mutt(1), and I want all of them to display nicely in a terminal. For that, I process emails (mostly HTML ones) to display them nicely, reflow them to the terminal width, extract links, optionally shorten them (using a local URL shortner), and so on. It doesn't look like much, but there are multiple stuff involved like URL shortening, find(1), mblaze(1), ...
  

Recording in BBB format: https://bbb.faimaison.net/playback/prese...4235005206

Poster:

Wow, wasn't expecting this! Looking forward to it already.

I'll be available ! I can propose a few topics which I worked on recently, I'll prepare one based on interrest:

Complex backups with simple tools

How I use tools like tarsnap, dedup, rclone to backup my data, be it encrypted password stores, raw data (pictures, videos, ...) or emails. Everything is backed up on remote "clouds" , so everything must be encrypted and compressed, for privacy and $$$. Backup encryption is interesting, because you must ensure that you can decrypt the data even if you loose everything (including any eventual private keys...).

Automatic configuration with drist(1)

The server hosting the gopher server at g.nixers.net is deployed using drist(1), a configuration management ala ansible. I use it to add new users, create directories or push static files, as well as configure and start services.
I would detail the whole process of setting up the server, from bottom to top !

How I try reallly hard to only read emails

My email setup got somewhat complicated over the years, to adapt to the clusterfuck that "modern" emails are today. I read my emails in mutt(1), and I want all of them to display nicely in a terminal. For that, I process emails (mostly HTML ones) to display them nicely, reflow them to the terminal width, extract links, optionally shorten them (using a local URL shortner), and so on. It doesn't look like much, but there are multiple stuff involved like URL shortening, find(1), mblaze(1), ...

Also, I would love it if someone using plan9 would showcase how they do stuff (edit/commit code, read mails, ... what else can you do?)

I'll cast my votes for 1 (I'm one of those who 'will do a backup soon when I have more time') and 3 (I really need to learn mutt)

I vote for z3bra's talks 2 and 3.

(13-10-2020, 09:56 PM)phillbush Wrote: I vote for z3bra's talks 2 and 3.

same as you man!

drist(1) sounds like a nice light configuration manager, can't wait to see it in action on a real case.

Well, I have a few things which could be interesting to talk about.

• I'm working on a programming language project; there are some interesting things to talk about, both in terms of implementation and some musings on programming language design.
  
• I have written a bunch of software which is part of my normal workflow; I could talk about that. Links to most of them are here: https://nixers.net/Thread-What-software-...ow-or-rice - I probably have less to say here than about the rest, but it fits the nixers theme really well.
  

I also have a few blog posts which could be converted to talks:

• https://mort.coffee/home/fast-cpp-embeds/: Embedding arbitrary data into C projects by generating a string literal instead of array of integer literals. Probably not super interesting?
  
• https://mort.coffee/home/obscure-c-features/: A bunch of cool preprocessor hacks. These tricks, plus more macro stuff I've played with since, could make an interesting talk.
  
• https://mort.coffee/home/clang-compiler-hacking/: Implementing a new C++ feature into Clang. Could be interesting.
  

Does any of that sound vaguely interesting? If so, what sounds the most compelling?

The embedding of arbitrary data in C is a topic I'm interested in. I would be interested into a talk on why you came to do your optims with `strliterals`. For example show a "real-world" code snippet that would use such embedding, compile, showcase it. Then show how slow that is and how to optimize it.

Would that make sense ?

I guess a few people here are not familiar with C so it would be great to explain the whole process from scratch.

(14-10-2020, 11:50 AM)z3bra Wrote: I guess a few people here are not familiar with C so it would be great to explain the whole process from scratch.

i totally agree, and i would like to hear more about that too. all those three c/c++ topics are hot, and i think at least one should be presented!

thanks for that input mort o/

Anyone would be up to do a prez on any of the following topics ?

• OpenBSD as a workstation
  
• Actually using Plan9
  
• Switching to wayland from X11
  

These are just a few ideas, if anyone wants to pick it !

If people are interested in one of those topics, and there's not enough talks, I can try to do a talk myself, but I'll also need some technical help about how to setup the client side talk stuff here...

Topics:

* how to build a debian binary archive (which can be then used for both free or non-free personnal repos, shared or not)
* how to use Coco/R to generate a simple parser, and why would one prefer to use a tool rather than implement a parser (for tech part, I'd basically need to refine my linuxfr's "journal" but that should be doable, and for the why part, it should not require much effort)
* or I can talk about setting up a PXE architecture, maybe even dig in my old stuff to mention how to do that for beaglebone black systems (means: Das-UBoot firmare instead of BIOS-compatible hardware)

The one that would require the least work for me is probably the Coco/R stuff, but it's also the more specialized (can only interest developpers of course, but is not limited to C++, people can use it with Java or C# too).
PXEs are neat, but are pretty simple when you understand the basics. For a talk of 15min, that may be a good choice thus.
Debian binary packages are neat (at least imo), but are quite specific (only debian and children) and I would not speak about the source packages, because those are... well, complex, and imo completely fucked up. TBH, debian's binary packages could be easier, too, but have to be that "complex" mostly because of their politics.

TBH, I don't feel very confident in doing that (a conf, even if it's short), but on the other hand, those are topics I myself find interesting and that I think could/should be more documented.
Since I'm not confident, I'd be more than happy to not even try, so if no-one is interested, I'd be glad.

(14-10-2020, 03:58 PM)z3bra Wrote: Anyone would be up for a prez on any of the following topics ?

• OpenBSD as a workstation
  
• Actually using Plan9
  
• Switching to wayland from X11
  

These are just a few ideas, if anyone wants to pick it !

I'd be interested in OpenBSD as a workstation a little, but more as "building a BSD dual boot", and would be really interested in "Using P9"

(13-10-2020, 08:12 AM)venam Wrote:
Hello nixers,
I'd like to announce the very first edition of the nixers.net conf.
We will host the conference on Sunday the 1st of November between 2-4pm UTC depending on the number of talks.

The "record or not" is nice, but does not answer the question: "licencing". For information, some countries (like mine, France) do not allow their citizens to put stuff on public domain themselves, which is why for example CC-0 exists. Such a talk is, AFAIK but IANAL (oh, those acronyms... sorry :) but I must admit I love the IANAL a lot, especially considered what I think about lawyers...) subject to such kinds of issues.
To avoid problems, I would suggest the organisation to only accept talks under said Creative commons licences, which allows "non-recording" and many other variants, and were writen by lawyers if I am right.

Also, a more practical question: will there be pauses between tailks?

(18-10-2020, 11:02 AM)freem Wrote: The "record or not" is nice, but does not answer the question: "licencing". For information, some countries (like mine, France) do not allow their citizens to put stuff on public domain themselves, which is why for example CC-0 exists.

Great point, I assumed that it was upon the person to take the responsibility as it's their own talk. But I guess there shouldn't be any issue with only allowing CC-0 talks, we're doing the presentation anyway so the slides are already in the open. And if someone chooses not to be recorded, nor to share their slides, then there shouldn't be any traces of their talk online anyway.

(18-10-2020, 11:02 AM)freem Wrote: Also, a more practical question: will there be pauses between tailks?

With only 4-6 talks, that's around 1h to 1h30, we could have a small 5min pause in the middle but I don't think we'd require more.

A reminder that there are still places for talks.
We'll close the call for proposals 4 days before the conference.

Why close it at all ? Even if people change their mind during the conf, and have stuff to share, I'd be willing to attend it !

(20-10-2020, 04:29 AM)z3bra Wrote: Why close it at all ? Even if people change their mind during the conf, and have stuff to share, I'd be willing to attend it !

That's a good point. We can hang out and present other stuff that wasn't on schedule, no issue with that as long as it's after the talks that were expected.
I'm doing this to have a list of talks with the schedule and time so that people can have a clear idea of what's going to happen, so that it's a bit ordered at least. Anything extra will be a bonus, so nobody will say no to geeking out.

A kind reminder that the call for proposal is still open.
I've added a dummy schedule to the main post to give an idea of what the conference will be like but there's lot of room for flexibility.

Regarding the platform we'll be using, it's going to be bigbluebutton. Listeners will join as "listen-only", posting their questions in the chat, while presenters will join with the option to use the mic. I'll be giving a small tour before the conf starts, so there shouldn't be any problem. Be sure to be there early.

On that note, for the presenters, I'll be available over the weekend if you want to test the platform and see how it works. And keep those in mind to not worry: the talk doesn't have to fit exactly in 15 min, there's a bit of room there. Because it's online, you can keep your notes in front of you, so no need for memorization. And most importantly, whatever you're going to say, we're all here to listen and appreciate it, that's why we'll be there.
I'll be joining 1h early and hang out in case people want to have fun before the conf.

Just got confirmation that I won’t be around at that date, so I hope the recordings work well. :) Really appreciate what you’re doing here, all the talks look interesting!

Wow! That's amazing!
I want to see z3bra doing black magic with mutt(1) and html email!

I'm looking forward for the day of the conf!
The talks topics are great.

The call for proposal is now closed so that the schedule can be fixed, clear, and shared with people from outside nixers.
However, don't worry if you still want to discuss something, we can append whatever you want towards the end of the conf.

quick update about my current status: got not time today to do anything, writing this from someone else's computer. As told on irc yesterday, I'm still unable to know if I'll be able to do my talk. If I will, it will likely rely a bit on improvisation... and I'm not sure it's that a bad thing for me, except that I still need to generate slides, ofc. WHich I won't do tonight, because now is relaxation time after a messy day, beer and punk music for my mind's safety (punk is more cheerful than metal, usually I tend to favor some darker music styles)!

PS: I could not join irc chan at all, since doing so would kick my registered lurker nick. Seems that #nixers_net requires registration (to freenode) to even join, not just to talk as can be seen in other chans.
PPS: darkmode theme sucks with the search dialog boxes, since the text in there is black, on firefox esr 78-3 debian stable amd64.
P^3S: I'll try to join tomorrow, and keep you guys updated on my status as I can. I thought the connection would be the major problem, but I underestimated life annoyances. About connection: speedtest.net indicates 20ms ping, 0.77Mbps down and 0.46Mbps up. Since there is no description about what the fuck they mean with Mbps, I'll go for the worse interpretation: million bits per second, which means roughly 56Kio/s for upload. Should be enough to emit sound only.
P^4S: KDE's calculator just power sucks (and yes, that system have KDE, for various reasons, and no it's not mine)!

I will do my best to tune in. This will be at 1am Sunday morning where I am (EST). Hopefully it is all recorded and can be viewed at a later date.

(29-10-2020, 08:45 PM)freem Wrote: P^3S: I'll try to join tomorrow, and keep you guys updated on my status as I can. I thought the connection would be the major problem, but I underestimated life annoyances. About connection: speedtest.net indicates 20ms ping, 0.77Mbps down and 0.46Mbps up. Since there is no description about what the fuck they mean with Mbps, I'll go for the worse interpretation: million bits per second, which means roughly 56Kio/s for upload. Should be enough to emit sound only.

That should be enough, I have the same speed and tested yesterday, PM me on the forums and we can test the audio.

(29-10-2020, 08:45 PM)freem Wrote: quick update about my current status: got not time today to do anything, writing this from someone else's computer. As told on irc yesterday, I'm still unable to know if I'll be able to do my talk. If I will, it will likely rely a bit on improvisation...

No problem, as long as you don't let us down, we're counting on you. We can reschedule your talk to be the last one and you can take as much time as possible.

Get ready folks! The conference is today at 14:00 UTC, the room will open on this link https://bbb.faimaison.net/b/pat-daj-fop-j88

I'll be available starting at 13:00 UTC.
Have a great time.

The room will open in 10min for preparation and pre-conference, in 1h10 the conf will start.
If you are a speaker, you can take this time to upload your slides in advanced and test the audio.
Otherwise, be sure to join as listen only to not disturb the conference.