[plug] Tuesday Meetup and directions

[Harry McNally]

Hello

This email started as a reminder of the PLUG meeting on Tuesday night at 
SpaceCubed (see Events and a mobile number will be on the door if you can't 
arrive until later) but the ABCNews article I posted on the weekend has got me 
thinking about Linux-in-everything and whether that has limits to usefulness.

We planned to get the official business out of the way and close the meeting 
promptly. It would be great if past committee members can make it so we can 
offer a vote of thanks. Volunteering can feel like a dry landscape and we need 
to acknowledge the work everyone does. I wondered if, post-meeting, we can 
talk informally about "when Linux might not be the best choice".

What I took away from Giese's talk in the Robots thread is that Linux has 
clear steps to boot. If he can penetrate and re-purpose the device then that 
is proof that other actors can. Attempts to obfuscate the booting steps won't 
help if methods of access can still be discovered.

So the next thing I did was search for YouTube videos about unplugging the 
microphone. I figured if I had one of these then I wouldn't need to command 
the vacuum robot with my voice or in any way. It is an expensive and pointless 
thing if it isn't ubiquitous.

There was nothing I could find and, after Greg's comment in the Robots thread 
that:

> More broadly, we stopped talking about IoT as being ridiculously insecure.

can we point out issues with the security of things (or at least ways to 
reduce risk) ?

This might be simply creating an "unplug the microphone" session if someone 
has a device we can "adjust" (reversibly!) so we can upload a video.

It might be a more complex task like rooting the device and setting up 
Valetudo if anyone on the 200+ strong mailing list has done this.

As a committee, we have had to consider the association's role for tax status 
reporting. What we do is educate (mainly each other) about Linux and all its 
applications through regular meetups.

Can we, though our usual activities, extend what we know to a wider audience ?

All the best
Harry

ps A pull-out from a page I was reading recently:  Learning Together - A 
Defense and Analysis of Cooperative Learning By Alfie Kohn

there was a quote:

INTERVIEWER:  What is it like to work in a group?
JUSTIN (age 10):  You have four brains.

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