Program for LinuxFest Northwest 2019

Unscheduled events
Seth David Schoen

Ghostbusting
Detectability of Invisible Users in Encrypted Chats

presented by Seth David Schoen

With the political conflict over encryption back in full swing, governments of several countries are pushing the idea that developers of communications apps should have to modify them, on government request, to include backdoors or various ways of getting around encryption. This poses a disturbing challenge for free software developers.

One recent suggestion from the British government calls...

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Security Medium
Bryan Lunduke

Lunduke Show Live
Aka "Linux Thursday... on a Saturday"

presented by Bryan Lunduke

The longest running (not true), most famous (not true) show about Linux arrives at Linux Fest Northwest. Taking questions from a live audience (true) for the first time EVER (not true). Got Linux-y, or FOSS-y questions? Bring them with you. Our distinguished panel of (cough) experts will answer them. With gusto.

Humans Easy
Kyle Rankin

Sex, Secret and God: A Brief History of Bad Passwords

presented by Kyle Rankin

Most of what we've been told over the years about what makes a good password has been wrong, so it's no surprise most people pick bad passwords. This talk will cover the history of password policy and password cracking starting from the days when Richard Stallman hacked the passwords forced on his MIT computer lab because he considered passwords an authoritarian method of control. Next I'll dis...

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Security Easy
Bryan Lunduke

Computers are Broken (and we're all going to die)

presented by Bryan Lunduke

Let's face it, the future is here... and all of our computers are broken. Software is slow and buggy. Systems are only supported for a few years (at most). Everything is reliant on an active Internet connection just to function at a basic level. Even our CPUs, themselves, are inherently insecure (by design). It's utter chaos. In other words: We're all doomed.

Humans Easy
Adam Monsen

Command Line for Kids of All Ages
Demos for everyone, from a kid

presented by Adam Monsen

What is the command line? How do I use it? Why should I learn it?

Come learn from a kid's point of view the most basic and useful aspects of the the CLI (command-line interface).

10-year old Alice and father Adam will demonstrate how anyone can use and gain massive value and benefit from learning and using the command line on a regular basis.

This active, engaging presentation is jam-p...

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Code Easy
Kyle Rankin maddog Simon Quigley

Q&A: Past, Present & Future
If we do not know the real answer, we will make up an entertaining story

presented by Kyle Rankin, maddog, Simon Quigley

A panel of distinguished technologists will take your questions on Linux & open source, with perspectives spanning from long before Linux existed, to the bright future ahead of us.

Come join us for this unique opportunity to celebrate where we've been, where we are, and where we are all going, together.

Admission will require an interesting question, subject to our interpretation ;-)

Humans Easy
Adam Monsen

Endless Summer of Code
Building the Foundation of a Community Through Internship Programs like GSOC

presented by Adam Monsen

Description For open source projects, mature and young, we'll present how before, during, and after internship programs like Google Summer of Code, you can attract, identify, retain, and transform interns into long-term contributors to your project. We’ll examine the culture, commitment, and processes you need to unlock endless impact and enable a virtuous cycle that continually renews yo...

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Humans Easy
Bryan Lunduke

Linux Sucks. IN SPACE.

presented by Bryan Lunduke

All great series inevitably end up in outer space. Leprechaun 4: IN SPACE. Jason X (aka "Friday the 13th part 10: IN SPACE"). And let's not forget those glorious masterpieces Critters 4 or Dracula 3000! It's simply natural evolution. Linux Sucks is no different. In 2019... Linux Sucks... IN SPACE.

Humans Easy
Rudy588 Shayla Jones Syndey Terrasi Josephine Leslie Brendible

Women in cybersecurity!

presented by Rudy588, Shayla Jones, Syndey Terrasi, Josephine, Leslie Brendible

The Whatcom Community College chapter of Women in Cybersecurity (WiCys Whatcom), carries on the mission of WiCys by providing a community of engagement, encouragement, and support for women in cybersecurity. Our club members, of all genders, have many different backgrounds and experiences. We would like to talk about them and engage the community about how to get involved in their own communi...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Lee Fisher

Defending Out-of-Band Management Attacks

presented by Lee Fisher

Out-of-Band Management, also known as Light-Out Management (LOM), refers to abilities of systems to be configured remotely via a management processor, without the main CPU knowing what's happening, even when the main CPU is "powered off". Examples of these technologies include: IPMI, HP iLO, Dell DRAC, DASH, SMASH, Intel AMT, and Redfish, among others. Redfish is the latest, and most vendors ha...

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Open Source Firmware Medium
Michael McKeirnan

Deploying Your ...Whatever More Securely With Linux
The lazy human's guide to publishing without getting owned

presented by Michael McKeirnan

Have you ever wanted to know how a pentester thinks your ...whatever is supposed to be deployed to the Internet securely? Come find out! We'll discuss a variety of Linux-focused deployment techniques designed to reduce attack surface and enhance the overall security of your deployment. Specific attention will be given to containerized deployments such as docker and runc, fully virtualized deplo...

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Security Medium
Sarah Ofsdahl

Go Forth and Brown Bag

presented by Sarah Ofsdahl

Brown Bags, Lunch and Learns, Study Sessions, whatever you call it, sharing knowledge is essential when it comes to helping your team become efficient. As teams grow, they learn the most proficient ways of doing things in their particular organization, for their particular team, and during their particular shift hours.

Effectively passing on that knowledge can and should be done in several ...

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Education Easy
Christian Paul

Web of Things API
Owning home automation via HTTP

presented by Christian Paul

The Web of Things API is a protocol based on HTTP for connecting devices to the web. New connected devices from hundreds of vendors usually come with a requirement of using their cloud services. Mozilla and the W3C are working on an easy, decentralized standard to give those devices an address on the web and provide interoperability. The “things” can be controlled from a single controller or a ...

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Internet of Things Easy
Molly de Blanc

What now? Enforcing your code of conduct

presented by Molly de Blanc

Is there a single right way to enforce a code of conduct, community guidelines, or whatever you call the systems you have to help maintain a good community? This is a peek into how the Debian Anti-Harassment (AH) team functions, a few examples of issues handled, and the philosophy behind helping the Debian community to be a welcoming place for all contributors.

The [Debian code of conduc...

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Humans Easy
Sydney Li

We can fix email server encryption!

presented by Sydney Li

For years the SMTP protocol that email servers use to deliver your mail over the Internet has had an encryption option, called STARTTLS. This server-to-server encryption feature has only recently become common, and the way it's typically used is still very fragile. An attacker can trick servers into turning off the encryption (downgrade) or using the wrong encryption key (man-in-the-middle). Th...

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Security Easy
Noah Meyerhans Samuel Karp

Deep Dive into firecracker-containerd
Using lightweight virtual machines to enhance the container security boundary

presented by Noah Meyerhans, Samuel Karp

Amazon Web Services recently released the Firecracker Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) built on top of the Linux KVM subsystem, which is optimized for lightweight, container-like "microVMs". This session dives deep into the architecture of the firecracker-containerd project, which aims to allow portability between standard OCI container images and the larger container ecosystem with Firecracker mi...

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Containerization Medium
Donald Robertson

Common licensing issues for free software projects
Learn the most common mistakes developers make in regards to licensing their free software project

presented by Donald Robertson

In this introduction to free software licensing, we will cover the most common issues free software projects confront when it comes to licensing. At the Free Software Foundation's Licensing & Compliance Lab, we have many opportunities to help developers correct and update their licensing. Whether we're answering questions from the community, helping maintainers get their project listed in the [...

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Humans Easy
Kyle Rankin

Freedom, Security and Privacy

presented by Kyle Rankin

So much about security revolves around secrecy. After all, you don't publish your passwords or GPG keys for the world to see. Some people go as far as applying the same arguments behind why they think proprietary software is superior to FOSS, for why it's also more secure. Unfortunately, proprietary software puts control in the hands of companies who you must then rely on and trust that their s...

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Security Easy
Mohsen Banan

ByStar Autonomous Content Collaborative-Authorship, Generation, Publication, and Distribution Software And Services
With XeLaTeX, HeVeA and Reveal.js

presented by Mohsen Banan

Screencast Presentation: http://web.by-star.net/lcnt/PLPC/180038/current/pres/PLPC-180038-pres.html

Presentation Access Page: http://www.by-star.net/PLPC/180038

What is the best way of putting together the ultimate multi-media screencast presentation?

And then what is the best way of publishing it -- autonomously?

And then what are the best ways of allowing for consumption of that u...

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Education Medium
Seth David Schoen

EFF and Friends Open Forum
Ask EFF and associates (almost) anything!

presented by Seth David Schoen

This is a recurring panel in which Electronic Frontier Foundation staff (this year, Jacob, Seth, and Sydney) will discuss some of what EFF has been up to the past year and respond to wide-ranging questions from the audience. We also expect to be joined this year by John from the Free Software Foundation.

Humans Easy
John Sullivan

"Just don't buy it"
Consumer choices in free software activism

presented by John Sullivan

Movement activism often focuses on economic decisions. Buy this ethically made product; don't buy that one made by a company that funds terrible things. In free software, we encourage people to boycott (for example) Microsoft, and to instead support companies who sell machines with GNU/Linux.

It's an intuitive idea that, as individuals wanting to make the world better, we should use our...

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Humans Easy
Aaron Wolf Wm Salt Hale

Snowdrift.coop, crowdmatching, and public goods funding

presented by Aaron Wolf, Wm Salt Hale

Come chat with community and team members from Snowdrift.coop, a community funding platform. It's based on the idea of "crowdmatching" — a pledge to donate a tiny bit to a project for each patron who will give together. We'll have open discussion (not strictly about Snowdrift.coop) around funding, sustainability, community-building, and cooperation around solving the ...

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Humans Easy
aimeceleste

Common sense career transitions
How to find and then get your dream job

presented by aimeceleste

Have you considered a tech career that was "above your pay grade"? What about a dream gig that you have few or - gasp - none of the basic qualifications for? Celeste will give you a few tips on how to identify skill gaps, then learn, network, and otherwise wrangle yourself into a job you wanted but never thought you could apply for, and have a better chance to pass the resume review stage.

Humans Easy
Alex Juarez

Hugo: Making Building Websites Fun Again

presented by Alex Juarez

At some point creating a simple website got complicated. Hugo claims to make building websites fun again and frankly, I agree.

Let’s build a website together in a hands-on beginner friendly session. No worries if you’ve never built a website before, we’ll take things slowly. We will break down what you need to know about Hugo’s file structure and templating system to create a personal w...

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Code Easy
Alex Juarez

Tackling Training Needs with Open edX

presented by Alex Juarez

Open edX is the platform behind edX.org, one of the largest online learning websites and communities.

Just because it powers one of the largest does’t mean we can’t use it to power some of the smallest.

In this session, we will go over how we can try out Open edX in a self-hosted environment for a small company or organization. Once we establish how we can try it out we will go over ...

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Education Easy
Alex Kretzschmar

Home Automation with Linux that doesn't rely on the cloud
Using Home Assistant, Docker and Ansible we talk about automating your whole house without relying on the cloud.

presented by Alex Kretzschmar

The trouble with any 'smart' device such as a Nest thermostat or Hue light bulb is that they require an internet connection and a company to be in business running a server that they connect to. As we have seen with Logitech a company can change it's focus at anytime.

> If the product you just bought requires a cloud service to be available to function, you don't own it.

2019 is the yea...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Allan Jude

OpenZFS: Best Filesystem for every OS
2019 and Beyond

presented by Allan Jude

ZFS is an advanced hybrid volume manager & filesystem created at Sun Microsystems in 2001, and became open source in 2005, and has since been ported to many different operating systems, both open and closed: illumos (Solaris), FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Windows, NetBSD, and others.

In 2013, the OpenZFS project was announced, to coordinate the effort to keep OpenZFS up-to-date and compatible acros...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Basil Bourque

Consult the experts
Informal chats with a few Postgres experts, for advice and information

presented by Basil Bourque

Bring your ideas, questions, or problems to this casual session for personalized discussions with database administrators and programmers with expertise is using the powerful Postgres database system.

Are you wondering if Postgres might work for your next app idea? Are you contemplating the porting of an existing app from some other database to Postgres?

Are you hitting some speed bumps ...

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Postgres Track Easy
Basil Bourque

11 in 11
Eleven or so new things in Postgres 11

presented by Basil Bourque

The current version of the Postgres database system is 11, released in late 2018 with over 150 new features.

Let’s take a look at about eleven of the more interesting features. Some big, some small, all useful.

  • New & improved partitioning, smarter faster ways to divvy up your data on disk.
  • More parallelization, to make more use of all those cores in your box.
  • New INCLUDE c...
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Postgres Track Medium
Basil Bourque

Elephant on a Cloud
Install Postgres with FreeBSD on Digital Ocean

presented by Basil Bourque

Demo of spinning up a new virtual machine instance running FreeBSD (the open-source Unix-like OS, similar to Linux). On that cloud server, we install the Postgres database engine. On our local computer, we use open-source pgAdmin, to connect to the database server and create a new da...

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Postgres Track Medium
Basil Bourque

Database normalization
The rules to organizing your data into tables, columns, and relationships

presented by Basil Bourque

Learn how to correctly organize your data in a relational database such as Postgres. The rules to guide you in your organizing are formally known as Normalization.

See how the goal of the Relational model is to avoid redundant data by grouping data into separate but related tables such as Customer-Invoice-LineItem, Books-Authors, Proj...

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Postgres Track Medium
Ben Porter

Awk: Hack the planet['s text]!
and make everyone else think you're a hacker genius

presented by Ben Porter

Description: Awk has been around since the dawn of time. It is an amazingly powerful tool with it's own programming language. Awk is so cool that it can be used to create entire services (that process text). But, there's a lot of ignorance out there regarging awk, and ignorance breeds fear. Come take the Awk red pill.

Abstract: We'll start out by reviewing the history of awk. ...

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Code Easy
Bri Hatch

A QUIC History of HTTP Through The Future
From cleartext beginnings to a focus on security and speed!

presented by Bri Hatch

HTTP, first defined in 1991, has undergone radical change since it was created by Tim Berners-Lee in the days of dialup. We'll cover the notable problems and improvements from 0.9 up to the proposed HTTP/3 which sheds TCP entirely and implements a secure and highly performant TLS-over-UDP protocol known as QUIC.

No prior knowledge of HTTP or networking is required, but even thos...

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Infrastructure Easy
Cathy Smith

Where is netstat? It's gone!
I want my ifconfig back

presented by Cathy Smith

Where is netstat and ifconfig? They are gone in my CentOS 7 installation. Where did my favorite networking commands go?

With the newer releases of Enterprise Linux, networking commands such as ifconfig and netstat are not present. They are not included in the basic installation. These commands have been deprecated for some time now. That means they have not been maintained. Going forwa...

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Infrastructure Easy
Charles Hathaway

Watching Terminals for Fun and Profit with YottaDB and Rust
In many industries logging of interactive shells on production systems is a need; but how can we do it efficiently, and without the risk of losing data?

presented by Charles Hathaway

YottaDB (http://yottadb.com/) is a high-performance NoSQL database for storing data in hierarchical key-value fashion. This lends itself well to storing, among other things, time-series data, such as logs and metrics. In this tutorial, we will construct a tool to monitor interactive terminals and log the sessions to a central database which is then replicated off of the...

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Security Medium
Charles Hathaway

When NoSQL isn't enough, but SQL is too much
Sometimes we need not only the performance of NoSQL transactions, but the analytical power of SQL engines; how can we get the best of both worlds?

presented by Charles Hathaway

Recent years have seen a massive rise in the prevalence of NoSQL technologies, despite the yelling and screaming of academics. Much of the popularity of these systems stems from the performance gains they have over SQL due their ability to directly manipulate data, without needing to go through a SQL engine. This is particularly important for ACID transaction processing: where a SQL engine wo...

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Code Medium
Christophe Pettus

Your Herd of Elephants: PostgreSQL Replication

presented by Christophe Pettus

PostgreSQL has added in-core logical replication, and now the field of replication options in PostgreSQL has gotten wide: Streaming replication, warm standby, logical replication… We'll discuss what the options are, their limitations and pitfalls, and what the best use-case for each one is. We'll show what it takes to set each one up, monitor it, and get it working again on failures.

We'll c...

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Postgres Track Medium
clive boulton

Past, Present & Future of Blockchain
Protocols for blockchain based economies to pass digital art from game-to-game and reward artists for their work.

presented by clive boulton

This talk will focus on the protocols for blockchain based economies to pass digital art from game-to-game and reward artists for their work at Hyperbridge. We will draw on evolving work in distributed SES Secure EcmaScript by Mark S. Miller to explain our future methods of approach. To set up the talk we will review...

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Security Medium
Conor Beh

FreeBSD at Work
Building Network and Storage Infrastructure with pfSense and FreeNAS

presented by Conor Beh

pfSense is the world’s most trusted open source firewalling and routing platform, providing essential features to supply your infrastructure with commercial-grade security and connectivity. Leveraging OpenBSD’s stateful packet filter “pf” (since ported to several other OS’s, including FreeBSD), pf includes the capabilities of Network Address Translation, various traffic shaping methods, and...

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Infrastructure Easy
Danny Haidar

Personal Autonomy and Multi-Device Computing: Using FreedomBox to Build Your Cloud

presented by Danny Haidar

With the widespread availability of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops, a multi-device lifestyle has emerged in which it is possible to do one computing task on multiple devices seamlessly. From instant messaging to note-taking to file transfers, once single-device computing tasks now flow between the multiple devices in our lives. The flow of computing between devices requires a cloud...

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Infrastructure Easy
Dave Stokes

The Top Seven Database Mistakes You Are Making
Or how to get really good at using databases

presented by Dave Stokes

Databases are often a mysterious, dark art for many. Many get the shivers when you mention relations, tuple calculus, indexes, and joins. This is a BEGINNER level talk on databases and common problems (or bad habit) novices pick up and never get rid of. Learn how to improve the performance of your queries, eliminate the dangers of SQL injection, see the truth about indexes, and more. This se...

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Education Easy
Dave Stokes

MySQL 8 Features for Developers
How to get more from your database

presented by Dave Stokes

MySQL 8 has many new features that developers can exploit for their benefit. First is the transnational data dictionary where you can now have millions of tables in a schema, Common Table Expressions, Windowing Functions, improved JSON support, histograms, invisible indexes, better locking mechanisms. a much faster temp table, and more. If you are a developer and using MySQL 8 (or want to upgr...

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Code Easy
David Spring

Try Linux Tutorium
Give Linux a Try… Linux works on any computer!

presented by David Spring

Learn how to use free open source programs like LibreOffice, Fotoxx and GIMP.

Got an older Windows computer and worried about Windows 7 support ending in 2021? No problem – Learn how to replace Windows with Linux! It is super easy!

Whether you are 7 or 70, it is never too early or too late to learn how to use Linux!

Education Easy
David Spring

Try Linux Tutorium
Give Linux a Try… Linux works on any computer!

presented by David Spring

Learn how to use free open source programs like LibreOffice, Fotoxx and GIMP.

Got an older Windows computer and worried about Windows 7 support ending in 2021? No problem – Learn how to replace Windows with Linux! It is super easy!

Whether you are 7 or 70, it is never too early or too late to learn how to use Linux!

Education Easy
David Spring

The Fight for a Secure Linux BIOS… Past, Present and Future
...

presented by David Spring

One reason many people are moving from Windows to Linux is security. People are tired of getting their Windows computers hacked every time they go online. The problem is that the Windows operating system has a Call Home function that is basically an open back door for hackers. But what is the point of having a secure Linux operating system on your computer if it has another program – the BIOS p...

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Open Source Firmware Easy
Ell

Containers 101
What you need to know, so you know what you need to know.

presented by Ell

Containers are all the rage right now, but if you want to start learning container technology where do you even begin? Starting out it can be difficult to know what questions to ask or even what you should be studying. It may be even more difficult to understand the answers you are getting. Join me while we take our first steps into understanding the concepts and products behind current contain...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Ell

Creating a Stronger Community by Poisoning Your Own Well
Adventures in Impostor Syndrome

presented by Ell

The technology industry has been rapidly growing for some time and as the industry grew there has become a shift in our mindset as we could no longer fill all the roles that were needed. With this came a push to diversify, to bring in new blood and new ideas and in the process of doing so, we began to develop a community.

Recently the topic of conversation has turned to Imposter syndrome, a...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Gardiner Bryant

Off Topical Podcast LIVE!
A panel discussion between Gardiner Bryant (The Linux Gamer) and Bryan Lunduke

presented by Gardiner Bryant

This is episode 34 of the Off Topical Podcast hosted by Gardiner Bryant and Bryan Lunduke in front of a live audience. We talk about our experience so far at LNFW, the tech and Linux news of the week, and take questions from the audience. Listen to the show at http://offtopical.net/#listen

Education Easy
Gary Smith

Steganography - Hiding In Plain Sight
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." Sherlock Holmes - The Boscombe Valley Mystery

presented by Gary Smith

Encryption gets all the headlines these days. What isn’t getting the headlines is encryption’s brother steganography. It’s been around as long as encryption and has played a vital role in secret communications since the time of the ancient Greek and Chinese empires.

This presentation will explore:

  • What is steganography?
  • Why you would want to use steganography over encryption.
  • The ...
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Security Medium
Gary Smith

An Introduction to Incident Response
It's not a matter of "if an incident occurs"; it's a matter of "when an incident occurs."

presented by Gary Smith

Can you believe that between 73 and 77 percent of businesses have no plan for how they will do incident response? Almost eight in ten small business owners (79 percent) do not have a plan for incident response to limit the effects of a data security event. Is it any wonder that when an incident does occur, people run around as if their hair were on fire. It doesn't have to be that way.

This ...

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Security Medium
Gerry Narvaja

Logging, Metrics and APM at Scale
Using the ELK/Elastic Stack

presented by Gerry Narvaja

Analyzing the performance of your systems and applications is critical to ensuring that your business is running smoothly. In this session, we’ll discuss how to use the Elastic Stack to gather, analyze, and visualize the data coming from your systems and provide a consolidated view of your systems' and business health.

Infrastructure Medium
Harry Hsiung

Network Boot in a Zero-Trust Environment
aka You're Probably Doing Network Boot Wrong

presented by Harry Hsiung

Network boot is commonly used for everything from booting thin clients to using IT automation for bare-metal provisioning. Unfortunately, most network boot infrastructure is based on outdated standards such as TFTP and PXE. This presents an issue when implementing a Zero Trust architecture, where security principles need to be implemented within the network perimeter. This session introduces mo...

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Open Source Firmware Medium
Haxoc

The Current State of Free and Open Source Software in Public Education

presented by Haxoc

For people to use free software, it must be ingrained at a young age, within the education system.

The presentation will highlight the following points: - Students – students’ awareness of open source, are we using it for school and do we care enough to ask for a change? - Staff – does the staff care enough about open source that they are willing to change how they teach? Decision making...

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Education Easy
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews

Anatomy of a Deprecation
Disabling TLS-SNI validation at Let's Encrypt

presented by Jacob Hoffman-Andrews

In January 2018, Frans Rosen found a vulnerability in TLS-SNI-01, a validation method used by Let’s Encrypt and other CAs. Over the past year, Let’s Encrypt and Certbot have been working to deprecate the method and migrate clients. We’ll talk about what went well, what could have gone better, and the challenges of distributing up-to-date software to a wide variety of operating systems.

Security Medium
Jed Reynolds

Evolution of Wireless Testing with Linux
But Mostly Practical Advice

presented by Jed Reynolds

Years ago, being able to ping out to Google was often adequite for validating your wireless network. Advancements in WiFi standards have brought numerous variations of what and how to test. Some of the old tools still work, and new tools have arrived. We'll cover modern and present testing challenges, and discuss planning for future wireless. Slides for talk: [http://blog.bitratchet.com/2019/04...

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Jeff Fitzmaurice

Early technology and Ideas for the Future
Your ideas may be the window to our future.

presented by Jeff Fitzmaurice

Everything we have these days is based on dreams and ideas from the distant past. We think cell phones are a recent concept. We think television is a 20th century idea. The truth is, ideas surrounding wireless communications are centuries ahead of their time. The old saying "There is nothing new under the Sun" rings true here.

Imagine a world without computers, cell phones, telephones, ...

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Education Easy
Jim Salter

Getting the Most out of ZFS
why you should use ZFS, and how to get more out of it if you already are

presented by Jim Salter

More and more people these days are using the ZFS filesystem, or have at least heard of it. But far fewer are using it to its full potential. Come to this talk to learn about how and why the ARC and ZIL can accelerate your workload, why inline compression is always a win, when and why you should change default parameters like recordsize and ashift, why you should be replicating instead of using...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Medium
Jim Salter

Building Scalable Mesh VPNs with WireGuard
the challenges and rewards of Linux's newest peer-to-peer VPN

presented by Jim Salter

WireGuard, a kernel-mode peer-to-peer encrypted tunnel provider, is the new hotness in the VPN world. In late 2018, I migrated my 50+ site self-hosted mesh VPN from OpenVPN to WireGuard. In this talk, we'll discuss the challenges and rewards of using WireGuard to provide moderate-to-large scale VPN infrastructure, and I'll share my experiences with it in production.

I've previously covered W...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Medium
Johannes Ernst

Let's build our own Internet-of-Things
We need an "Indie IoT", there's enough "Overlord IoT" already

presented by Johannes Ernst

The internet of things today is entirely dominated by vendor silos, from locked-down hardware and firmware to opaque communication protocols, big privacy-invading data stores in the cloud under vendor control, and only very selective APIs, usually cloud-only. Can we do better?

In this BoF, we'll have an open discussion about IoT projects and products that follow the Linux spirit of openness ...

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Internet of Things Easy
Johannes Ernst

Paradux: Recovering From Maximum Personal Data Disaster
What if all your personal data and all your passwords were suddenly lost?

presented by Johannes Ernst

Many of the residents of the towns that were wiped out this year by the California wildfires did not have time to grab their laptops, bring their hard disks, or take their password recovery sheets with them. Similarly, what if your favorite cloud services simply kicked you off? Personal data disasters lurk everywhere. If one hits you, could you recover your data and your passwords?

Paradux i...

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Security Medium
Josh Williams

Get It Back
A New PostgreSQL Admin's Guide To Redundancy and Recovery

presented by Josh Williams

How's that Postgres database? Would be a shame if something were to happen to it. No, really, I'd feel sad. You have backups, right?

But there's so many options, what kind? SQL-based or point-in-time recovery? Are you using a backup management solution with that? What about replicas? Physical or logical? We'll take you through the all the possibilities, along with some demonstrations of data...

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Postgres Track Easy
Kaylea Champion

Baling Wire, Bailing Buckets, or Bailing Out
How can we tell when a free software project is in danger?

presented by Kaylea Champion

Bugs and problems are a reality in software engineering. Some bugs threaten to sink entire application stacks and lurk undetected, while others are low-priority irritants. Some projects are able to improve rapidly and respond to issues, while others struggle. Meanwhile, our distributions are composed of thousands of projects.

As developers, users, and supporters of FLOSS, how can we tell th...

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Infrastructure Easy
Wm Salt Hale Kaylea Champion

Calling all FLOSS Founders

presented by Kaylea Champion, Wm Salt Hale

Have you (or a group of friends) started a free software project? How about a usergroup or conference? Maybe you haven't yet, but are definitely considering it. Or, have you tried to start something new and found it didn't work out the way you wanted? Have you witnessed the rise and decline of projects and events, and are you willing to share your stories? Come to the FLOSS Founders BoF and dis...

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Humans Easy
Kenny

LPIC-1 Preparation Session
Linux Professional Institute Preparation Sessions

presented by Kenny

Not ready to take the exams just yet? LPI certified partners will be offering a LPIC-1 exam preparation session on Saturday, April 27th.

Register for our complimentary exam preparation session! The session will be lead by a LPI certified presenter that will be able to field any technical questions and help prepare you before you take the exam. Participate and learn more about the importan...

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Education Medium
kgiori

Mozilla Project Things (IoT) -- Open Framework for Decentralized, Private, Secure, and Interoperable Web Things

presented by kgiori

Come learn about Mozilla’s Project Things initiative. It is an open source implementation aimed at promoting a decentralized, and W3C-standardized, Web of Things framework for managing IoT device data. Mozilla’s implementation puts people first, protecting user privacy and security, while promoting industry interoperability. The tutorial will demonstrate how to set up ...

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Internet of Things Medium
K.S. Bhaskar

What Was Old is New Again
A new API expands the usability of a mature, proven database technology

presented by K.S. Bhaskar

A proven, mature, continuously evolving, NoSQL database technology that has been in production for decades, has acquired new APIs.

Originally MUMPS was an operating system, a hierarchical database & file system, a user interface as well as a programming language. One booted into MUMPS and exited by shutting down the computer.

What makes it new again? While the language continues to ha...

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Code Medium
Larry Apolonio

Introduction to Software Defined Radio
Sniffing the Airwaves

presented by Larry Apolonio

This is a follow up from last years presentation on 433Mhz and IoT devices. I was showing how to get the codes sent from devices and it piqued some people's interest in software defined radio.

Today any person can purchase a $25 device and with a laptop begin exploring the addicting hobby of software defined radio, so I will go through what it is and getting started yourself on sniffing t...

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Security Easy
Lee-Man

Using iSCSI to share Discs and Tape
SAN for dummies?

presented by Lee-Man

All the tools you need for your own local SAN are available on Linux, including an iSCSI initiator (open-iscsi) and an iSCSI target (LIO) using the targetcli interactive interface. Using these tools, it's easy to share disc drives and even tape units between systems. I will touch on some advanced subjects, such as tcmu-runner, a package that allows users to create their own custom user-space IO...

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Infrastructure Medium
LinuxFest Northwest

World Famous Raffle

presented by LinuxFest Northwest

Every year LFNW has it's biggest fund raiser activity called "The World Famous Raffle", thanks to our many sponsors and supporters who donate noteworthy raffle items. Tickets are $1 each, cash only, and quantities are limited (by law).

Due to it's popularity the raffle will be held both Saturday and Sunday in the exhibit hall, at the end of each day.

Items donated by our Community Suppo...

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LinuxFest Northwest

World Famous Raffle

presented by LinuxFest Northwest

Every year LFNW has it's biggest fund raiser activity called "The World Famous Raffle", thanks to our many sponsors and supporters who donate noteworthy raffle items. Tickets are $1 each, cash only, and quantities are limited (by law).

Due to it's popularity the raffle will be held both Saturday and Sunday in the exhibit hall, at the end of each day.

Items donated by our Community Suppo...

more

LinuxFest Northwest

Twilio -- Saturday Night Trivia & Variety Show
by invitation only

presented by LinuxFest Northwest

Network with fellow LinuxFest Northwest attendees, enjoy some jokes & music, and test your knowledge in geek trivia! MC'd by Bryan Lunduke, its bound to be a wonderful time.

Appetizers and beverages will be served free of charge. Registration is required.

Sponsored by Twilio

LinuxFest Northwest

OVERFLOW: Q&A Past, Present & Future
live streaming due to demand

presented by LinuxFest Northwest

Overflow room with a live stream of:

Q&A: Past, Present & Future presented by maddog, Kyle Rankin, Simon Quigley

A panel of distinguished technologists will take your questions on Linux & open source, with perspectives spanning from long before Linux existed, to the bright future ahead of us.

Come join us ...

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Humans Easy
LinuxFest Northwest

Crafty Penguins -- Friday Night Game Social
by invitation only

presented by LinuxFest Northwest

Meet and hang out with fellow nerds, while playing an assortment of games, or bring your own and hang out!

Appetizers and beverages will be served free of charge. Registration is required.

Sponsored by Crafty Penguins

Linux Professional Institute

Linux Professional Institute Exam Lab
LFNW session 2

presented by Linux Professional Institute

Linux Professional Institute is thrilled to be offering exams at a discounted rate exclusively to LinuxFest Northwest attendees. While at LFNW, take the Linux Essentials for $75 USD, DevOps Tools Engineer for $99 USD or a LPIC for $99 USD.

Please register in advance for any exams. The time allows you the opportunity to take up to 2 exams per session.

**External registration and payme...

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Education Medium
Linux Professional Institute

Linux Professional Institute Exam Lab
LFNW Session 1

presented by Linux Professional Institute

Linux Professional Institute is thrilled to be offering exams at a discounted rate exclusively to LinuxFest Northwest attendees. While at LFNW, take the Linux Essentials for $75 USD, DevOps Tools Engineer for $99 USD or a LPIC for $99 USD.

Please register in advance for any exams. The time allows you the opportunity to take up to 2 exams per session.

**External registration and payme...

more

Education Medium
Lloyd Albin

Using GIS in Postgres – Real World Examples of PostGIS

presented by Lloyd Albin

In this presentation we will go over basics of how to install and use PostGIS.

  • Install Local Postgis / Cloud Solutions
  • How to calculate distance between two Airports/Points/Locations using
    • The old school math using the "Spherical Law of Cosines" and "Haversine" formulas.
    • The new school PostGIS method of doing the same math for calculating the distance
  • How to calculate flight ...
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Postgres Track Easy
Lloyd Albin

Monitoring PostgreSQL - Part 2

presented by Lloyd Albin

In this presentation, we will go over how to install and use the new pg_monitor extension(s).

Please Note: This extension is used in house and has not been released to the public yet, BUT, it will be before the presentation.

We will cover: - pg_monitor - New Extension - pg_monitor_server - New Extension - pg_monitor_owner - New Extension - Grafana Stats that can be monitored from the ...

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Postgres Track Medium
Lloyd Albin

Monitoring PostgreSQL - Part 1

presented by Lloyd Albin

In this presentation we will go over how to setup the following software to setup a monitoring solution:

  • Whisper Database -- This is a specialized database for storing time related data.
  • Graphite -- Graphite is used to display the data from the Whisper database.
  • collectd -- collectd is used to insert data into the Whisper Database from the OS and PostgreSQL.
  • Grafana -- Grafana...
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Postgres Track Medium
m4dz

Zero Knowledge Architecture, is it possible?
How to protect users privacy?

presented by m4dz

Did you already hear about the ZKA pattern? Zero Knowledge stands for a pattern where no-one but the owner is aware of the content of the data. It's mainly in use in the Zero Knowledge Proof pattern, an authorization design. Despite its powerful concepts, Zero Knowledge patterns remain misunderstood.

In fact, there's a small amount of contents about what Zero Knowledge really is, what it imp...

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Security Medium
maddog

2019: Fifty years of Unix, Internet and more
Why does it matter?

presented by maddog

2019 is a year of anniversaries. It is the fiftieth year of Unix, the ARPAnet, people walking on the moon, Woodstock, Linus being born (yes, he is fifty) and many other things. It is the thirtieth anniversary of the World-Wide-Web, the twenty-fifth anniversary of V1.0 of the Linux kernel, Beowulf supercomputers, and 64-bit Linux. It is the twentieth anniversary of the Linux Terminal Server ...

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Humans Easy
Marcus Eaton

Syncthing + your favorite password manager = Zero-trust password syncing between devices.
Passwords suck, but here's how to make them suck less.

presented by Marcus Eaton

Everyone should be using a password manager. But not all password managers are created equal. There are companies that have been around for a while doing cloud-hosted password management, like Lastpass, or Dashlane. There are browsers that can now remember your passwords for you. There are even biometric authentication methods on your phone that can substitute for a password in most cases. But,...

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Security Easy
Michael

Raspberry Pi Q&A
getting started

presented by Michael

Learn about the Raspberry Pi (or RPi for short).
See these mini PCs in action and experiment with them.

See the popular, open source, single board computer that powers many DIY maker projects you can do. Learn about some important resources and meet others interested in building RPi projects, with plenty of time for Q&A.

Session leader: Michael Scott McGinn, creator of the GeekZ...

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Education Easy
Michael Dexter

FreeBSD is Everywhere
Modern Unix for Work, Home, and Play

presented by Michael Dexter

The FreeBSD Unix Operating System just celebrated its 25th anniversary and traces its roots to decades more of Unix development at the University of California, Berkeley. While FreeBSD continues the tradition of a true Unix environment, it offers cutting-edge features like the OpenZFS file system, Jails containment system, bhyve hypervisor and Packet Filter firewall. FreeBSD runs on the smalles...

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Education Easy
ogbog

Blender 2.8: An intro to 3D Animation
Learn how to sculpt, model, animate, and so much more with Blender, the 3D powerhouse

presented by ogbog

Blender is the poster child for open source graphics software done right. The new 2.8 beta revolutionizes Blender workflows and adds many new features. The result: even veteran users are ready for a refresher tutorial!

Bring your laptop and mouse to this hands-on tutorial session. Attendees will learn the basics of Blender's interface and 3D workflows. Explore several demo projects that sho...

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Education Easy
ogbog

Digital painting in Krita
Bring your drawings and paintings to life with Krita

presented by ogbog

Learn how to draw and paint in Krita, the 2D illustration program that puts brushes at the forefront of your workflow. Attendees will learn the principle workflows and conventions behind Krita, such as brushes, colors, and layers. Traditional artistic skills will also be covered, with a focus on how to draw and paint like a professional, and how Krita's interface corresponds to real world art m...

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Education Easy
Paul English

Why Open Source is Critical For Platform Firmware

presented by Paul English

Modern computer systems are comprised of many many microcontrollers, and any peripheral device typically also has at least one. This is often true even of devices designed for extremely low power operation such as IoT.

For all the same reasons you value open source software in your operating system and applications, you should also want open source for your platform firmware.

But even if ...

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Open Source Firmware Medium
popey

Snapcraft Workshop
Bootstrap your skills - create snaps with ease

presented by popey

Snapcraft is the universal app store for Linux that can deliver your app on any Linux distribution for desktop, cloud, and Internet of Things. If you’re starting your journey as a software developer or looking to expand your user base, this workshop is just the thing for you.

During the workshop you’ll learn how to create and publish snaps. Snapcraft supports many popular programming languag...

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Code Easy
porkostomus

Live Coding Minesweeper in Clojurescript
Develop for the web... without JavaScript!

presented by porkostomus

A new language has emerged that is transforming the process of web UI design. Harnessing the power of Lisp, functional programming, and offering a superior model for state management. In this session we will be making a game, which is a fun example of a user interface involving complex state.

Once we have a working minesweeper implementation, we will demonstrate how we can then change the ga...

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Code Medium
porkostomus

Make a music synthesizer in Bash
Programming: The new Rock 'n' Roll™.

presented by porkostomus

My creative self and my inner computer geek had often felt like they were fighting with each other. So I sought to develop a "musical computer-nerdy Theory of Everything" in order to attempt to unite these two seemingly opposing forces, or at least to create a space where they can play together for awhile. In this session we will learn to design instruments using SoX, the Swiss Army Knife of Au...

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Code Medium
Ray Shimko

Choose Your Distro Adventure!
Choose Your Linux Destiny!

presented by Ray Shimko

In this epic presentation the audience will decide the fate of the speaker and the direction of the talk based on choices they make at the beginning and during the show. A handful of distributions will be given to the audience at the start of the talk and based on which they choose is where the adventure begins. It's like Zork except way more animated and Linux-y!

Education Easy
Ray Shimko

Linux Gaming - The Dark Ages, Today, And Beyond
Linux Gaming - From Zero To Hero!

presented by Ray Shimko

In this presentation we will take a walk down memory lane regarding how far Linux gaming has come. Exploring the advent of tools like Wine, PlayOnLinux, Lutris, etc. Of course no talk like this would be complete without addressing Steam / Proton and what that means and could potentially mean for the future of Linux gaming. Do you think proton could hail the end of native Linux ports or do you t...

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Humans Easy
Richard Clark

Chat Ops - Everything old is new again
Chat as UI

presented by Richard Clark

Slides and more details up at https://github.com/seerickcode/chatops-lfnw

Chat Bots are nothing new, but the buzzword mill has recycled bot excitement for a new generation. Bots are awesome and Chat provides an easy to develop and deploy user interface for Devops functions (and basically anything).

We will quickly run through a brief overview of the history of chat, and bots, what the ne...

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Infrastructure Medium
Robert

PostgreSQL: An Introduction to BARMAN
Working in a Scalable Databased Clustered Environment

presented by Robert

**

2019-04-27: I've uploaded the scripts and slides on gitlab

        https://gitlab.com/rbernier/linuxfest-2019-all-about-barman

**

The PostgreSQL ecosystem is incredibly sophisticated. At one time the only thing a PostgreSQL DBA had to worry about was to master this opensource database engine and leverage his knowledge of the operating system. Well, times have changed. The w...

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Postgres Track Medium
Rob Hartzenberg

Automation with Node-RED
Flow-based programming for the IoT

presented by Rob Hartzenberg

Node-RED is a flow based programming tool for connecting hardware devices, APIs and online services together in a new and interesting way - with little to no programming skills required at all.

In this session we'll explore Node-Red and how I've used it for:

  • Connecting to a Raspberry Pi's GPIO for digital I/O.
  • Connecting to Google Home and Google Assistant f...
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Code Easy
Ross Brunson

CompTIA's NEW Linux+ Certification - All You Need to Know!
For those who are curious about CompTIA's newest Linux+ Certification.

presented by Ross Brunson

CompTIA has split from it's historic relationship with the Linux Professional Institute, and has re-introduced the Linux+ certification based on an entirely updated set of objectives and content.

Designed for those who are curious about the certification, whether they are candidates, employers or managers, this session will give you all you need to make the decision of whether the new Linux+...

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Education Easy
Ross Brunson

From Sysadmin to DevOps Engineer -- The Easy Way!
Move up the career ladder with Cloud and Monitoring Skills.

presented by Ross Brunson

The days of being a sysadmin alone are nearly gone, and soon you MUST have developer operations skills to get even the most entry level job managing a rack of servers, of virtualized systems or your own AWS, Azure or Google Cloud environment!

There's a hard way and an easy way to skill-up and become a Devops Engineer. Your presenter did it the hard way and can help you avoid the problems an...

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Education Easy
Samuel Karp

Linux Container Primitives
cgroups, namespaces, and union filesystems

presented by Samuel Karp

In this session, we'll explore the different Linux primitives that are commonly used in implementing container runtimes. We'll learn about the Linux primitives that underlie container runtimes like Docker, including cgroups, namespaces, and union filesystems. We'll see how Docker uses these primitives, and how the OCI standard makes it possible to customize how your containers run. We'll also d...

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Containerization Medium
Shreya

Finding a needle in a Haystack
A talk about Observability

presented by Shreya

We at Expedia work on a mission of connecting people to places through the power of technology. To accomplish this, we build and run hundreds of micro-services that provide different functionalities to serve one single customer request. Now, what happens when one or more services fail at the same time? Well, to improve the observability in our system and provide a high quality of service, we se...

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Infrastructure Medium
Simon Quigley

Ubuntu 19.04+: The Disco Dingo and Beyond
Disco Dingo features and plans for beyond

presented by Simon Quigley

Ubuntu 19.04, codenamed the Disco Dingo, is now available!

In this presentation I will go over key features that users should be aware of, why you should consider using Ubuntu 19.04, the different flavors and highlights from the new release, and plans for the Ubuntu 19.10 EE cycle (which leads up to 20.04).

Code Medium
Simon Quigley

Open Source is Not Just GitHub
Other project management solutions you should consider when writing open source software

presented by Simon Quigley

Often times people will associate Open Source and the Git version control system itself with GitHub, when there are many other project hosting solutions already available that often provide better features. In this presentation, I compare and contrast GitHub with several other project hosting solutions, including Phabricator, GitLab, and BitBucket, from the perspective of a project lead who has...

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Infrastructure Easy
@socialhappiness

sudo apt install Happiness
Everyone can benefit when we’re actively seeking a happier experience within the realm of tech support

presented by @socialhappiness

Learn tips on how to turn our support interactions with each other into happier experiences. In this talk, you'll also learn some best practices when interacting with a support human so that you can reach a solution faster. In the Linux community, we have no choice but to interact with each other for tech support, but some of us could change our approach to reach a happier outcome. Everyone can...

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Humans Easy
Stephano Cetola

UEFI Boot for Mere Mortals

presented by Stephano Cetola

Over the past decade the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) has become the primary standard for boot firmware. However, the complexity of the UEFI spec and the myriad of implementation choices can be confusing to even experienced developers. Fortunately, there are a growing number of open source UEFI implementations for different architectures, making it easier to explore the world of...

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Open Source Firmware Easy
Technology Alliance Group

TAG Expo + Job Fair
in association with LFNW

presented by Technology Alliance Group

https://expo.tagnw.org

We’re excited to announce that TAG’s 11th annual Expo + Job Fair will be a joint event with LinuxFest Northwest! This event is a varied showcase of some of the best tech employers in the PNW and an opportunity to find some of the top technology jobs and STEM educational opportunities in our region today.

Who Should Attend ...

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TAG NW
Toby Betts

Playing in the Sandbox
Improve Security and Privacy with Userspace Compartmentation

presented by Toby Betts

With the high frequency of corporate data breaches and the increased use of invasive tracking software used by modern websites, it is more important than ever to protect your data from unauthorized access. Rigorous coding practices might help developers avoid security bugs, but what can regular users do to keep their data safe when they don't control the code? In this talk we'll explore the bas...

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Security Easy
Vincent Zimmer

Open-Source Host Firmware Directions
Firmware abounds....

presented by Vincent Zimmer

Host Firmware is an integral ingredient of platforms at Intel. From the early days of proprietary BIOS in the 1980’s and 1990’s, to the world of standards in the 2000’s, to the post-PC world of the last few years, the nature of firmware has changed. This talk will discuss current trends in standards such as UEFI and associated EDKII firmware, other communities like coreboot, and common denomina...

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Open Source Firmware Medium
Wes Payne

Lambda Calculus for the Practicing Programmer
Or What is a Combinator Anyway?

presented by Wes Payne

Are you curious about the foundations of computing? Have you ever wondered (after too many hours on Hacker News) "what's a y-combinator?".

In this presentation we will explore the nature of computation through the lens of the lambda calculus, discover how you can create numbers from nothing but functions, and finally explain what a combinator is, and why you might want one.

Topics include...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Medium
Wes Payne

Audio Production on Linux
An Introduction

presented by Wes Payne

Join Jupiter Broadcasting to explore the basics of digital audio, its implementation on Linux, and the hardware and software you'll need to get started producing your own music, podcast, or other audio project.

Suitable for anyone interested in audio production and Linux, or just curious about how podcasts are made.

Topics include: - Intro to Digital Audio - ALSA, PulseAudio, Jack, and ...

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Jupiter Broadcasting Easy
Wimpy

Introducing Snaps and Snapcraft
A platform that enables developers to deliver applications to millions of Linux users and devices

presented by Wimpy

Introduction

Snapcraft is the universal app store for Linux. The Snapcraft team have created a platform that makes it simple to build and publish your applications, so they run on all major Linux distributions, decoupling application delivery from Linux distribution release cadence. Snapcraft hands direct control of publishing software to developers. No more old ap...

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Humans Easy
Yad

Linux Timestamps: Where have all the files gone, long-time passing?
Everything you know about content versioning is wrong.

presented by Yad

Where have all the files gone, long-time passing?

or everything you know about content versioning is wrong

Summary

    1 A presentation on the history, current state, and vision for a better future of filesystems for the non-technical user.
    2 How people loose metadata and how they preserve it.
    3 How the GNU/Linux community may improve the situation.
 ...
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Security Easy
cvantuin

A DevOps State of Mind: Managing Microservices and Databases with Kubernetes

presented by cvantuin

Rapid innovation, changing business landscapes, and new IT demands force businesses to make changes quickly.  In the eyes of many, DevOps + Microservices + Containers are at the brink of becoming pervasive in IT to accelerate business innovation.   In this presentation, you'll learn about managing containerized Microservices + Databases at scale:

  • Best practices for immutable and secure co...
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Containerization Medium
George Dyson

From Analog to Digital and Back

presented by George Dyson

The digital revolution, conceived in the 17th century, took electronic form when stored-program computers, assembled from analog components, broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things in the aftermath of World War II. Nature uses digital coding, embodied in strings of nucleotides, for the storage, modification, error correction, and conveying of instru...

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Humans Easy
cvantuin

A DevOps State of Mind: Continuous Security with Kubernetes

presented by cvantuin

When it comes to adopting containers in the enterprise, Security is the highest adoption barrier. Is your organization ready to address the security risks with containers for your DevOps environment? In this presentation, you'll learn about best practices for:

  • Addressing the top container security risks in a container environment including images, builds, registry, deployment, hosts, net...
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Containerization Medium