FOSDEM: more boring shit

Let's take a look at my annotated copy of the FOSDEM 2017 main talk schedule, shall we?

Keynotes

Welcome to FOSDEM 2017
The speech is 25 minutes so it will fit into your Burger King lunch break!

Kubernetes on the road to GIFEE
"GIFEE" stands for "Google Infrastructure For Everyone." Presumably your computers are too fast and you need some more abstractions to slow them back down. No, I don't know what the second 'E' stands for.

Software Heritage: Preserving the Free Software Commons
"The Free Software Commons" is just some bureaucrat's idea to put a shitload of free software on a hard drive somewhere. The talk description does not explain why archive.org is insufficient for this task. I think it's because archive.org will not establish a salary for the bureaucrat.

Understanding The Complexity of Copyleft Defense
After 25 Years of GPL Enforcement, Is Copyleft Succeeding?

An FSF bureaucrat spreads FSF propaganda.

Using Linux in Air Traffic Control
Hardware and Operating System Platforms

Someone is trying to use linux to do something.

Closing FOSDEM 2017
This one is only ten minutes so you can attend it and get back before the fries are done.

Architectures

RISC-V: Open Hardware for Your Open Source Software
The talk description claims RISC-V is in use in both Internet of Things and supercomputing, which is amazing since nobody's produced any working hardware yet.

Free Software For The Machine
Hewlett-Packard came up with a bespoke machine. They could not afford any marketing experts, so this machine is called "The Machine." The big innovation is that you just shit data onto the disk instead of bothering with a proper filesystem. The speaker is the same Keith Packard who made the X Window System even worse than it was before.

Building

Bazel
How to build at Google scale?

Google, typically, open-sourced some trash software that only serves their needs. This guy is here to explain to you why you should ever, ever give a shit, and also you should probably get involved with the project and give Google free labor.

Continuous Integration at a Distribution Level
Shepherding 30.000 packages to never break

In addition to "30.000" being a strange grade of precision to apply to the number thirty, the second the audience realizes this idiot is talking about Ubuntu everyone will know this "never break" bullshit is a lie.

Continuous Localisation using FOSS tools
Building a fast responsive localisation process using open source tools

The talk description is in English and the talk will be given in English. You can find out more on the FOSDEM web page, which is in English. This shows you how important localization is.

Cloud

CloudABI: easily develop sandboxed apps for UNIX
Someone realized that it's much easier to secure software if you throw half of it out and ignore the other half. He has started a business with this as the planned profit source.

Resurrecting dinosaurs, what can possibly go wrong?
How Containerised Applications could eat our users.

Someone realized that "containerized applications" -- the practice of just tarring up all your shit with its shared library dependencies and treating that as a unit -- is part of what made Windows suck. The speaker's other talk involves advocating for 'rolling release' distributions. That's right: even the rolling-release idiots think AppImage sucks.

Documentation

Write a Better FM
Read The F* Manual? Maybe you need to write a better f* manual

An idiot is afraid to say fuck. He works for Red Hat and Apache at the same time so obviously he is the world's leading authority on what documentation should look like: either contained entirely within runtime error messages or hidden behind a paywall.

Bridging the Gap between Legacy Docs and Modular Content
Another Red Hat idiot wants people to stop writing documentation and write stories instead.

What open source and J.K. Rowling have in common
Importance of storytelling in open source projects

The talk description spouts meaningless shit about storytelling, but the real common factor between Rowling and Linux is their presence in the homes and hearts of millions of children and/or mouth-breathing retards who are impressed only because they haven't seen what competence looks like.

Miscellaneous

The Veripeditus AR Game Framework
Enabling everyone to freely create Augmented Reality Games

Finally, someone comes up with open-source gaming technology even less interesting or popular than VR.

LoRaWAN for exploring the Internet of Things
Talk Hard: A technical, political, and cultural look at LoRaWAN for IoT

An academic has a radio.

Datacubes on Steroids with ISO Array SQL
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Terabytes

An idiot calls multidimensional arrays "datacubes." Nobody knows why, or wants to find out.

You know what's cool? Running on billions of devices
curl from A to Z

Daniel Stenberg is here to tell you how important curl is, because telling people how important curl is happens to be his full-time job.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About "Hello, World"*
(*But Were Afraid To Ask)

All I Want To Know Is Why The Woody Allen References*
*(to a movie that came out before you were born)

Ethics in Network Measurements
Moral obligations of engineers, scientists and hackers, based on example of RIPE Atlas

An absolute asshole tries to justify the massive crowdsourced surveillance program they've built.

All Ages: How to Build a Movement
Organizational advice from two idiots who have never organized anything.

Libreboot
Free your BIOS today!

The idiot from last year is back, trying to sell you laptops preloaded with a version of Coreboot that has all the useful shit stripped out.

Pieter Hintjens
In Memoriam

It is kind of gross to make this some kind of scheduled event. Have some class and do an informal meeting after hours for this, people.

Tempesta FW: Linux Application Delivery Controller
Yet another webshit trying to make his webshit faster.

User Session Recording for the Enterprise
An Open-Source Effort by Red Hat

Red Hat would like the ability to significantly increase the amount of data collected for the bug reports it ignores.

Security and Encryption

Portfolio of optimized cryptographic functions based on Keccak
Yeah, it's still just SHA-3, man.

The Making of a Secure Open Source Password Keeper
From the Electronics to the High Level Software...

An Exercise in Full-Stack Irrelevance!

Securing Automated Decryption
New Cryptography and Techniques

Apparently nobody's told Red Hat that if something can be automatically decrypted you may as well never have encrypted it to start with.

It's time to SAFE the Internet
Introducing SAFE, the decentralised privacy-first storage and communication network

More ranting about the blockchain from Bitcoin Idiots, LLC. Why yes of course it involves both Rust and javascript, how did you know?

WireGuard: Next Generation Secure Kernel Network Tunnel
Cutting edge crypto, shrewd kernel design, and networking meet in a surprisingly simple combination

Recognizing that IPSec is an overcomplicated monster that nobody uses, an idiot sets about writing a simplified monster nobody uses.

Encrypting Matrix
Building a universal end-to-end encrypted communication ecosystem with Matrix and Olm

A moron thinks someone wants to use third-party servers with Open Whisper Systems' Signal protocol. Don't bother to learn his name; you won't need it.

Quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography
a gentle overview

Listening to a Russian talk about quantum computing is akin to asking your dog how to replace a circuit breaker.