June 2021 - Roundtable

How does on get the date function to work in Libre Office spreadsheet?
by eh＠eduardhiebert.com 08 May '23

08 May '23

Hi, I've formatted the cells as date mm/dd/yy and entered the values as is. Also tried by preceeding with equal sign in case deemed to be a formula but neither works. I assume a difference between two days yields the difference in days, correct? Or are the formula different than plain math? Eduard the Osborne guy at last meeting

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WIRED: Tech Companies Don’t Need to Be Creepy to Make Money
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 25 Jun '21

25 Jun '21

I thought the following article was interesting... *Tech Companies Don’t Need to Be Creepy to Make Money* The unlikely survival—and success—of DuckDuckGo suggests a way to escape surveillance capitalism. Read in WIRED: https://apple.news/AQkH0EtdBQ5mm846r1zeg7A Gilbert

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iOS bug breaks WiFi if SSID contains "%" characters
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 22 Jun '21

22 Jun '21

This one made me laugh. Someone didn't clean up their input strings before passing them along to a formatting function... https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/iphone-bug-breaks-wifi-when-… https://www.engadget.com/iphone-wifi-network-name-bug-191550155.html Watch out for a proliferation of goofy-named hotspots until this one is fixed! Gilbert -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Winnipeg MB CANADA R3T 2N2 For best service, contact <cstech(a)cs.umanitoba.ca>.

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Accusations against Stallman at last night meeting
by Bill Reid 10 Jun '21

10 Jun '21

I was somewhat surprised at the vitriol expressed last night against Richard Stallman. I was aware of his statement about Epstein but not the other accusations. I understand that sexual abuse allegations should not be ignored but also that because it is an emotional topic allegations often depart from reality. Here is one of many articles defending Stallman: https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-against-richard-sta… <https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-against-richard-sta…> -- Bill

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Reminder: MUUG Online Meeting, Tonight, June 8, 7:30pm -- Intro to PeerTube
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 08 Jun '21

08 Jun '21

A reminder that the MUUG online meeting will be on Jitsi this evening... The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting online, on Tuesday, June 8th, at 7:30pm: Introduction to PeerTube: A Free and Decentralized Video Hosting Platform The internet continues to trend towards large, corporate owned websites and platforms. No one can deny that large platforms are amazing and convenient! But due to their sheer scale, social networks have difficulty with moderation and preventing abuse. Rules that work well for one set of users might be unacceptable to others, and automated moderation tools perform poorly outside of the culture and language they were developed in. These concerns have encouraged a wave of federated, decentralized social networks, loosely labeled the "fediverse." Similar to how email servers work today, any admin can run an instance of a social network, which then associates with other servers to share content and hosting costs. PeerTube is the most popular federated video hosting platform in this space, with an active community and many instances. Join us this month, as Chris Audet explores a possible future direction for video driven social networks. Chris will discuss why you might want to host a PeerTube instance, the cool underlying tech, and the role of alternative social networks in a world dominated by giants. Join the meeting: https://jitsi.merlin.mb.ca/muug.2021.06 The group holds its meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their web server: https://muug.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board, or linking to it on social media: https://muug.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://muug.ca/

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Looking for a used rack mount UPS
by Wyatt Zacharias 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

Hey everyone, I'm looking to buy a used rack mount UPS to replace a couple of standalone units I've got sitting on a shelf in my rack. Specifically I'm looking for one with expandable capacity to get extended run time for my network gear if there's a long power outage. Realistically I only need about 1000VA since I just run a couple single socket machines, but larger would be fine too. If you've got one let me know, I'll be happy to lug it out of your basement for you! -- Wyatt Zacharias

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ipsec mystery
by Trevor Cordes 02 Jun '21

02 Jun '21

So I just upgraded to Fedora 33. ipsec-tools rpm is gone. Toast. Ok. But it also takes with it setkey, which I use to setup the odd VPN using integrated Linux ipsec based on my /etc/ipsec.conf file. I've been using that for at least a decade. Ok, fine, so I have to figure out how else to load my VPN rules into the kernel using stock Fedora tools. (Maybe racoon2....) But here's the mystery: after rebooting the box into F33, it's still connected on a VPN to a F32 box. Even though setkey is missing!! What on earth is loading my ipsec.conf rules on boot into the kernel? (Strongswan is also on the box, but it's completely deactivated at the moment. It too looks at ipsec.conf (sometimes). Systemd has it completely ignored (not in any target/wants) and it's not running any daemons. And no, this box doesn't have racoon2 on it (yet).) It's almost as though the kernel itself is reading the file, but that can't be?? Or the kernel saves the pre-reboot ipsec setup then reloads it? But I can't find any file that it could go in? And that doesn't make sense anyhow vis a vis the separation of kernel and userspace. I'm completely stumped. There should be no VPN working, but there it is, with me pinging boxes over the tunnel. Very strange... And I can't see any way to read the ipsec spd entries, since setkey did that also! So it's in there but no way to configure it on the fly and no way to see what's configured? If anyone knows any way to see into the kernel's ipsec setup using /proc or /sys files, let me know! I couldn't find anything relevant in there, not with a filename you'd expect.

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MUUG Online Meeting, Tuesday, June 8, 7:30pm -- Intro to PeerTube
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting online, on Tuesday, June 8th, at 7:30pm: Introduction to PeerTube: A Free and Decentralized Video Hosting Platform The internet continues to trend towards large, corporate owned websites and platforms. No one can deny that large platforms are amazing and convenient! But due to their sheer scale, social networks have difficulty with moderation and preventing abuse. Rules that work well for one set of users might be unacceptable to others, and automated moderation tools perform poorly outside of the culture and language they were developed in. These concerns have encouraged a wave of federated, decentralized social networks, loosely labeled the "fediverse." Similar to how email servers work today, any admin can run an instance of a social network, which then associates with other servers to share content and hosting costs. PeerTube is the most popular federated video hosting platform in this space, with an active community and many instances. Join us this month, as Chris Audet explores a possible future direction for video driven social networks. Chris will discuss why you might want to host a PeerTube instance, the cool underlying tech, and the role of alternative social networks in a world dominated by giants. Join the meeting: https://jitsi.merlin.mb.ca/muug.2021.06 The group holds its meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their web server: https://muug.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board, or linking to it on social media: https://muug.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://muug.ca/

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