sudo-discuss May 2022

sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org

23 participants
61 discussions

by Thomas Levine

The vending machine now provides some more feedback after money is put in. Source code associated with my contribution is here. I haven't documented the other components of the vending machine. https://thomaslevine.com/scm/sudo-vending Based on the implementation details, it appears to me that the bill acceptor is in fact plugged into one board (Arduino Leonardo) that is connected by serial to another board (Raspberry Pi). Why is the former board used at all? That is, why is the bill acceptor not plugged directly into the latter board?

4 months, 4 weeks

Jitsi telescreen setup in sudoroom!

by Jake

I've set up a jitsi terminal on the wall in Sudoroom! It's a big TV made by Hitachi, and it has a feature where it can go into "power saving" mode when the HDMI signal is lost. That means the screen can power down when DPMS puts the monitor to "sleep". It has a webcam that's clearly labeled, and on a hinge so it can easily be aimed down at the floor if people are shy, and it has a Jabra USB speaker/microphone thing which should hopefully provide good speakerphone functionality. I have the computer setup to start firefox, and i have firefox set to open the jitsi page, where permissions are already enabled for webcam/audio. The only remaining need is to automatically wake the monitor from sleep (using "DISPLAY=:0 xset force dpms on") whenever there is anyone else detected in the jitsi "room" This feature is important so that people can see (on the screen) whenever someone is in the screen/camera/microphone with them. For now the monitor is either left on a lot, or blanks out due to a timeout. I've determined that the most direct ways to make the monitor turn on when anyone joins the jitsi channel are: 1. make an XMPP client in python or something, which connects to the server and finds out how many people are in the room (and whether there's anyone other than the telescreen in there) and sets the monitor on/off state accordingly 2. make a browser extension to find the element containing the number of "Meeting participants" and copy the number to the window title, where it can be observed from the shell with a command like wmctrl -l <div class="jss52">Meeting participants (2)</div> unfortunately the div class is not always jss52 but the innertext is always Meeting Participans(#) so it should be able to be found. The idea is that with this setup, people can go on jitsi and talk to whomever is in sudoroom, as well as each other. presently i'm using this link but that can change if we find something better: https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles note: the telescreen in sudoroom is not signed in right now, not sure why but i'll fix it asap

7 months

Resin 3D printing?

by Marc Juul

Hi sudoers. I was wondering if anyone might be interested in having a 3D resin printing setup at sudo room? I'm thinking one of those ~$200 resin printers, a little wash basin and a UV exposure box. We can probably make the wash basin and UV box ourselves and maybe some of us can contribute a few bucks and split the cost of the printer? I know resin tends to stink and release questionable VOCs into the air, however: I have acquired a tabletop ductless fume hood. It functions by sucking the fumes through a carbon filter. I'd be happy to keep it at sudo room for the resin printing setup. It probably needs a new carbon filter but I got some carbon filter material and plan to simply re-stuff the existing filter cartridge. The hood is 35.5" wide with a 24" tall work area. It looks like this but without the bottom tray: http://acintergroup.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/9df78eab33525d0… I'm thinking we can put it on the white southernmost table behind the laser cutter? Maybe a front-opening printer like this one would be appropriate? https://www.anycubic.com/products/photon-mono-se-lcd-3d-printer?variant=358… If this happens I'd like to keep access to the printer and a small supply box locked off unless folks have been checked out on usage of the printer since it's easy to permanently destroy these by not cleaning off the resin and letting the sun's UV harden it. Folks from CCL might also be interested since resin is generally autoclavable and more chemical resistant than what can be done with the melty-type printers. Anyone interested enough to help buy such a thing? -- marc/juul

11 months, 3 weeks

thoughts on helping new members get up and running with SudoRoom (non obvious approaches to diversity)

by romy＠snowyla.com

I have some thoughts about helping new members get up and running at SudoRoom. - I haven't been participating in discussions as much as I could have because I get everything in a big email summary. It's hard to see when people are replying to me, I guess over the years I forgot there's an easy web panel board. Maybe we could link to this more directly? https://sudoroom.org/lists/hyperkitty/list/sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org/ - Helping out women and non binary folks Over the years people have asked me to help get more women and cool people get involved in hackerspaces. This is a noble cause, but a lot of the approaches like celebrating diversity etc. might not be the right approach for hackers and nerds. How do you get more women and minorities and hackerspaces while keeping the spirit of the hack? It's quite complicated, true, because SudoRoom is not for everybody. There was a time when there were a lot of brogrammers working on startups who were interested in joining. They were not interested in any social good causes or making the world a better place - I think they were looking more for something like WeWork, and that was fine! Maybe they could join a "tech incubator space" At the same time there has been a cool drive to get more minorities and women into tech spaces. I think this is very cool! It's obviously "complicated", with so many social and class and gender structures going on. I've seen a lot of these initiatives, and there are some easy wins that nobody can deny that mostly focus on: (A) People trying to break into tech to get a good job that pays well. These initiatives have a lot of corporate and branding pep talks. They have their place, and we definitely want to help people learn to fish so they can fulfill their basic needs. These kinds of initiatives involve a lot of interview training, career development initiatives, and basic intro to coding or git courses. I should know because as a self taught programmer I participated in these, and I benefitted a ton from these! The downside to career-focused tech diversity causes is that they focus on money and careers. We all know that the obvious money and career topics are actually not the best choices for people who are truly interested on creating and learning about programming. Even for long term career growth you want people who want to learn programming, not just how to build websites on Ruby on Rails and javascript shopping ecarts. (B) Initiatives around teaching local youth to get into tech or workshops to tutor kids. Who can argue against these? It's very feel good. The only downside with teaching and volunteering with kids is that the pressure is heavily set upon women in tech to lead these, and I personally don't think there is anything about women that makes them more appropriate for taking care of kids or teaching them. Also, societally we need more male or trans folks to teach kids for diversity as education below the university level is heavily skewed to females. So if SudoRoom wants to tackle the diversity topic, I think we have to find a more unique way to do this. (A) careers for minorities breaking into tech and (B) educating women are well served by people outside of hackerspaces. (A) and (B) are not what SudoRoom is particularly great at, and I do not see how most people can become their best hacker doing either (A) or (B) when they are not suited to it. We also come to one of Omni Commons' greatest weaknesses - a love for administration and endless meetings. I know it's the nature of the space, but I'd like to help get people who are hackers to come and hack here without having to get involved in endless meetings and discussions. A hackerspace should provide an environment in which hackers can come, socialize but also reach their ideal flow state and creativity. If people are going to a lot of administrative meetings, are coordinating meetups, or hyping other hackerspaces in red states in the United States, that doesn't leave them the opportunity to develop themselves as hackers and create and add to the vibe of the space. (It is also extremely irresponsible to hype any place in a red state at this time, or tell any hackers it is a good idea to move there, especially women or anyone who has a woman in their family. Women are literally getting prosecuted for murder for having miscarriages! oh my!) OK so this was all long winded but the gist of it is: Let's try to get the diversity ball rolling in hackerspaces in a non obvious way, something different from the diversity non profit complex. Let's help people get ramped up and into the flow state. Let's free women from the obligation of volunteering to educate kids or do noncreative work. Let's make complex technical projects easy to understand and ramp up on, and not cage women and minorities into endless beginner's projects in the name of making technology more accessible for all. There are many ways to make things better, and one of those ways is being the best hacker you want to be!

1 year

thinking of starting a Blender learn together meetup / online thread

by romy＠snowyla.com

Hi! I'm thinking of starting a Blender learn together meetup/online Course. Ideally this should be during a weekly or semimonthly/biweekly night (not even sure). What would be cool is if we made tutorials that were very SudoRoom specific, such as constructing a 3D model of the SudoRoom space, or creating a SudoRoom logo in 3 dimensions. Also, this would be a cool way to get video editing and the light projection stuff wrapped up into the SudoRoom projects!

1 year

[omni-consensus] Fwd: Proposed budget process for the events team (fwd)

by Jake

Dear Sudoroom, As delegate I have to represent the interests of the sudoroom membership on issues that affect everyone. I haven't got a lot of responses to other proposals i've put forward. I want to remind everyone that the best way to stay involved with omni-wide decisions is to join the consensus email list, and even attend delegates' meetings if you like. They're open to everyone. Below is a proposal to let the events booking group have a fund made from money that events bring in, that they can make use of with less supervision, in the interests of improving the process of putting on events. It's an important moneymaking group at Omni and I trust them to do a good job with it. If nobody objects then i'll say Sudoroom is in favor of this proposal. -jake sudoroom's delegate to the omni commons ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 31 May 2022 15:21:57 -0700 From: Yardena Cohen <yardenack(a)gmail.com> To: Jake <jake(a)spaz.org> Cc: consensus <consensus(a)lists.omnicommons.org> Subject: Re: [omni-consensus] Fwd: Proposed budget process for the events team Yes, ideally all collective members would take an active interest in every detail of Omni's operations. In practice, the delegates often have to use their own judgement to figure out which things need to be escalated to the status of a "full community-wide proposal" and which things are just minor operational changes which fall reasonably within the parameters of prior consensus decisions. That's the balance we've struck in our own pragmatic mix of direct vs representative democracy. I would welcome proposals to add more clear structure around this. Tbh this proposal is my attempt at creating some structure which solves some of that problem. I am not a delegate and I don't really care either way. I just want other folks to consider it, and the consensus list is the place to start those conversations. On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:07 PM Jake <jake(a)spaz.org> wrote: > > Is this not a proposal that delegates need to put before their collectives? Or > do the delegates have the ability to decide on their own? I don't understand. > > -jake > > On Tue, 31 May 2022, Yardena Cohen wrote: > >> I would like the delegates to consider this proposal. Instead of event >> income going directly to omni's general funds, the events team would >> get its own bank account, make regular transfers of $6k/mo (when >> available) to omni checking, and keep any surplus as an independent >> operating budget. The events team would decide what to do with this >> budget. What do you all think? >> >> ---------- Forwarded message --------- >> From: Yardena Cohen <yardenack(a)gmail.com> >> Date: Thu, May 26, 2022 at 8:15 AM >> Subject: Proposed budget process for the events team >> To: events at omni <events(a)lists.omnicommons.org>, finance >> <finance(a)lists.omnicommons.org> >> >> >> Hey all, I'd like to float an idea for you all. What if the events >> team had its own money and could set its own budget? My idea is that: >> >> * events wg gets its own bank account >> * all event income goes into that account >> * all event expenses come from that account >> * events wg can make its own internal/autonomous decisions about who >> gets access to that account and how money comes/goes (as long as >> decisions are transparent and standard 501c3 rules are followed) >> * events wg makes a regular transfer of $6k each month to omni's general funds >> * beyond that, all funds are kept by the event wg >> >> I think that, over time, this bank account would grow, and the events >> group would be able to do great things with it. This would hopefully >> lead to less micromanaging from the delegates / the rest of the omni >> community and remove some pressure by setting clear and finite >> expectations. Decisions about work should be made by the people doing >> the work. Leftover money could also be used to pay stipends to enable >> more people to do work who aren't independently wealthy. >> >> What do you all think of this idea? >> _______________________________________________ >> consensus mailing list >> consensus(a)lists.omnicommons.org >> https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/consensus >>

1 year

Hardware Hacking Tuesday tonight

by Jake

Hi everyone, you're getting this email either because you're on the sudoroom discuss email list, or because I BCC'd you directly. Tonight I'll be hosting Sudoroom for those who want to come hack on whatever in person, or through telepresence of any means you can invoke. Remember that Omni Commons and Sudoroom policy is presently that EVERYONE MUST WEAR A MASK AT ALL TIMES INSIDE THE BUILDING. (if you want to eat something you should go outside) in case you didn't know, there is definitely a covid surge happening right now in the past few weeks, we've had about 5-15 people over the course of the evening, not including remote participants who logged in through the telescreen (linked last in this email) Jenny put it on the Omni calendar: https://omnicommons.org/blog/events/hardware-hack-night-3-2022-03-01/ Here it is on the sudoroom page: https://sudoroom.org/events/hardware-hack-night-2022-02-15/ that says 7PM but I try to be there soon after 6pm. if you get to the door (at the corner of 48th and shattuck) and you can't get in, call me or someone else who's there to let you in! Email me if you don't have my phone number. Actually a great way to get our attention is to join the video chat link at the end of this email! We don't always hear the doorbell and I don't answer it after 10PM anyway because of diminishing returns :) You should get on this sudoroom discuss mailinglist! click here: https://sudoroom.org/lists/postorius/lists/sudo-discuss.sudoroom.org/ and you should donate to sudoroom, monthly, by signing up here: https://sudoroom.org/humans and if you want to make a one-time donation, you can go here: https://sudoroom.org/donate if you can't make it, join the jitsi videochat with the room, and chat with each other as well as a giant TV screen/speakerphone on the wall of the space: https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles (don't worry if you're the only one in the "room", others will join eventually, and if the camera is pointed at the floor, just yell until someone comes and talks to you and then ask them to aim it back up into the room) see you soon! -jake

1 year

Re: [omni-consensus] PROPOSAL: BIPOC and Oppressed Gender Safe Space Committee (BOGSS)

by Jake

Dear Sudoroom, Tonight I will not make it to Hardware Hacking Tuesday but I suspect people will probably be there, although i haven't seen any announcements. This email is a reminder that we need to discuss the BOGSS proposal at the Sudoroom meeting tomorrow night, and figure out what questions and/or amendments we want to send our delegate (me) to the Delegates' meeting on Thursday. People have already said things about it, both directly to me and publicly, and I have my own amendments to propose, and we can talk about all of those tomorrow night. I know everyone is busy (I am too!) but this is a pretty important issue for Omni that we need to engage with as much as possible. -jake ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 5 May 2022 20:56:02 -0700 (PDT) Dear Sudoroom, Today I voted in behalf of Sudoroom in favor of the MOP proposal, and they are now a member collective of Omni Commons. I emailed about them on April 20th but didn't hear anything back, so I hope everyone is okay with that decision. Today a proposal was introduced for a new committee to be formed at Omni Commons to value and protect the safety and interests of BIPOC/Non-Men. this is the original proposal in PDF form: https://omnicommons.org/pipermail/consensus/attachments/20220505/ab900701/a… this is an editable "cryptpad" and we are requested to "please leave comments in red" https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/6IhZqwyXxN6CrEvtiljmnqTa/ actually this is a cryptpad copy of their document just for sudoroom, and I will forward our discussion to Rafiq to integrate our input. Other collectives are asking questions too, so if you want to be more engaged in the discussion, please join the [omni-consensus] list! But definitely make discussion here in the sudoroom list and get engaged. If Sudoroom members have concerns or objections, we need to communicate them promptly and work toward agreeable amedments. It is not an option to simply reject the proposal, but rather if you have specific concerns then we need to work with each other to address those concerns and come up with something agreeable. -jake ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Yardena Cohen <yardenack(a)gmail.com> Hey all, I'm boosting this email with a new subject line so that it's clear to readers - this contains an important new proposal!!! Brief summary: this proposal forms a congress of BIPOC and non-men from all Omni's groups, who then elect a small committee which has its own seat on the board, its own delegate, and a few specific powers related to addressing racism and sexism. This is an important step towards making omni representative and accountable! This finally begins to put our Statement of Solidarity into action! ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: rafiq.ali <rafiq.ali(a)protonmail.com> Date: Thu, May 5, 2022 at 12:16 PM To: <consensus(a)lists.omnicommons.org> I added a little note at the beginning on our proposal and the events from 2 weeks ago. Happy to provide a short statement. In general, I appreciate the apologies made and think this can be a growing opportunity to forge a stronger collective. If it's possible, we can open discussion on the proposal this week if enough delegates have had a chance to review with the idea of approving at the next delegate meeting (or worst case, the one after). As mentioned earlier, we are proposing the creation of a safe space Committee (see attached). We appreciate and accept all feedback/comments/concerns. In struggle, Rafiq CLP

1 year

Hardware Hacking Tuesday tonight

by Jake

1 year

WNB coding night tonight

by Juliana A

Hey, as I mentioned last week I won't be able to make it today, but if any wnb from this list want to stop by it’s totally fine! Night will still keep being WNB only. If you don’t have a key, knock on the door, It seems there's always people at Omni C on Monday evenings, so getting in should not be an issue.-- julianaferreira(a)gmail.com

1 year

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sudo-discuss May 2022