Meeting Notes 2017-01-11

sudo room mtg / party - 11 January 2017

attendees

• matt senate
• lesley
• onye
• robb
• redwoods
• sean
• patrick
• charley
• remote-daniel

Icebreaker

"if you had to be on an island, and you can only bring 3 things, what would those things be?"

• PatrickD - duct tape
• Steve - coffee, tobacco, weed
• Matt - a friend so I wouldn't be alone, a really good book, and a rope
  • Patrick pointed out that a friend is not a thing
    • Matt said a friend isn't necessarily a person. He'd bring a friend that's not a smartass.
• Lesley - glasses, computer, some kind of food bar, soylent bar, nutrition
• Rob - food, water, and women
• Sean - water, a satellite connected communication device, and a greenhouse automated aquaponics system
• Onye - my laptop, a solar powered charger, and I'd be good, wifi connector
• Redwoods - (after much contemplation) a shovel, a fat sharpie permanent marker, water purification pump
• Charley - a towel, a container ship full of everything I might need

announcements/discussion

• as previously discussed (see mailing list), the no-longer-used omni organization could be disposed of in a useful way, such as transferring it to a land trust that could assist those in need in the wake of the recent fire. This idea was briefly discussed, as was the fact that we do not currently have a quorum so can't make a decision about this idea.
• Matt explained a concurrent meeting from today that is also focused on organizing a response to the ghost ship fire and its aftermath, specifically the idea that the former omni organization could become the owner of various properties. He suggested this is being led by David Keenan.
• Redwoods announced that they are running a campaign that may have sudo room overlap. M Night Shyamalan is coming out with a movie on January 20, called "Split". 20 people including Redwoods wrote a letter to MNS. See also splitmoviehurts.com. (and twitter@splitmoviehurts). Redwoods could use help with campaigning and strategy around organizing this effort, -- a horror movie featuring a villain with multiple personalities, demonizing a condition which is already highly stigmatized. The campaign aims to inform the public about the realities of living as multiple, and use the release of the film to reduce rather than increase stigma and pathologization. Contact them via twitter or website to volunteer re strategy, campaign, social media, writing, web.

new membership applications

Sean:

   - intro: My name is Sean
   - what brings you to sudo room? I'm kind of a scientist that got into engineering a few years ago. Been working on some projects that I'm really interested in. I'm being surrounded by a community of interested engineers. I'm also a fan of community living spaces and shared living/working situations. 
   - what do you want to hack, if you know? Right now I'm working on a completely automated aquaponics greenhouse for small-scale agriculture production. Developed a general automation system using Arduinos and (some other stuff I didn't hear). Brought this device to hardware hack night for feedback. Trying to grow that right now.
   - share/teach? I have basic EE capabilities, control systems engineering and signal processing. BS in Physics. Aquaponics cycle, want to learn more, only been studying for a few weeks. As far as teaching, maybe better as a TA. Others seem to have more knowledge.
   - plan to abolish various awful things? Lead by example.
   - plan to end anthropycene extinction, world hunger, etc.? personalized aquaponics ... systems for distributed food networks addressing climate-change.
   - plan to ensure freedom etc? better encryption systems, open source hardware/software, communication standards; shared
   - Lesley explained the SOS/SaferSpace policy.
   - Problem? I guess there is a wrong answer to that one.
   - Banned? Nope.
   - Contact methods? I have a beacon I can put on the roof.
   - Schedule? Highly variable schedule due to being self-employed.
   - Lesley mentioned sudo-humans and the sliding scale for contributions.

Onye:

   - intro: My name's Onye, I'm a math grad student at Berkeley studying theoretical CS, complexity theory.
   - brings you here? Looking at things on meetup.com. This seemed really interesting. Seems cooler than I expected. (some: ouch!)
   - what to hack/learn? Not sure if I know yet, but I'm not familiar with working with physical objects/hardware, so not sure about ideas. (Lesley mentioned we also do programming.)
   - share/teach? Machine learning maybe? (Matt: Romy wants to revive algorithms night)
   - plan to abolish sexual violence etc? If everyone is dead, there will be no more violence.
   - end the anthropycene extinction etc? Ask an arificial intelligence, I guess. Hopefully there's sufficient data.
   - Freedom and privacy etc? What if I don't want to protect those things? What if I want to destroy it? Is that an option?
   - Lesley blah-blah and etc.'d the SOS/Safer Space Policy. (Charley suggested reading the referenced documents.)
   - Been banned etc? No
   - email: oekenta@gmail.com
   - schedule: not much of a schedule
   - Please join sudo-humans at sudoroom.org/humans

Steve:

   **** this needs to have the email list submission added to it and have the conversation moved elsewhere ****
   - intro: is probably on the info@ list
   - ...
   - abolish sexual violence etc? We do not end freedom, but we end privacy, in that in any public space, public space should be public forever. A shared distributed ingelligence, we should be able to ask, "hey, what happened here?" and no one should be able to hide from that.
   - anthropycene extinction: get off this rock.
   - freedom and privacy etc: my concern is ... post-quantum cryptography, how soon do we need it? do we have anyting viable yet? (this resulted in a discussion with Onye explaining some things about quantum computers, which will not happen for a long time, and even then, quantum cryptography is theoretically unbreakable, while it's always possible to get around something, but if it works properly it's unbreakable even with a quantum computer, so it could solve the cryptographic concerns more powerful computers would bring). back to Steve: if NSA or whoever were smart, they just need to store everything encrypted so it can be read later when technology improves. (Lesley: privacy vs. what can be done with information about you are totally different things. Matt: in China there's now a rating system for people. Onye referenced the recent relevant black mirror episode. Sean: maybe the answer is having no human single points of failure) Steve: is Big Brother scary if everyone is Big Brother? With bitcoin, for the first time ever, everyone has access to this data structure. (Onye: in Russia, the Russian facebook, it has less secure privacy settings than .. look up on this database to find out where they live, where they work, etc. Lesley: maybe different people have different privacy requirements. Basic civil rights protections and not criminalizing nonviolent behavior could make surveillance less harmful. Matt likened this discussion to Vi vs. Emacs.) I've now given up on Emacs.
   - Never been banned from anywhere.
   - Contact? stevenaleach@gmail.com
   - Schedule? Until recently, yes. Now, no.

And then...

About half the people left. The meeting appears to be over.