Chaos Computer Club - archive feed

I am an engineer, so when my partner died when I was 24 and I found myself in the midst of grief, I discovered that the best way of dealing with it was to use the engineering approach that was already ingrained in me. “An engineer's guide to grief” if you will.

Some bits worked (some less so!) and that’s what I want to share with you, ahead of a honest, open conversation exploring how we can get all get better at dealing with, and talking about, death.

Trigger warnings: Death, dying, cancer, middle-aged lady probably wearing too much leopard-print

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Trains are one of the safest ways to travel, but it hasn't always been like that. In this talk I will introduce the basics of railway signalling, and look at how it has evolved over time - often in response to accidents and near-misses. You will find out how a single stray wire caused an accident that killed 35 people, why leaves on the line cause such a problem for the railways, and how signalling systems are designed to deal with the inevitable human error. Working from the early days of the railway to the present (and future), the talk will take you through a number of accidents, their causes and the improvements that were made after the accidents.

This talk is suitable for any level of knowledge about railways - it aims to be understandable for complete beginners, and still have some interesting parts even for railway geeks.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

The SEGA Dreamcast was released nearly 25 years ago, but was discontinued after only 18 months on sale in the west, and was such a commercial failure that SEGA never made another console. Despite this short lifetime, a homebrew community formed, has not gone away, and has only become more passionate since.

The most tangible demonstrations of this passion are the extensive hardware modifications that have been developed by hobbyists to drag the Dreamcast kicking and screaming in to the 21st century. Users can restore internet connectivity, replace the PSU or the commonly-failing disk drive (originally based on bespoke optical media), and even enable true digital video output.

I will talk about the origins of the Dreamcast homebrew scene, and the development and implementation of the most popular of these mods that ensure the Dreamcast will live on for many years to come.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Exploring data ethics through creative immersive tools with brainwave, and motion capture data. Is there a difference in sense of self (identity) between the human and the virtual? How does sharing your personal biometric data make you feel? How can biometric and immersive development tools be used in the computing classroom and dance studios to raise awareness of data ethics and immersive performance tools?

We created 3D motion capture data from 2D RGB video sources using AI software. We recorded and visualised EEG using cheaply available equipment. We are currently producing a performance in Augmented Reality, using game development tools for animation data visualisation, particle systems, fragment shaders, etc. And data sonification with Python and Sonic PI.

We will give a video demonstration of work in progress augmented reality ballet using the concepts we have developed. It is cool and awesome.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Business processes evolve continuously, customer expectations and requirements change even faster. Process management and workflow support systems have a tendency to grow organically into fearsomely complex monolithic beasts while piling up technical debt in the process.

Data migrations come at high cost, changing systems almost always require data to be converted into the new systems particular data model, which makes doing data migration verification both complex as well as costly.

Using the open source/free software SQL database engine PostgreSQL, one of the leading Relational Database Management Systems, and in recent years the most popular database engine used in startups and scaleups, takes away the concern of future accessibility and integrity of the data itself.

A middleware layer/REST API built with Symfony framework and a ReactJS based frontend ensure a fully responsive modern UX. Furthermore we use GitLab and Ansible for project management and automating our CI/CD environment.

At OpenNovations we’ve created a solution called Aranei built with standard open source tools which generates a state of the art, open web standards based, user interface on top of any existing SQL data structure. Keep the same schema/structure between source system and archiving solution, or to use the notion of a controlled copy, is a much less cumbersome approach, as a one on one data verification can be performed.

Not just the UI components themselves are generated by the metadata app modeling engine, also automated test scripts and a data dictionary are generated as part of the data verification process.

Business processes evolve continuously, customer expectations and requirements change even faster. Process management and workflow support systems have a tendency to grow organically into fearsomely complex monolithic beasts while piling up technical debt in the process.

Data migrations come at high cost, changing systems almost always require data to be converted into the new systems particular data model, which makes doing data migration verification both complex as well as costly.

Using the open source/free software SQL database engine PostgreSQL, one of the leading Relational Database Management Systems, and in recent years the most popular database engine used in startups and scaleups, takes away the concern of future accessibility and integrity of the data itself.

A middleware layer/REST API built with Symfony framework and a ReactJS based frontend ensure a fully responsive modern UX. Furthermore we use GitLab and Ansible for project management and automating our CI/CD environment.

At OpenNovations we’ve created a solution called Aranei built with standard open source tools which generates a state of the art, open web standards based, user interface on top of any existing SQL data structure. Keep the same schema/structure between source system and archiving solution, or to use the notion of a controlled copy, is a much less cumbersome approach, as a one on one data verification can be performed.

Not just the UI components themselves are generated by the metadata app modeling engine, also automated test scripts and a data dictionary are generated as part of the data verification process.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

We have several ways to install and update openSUSE distributions, standard with zypper, atomic with transactional-update or using disk images created with kiwi or similar tools. But this are all RPM based.

In some scenarios, it would be good to have an image based installation and update mechanism (image means /usr, not a full disk image).

A PoC is MicroOS TIU (https://github.com/thkukuk/tiu), which allows to use either btrfs snapshots or several partitions (usrAB) for installation and update.

This talk will give some insight into it. The current status, the problems, what it means for packaging, etc.

We have several ways to install and update openSUSE distributions, standard with zypper, atomic with transactional-update or using disk images created with kiwi or similar tools. But this are all RPM based.

In some scenarios, it would be good to have an image based installation and update mechanism (image means /usr, not a full disk image).

A PoC is MicroOS TIU (https://github.com/thkukuk/tiu), which allows to use either btrfs snapshots or several partitions (usrAB) for installation and update.

This talk will give some insight into it. The current status, the problems, what it means for packaging, etc.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

D-Installer is the code-name of a experimental project for creating a new YAST-based installer designed to offer reusability, better integration with third-party tools and the possibility of building rich user interfaces over it. In this talk, we will explain the motivation of the YaST Team for creating a new installer and what possibilities this new idea brings. There will be time for diving into some technical details about the project architecture and we will show a live demo! You will hear about D-Bus, web interfaces, YaST and Cockpit. If you are interested in how all those pieces play together, do not hesitate to join us.

D-Installer is the code-name of a experimental project for creating a new YAST-based installer designed to offer reusability, better integration with third-party tools and the possibility of building rich user interfaces over it. In this talk, we will explain the motivation of the YaST Team for creating a new installer and what possibilities this new idea brings. There will be time for diving into some technical details about the project architecture and we will show a live demo! You will hear about D-Bus, web interfaces, YaST and Cockpit. If you are interested in how all those pieces play together, do not hesitate to join us.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Default community distributions are running in the same issues for special architectures. Every Linux distribution has got mostly separate maintainers and hardware distributors are handling these communities really often disconnected. That has been identified also for the architecture s390x. Therefore, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, SUSE, Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat have established together with IBM a Linux Distributions Working Group for a better collaboration together and with the goal to achieve better support. In this presentation, you should receive an overview of a good collaboration between Linux distributions and what you can achieve together with such a Working Group.

Default community distributions are running in the same issues for special architectures. Every Linux distribution has got mostly separate maintainers and hardware distributors are handling these communities really often disconnected. That has been identified also for the architecture s390x. Therefore, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, SUSE, Canonical (Ubuntu) and Red Hat have established together with IBM a Linux Distributions Working Group for a better collaboration together and with the goal to achieve better support. In this presentation, you should receive an overview of a good collaboration between Linux distributions and what you can achieve together with such a Working Group.

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Unfortunately, you cannot pop magic Limitless style pills to improve your memory. But with a bit of understanding about how our memory works, we can introduce techniques that will help us remember important and even unimportant information. In this talk, I will talk a bit about the structure of memory and then discuss some techniques that anyone can use to improve their memory (when you want to).

about this event: https://c3voc.de

Margate, Kent is a phoenix rising from the ashes of Britain's great seaside institutions. This one-time jewel had been abandoned to decay and deprivation. The last 6 or 7 years have seen green shoots of regeneration begun by Turner Contemporary Gallery and is now rich in galleries, media consultants, music and film producers. Its High Street is an exemplar for retail re-purposing. Unfortunately, there remains a lot of deprivation and a widening digital divide.

This talk is an engineer’s tale of moving to Margate from London. The opportunities, experiences and challenges had so far, and an ambition to bring more joy of tech to the area. I will talk about Margate's Maker community as context, and tell tales of working with artists and involvement with several community activities. I even mange to squeeze in a bit of IDEF0 modelling!

about this event: https://c3voc.de