[BCLUG] [Discuss] GitHub...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting BCLUG (admin at bclug.ca):

> And, spent time with BALUG (Bay Area LUG). Cool! I like their
> meetings, and Rick who has contributed to this very thread is
> prominent in the BALUG.

I'm kind of prominent because I'm still there, as is Michael Paoli, and
maybe generously a dozen regulars.  BALUG had a significant problem
during the worst part of the pandemic, in that its meeting space was a
Hunan-cuisine restaurant in the South of Market neighbourhood of San
Francisco, and _that_ was a problem because such "downtown" districts,
or CBDs as we would say in the Hong Kong of my youth, have been
practically ghost-towns.  The tech firms particularly, but also others,
shifted to work-from-home with conviction (COVID being taken properly
seriously in non-rural parts of the Golden State, and especially in the
S.F. Bay Area), and have been in no hurry to shift staff operations back
into town again.

Thus, that _particular_ Henry's Hunan Restaurant had greatly reduced
operations for a long while (because ghosttown), and only about six
months ago resumed indoor dinner service -- still closing earlier than
before, at 8pm.

In general, the Bay Area Linux community is still trying to find its way
again as the world changes, which isn't surprising because the S.F. Bay
Area is doing likewise.

> I don't think I agree. Sure, they've done some dumb stuff, but most
> people don't remember Anonymous and never equated it with Linux.

Indeed.  My reaction to the notion of Anonymous being even significantly
associated with either Linux or open source was "Huh?"

I mean, I was an avid "Mr. Robot" fan, too.  F-Society was an obvious
Anonymous reference, and Elliot Alderson and his gang _did_ work a lot
on Linux on-screen, and, miracle of miracles, all of the screen commands
were real and made sense.  But Anonymous _itself_ had/has no special
connection to Linux, to my knowledge.

> Never seen the show, just a few clips on YouTube. Seemed okay.

Try season 1.  I think it's worth your time.

> Computing being fun is kinda hard these days. Computing is to modern
> life like water is to fish. And fish don't have "fresh water user
> groups" (so I'm told).

Quite.  The perception is that infrastructure doesn't need such
things.  Which, actually, is kind of cool, when you reflect on 
that, in relation to where we were, all those years ago.

(I'm now one of the old fogies.  Odd how that happens.)

> Meetup.com has groups focused on a lot of different technologies. I have
> gone to a PostgreSQL meetup once that had something like 50 people! And
> pizza.

So... I don't flog my "Meetup Rant" essay, as that's obnoxious
behaviour, and it's linked in two places from the Linux User Group
HOWTO, in case anyone actually wants to find it.  And the entire point
of such an essay, when/if I'm motivated to write and host one, is to
capture my view on a subject so I can say "Here, read this thing if you
want to know my view", and not annoy myself or others repeating a
conversation that got old.

That having been said, direct link:
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/meetup.html