HWC Baltimore 2017-11-01 Wrap-Up

Baltimore's first November 2017 meetup for Homebrew Website Club met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on November 1st. 

Below are notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup.

bouhmad.com – Been working on a big post about security issues. Also, collecting resources for an Equifax-breach-themed CryptoParty in November, which will also go on his site.

djfalcon23.github.io – Buying his dream domain (TBA once it is registered). Been reading lots about getting into tech industry, dealing w/ impostor syndrome. Planning to turn some of these into notes and/or posts on his site when it is up.

martymcgui.re – Posted up the last IWC NYC 2017 interview (with Tantek). Would like to have one per week to put up, so will bring his mic to next HWC Baltimore, and may start asking people in IRC to do interviews over Skype, Zencaster, or similar. Also just reached the 100th episode of his comedy podcast.

Other things.

• Worries about Net Neutrality and the upcoming FCC proposals to break it by allowing pay-for-access fees to publishers. We looked at resources like battleforthenet.com and a video from Congressional Democrats about the issue.
  
• Podcasts about tech. Derek has been trying to find podcasts about cutting-edge tech, but been frustrated. For example, Friends Talk Frontend has good content, but he finds the hosts annoying. Adam recommend Talk Python to Me because it is funny and timely, focusing on new tech. Marty recommends the Contrafubilists because it is kind of an anti-cutting-edge tech podcast with very thoughtful hosts that take apart the marketing speak behind technology trends.
• Also got off into the weeds about good story-driven podcasts. 😅
• Talked about a theoretical "disruptive student" detection system that uses computer vision, motion detection, face recognition, to log "overactive" students and generate reports. Generated a lot of interesting discussion about unintended consequences of technologically "simple" systems.
• Talked about the problems of trying to digitize the rules of complex human systems and the problems of measuring outcomes, determining what "just" algorithms looks like, etc.

Thanks to everybody who came out! We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the next one! We'll be meeting again on November 15th and November 29th.