Edward Snowden will kick off LibrePlanet 2016 in Cambridge | Hacker News Reader

Edward Snowden will kick off LibrePlanet 2016 in Cambridge

fsf.org

This is a great boost for LibrePlanet and an excellent opportunity for GNU hackers from a variety of perspectives on the personal privacy issue to engage in a serious and hopefully society-changing dialog.

Will this be broadcast or recorded for those unable to attend in person?

The entire event will be recorded for later viewing, as with previous LibrePlanets. I'll check with Georgia from FSF whether this event will be live streamed and update here later. Snowden will be streamed _within_ the event (he's not onsite) so you may want to actually go to Boston, as a recording of him being streamed will just not be the same :-)

I was not aware that a decent "free software live video stream" exists. Anyone know what technology they'll be using?

In the past, I usually notice him using Google Hangouts.

I'm pretty sure the FSF is using GStreamer and Icecast for LibrePlanet events.

This is correct as of last year, and probably this year, too, but I can't say that for sure. They could very well have made some good tweaks and upgrades to the hardware/software.

Last year, Thinkpad X200 laptops (using Libreboot and Trisquel) were used in the 3 session rooms. The cameras were by Elphel, also running free firmware. The laptops processed the video feed with some complicated gstreamer pipeline and sent the result off to the FSF's Icecast server. The stream could then be viewed in the video player of your choice (such as VLC) or directly in a web browser. A small JavaScript application on the LibrePlanet site let you quickly switch between the 3 rooms and used Icecast's XML API to retrieve some fun stats like how many people were currently watching the stream.

It would be nice if they could get beefier machines on site doing the a/v work which really taxes the X200 (the gstreamer processes get nice'd to give them higher priority and the fan is set to max via a kernel setting), but there simply aren't any better options for fully free computers right now that can be reasonably transported. Or maybe the FSF has found something that I don't know about. We'll see!

I guess it depends on your definition of "reasonably transported" but options are opening up:

http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-d16/

Yes, this is a nice recent advancement. The GNU Guix project will likely be using this motherboard for their build farm.

We're all rooting for GNU Guix. For me, at least, this is the project of 2016 to watch, get involved with and support. I grabbed early versions and I couldn't be happier :-)

Hello FSF, I want to kick off LibreGulag [0] :( Please support me too!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

You will want to go here for more information and to network with other groups toward starting a LibreGulag: https://libreplanet.org/

Good luck!

This is really sad. I can't support FSF any more. I agreed with their mission, but I don't agree with Snowden's.

I've watched carefully all the Snowden interviews and available tape. While I may not agree with him on everything, I believe that the core message being discussed is important. I don't believe one way or another this means FSF, LibrePlanet attendees or GNU programmers in general all agree specifically with Snowden or his tactics. Some may, some may not. But all agree that the issues of lost freedom, privacy invasion and government overreach are critical to discuss and collaboratively find solutions for.

I can still support them even though they have engaged that oath-breaker. They do a lot of good, on balance — a lot. I wish that they hadn't fallen for the hysteria, but they're still doing a great amount of really important work.

"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"

His oath wasn't to the US government. He hasn't broken anything.

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