[chbot] Opening the doors to another real meeting

[Volker Kuhlmann]

> Our next meeting is planned for Monday 18th May 2020.
> How much interest in attending ?

At this point I prefer to give avoidable physical meetings a miss and
see what's ahppening for another month. If 10 limit wouldn't kill it
anyway, distancing, hygiene etc are just cumbersome.

> Thoughts please.

Go online again. It worked kind of ok last time.

My issues with it:

* Google meet worked in chromium, but did nothing in Firefox, where
things hang for 2 minutes before finishing off with some really dumb
error message. Google knows exactly why it doesn't work - using
borderline-proprietary standards and a "my way or get stuffed" attitude.
Google is the new Microsoft, but hides that behind some "no evil" smoke
screen. I have very low tolerance for rewarding that kind of company.
Case in point: try find a download link for chromium - except for the
nightly build it goes straight to chrome.

* Privacy. I'm one of the few who cares. When we meet at the club,
there's a reasonable expectation that e.g. things are not recorded (or
at least people ask first), and that the size of the audience is exactly
known. There are no such things with online meetings unless there are
serious discussions first (I haven't seen anyone bother yet) *and* the
technology can be trusted and verified, including software and
processing facilities (cloud stuff).

There's no way I'll be having video with google or zoom (another dubious
company), and no way I'll have audio with google, and probably not zoom
either.


I currently have access to a Jitsi server that is otherwise idle. 4
core, 8GB, but in Germany. I don't know what its Jitsi limits are but
I'd be keen to test it out.[1] It might not work best for those with slow
connections.

I couldn't find useful info on Big Blue Button, all there is is stuff
about some open source front end. Speak up if anyone has more info.


Although I do have a webcam now. I could make a brief presentation about
how that came to be. With some photos I could make a web page with no
more effort (or less...).


Volker

[1] It works fine with FF 68.2esr, but one report of crashing FF 74(?).
I'd try the latest stable FF of a few days ago next.

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann
http://volker.top.geek.nz/	Please do not CC list postings to me.