FOSS and Crafts

Blender, the absolute powerhouse of FOSS 3d (and increasingly 2d) graphics! We give an overview of the software's history, some personal history of our relationships to the software, what it can do, and where we're excited to see it go!Links:BlenderBlender historyGrease pencilSome historical Blender videos from the NeoGeo and Not a Number days: Did It, Done It, Not a Number commercial, Come and SeeElephants Dream, aka Project OrangeBig Buck BunnyPrevious episodes on blender:Blender for open movie productions and educationSophie Jantak on pet portraits and Blender's Grease PencilBlender Conference videos mentioned:Inklines Across The SpiderverseMy Journey Across the Spider-Verse: from Hobbyist to HollywoodForensic Architecture - spatial analysis for human rights casesThe MediaGoblin campaign video (well, the second one)14th anniversary animation gift to MorganIn Unexpected PlacesSeams to Sewing Pattern (a Blender plugin for making clothes and stuffed animals!) (could we make Free Soft Wear patterns with it?)Wing It!Wing It! Production Logs and BlenderheadsEpisodes about lisp, because obviously Blender needs more lisp (who's going to do it):What is Lisp?Lisp but Beautiful, Lisp for Everyone

How do you survive in a world that is no longer optimized for making your own clothing when you suddenly find that modern conveniences no longer accommodate you? As a textile historian, Morgan has been ruminating for years about women's contributions to the domestic economy, the massive time investment of producing clothing for a family, and the comparative properties of different textile fibers. These research interests were informed by a lifetime of sewing and other fiber crafts. None of this experience, however, properly prepared her to face the reality of needing to rely on her own hands to provide large portions of her own wardrobe.Guest co-host Juliana Sims sits down with Morgan to talk about how, in the wake of a recently developed allergy to synthetic fabrics, she now finds herself putting that knowledge of historical textile production to use to produce clothing that she can wear.Links and other notes:Morgan presented this as a (much shorter) talk at the Dress Conference 2023Slides from the presentationMorgan's Dissertation, which we also coveredRSI Glove PatternThe quote that Morgan somewhat misremembered about a woman preparing wool before the winter:"A thrifty countrywoman had a small croft, she and her sturdy spouse. He tilled his own land, whether the work called for the plough, or the curved sickle, or the hoe. She would now sweep the cottage, supported on props; now she would set the eggs to be hatched under the plumage of the brooding hen; or she gathered green mallows or white mushrooms, or warmed the low hearth with welcome fire. And yet she diligently employed her hands at the loom, and armed herself against the threats of winter." -- Ovid, Fasti 4.687-714

Back again with governance... part two! (See also: part one!) Here we talk about some organizations and how they can be seen as "templates" for certain governance archetypes.Links:Cygnus, CygwinMastodonAndroidFree Software Foundation, GNUSoftware Freedom Conservancy, Outreachy, Conservancy's copyleft compliance projectsCommons ConservancyF-DroidOpen CollectiveLinux Foundation501(c)(3) vs 501(c)(6)StitchtingFree as in FreedomLKML (the Linux Kernel Mailing List)Linus Doesn't ScaleSpritely Networked Communities InstitutePython and the Python Software Foundation, PyCon, the Python Package IndexPython PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals), XMPP XEPs, Fediverse FEPs, Rust RFCsBlender, Blender Foundation, Blender Institute, Blender StudioBlender's historyElephants DreamMozilla Foundation and Mozilla CorporationDebian, Debian's organizational structure, and Debian's constitutionEFFOh yeah and I guess we should link the World History Association!

Governance of FOSS projects, a two parter, and this is part one! Here we talk about general considerations applicable to FOSS projects! (And heck, these apply to collaborative free culture projects too!)Links:Why We Need Code of Conducts, and Why They're Not Enough, by Aeva BlackBlender Cloud and the Blender Development Fund

WebAssembly! You've probably heard lots about it, but what the heck is it? Is it just for C and Rust programs? Can you write it by hand? (Do you want to?) And wait, how is Spritely getting involved in WebAssembly efforts? Find out!Links:WebAssemblyHoot! (and Hoot announcement, Andy Wingo joining, Robin Templeton joining)Lisp Game Jam - "Wireworld" - Hoot's low level WASM tooling in actionDirectly compiling Scheme to WebAssembly: lambdas, recursion, iteration!Understanding the WebAssembly text formatWebAssembly GC proposalEpisode 49: Lisp but Beautiful; Lisp for EveryoneWASIPOSIXEpisode 17: Gardening, from seedling to seasonedConway's Game of LifeWASM-4Episode 46: Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1Schism by Eric Holk

F-Droid, a repository of free software for your Android devices! Christine interviews F-Droid developers Sylvia van Os and Hans-Christoph Steiner as well as F-Droid board member and chair... Morgan Lemmer-Webber!Links:F-DroidSylvia van OsHans-Christoph SteinerF-Droid board announcementGuardian ProjectGoogle Play bans Matrix/ElementCatimaYour app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

In yet another deep dive into yet another weird hobby of Christine's, we talk about how to make your own dehydrated meals! Why the heck would you want to do this? Well, maybe you want more consistent or dietary needs friendly travel food! Maybe you want to go camping or hiking! Maybe you're sick of deciding what's for lunch and you just want to scoop a cup of meal out of a jar on your desk every day! Maybe you want to weird out your fellow conference-goers as you turn a dry powder into a fully cooked meal with hot water and hot water alone!Links:Making dehydrated meals overview (Christine's Kitchen 0): [YouTube] [PeerTube]Backpacking chefDishwasher cooking (yes it is a thing)

Morgan talks about "Free Soft Wear": textile processes under free culture licenses!Links:Morgan's talk about Free Soft Wear at the Creative Freedom SummitElena of Valhalla's repository of CC BY-SA sewing patternsMorgan's blogFree Soft Wear indexDice bag and simple skirt tutorialsRSI Glove patternSimple sweaterLayered SkirtKat Walsh or @kat@stareinto.spaceTall Dog Electronics face mask (You may recognize Dan and Tall Dog Electronics of TinyNES fame)Wikimedia CommonsProject GutenbergLearning the sewing machineRSI episodeFreeSewing (an open source software project that creates made-to-measure creative commons licensed sewing patterns)

Everyone goofs sometimes. Today we talk accidents... some happy, some not!Links:Decaf coffee and history of penicillin, your pop-sci "accidents of history" stories of the day. Look, this is admittedly kind of a fluff episode.Have we linked to Worse is Better before? We did? In the lisp episode?And here's the Terminal Phase episode

Twitter is burning, and people are flocking to the fediverse. Is the fediverse ready though? How did we get here? Where should we be going? Since Christine is co-author of ActivityPub, the primary protocol used by the fediverse, Morgan decides it's time to get Christine's thoughts recorded and out there... so we hop in the car as we talk all about it!Links:ActivityPub, the protocol which wires the federated social web together, of which Christine is co-author! Be sure to check out the Overview section... it's actually fairly easy to understand!Some of the implementations discussed (though there are many more):MastodonPeertubePixelfedPleromaA lot has been written about Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. Here's a pretty decent timeline (though it's missing the transphobia stuff).W3C Social Web Working Group is where ActivityPub was standardizedOcapPub (while not complete, it lays out a lot of the core problems with the way the fediverse has gone)The Spritely InstitutePrevious episodes on Spritely: What is Spritely?, Spritely Updates! (November 2021), and sorta kinda the Terminal Phase episodeThe Presentation of Self on a Decentralized Web (PhD dissertation by ActivityPub co-author Amy Guy, partly covers its standardization)SMTP and XMPP can be seen as decentralized "social networks" before that term took offOStatuspump.io is where the pump.io API came from, which is the direct predecessor to ActivityPubStatusNet / GNU SocialDiasporaMediaGoblinAPConf videosContext CollapseEarly writeups from Christine some of these ideas, but are old:ActivityPub: from decentralied to distributed social networksmagenccrystalgolem

Terminal Phase! A space shooter that runs in your terminal!!! Who wouldn't be excited about that?Not to mention that it shows off cool features of Spritely Goblins... like time travel:Well, Terminal Phase has been Christine's fun/downtime project for the last few years, and one of the bonuses you can get for the reward tiers of donating to this podcast! And yet we've never done an episode about it! Given that a brand new (and much easier to install) release of Terminal Phase is coming out really soon, we figured now's a good time to talk about it!Links:Terminal Phase!Blogposts about Terminal Phase!Project announcement1.0 announcementTime travel debugging in Spritely Goblins, previewed through Terminal Phase1.1 announcementTerminal Phase was in a Polish "Linux magazine"!FOSS & Crafts' PatreonSpritely Goblins, a project of the Spritely InstituteBlast off! A tour of Spritely Institute's techRacketGuileGuix8sync (Goblins predecessor). See also the Mudsync video, on that very page.RaartSpacewar!A bit about how Spacewar lead to UNICS (later renamed Unix)

Morgan and Christine walk through their (well, Morgan's) renovation of a cargo van into a campervan. This is a very crafty episode, but we do work in a few analogies to some FOSS (and open hardware) things!Show notes at the end, but how about a quick visual van tour?Back of the van, wide open!A closer look...Actually, let's move that solar panel aside...Here's a better view of the cabinet with all the equipment attached:Here's what the van looks like if you come in the side door:Another, more diagonal view:Safety first!Window covers, custom fit! Reflectix goes out, fabric goes in.The cabinet with the cargo net off...And one more view!Links:Cheap RV Living channel on YouTubeVanlife subredditBuilt to Go! A #Vanlife PodcastForesty Forest

The Spritely Institute (of which Christine is CTO) just announced its multi-year grant by the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web and gave a tour of its current tech! This is a big moment that's been in the works for a while, as Spritely moves hands towards real stewardship by a real nonprofit!Also also! The video recording of the Lisp/Scheme workshop (based on A Scheme Primer) is released! Unlock Lisp / Scheme's magic: beginner to Scheme-written-in-Scheme in one hour! (PeerTube, YouTube, )Links:Spritely Networked Communities InstituteFFDW funding announcementTech tourDonate to the Spritely Institute!FOSS & Crafts episodes about Spritely:The What is Spritely episode, where Morgan says "get in the car Christine you need to talk about your project", is the first time Christine laid out the broader (early) plans for Spritely in depth! (In that sense, FOSS & Crafts has been here for much of Spritely's journey, as many of our listeners know!)Spritely Updates! (November 2021)Less directly, Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1 talks about much of the tech that informs Spritely's design!Spritely Institute's jobs page which will have jobs posted on it like, real soon nowSpritely Institute is also the org that published A Scheme Primer, which we've talked about beforeFree as in Freedom has talked about how the IRS has been more cautious about granting nonprofit status to FOSS orgs in Episode 0x4E (IRS Refusal Redux)Some background about Randy Farmer (Spritely Institute's Executive Director):Randy co-founded Lucasfilm's Habitat, the world's first graphical massively multiplayer virtual world, which ran on the Commodore 64 in 1985 (!!!)Revival over at neohabitat.orgSee the hilarious marketing videoThe Lessons of Lucasfilms Habitat is one of the most cited papers about virtual community designs of all times, and still holds up todayElectric Communities Habitat was Habitat's followup.Hard to find information on, but here's a Randy demo'ing the system from 1997!The E Programming Language, on which much of Spritely is designed, came from EC Habitat. See Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1 for more on that (and hey, when are we getting out part 2?)Randy co-hosts a podcast called Social Media Clarity which has some interesting episodes.See also Spritely Institute's brilliant engineer Jessica Tallon writing about her experiences and especially her pebble bank design!

Morgan's out sick! And yet Morgan is still in this episode! And that's because this episode is the audio version of a talk by the very same name from FOSDEM 2022, co-presented by Christine and Morgan! But since Morgan isn't here, Christine fills in, and also gets a bit silly.HACK AND CRAFT SCHEME TUTORIALS! The last live scheme tutorial went really well! And relatedly, Christine and the Spritely Institute just published A Scheme Primer, which is more or less the text version of that presentation! The next live verison of the sheme tutorial will be hosted at Hack & Craft! Come this Saturday, July 16, 2pm-4pm ET (6pm-8pm UTC)! We're planning to record this one!Oh, and bonus Fructure gif:Links:The video version of this talkEpisode 47: What is Lisp?Wisp and its associated SRFI-119Fructure!!! Watch the amazing RacketCon talk!

The amazing Sophie Jantak joins us to talk about how she makes pet portraits (including one she made for us!) using Blender's Grease Pencil. Hear about Sophie's process, why Grease Pencil is the right tool for her, and what her collalboration process is like on pet portrait commissions! (And yes, you can commission Sophie tool!)BONUS FREE CULTURAL SOURCE CONTENT! We've collectively decided to release this artwork's source code as a free cultural work! Get the .blend (CC BY-SA 4.0)!HACK AND CRAFT SCHEME TUTORIALS! Also a reminder, we'll be hosting two versions of a "Intro to Scheme" tutorial during the two Hack & Craft meetings this month!July 2nd, 8pm-10pm ET (12am-2am UTC): First trial run of Scheme tutorial!July 16, 2pm-4pm ET (6pm-8pm UTC): Second version, we're planning to record this one!Links:Sophie Jantak!YouTube channel (lots of great grease pencil tutorials!)Pet commissionsPatreonSophie's beginner grease pencil tutorial: 3d bonsai paintingBlender and Grease Pencil (hybrid 2d and 3d artwork)Christine's cat comix (these were made for Morgan when she was finishing her dissertation, but maybe you'll enjoy them):1: Deadlines2: The Anxiety Cloud3: Missy's Adventures in Video Gaming4: Missy's NES cart5: Enter Kelsey the Queen6: Kelsey Claims the House for Herself7: Missy's Revenge8: Kelsey's DemandHERO, a Blender Grease Pencil ShowcaseThere are a lot of good Grease Pencil tutorials online... we'll let you find them, but this Grease Pencil Random Tips and Tricks is a nice thing to know about!FOSS & Crafts Episode 16: Bassam Kurdali on using Blender for open movie productions and education

This episode is all about the Lisp family of programming languages! Ever looked at Lisp and wondered why so many programmers gush about such a weird looking programming language style? What's with all those parentheses? Surely there must be something you get out of them for so many programming nerds to gush about the language! We do a light dive into Lisp's history, talk about what makes Lisp so powerful, and nerd out about the many, many kinds of Lisps out there!Announcement: Christine is gonna give an intro-to-Scheme tutorial at our next Hack & Craft! Saturday July 2nd, 2022 at 20:00-22:00 ET! Come and learn some Scheme with us!Links:Various histories of Lisp:History of Lisp by John McCarthyThe Evolution of Lisp by Guy L. Steele and Richard P. GabrielHistory of LISP by Paul McJonesWilliam Byrd's The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written demonstrates just how easy it is to write lisp in lisp, showing off the kernel of evaluation living at every modern programming language!M-expressions (the original math-notation-vision for users to operate on) vs S-expressions (the structure Lisp evaluators actually operate at, in direct representational mirror of the typically, but not necessarily, parenthesized representation of the same).Lisp-1 vs Lisp-2... well, rather than give a simple link and analysis, have a thorough one.Lisp machinesMIT's CADR was the second iteration of the lisp machine, and the most influential on everything to come. Then everything split when two separate companies implemented it...Lisp Machines, Incorporated (LMI), founded by famous hacker Richard Greenblatt, who aimed to keep the MIT AI Lab hacker culture alive by only hiring programmers part-time.Symbolics was the other rival company. Took venture capital money, was a commercial success for quite a while.These systems were very interesting, there's more to them than just the rivalry. But regarding that, the book Hackers (despite its issues) captures quite a bit about the AI lab before this and then its split, including a ton of Lisp history.Some interesting things happening over at lisp-machine.orgThe GNU manifestio mentions Lisp quite a bit, including that the plan was for the system to be mostly C and Lisp.Worse is Better, including the original (but the first of those two links provides a lot of context)The AI winter. Bundle up, lispers!Symbolics' Mac IvoryRISC-V tagged architecture, plus this lowRISC tagged memory tutorial. (We haven't read these yet, but they're on the reading queue!)SchemeThere's a lot of these... we recommend Guile if you're interested in using Emacs (along with Geiser), and Racket if you're looking for a more gentle introduction (DrRacket, which ships with Racket, is a friendly introduction)The R5RS and R7RS-small specs are very short and easy to read especiallySee this section of the Guile manual for a bit of... historyCommon Lisp... which, yeah there are multiple implementations, but these days really means SBCL with Sly or SLIMEClojure introduced functional datastructures to the masses (okay, maybe not the masses). Neat stuff, though not a great license choice (even if technically FOSS) in our opinion and Rich Hickey kinda blew up his community so maybe use something else these days.Hy, always hy-lariousFennel, cutest lil' Lua Lisp you've ever seenWebassembly's text syntax isn't technically a Lisp, but let's be honest... is it technically not a Lisp either?!Typed Racket and HackettEmacs... Lisp?... well let's just give you the tutorial! The dreams of the 60s-80s are alive in Emacs.Actually, we just did an episode about Emacs, didn't we?Digital Humanities Workshops episodeWe guess if you wanted to use Racket and VS Code, you could use Magic Racket?! We dunno, we've never used VS Code! (Are we out of touch?!)What about for Guile?! Someone put some energy into Guile Studio!Hack & Craft!

Calling all programming language nerds! Distinguished computer scientist Mark S. Miller (presently at Agoric) joins us to tell us all about distributed object programming languages and their history! We talk about actors, a bit of Xanadu, and little known but incredibly influential programming languages like Flat Concurrent Prolog, Joule, and E!Actually there's so much to talk about that this episode is just part one! There's more to come!Links:The actor model (the core of which is sometimes distinguished from modified variants by as being called "the classic actor model"). Long history; Tony Garnock-Jones' History of Actors is maybe the cleanest writeupThe Agoric Open Systems papers by Mark Miller and Eric Drexler are a good background into the underlying motivations that got Mark into distributed objectsmarkm-talks and markm-more-talks which are mostly about object capability security topicsAPConf keynote, Architectures of Robust Openness by Mark S. Miller (YouTube copy)Mark diagraming a (certificate based) object capabilities flow at Rebooting Web of Trust 2017 (when Mark and Christine first met!)The history of Mark and company performing civil disobediance to make cryptography available to everyone is discussed in When Encryption Was a Crime: The 1990s Battle for Free Speech in Software, part of a four part seriesRSAXanadu, Ted Nelson, and Computer Lib/Dream MachinesXerox PARC, which is where the Vulcan group happened (which is hard to find information on, sadly).Mark mentions some of his colleagues who worked with him in the Vulcan group, including Dean Tribble (who worked on Joule, see more below) and Danny Bobrow who is famous for his groundbreaking program STUDENT (Natural Language Input for a Computer Proglem Solving System is an incredible read, detailing a program (written in lisp!) which could read algebra "word problems" written in plain English and solve them... in 1964!).Flat Concurrent Prolog... it's tough to find things about! Presumably here's the paper Mark mentioned that Dean lead on Flat Concurrent Prolog from the Vulcan group which lead to Joule's channels. A bit more on (go figure) erights.org!The Joule manual is still a very interesting read, if you can find the time. Talks about channels in depth.Here's the Communicating Sequential Processes book by Tony Hoare, quite a nerdy read!On capabilities and actors... we'll get to this more in the next episode, but for now we'll leave the Ode to the Granovetter Diagram paper here (it's a truly amazing document!)

In this episode we give a very (very) high level introduction to cryptography concepts. No math or programming background required!Links:Crypto 101, probably the BEST book for learning about cryptography concepts. And a relevant talk from PyCon!We mentioned RSA, which is the first publicly published algorithm for public key cryptography. These days most public key cryptography uses elliptic curves instead. It's possible that in the future, something else will be recommended instead!Playing around with GnuPG can be a great way to learn about cryptography as a user, but... it's also not the easiest thing to learn either, and we don't personally believe that GPG/PGP's web of trust model is a realistic path for user security. (But what we recommend instead, that's a topic for a future episode.) Still, a useful tool in all sorts of ways.Mixing and matching these things at a low level can be tricky, and unexpected vulnerabilities can easily occur. Cryptographic Right Answers has been a useful page, but the cryptography world keeps moving!

Guix turns ten! We celebrate Guix's first decade by highlighting ten great things about Guix! Hear all about functional package management, time-traveling operating systems, and why "Composable DSLs" are great!Links:GuixStories about 10 years of Guix, from the Guix blogNixCool Guix features highlighted in this episode:Grafts (for security updates)guix challengeguix shell and guix environmentguix packNonguix (Proprietary! Nonfree! But sometimes some users need these things to get their computers to work...)Reproducible BuildsBootstrappable BuildsMes (see this video for an introduction)Reflections on Trusting Trust (aka the "Thompson Attack" described in the episode)virtualenv

This week we're talking about Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI). Christine and Morgan tell their stories bout over-using their wrists from programming (prodded along by an injury) and writing academic papers respectively. We discuss what you can do to treat or minimize the effects of these injuries then cap it off with a discussion of RSI gloves including Morgan's Free Soft Wear RSI glove pattern.Repetitive Strain InjuriesMorgan's RSI gloves articleYour Wrists Hurt, You Must Be a ProgrammerIt's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome book (there are probably better resources out there now, this is what Christine read a decade ago)WorkraveSome RSI exercises that Christine thought were effective (old, but archived on internet archive... Christine still uses them sometimes)

Christine finally overcomes her fear of the sewing machine and we talk about Christine and Morgan's respective experiences learning it, and how you can pick it up too!Links:Morgan's article on Basic Sewing Patterns. Includes pictures of the dicebag and skirt! (More tutorials coming soon!)You probably know what a sewing machine is, but isn't there always more to learn?A Cultural Perspective on Gender Diversity in Computing and Building an Effective Computer Science Student Organization: The Carnegie Mellon Women@SCSAction Plan (On that note, when Christine was in college she attended a presentation by Lenore Blum about women in CS, which is where the potluck anecdote comes from.)

Morgan finally overcomes her fear of Emacs and we talk about Morgan and Christine's respective experiences learning it, and how you can pick it up too!Our talks tomorrow at FOSDEM's Declarative and Minimalistic Computing room:Lisp but Beautiful; Lisp for EveryoneSpritely Goblins Comes to GuileSwitching capslock and ctrl stuff: (it's a great idea even if you don't use Emacs; many keyboards used to have ctrl key where capslock now is, and much advanced program use benefits from keyboard shortcuts):Switching on GNU/LinuxSwitching on Windows 10 & 11Switching on OSXOn Guix: (keyboard-layout "us" #:options '("caps:ctrl_modifier" "shift:both_capslock")) in your system configuration both makes capslock a ctrl and allows you to press both shift keys at once to enable capslock behavior (should you want such a thing)And actually there's a whole EmacsWiki page about itLinks:Emacs!Git and MagitOrg-ModeSpacemacsMousemacsEmacs Themes… find one that's right for you!The Emacs lisp reference manualemacsconfOrg-mode and Org-Roam for Scholars and ResearchersSacha Chua, whose blog is full of awesome emacs and emacs news posts, and who also releases lots of great videos about Emacs!Emacs Rocks!Episode 14: Digital Humanities WorkshopsEpisode 15: Scribble and the Open Document Formatmu4e, ERC, crdt.el (video)… many more emacs tools mentioned, not all linked! Trying to be comprehensive would result in a trip to the M-x doctor for sure…wireworld-el, Christine's (minimalist) implementation of the wireworld cellular automata (cellular automata circuits!)And yes, it turns out you CAN annotate PDFs in emacs, using the pdf-tools package!

Morgan and Christine talk about the skills they've learned in their humanities backgrounds and how those have translated into their work within FOSS communities and projects. They'll then discuss the benefits of seeking out varied skillsets within your communities, the value of looking at problems from multiple lenses, and how to use all of the tools we've got to promote our projects. (This episode is the audio from our SeaGL keynote of the same name!)Oh yeah, and as we said in the intro, the TinyNES campaign is going strong (see our last episode)! We met the minimum goal which means it's happening! Still a couple of weeks left (at time of writing) to get yourself an open hardware NES, but over half of the "genuine chip" ones are now sold out, so get yours while you can!Links:SeaGL, and a video of our keynote of the same nameSpritelyOkay here's Christine's old comic Lingo from nearly two decades ago, don't judge too harshly plsEmacsLaTeXRacket and Racket's picture languageMediaGoblinDigital Humanities Workshops episodeMusic Production on Guix SystemJessica Tallon and Spritely interviewFOSS Stitch episode of F&C, and ih!The Liberated Pixel CupDeb NicholsonUrchn Studios

Dan Gilbert of Tall Dog joins us to talk about the Tiny Nostalgia Evocation Square (or TinyNES for short)! The TinyNES is an open hardware system compatible with the compatible with original Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom cartridges and controllers. Instead of being just an emulator or FPGA-based implementation, the TinyNES uses the original 6502-derived chips and a custom circuit board, preserving and carrying forward computing history! Oh yeah, and it's also running a crowdfunding campaign, so you can order your own and support open hardware in the best way possible: by playing video games!By the way, we mentioned that FOSS & Crafts Studios would be launching its first collaboration... we're helping to run the crowdfunding campaign on this one (and couldn't be more excited about it)!Links:TinyNES crowdfunding campaign (launch announcement, sources will be on tinynes.com when campaign succeeds)Tall Dog, Dan's company (they do some other cool open hardware stuff too, check 'em out!)Tall Dog's statement on supporting open sourceThe 6502 chip and its specially modified version for the Nintendo Enetertainment System, the Ricoh 2A03FreeCAD and KiCADVisual6502Nova the SquirrelEverdrive (proprietary hardware, but lets you run custom ROMs, including Nova)Robot Finds Kitten on the c64! Written in Racket!

It's time for some updates on Spritely, the project Christine founded to advance decentralized networking technology! A lot has happened since our episode about Spritely from last year (which is really where Spritely got its main public announcement)! Most notably, Jessica Tallon has joined the project thanks to a generous grant from NLNet and NGI Zero! But there's a lot more that has happened too, so listen in!ALSO! As mentioned at the end of this episode, starting with the NEXT episode, we'll begin signing off every episode by thanking donors to FOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! By donating you both support this podcast AND Christine's work on Spritely!Links:The Spritely ProjectFOSS & Crafts Studios' Patreon! Donate to show up in the thank-yous for upcoming episodes!The previous "What is Spritely?" of this podcastJessica Tallon joins with a grant from NLNet/NGI Zero! Plus an interview!Spritely Brux, Spritely's identity and trust management framework, which Jessica is working on (and Morgan dressed as for the costume contest)Goblin-Chat (mostly a prototype to demonstrate the underlying networking tech)Spritely Goblins, Spritely's distributed programming environment framework (and which Christine dressed as for the costume contest) (code, documentation)Work in progress port of Goblins on Guile! It's getting close!Spritely Aurie, Spritely's security-preserving runtime serialization and upgrade frameworkSafe Serialization Under Mutual Suspicion by Mark S. MillerPickling, Uneval, Unapply by Jonathan ReesOCapN, the new generation of CapTP and friends (see also What is CapTP, and what does it enable?)Coroutines, Goblins' scoped suport for them. As for why they aren't prioritized in Goblins, read up on re-entrancy attacks, including this ancient e-lang email threadGoblins' integration with Racket's asynchronous programming stuff via sync/pr (will be documented in the next tutorial version)SeaGL, where Morgan and Christine keynoted... and performed in the costume contest as the Spritely Brux and Goblins mascots!

Wm Salt Hale joins us to talk about his dissertation on resilience in FOSS communities (especially after crisis events), the kind of impacts founder decisions can have on long-term community development, especially as seen through reactions to software vulnerabilities and license decisions.Also! Salt mentions that we're keynoting at SeaGL this weekend! It's an online conference, so maybe we'll see you there!Links:Wm Salt HaleSalt's master's thesis: Resilience in Free/Libre/Open Source SoftwareCommunity Data Science CollectiveBenjamin Mako HillWikipedia article on HeartbleedDebianChampion, Kaylea. 2019. “Production Misalignment: A Threat to Public Knowledge.” Master of Arts Thesis, Seattle, Washington: University of Washington.PandasScrapyHarvard DataverseSnowdriftSeaGL

Lightning round! Morgan and Christine blast through a bunch of snack-sized topics they're currently interested in, ranging from an actual FOSS video game made for the NES, to "Free Soft Wear" clothing, to compiler towers!above image from Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear"Links:This episode's title was inspired by Ian Bicking's 2009 PyCon talk, "Topics of Interest", but it's bitrotted off the internet so we can't link you to that one. Boooooo!Nova the Squirel by... Nova the SquirrelSource code!upcoming SNES sequel!You might need an NES emulator... Mednafen is good and can play games on a lot of systemsMark Bitman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" First edition and no I'm not linking you to the second edition which is good but not as deeply instructiveElena "of Valhalla"'s blogpost about tie-on pocketssee alsosee also (see also)Episode 17: Gardening, from seedling to seasonedGuile's compiler towerKat Walsh's awesome necklace she made during Hack & CraftJim's Big Ego's song Mix Tape from the album They're Everywhere!If you like this song, you might really like the album free* which Christine would argue tells a collective narrative very relevant to this podcastRobo Rally! Program robots!Morgan's blogpost on "free soft wear" (term coined by the great Kat Walsh!)Morgan's tablet weaving pattern for the "html strap" (Partly inspired by this pattern, but honestly mostly different. Bonus question for the reader: what constitutes a derivative work for weaving patterns?)Eat the Weeds is a great resource to learn about what kinds of weeds you can eat, and which ones you can't, but even then, be careful. Really, seriously, be careful. Poison hemlock looks almost just like its more innocent cousin Queen Anne's lace except that it will kill you quickly and painfully. There's lots of great wild stuff out there, but be careful, and maybe take a class or instructions or help from someone who knows what they're talking about, or only eat the stuff that's generally agreed upon as "there's nothing dangerous you could mistake this for". And even then, be sure!

In Part 1 of Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, we discussed the practical matters of textile production in domestic and commercial contexts. In this second episode, we look at the performative ways that textile production was used to construct women's identities. This includes the incorporation of textile tools and production into rites of passage such as marriage, childbirth, and death as a symbol of the virtuous matron. We further discuss religious use and association of textile production through the stories of the Fates, Arachne, and the Virgin Mary. We then come around to weave the rest of the narrative together: could the piece that fits in the women-shaped hole of textile production in ancient Rome be... women?This episode is dedicated in loving memory of Laura Callahan-Hazard and Sigrid Steinbock, both enthusiastic supporters of Morgan's dissertation, themselves both textile artists, and who both had wanted to read Morgan's dissertation but left this world too soon.Links:Morgan's dissertationEpisode 34: Women and Wool Working in the Ancient Roman Empire, Part 1Trinkl, Elisabeth. 2004. "Zum Wirkungskreis einer kleinasiatischen Matrona anhand ausgewählter Funde aus dem Hanghaus 2 in Ephesos." In Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien. 73:281-303Roman version of the Arachne Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses VI Content Warning: suicide, oblique mentions to rape, gods being jerks to mortalsRoman description of the three fates or Parcae by Catullus, 64, scroll down to line 305.Roman version of the Europa Myth by Ovid, The Metamorphoses, II, 833-875 Content Warning: abduction, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortalsA summary of the mythology of Leda and the Swan, very brief Roman summary in Hyginus, Fabulae 77, scroll down to § 77. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortalsRoman version of the Danae Myth by Hyginus, Fabulae 63, scroll down to § 63. Content Warning: rape, gods taking other forms to seduce women, gods being jerks to mortals

In the first of two episodes on Morgan's dissertation we introduce the topic of women and textile production in the Roman Empire. Scholars have often viewed the domestic and commercial divide in textile production along gendered lines, associating domestic production with women in the context of the ideal of feminine virtue and commercial production with men working in centralized production centers. Here we use the cottage industry model to contextualize the role of women's labor in the Roman textile industry, exploring the links between domestic production and commercial distribution.Links:Morgan's dissertationEpisode 26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey talks about the process of getting a PhD (from Morgan's personal experiences, your mileage may vary)Episode 3: Textile production and a nostalgic past discusses Augustan propaganda and textile production and gives a summary of the stages of textile production from sheep to sweater.The two Augustan versions of the Lucretia myth by Ovid, Fasti 2.722-751 and Livy, History of Rome 1.57.9 (Content Warning: rape, suicide, revolution)Another instance of a woman's labor from Ovid, this time a more modest country woman who must weave cloaks etc before winter to protect her family from the cold: Ovid, Fasti 4.687-714.Hitchner, Robert Bruce. 2012. "Olive Production and the Roman Economy: The Case for Intensive Growth in the Roman Empire." In The Ancient Economy, Taylor and Francis. Partial text available on Google Scholar.Barber, Elizabeth. 1994. Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York : Norton.Lena Larsson Lovén has written extensively on both the iconography of textile production and the performative relationships between women and wool work in the Roman Empire.

In this episode, we discuss "bikeshedding" (also known as the Law of Triviality), the famous proposition that complex contributions and ideas (such as plans to build a nuclear power plant), often of high impact and importance, move forward with relatively little interference, whereas simple contributions and conversations (such as which color to paint a bikeshed) get caught up in committee and high-volume debate, and how this tends to impact FOSS communities. We do a (slightly dramatic) reading of the original email, hold a conversation about it, and then come back to the topic with a twist right after everyone (including ourselves) thought the episode was over.Links:The original bikeshed email hosted at shed.bikeBut wait! Use bikeshed.org instead!Wait! You should link to the white background page! No, the green one! No, blue! No, purple!Poul-Henning Kamp's page on the subjectBut wait! Brett Glass (and others) respond!yourlogicalfallacyis.com, but be sure to read about The Fallacy Fallacy before you start linking to these to try to win an argument on the internet

Chris and Morgan reflect on one year of FOSS & Crafts, as well as announcing... FOSS & Crafts Studios!Links:FOSS & Crafts Studios on Patreon (still also the right place to support Chris Lemmer-Webber's FOSS work)Thank you to our guests: Nick and LP, Zack, Kate and Frankie, Sebastian, Bassam, Tristan, Sumana, Mallory, Vicky, Steve, Elana and Katie, and Steel.3: Textile production and a nostalgic past28: FOSS Stitch w/ Elana Hashman and Katie McLaughlin5: Milkytracker, chiptunes, and that intro music22: Crafting the past… or trying to9: What is Spritely?11: An Ethics of Agency20: Hygiene for a computing pandemic26: Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber, an academic journey1: Collaborative Storytelling with Dice6: What Escaped from the Demonic Z.O.O.O.O. (part 1) and (part 2)10: The What Goblins Saga, Chapter 1: What Are Goblins? and Chapter 2: Trees, Friends, and Static25: Governance, Leadership, and Founder's Syndrome30: Gender and Sexuality, A Personal Perspective23: Nerdout! Fuzzy and crisp systems and 27: Nerdout! Game Design and Social SystemsShrini's toots about the Hack and Craft:Post1 Post 2 *We did extrapolate a lot more than the posts say ;)

Steel Wagstaff joins us to talk about their work at Pressbooks, a FOSS based book publishing suite particularly focused on Open Educational Resources (OER), as well as talking about OER generally, open access, and education as a fundamental human right!Pressbooks (git repos)Pressbooks DirectorySteel Wagstaff's website, Twitter account5Rs of open contentUN Sustainable development goals[Cape Town Declaration (September 2007)](https://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration + https://www.capetowndeclaration.org/cpt10/)Charles Reznikoff, First There is the Need (Santa Barbara, California: Black Sparrow Press, 1977)Achieving the Dream's Art History I, by Associate Professor Emeritus Bruce Schwabach of Herkimer Community College. (CC BY!)Open Music Theory (which was also mentioned in Episode 5: Milkytracker, chiptunes, and that intro music) (CC BY-SA!)Fundamentals, Function, and FormSMuFL: Standard Music Font LayoutInclusive Spectrums ("This exhibition presents the preliminary major research project ideas of OCAD University's Inclusive Design 2019/2021 cohort.") (CC BY!)White Jaw by Laurel BastianRebus FoundationScholarLedRadical Open AccessManifeold (GPLv3!)editoriaKnowledge Futures GroupPubPubScalar

On this episode, Chris talks about being nonbinary trans-femme and Morgan talks about being demisexual (and briefly about both being pansexual) and how they have both navigated these experiences in their lives and relationship.Links:There are a lot of resources on the internet about being transgender and nonbinary, and opinions about most of them tend to run strong. That said, Transgender Map has good resources explaining many concerns for those who are transgender or nonbinary, are trying to figure out if they are transgender or nonbinary, and support materials for family and friends.demisexuality.orgWebMD article on demisexuality. Note that despite what Chris says on the episode, the page itself does not mention narrative components of demisexual attraction, but rather emotional ones. The extrapolation of application to narrative aspects came more from Morgan and Chris talking through Morgan's manifestation of those aspects.Chris's "Alpha Release" post about being nonbinary trans-femme with pictures, on the fediverse and on Twitter (and later update). (These were the first pictures Chris took in a more directly "femme" gender expression and do not reflect the current state of the development branch.)Morgan's coming out thread about being demisexual, on the fediverse and on Twitter.That sketchover self-portrait that Chris mentioned (overlaid over photo)

Any skillset has basic foundational elements or building blocks. In this recording of Chris and Morgan's talk at ÖzgürKon, we discuss the way that access to those basic elements is limited in modern society. This can be seen in any number of fields from actual building blocks increasingly being sold in sets to make specific toys as opposed to generic buckets of blocks that allow kids to develop their creativity to the way that access to the source code and hardware in our technology is increasingly restricted.Also! In this episode we announce Hack and Craft, a new companion "stitch and bitch" style usergroup to FOSS & Crafts. (Any crafting is welcome... including computer programming, as long as it's a fun project!) Feel free to bring your own project and hang out at inagural meeting on June 19th!Links:ÖzgürKon 2021

Elana Hashman (Python Software Foundation Fellow and open source hacker) and Katie McLaughlin (Python Software Foundation Fellow and crafter) join us to talk about F(L)OSS meets embroidery and cross stitching (FOSS stitching?) including a significant conversation about FLOSS vs embroidery floss.Much is also conversed about ih, a project started by Katie with contributions from Elana, a python project which helps generate embroidery patterns from images.Links:ih!ih presented at PyCon 2019: Katie McLaughlin - A Right Stitch-up: Creating embroidery patterns with Pillowih, as a serviceDMC (Dollfus-Mieg et Compagnie), the textile company mentioned several timesPython Pillow (continuation of PIL, the Python Imaging Library)Linux Conf AU, which has had a lot of "stitch and bitch" type events: 2018 art & tech miniconf, 2019 knit, crochet, sew BoF, 2020 creative arts miniconfCross Stitch Carpentryginger coons' open color standard workfreieFarbe Open Color initiative, appears to be CC BY 4.0Stitching patterns really are a kind of domain specific visual programming language (see the response, "What is this, assembler?")Core rope memory was usually hand-woven by women in early computing days (more)Still here? How about some extra images?Morgan's needlework of an alpaca, made with alpaca fiber:Kirby quilt that Morgan did for a babby:

Steve is back, talking with Chris about viewing social systems through the lens of game design. How do game mechanics, uncertainty, and narrative map onto governance, society, and citizen participation?Thanks to Kate and Ricky for participating in a pre-show discussion which generated many of the ideas explored in this episode.Links:The first F&C Nerdout episode on "Fuzzy and crisp systems", in case you wanted to hear more of the Chris & Steve conversation dynamicF&C Episode 4: The Eight Kinds of Fun, and the paper it was inspired from, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game ResearchVeil of Ignorance thought experiment by philosopher John RawlsComeback MechanicPower GridThe Ludology podcast... if you like this episode, you'll probably like Ludology.Ludology does a "Biography of a Board Game" on CandylandLudology Episode 3 - Catch the Leader which includes the first critique of Power GridLudology Episode 3A - The Defense of Power GridConway's Game of LifeEmergence (the broad umbrella which includes "emergent behavior")How cats get drunk in Dwarf Fortress, and why its creators haven't figured out time travel (yet) (Note that we cut off the story before it got sad in the episode... the following link tells the full story, including the sad end to this particular form of emergent behavior)Game Analysis: Love LetterApparently the game about the soldiers gaining PTSD and getting drunk was called "Clockwork Empires" (note, another proprietary game and we haven't played it; it's an empire-colonialist-expansion game, but maybe a bit more consciously so... we don't know really though). This is the closest article we could find about the behavior but it doesn't seem to be the full interview Steve remembered. Note that Steve had a followup email saying: "Also, a detail I apparently forgot is that the alcohol helped them forget (temporarily?) their lost friends, which feels important..."

Remember how we've been saying the entire run of this show "Morgan's hard at work at finishing her PhD dissertation?" Well guess what! She finally got it handed in and defended it... Morgan is now officially Dr. Morgan Lemmer-Webber! (She still has to wrap up a few edits but hey it's official now!)Morgan walks us through her experiences of the graduate school process, from applying (and re-applying) to schools, to a masters program, to a PhD program, and the many fun steps, bumps, and adventures in-between.Not much in terms of show notes this episode, but here are some pictures!Congratulations again, Morgan!

What story does an institution tell about itself? To whom does a governance structure and its leadership serve? To what degree are leaders within a governing institution subject or exempt to the rules of the governed? We use this framework to discuss the unexpected announcement of Richard Stallman's re-appointment to the FSF board, by the FSF board.Content warning: depression and sexual harassment are both mentioned in this episode.Links:Founder's Syndrome (Wikipedia article)Statement on the Re-election of Richard Stallman to the FSF Board by the EFFAn open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positionsMicroblog post expressing lack of foreknowledge of announcement by FSF staff and Libreplanet volunteersNot The First Time We Tried (FSF, GNU, RMS, etc.) by Sumana HarihareswaraKat Walsh's statement of making arguments in opposition to RMS's reinstatement to the board (Twitter version) and announcement of resignation (Twitter version)The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman by Benjamin Mako Hill, longtime FOSS advocate, former member of FSF boardProgramming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker EthicDocumentation of accusations of women being harassed by RMSPolitical cartoon between RMS and Chris from when Chris was in collegeRe: Bug in emacs tetrisGNU Emacs and XEmacs2018 Letter to the board in response to RMS's behavior and the board's lack of responseMarianne Corvellec’s Libre Planet 2017 talk “The GNU Philosophy: Ethics beyond ethics” where RMS says "I'm the president of the Free Software Foundation... so I don’t have to follow the rules"

Morgan returns from handing in her dissertation! Very topically, Morgan and Chris talk about organizational systems which can help you stay on track... even when you're working from home or trying to finish your PhD during a global pandemic.Links:The Hipster PDA, including the original semi-satirical announcement post.Org Mode, the world's greatest organizational and outliner system (or so claims Chris), if you're an Emacs user anyway (honestly, Org Mode is a great reason to pick up Emacs)Locating purveyors of excessively priced office supplies left as an exercise for only a very particular kind of reader.

Morgan is in the final crunch of finishing her dissertation draft, so Chris's brother Steve Webber joins us for a special "nerdout": analyzing the dual nature of fuzzy vs crisp systems! From physics to biology, from programming languages to human languages, the duality of fuzzy and crisp is everpresent.Yes, this really is what Chris and Steve sound like whenever they get together...Links:Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (but this version looks better on the web) and the 1980s lectures (also on Internet Archive but the YouTube uploads are more recent and higher quality)Lisp and SchemeLambda CalculusThe Little SchemerThe Most Beautiful Program Ever Written by William ByrdLisp 1.5 programmer's manual, which also now has a lovely reprint for sale (see Appendix B for Lisp in Lisp, albeit in m-expression rather than s-expression format... m-expressions never took on)Javascript: The Good PartsThe narcissism of small differencesTo Mock a Mockingbird by Raymond Smullyan. Also, presumably not the link Steve had shared with Chris back in the day (but maybe it was?) but here's a more math'y breakdown of some of the ideas, To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus with Animated ReductionDuality (mathematics)Fuzzy and crisp setsNeats and scruffies (see also our previous episode about machine learning)Alan Watts' lecture on "prickles and goo"Carcinisation (convergent evolution on "crabs")Lisp vs APL: "Mud and Diamonds"GuixJonathan Rees's websiteLojban, and here's a pretty good Lojban introThe infamous Lojban "bear goo" debate

There's all sorts of reasons to pursue historical crafting techniques: for the experience of recreating them or learning new techniques, for education, or for entertainment and immersion. Morgan and Chris explore these paths under the terms "experiential historical crafts", "experimental archaeology", and "historical reenactment". What is important, useful, and fun about each of these? What pitfalls might we want to avoid? What can be gained by what we might find, how might we bring more people in... and what do we risk by what (or who) we might miss or leave out?Links and references:Colonial WilliamsburgAfroculinaria, Michael Twitty’s blogTwitty, Michael. The Cooking Gene : a Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South. New York, NY :Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, 2017.Outram, Alan K. “Introduction to Experimental Archaeology.” World Archaeology, vol. 40, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–6.Janet Stephens’s YouTube channel, with tutorials for re-creating historical hairstylesStephens, Janet. “Recreating the Fonseca Hairstyle.” EXARC, 2013/1, https://exarc.net/issue-2013-1/at/recreating-fonseca-hairstyleThe journal EXARC is a peer-reviewed online journal for experimental archaeology with articles released under CC BY-NC-SAStrand, Eva B. A, Marie-Louise Nosch, and Joanne Cutler. Tools, Textiles and Contexts: Investigating Textile Production in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015.Society for Creative Anachronism/SCANew Yorker* article about the Townsends episode on “Orange Fool” (* Not the New York Times, as Chris misspoke in the podcast)Townsends episode on “Orange Fool”Townsends episode in aftermath of the “Orange Fool” outrage (where he specifically states that his channel does not link historical topics to modern politics)Michael Twitty making Kush on Townsends (“Exactly how you expect stuffing to smell … this is what you expect it to taste like”)Michael Twitty making Akara on Townsends (the fritter/falafel-like dish)Special note here: we aren't saying Townsends is bad; we enjoy the show and from a standpoint of production, what it does present is very good. But it does seem like the show makes an intentional dodge on important issues or chooses to only present a limited and fun subset of history... which can be disappointing at the least and at the worst can result in a kind of nostalgia that erases real problems. All history is suffused with things to celebrate and things which are disturbing and disappointing, but recognizing only the former sets us up to repeat the latter.

We're joined by Vicky Steeves, a hyper-talented librarian specializing in data management, open and reproducible research, and the overlap between FOSS, free culture, and library sciences! We dive into all of that... plus a bit of crafting... and even... what's this? A discussion of what the FOSS world can learn from the world of game modding (and vice versa)!Links:ISAGE (Investigating & Archiving the Scholarly Git Experience) and, to be a bit meta, ISAGE's own data as open and reproducible research!Sherpa RomeoReproZipRelated F&C episode: Stefano Zacchiroli on preserving source code at Software HeritagebwFLA - Emulation as a ServiceStardew Valley modding page (note: Stardew Valley is not itself FOSS)Programming owes its strength to our long legacy of knitting by Carrie StokesProject JupyterGit, git-annex, and git-lfsDockerThe Types, Roles, and Practices of Documentation in Data Analytics Open Source Software Libraries: A Collaborative Ethnography of Documentation Work by R. Stuart Geiger

Chris and Morgan, driving in the Covid-19 pandemic, reflect on lessons of hygiene and a separation of concerns from the past (seen through the retroactively surprising struggle for handwashing acceptance) while analyzing how to bring safety to today's computing security pandemic via object capability discipline.As said in the episode, there's a lot of research and evidence for the object capability security approach! Please do scour the links below (with significant commentary attached).Links:Ignaz Semmelweis and two excellent podcast episodes with more:Ignaz Semmelweis and the War on Handwashing on Stuff You Missed in History ClassThe fascinating, inspiring, and infurating story of Ignaz Semmelweis on SawbonesThe mailing list post by Chris that prompted this episode (largely the same stuff, a bit more particular to the targeted audience): Hygiene for a computing pandemic: separation of VCs and ocaps/zcapsPOLA Would Have Prevented the Event-Stream Incident, by Kate Sills. Examines how malicious code inserted into a library designed to steal programmers' private information/keys/money could have been prevented with capability-based security.An interview with Kate Sills about object capabilities; contains some of the same information presented in this episode, but with more focus on the basic concepts.A Security Kernel based on the Lambda Calculus explains how these concepts apply to programming language design (using a limited subset of the Scheme programming language).Ka-Ping Yee's PhD dissertation, Building Reliable Voting Machine Software, demonstrates the difficulty of finding intentionally obscured security vulnerabilities through code review (see "How was PVote's security evaluated?"). This demonstrates that FOSS is necessary but insufficient on its own for security.A backdoor which was inserted into the official Linux kernel source code (and actually distributed on the official CVS server, briefly!) all the way back in 2003. Note that the vulnerability was initially discovered not through code review, but through discovering a server intrusion. The code is well obfuscated in a way that might be difficult to observe through visual inspection of a significant body of code.The zcap-ld spec has a subsection on how to safely and hygienically bridge the worlds of identity/claims/credentials with authority/ocaps. (Note some bias here: Chris co-authored this spec with Mark Miller.) It also has some other useful subsections: Capabilities are Safer contrasts with ACLs, and ZCAP-LD by Example shows how capabilities can be constructed on top of certificate chains (an approach not even mentioned in the episode... but yes, you can do it!)So why are ACLs / an identity-oriented approach so bad anyway? ACLs Don't explains the problems caused by an identity-oriented authority model:Ambient authority, ie "programs running with too much authority"... think about the "solitaire running 'as you'" part of the podcast (and contrast with the POLA/ocap solution also explained in-episode)Confused deputies, which are notoriously kind of hard to describe... Norm Hardy provides a capsule summary which is fairly good. But also:The Browser is a very Confused Deputy is an excellent and fun video introduction.Norm Hardy's original Confused Deputy paper is still worth reading, and there is more to read hereAn example of a confused deputy attack against the Guile programming environment (which Chris helped uncover): Guile security vulnerability w/ listening on localhost + port (with fix). Note the way that both the browser and the guile programming environment appear to be "correctly behaving according to specification" when looked at individually!Another way to put it is that identity-oriented security approaches are also generally perimeter-based security approaches and (I'm paraphrasing Marc Stiegler here): "Perimeter security is eggshell security... it seems pretty tough when you tap on it, but poke one hole through and you can suck out the whole yolk."Capabilities: Effects for Free shows nicely how capabilities can also be combined with a type system to prove constraints on what a particular subset of code can do.What we haven't talked about as much yet is all the cool things that ocaps enable. A great paper on this is Capability-based Financial Instruments (aka "Ode to the Granovetter Diagram", or "The Ode"), which shows how, using the E distributed programming language, distributed financial tooling can be built out of a shockingly small amount of code. (All of this stuff written about a decade before blockchains hit the mainstream!)You might need to know a bit more E syntax to read The Ode; Marc Stiegler's E in a Walnut is an incredible resource, and has many insights of its own... but it's a bit more coconut-sized than walnut-sized, in my view.An enormous amount of interesting information and papers about object capability security on the E Wiki's Documentation page page (snapshot). Honestly you could just spend a few months reading all that.In particular, if you're mathematically minded and say "yeah but I want the proofs, gimme the proofs; I mean like real math'y proofs!" there's a whole subsection on Formal Methods (snapshot)But maybe you're worrying, is it possible to build secure UIs on top of this? Not One Click for Security does a lovely job showing how ocap principles can actually result in a more intuitive flow if done correctly... one smooth enough that users might wonder, "where's the security?" Surprise! It was just smoothly baked into the natural flow of the application, which is why you didn't notice it!And if you really want to spend a lot of time getting into the weeds of how to design ocap systems, maybe look at Mark S. Miller's PhD dissertation, Robust Composition: Towards a Unified Approach to Access Control and Concurrency Control. Chris is pretty sure they're the only one with an autographed copy sitting on their desk.Finally, have we mentioned that Chris's work on Spritely is pretty much entirely based on extending the federated social web based on ocap security principles?

With computing technology becoming integrated with every aspect of our lives, many issues are simultaneously human rights issues and technical issues. Thus, how are organizations concerned with human rights and social justice engaging with technological authorship and policy-making? Mallory Knodel, presently Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Democracy and Technology, explains her work as a Public Interest Technologist. Mallory is also heavily engaged in a wide number of technical standards-making organizations, and explains not only how technical standards are of interest to human rights organizations, but how the origin in work to define human rights overlaps with the emergence of standards-making efforts.Links:Center for Democracy and TechnologyThe Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group (of which Mallory is co-chair)A whole bunch of mentioned standards-making organizations: W3C, IETF, IRTF, IEEE, ITU, ICANN, ISOEngineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880[http://manu.sporny.org/2016/rebalancing/](Rebalancing How the Web is Built) by Manu SpornyThe slew of Google-related stuff, both good and bad:Google's attempt to control which browsers are permitted to use their servicesControvercy around Google's AMP technologyGoogle Is Testing End-to-End Encryption in Android Messages3d party tracking cookiesGovernmental battles over root DNS splitRussia blocking TLS 1.3IETF RFC 8890: The Internet is for End Users

We're joined by Sumana Harihareswara, a FOSS advocate yes, but also a person of so many other talents! We talk about sketching, standup comedy, and maintainership for the long life of free software projects. (Did you know you can hire Sumana to help on your FOSS project maintainership btw? Sumana runs Changeset Consulting!) We also talk about representation in the FOSS community within the arts (especially narrative arts), and about learning new skills within "no big deal" contexts.Links:Changeset ConsultingSumana's LibrePlanet 2017 keynote: Lessons, myths, and lenses: What I wish I'd known in 1998Producing Open Source SoftwareVidding and some of its origins in the slideshow form (in particular with Kandy Fong's early works)More on fanworks and fan communities and their history at fanlore.orgVid: Pipeline by, as it turns out, Sumana Harihareswara!Vid: Only a Lad by Laura ShapiroVid: Straightening Up the House by eruthros; also see all this other great commentary!The Bug by Ellen UllmanHalt and Catch FireThe Internet's Own Boy, a film and play about Aaron Swartz, which you can watch here in movie form (we're trying to find references to the play version... if you know something we should put up, let us know here!)Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, and also the critical response Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic by Allison ParrishXKCDJulia Styles in GhostwriterSoftware Freedom Conservancy, who is doing a fundraiser right now!Sumana's fundraising vid for Conservancy in 2015Chris's animated ascii art card for Conservancy in 2019 (source code)If you're interested in Sumana's upcoming book on long-term maintenance of FOSS projects, you can contact her for more info!

We're joined by our friend Tristan to talk about gardening experiences, from newbies (us) to the wise (Tristan and others who are not us). We (Morgan and Chris) have just started seriously gardening this year, and have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. And it turns out that people who have been doing it for years (such as Tristan) still have a lot of successes but also a lot of failures. But those can be fun too!Links:Stocking Up (book on preserving)No dig sheet mulching

Bassam Kurdali (Fediverse, Twitter) talks about using Blender (a free and open source software suite for making 3d artwork) for open movie projects such as Elephants Dream (the world's first open movie project, which Bassam directed!) and Wires for Empathy, as well as use in teaching it to college students studying animation.Links:BlenderUrchin studiosChicken Chair (we need a better link for this... check back later!)Elephants DreamWires for Empathy (aka "Tube")OpenToonzBoats AnimatorNatronHampshire CollegeRhode Island School of Design (RISD)Blender splash screens gallery

Morgan and Chris talk about the Scribble document authoring format, with Morgan talking about authoring her dissertation in it and Chris talking about writing an OpenDocument Format (sometimes shortened to "ODF" or "ODT") exporter. (That code is now a merge request which will hopefully become part of Scribble itself!)Links:The Digital Humanities Workshops episode... this is kind of a continuation of those topics.Racket and ScribbleRacket 7.4 release notes, where Morgan is mentioned as a contributor.Clarification: At one point we talk about whether or not Scribble includes support for "image lists". It has the relevant building blocks with support for images and figures, we were talking a bit more specifically about fitting a particular document formatting and organizational pattern used in art history papers.

Morgan and Chris discuss the Digital Humanities workshops they ran introducing non-programmers to Racket and Scribble.Links:The flier (post-LibrePlanet 2018 edition)Course materialBuilding a Snowman with RacketHow to Use Scribble to Write your Academic Papers: A Reference Tutorial

This week we are joined by Sebastian Lasse, author of the Redaktor ActivityPub powered CMS, and co-host of both ActivityPub Conference 2020 and ActivityPub Conference 2019 along with Morgan. Lots of retrospective, especially on the difference between APConf as an online conference in 2020 vs an in person conference in 2019.Links:ActivityPub Conference 2020ActivityPub Conference videosThe Running a FOSS virtual conference meta-talk/panelActivityPubFOSShost"Some singing"RedaktorThe Hackathon at APConf 2020Sebastian's Petnames hackathon project threadSpritely hackathon project threadOther hackathon projects/threads!We have a few more recordings related the petnames discussion and the hackathon demos to link here, but we'll have to wait until they're ready to go up to link them here!

On this episode of FOSS and Crafts Theatre, we continue the What Goblins Saga. The What Goblins saga continues as the characters continue to learn about themselves and their ever-changing environment. If you haven't listened to Chapter 1, maybe stop reading now to avoid spoilers from that episode!Having discovered that they are are sapient beings emergent from a networked video game, and having accidentally stumbled into administrative powers, the What Goblins discover the consequences of using those powers without knowing how the world around them might react to that.Links:FOSS & Crafts Episode 1: Collabortive Storytelling with Dice introduces the idea of RPGs as a way of making narratives together.See also Freeform Universal (the RPG system used for this episode, explained in depth in Episode 1)!And of course, see Chapter 1 of the What Goblins Saga!