FSHM Weekly - 20/1/19

We have public policy updates, night sky watching, a new podcast and news about RMS visit.

Secret Alien Technology meeting

The Clojure programming study group had its meeting on 20/1/19. They discussed and learned Clojure using http://clojurescriptkoans.com/.

For more info, refer to https://wiki.fshm.in/doku.php?id=secretalientech

Scary updates to the IT Act must be stopped

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) had proposed changes to the Information Technology Act - http://meity.gov.in/content/comments-suggestions-invited-draft-“-information-technology-intermediary-guidelines

Meity has invited public comments on the proposed changes till Jan 31, 2019.

If these changes were to be brought into effect, this would legalize mass surveillance while making corporates like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon the watchdogs of our culture.

This is evil. This should be stopped.

Express your opinions to Meity via email - gccyberlaw@meity.gov.in

Legal comments on this issue can be found at - https://internetfreedom.in/india-must-resist-the-lure-of-the-chinese-model-of-surveillance-and-censorship-intermediaryrules-righttomeme-saveourprivacy/

First podcast

Kamal & Ganesh talk in Tamil about the need for "Source code being open" in multiple spheres of our life like economics, science, education.

Noordine helped create the format for the talk, edit and upload it.

MP3 version download link (41MB) - https://files.fshm.in/s/eZAnBQr5sNysJ3y

Opus version download link (14MB)- https://files.fshm.in/s/3ZeytwKEZpJR2oN

License - CC BY-SA-4.0

Night Sky Watching

We are practicing to watch the night sky on our community funded telescope.

We'd have to fix a date to organize the night sky watching event.

Hacktivist annual review

T Shrinivasan, Tamil computing hacktivist, shares his annual review - https://goinggnu.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/annual-review-what-i-did-on-2018/

RMS spoke at FSMK Camp

Free Software Movement Karnataka hosted Dr. Richard M Stallman, founder of Free Software Movement, as keynote speaker for its technical camp.

FSMK covered RMS's visit on their mastodon account - https://mastodon.social/@fsmk_org & and view the tag - https://mastodon.social/tags/richardstallman

Upcoming community events

We have asked to deliver a guest lecture on "Digital Self Defense" at Bharathidasan College for Women within this week.

We are trying to conduct a two day workshop on "Mapping, analytics & GIS" at Pondicherry University.

Help needed

We need help to write / translate blog posts, make FSHM's website, manage FSHM's social media, approach educational institutions for workshops and guest lectures.

Special help in needed in organizing a signature campaign to present our response to Meity's proposed changes to the IT Act.