- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Installing Linux on Hundreds of "Obsolete" Computers
by Joshua Stone Oct. 8, 2025

Oct. 8, 2025

Hey all, I thought it was really cool to see a coordinated effort to extend the lifespan of perfectly usable computers that're only "Obsolete" because of Windows 10 becoming EOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHLTOdsqDRg I wonder if WLUG could do something similar to make computing more equitable within the community? - Josh

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Meeting October 9th at 7PM Topic: Jack from PIRG to speak about National Right to Repair
by Tim Keller Oct. 7, 2025

Oct. 7, 2025

Hey Everybody, We've got a meeting on Thursday!! Topic: National Right to Repair day Speaker: Jack Frimet from PIRG. Time: 7PM Date: October 9th, 2025 Location: Technocopia Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Jack Frimet from PIRG <https://pirg.org> reached out to me and asked that he speak at this meeting. PIRG is an organization that among many other causes is advocating at the national level for the right to repair. As we are all aware, with Win10 reaching EOL, this is causing a tsunami of e-waste as people are forced to upgrade to run Win11. On Saturday Oct 18th, it's National Right to Repair day. PIRG in coordination with Techncopia is going to be hosting what's looking like to be a good old fashioned Install-fest. Sadly, I have a family conflict, but I'll be there in spirit! I hope to see you all on Thursday! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Re: Windows 10 to Linux Repair Event
by Tim Keller Oct. 4, 2025

Oct. 4, 2025

Hey Jack! An event like this would right up WLUG's alley! Our next meeting is scheduled for the 9th. I unfortunately have a family even on the 18th and will be out of town, otherwise I would be there in spades. One of things that WLUG started out doing was "install fests" where we helped people get Linux on their desktops! We *just had a meeting* so I'd be amenable to moving the meeting to the 16th to help prep and make bootable media if that would help. I'm absolutely horrified by the immense amount of e-waste this debacle is causing, all in search of the mighty dollar.. Thanks, Tim. I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers". On Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 3:57 PM Jack Frimet <jfrimet(a)pirg.org> wrote: > Hi Tim and WLUG, > > My name is Jack Frimet, and I'm with PIRG, a consumer advocacy group > working on the Right to Repair. You may have heard from Eric Sutman, but we > are hosting an event at Technocopia on 10/18 (International Repair Day!), > where we are working to save computers impacted by the End of Windows 10 by > switching them over to Linux. > > We need some volunteers to help with actually working on the computers, > and I figured this seems right up your group's alley! I'd love to set up a > time to chat with any of WLUG's organizers to gauge interest in > volunteering for this event! Feel free to send me an email or give me a > call at 845-637-9633. > > Best, > Jack > > -- > > Jack Frimet > Right to Repair Associate > jfrimet(a)pirg.org >

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Looking for Locality Info of Apatite Specimen
by The Hammer Sept. 27, 2025

Sept. 27, 2025

Hello, I am wondering if anyone might be able to guide me at to the specific locality of a blue apatite specimen that I have. The Label says "Blue Apatite XL New York" The specimen is about an inch across at its widest point. Ron

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Sorry about the A/V troubles..
by Tim Keller Sept. 19, 2025

Sept. 19, 2025

Last night because I had the presentation full screened I failed to see that the audio had dropped out. For the next meeting I'm going to bring a dedicated laptop whose sole job is to be the "meeting" laptop that just drives Jitsi. As an aside, I'm glad everybody liked the presentation. I'll put my slides up somewhere sensible. Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Reminder!!! September 18th WLUG Meeting! Topic: Tailscale / Nebula
by Tim Keller Sept. 18, 2025

Sept. 18, 2025

Hey Everybody, We've got a meeting THIS Thursday! Time: 7pm Date: September 18th, 2025 Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland St. Worcester MA. Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Topic: Why Traditional Network Security is DOOMED! In this talk, I'll explain how we've *done *modern network security, and why tools like tailscale / headscale / nebula largely nullify some of this security. For those of us who are network / security administrators I'll talk about what we should be looking for, and I'll also show off how these technologies are amazingly useful. I will be definitely demoing Tailscale as I'm a daily driver of it and provided it doesn't break my existing stuff I'll show off Nebula. I'm sure this is going to foster a lively discussion about networking, firewalls, security in general and what security on modern networks is going to have to look like to address these new technologies. As usual after the meeting we'll go get some dinner and keep talking. I hope to see you all there! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Reminder! WLUG Meeting NEXT Week, Sept 18th, 2025!
by Tim Keller Sept. 8, 2025

Sept. 8, 2025

Hey Everybody, Our next meeting is the 18th of September! I'll be giving a talk on tailscale / headscale and possibly nebula if I have time. The working title for the topic is "Traditional Network Security is DOOMED!" Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Next meeting will be the 18th, not the 11th.
by Tim Keller Aug. 28, 2025

Aug. 28, 2025

Hey Gang! I've got a conflict on the 11th, so I'm moving the meeting to the 18th. My plan is to talk about Tailscale / headscale and nebula to build secure networks that don't require punching holes in firewalls, etc. Let me know if you know of similar tech and I'll try to talk about that as well. Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Spectrum, Recursive dns and interception of root authoritative DNS
by steve＠patternsoft.net Aug. 27, 2025

Aug. 27, 2025

Hey all. I was wondering since were all? Worcester or surrounding and dealing with Spectrum as an ISP, if you’ve run into the same thing I have in the last few months. I used to, as you’ll see soon, run unbound as a recursive DNS server in my home network to cache and limit external DNS queries that was the forwarder behind Pihole. It worked great for a very long time. But a few months ago, my internet went down, and It turned out to be non cached dns queries starting to fail. I realized in logs that unbound was getting errors reaching out to dns servers and disabled it until I could investigate instead forwarding to cloud flare temporarily. Now that I have had time to research and investigate, I have found that at least SOMETHING is intercepting my my queries to authoritative DNS servers when I reset unbound and it throw’s away the response because they aren’t “AA” status responses and it never caches the root dns and therefor won’t resolve anything. I come to find out the “authoritative” servers are responding with a status of RA which means it’s not the actual authoritative service when I query manually, dig @198.41.0.4 . NS +norecurse an actual authoritative, and that this is most likely a change Spectrum has made. Has anybody else ran into this? Is it actually Spectrum. I guess I haven’t dug far enough yet to see if its may be a firmware update to my router, UDM PRO yet. Still working on that, but though I’d ask this group first before I dig into that and save myself the time and go straight to ISP workarounds. Thanks in advance! Looking forward to our next meeting!! Steve

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Reminder! WLUG Meeting tomorrow!! Topics: pi5 nvme support, backups, general discussion
by Tim Keller Aug. 14, 2025

Aug. 14, 2025

Hey Everybody! We've got a meeting tomorrow, Thursday, August 14th, 2025 at 7PM! Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland Ave Worcester MA. Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA I'm sure we'll have our usual A/V antics.. Topic: pi5 nvme support, backups, round table. I recently had a hardware failure that exposed that my backup solution wasn't that great. This spurred me to get a solution for backups. With a trusty pi5 and some nvme's I've setup a "burp" backup server. I'll show off the pi5 with an nvme or dual nvme setup running Rasbian with ZFS and burp. Then from there I'm sure we'll stray into other topics and I expect the conversation to get lively. As usual, we'll head out for dinner afterwards and keep the conversation going. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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