[talk] the next con: content (2 of 2)

[George Rosamond]

Malcolm Matalka:
> Den 13 aug 2015 16:28 skrev "George Rosamond" <george at ceetonetechnology.com
>> :
>>
>> February 2014's con was focused on the "BSDs in Production" and was
>> themed broad enough to allow us to choose content while feeling
>> consistent :)
>>
>> And like last con, our audience is not the BSD scene local and remote,
>> but rather the non-BSD people in the metropolitan area. No one can take
>> anything away from the current BSDCons' importance, but we are doing
>> something different here, again. Our con is not an opportunity for the
>> 'usual suspects' to meet at different cities around the world. Rather,
>> our con is about talking to the broader community around NYC.
>>
>> There are two theme ideas I'm personally thinking about that have been
>> discussed.  Yes, the term "beyond" is purposeful.
>>
>> 1. The BSDs Beyond x86: ARM, MIPS
>>
>> The obvious connection for people on this topic is the Raspberry Pi, but
>> I can imagine that will barely be mentioned.
>>
>> There is very significant work happening on armv7 and what is now known
>> as aarch64 (64-bit ARM). It's not just about small hardware, but about
>> powerful, low-energy consuming hardware that should begin creeping into
>> data centers soon. The big firms are working on it, and even Amazon
>> acquired an ARM hardware firm a while back.
>>
>> There are other angles. There is some *really* cheap hardware that is
>> useful for testing network drivers, porting to the Chromebook, etc.
>>
>> Ideally, we'd get some hardware manufacturers to bring in some gear to
>> make this a more hands-on event.
>>
>> 2. The BSDs and Security: Beyond the Obvious
>>
>> IMHO the security angle is way overplayed, and we should be angling this
>> outside the box.
>>
>> There are a few topics that come to mind.
>>
>> OCAML being one. Capsicum/tame (fbsd/obsd, respectively). ASLR.
> 
> As an ocaml fan, what are you referring to when you say ocaml here?
> 

The language in the context of building secure services is one idea.

And what would your idea be?

>> Interesting lessons in porting Tor Browser (essentially Linux software)
>> to OpenBSD in regards to portability, footprints (er, bloat).
>> Upstreaming portable BSD code, specifically thinking about OBSD's
>> arc4random and libressl (libretls now? :).
>>
>> Another topic might be on entropy. In light of the FBSD breakage in the
>> fall in -current and the critiques of Linux RNG, how do we know it's
>> working?  What is good entropy? How do we know it's good? How many
>> stupid ways do bad non-crypto developers try to replace a system's RNG?
>>
>> Finally, as always, we are going to work hard to keep the event as "BSD
>> agnostic" as possible. All the BSDs should be represented, but also
>> having more general speakers not tied to one project or another is a
>> positive.
>>
>> Anyways, please feel free to jump into this topic.

g