OTC CatchUp #66 Summary

About OTC CatchUp

OTC CatchUps are weekly informal sessions involving project showcases and technical discussions. They are held every Saturday from 10:30 PM IST. Join in!.
For all summaries, please visit catchup.ourtech.community/summary.

OTC CatchUp #66

Date: 12-02-2022

Duration: 8 hrs 6 mins

Topics Discussed

General introductions.
Himanshu Sharma shared his article on Securing Local Storage in Flutter.
Vedant Panchal asked how one should share sensitive information like API keys with project members.
- Jaden Furtado suggested using a password manager or using PGP keys.
  - How to Generate PGP Key Pair?
- Rishit Dagli suggested using a private Git submodule or secret on GitHub itself.
Talking about PGP started talks about
Anil Harwani suggested reading The Clouflare Blog.
We talked about the history of Serial and COM ports in computers.
Anil Harwani and Omkar Khair once again implored everyone to explore the internals of various technologies and to not just play 'lego' with technology (just blindly combining various libraries to make something work).
Omkar Khair showcased ATOM Matrix, a compact development board with a 5 * 5 RGB LED matrix.
- It’s not just about building things, it’s also about security, performance, testing, debugging, scaling, etc.
Omkar Khair gave us an example to justify why Security Through Obscurity (STO) is a bad idea.
- Security solely implemented through obscurity is worse.
- Pencil MOD: Lower versions of NVIDIA’s nForce graphics cards were able to perform later version functions because the necessary chips wre already present in the lower version boards, but were not connected. A simple conductive pencil drawn connection between the connectors did the job. So NVIDIA was relying on obscurity for people to not discover that, but some people did.
Omkar Khair told us that while working in a team it is important to identify the inclinations of people (Engineering, Marketing, Management, etc) as it helps in identifying the intentions behind something that they are suggesting. Whether to consider all, some or none of those suggestions is up to one’s discretion, but that’s difficult to do without knowing where they are coming from.
Omkar Khair told us that it is important to listen to discussions against something that one is passionate passionate about, as it helps in refining one’s perspective.
Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
- Omkar Khair told us about how people are trying to capitalize on emotions in the Web3 space.
- Omkar Khair also shared a blog on issues with Web3.
- Omkar Khair informed us that being technically sound when it comes to Blockchain and Crypto stuff was important to not get scammed.
- Harsh Kapadia informed everyone about the Razzlekhan Bitcoin laundering scandal.
- Omkar Khair also suggested reading Bitcoin’s White Paper.
- We all were wondering why the Universal Pass for travel in India was using Blockchain to issue the pass. No one could come up with a valid reason to justify it.
- Sunidhi Shende shared a guide for Bitcoin called Learn Me a Bitcoin.
- Omkar Khair talked about the block debate in Bitcoin and how users could vote by setting a flag.
- Harsh Kapadia shared Discussing Job Opportunities in Web3 space and IMPACT of 30% CRYPTO TAX on WEB3 STARTUPS.
- Omkar Khair talked about zkSNARKs. They help in hiding the identity and wallet balance of an individual, but are still able to validate the transaction. Monero has implemented a similar principle as well.
- Omkar Khair told us about CryptoMixer, which makes transactions safer and untraceable, thus improving privacy.
- There were talks about mining Cryptocurrencies on Replit servers as well.
There was a debate on whether all Open Source contributions are equal (not 'big' or 'small') and/or are equal in value.
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education course was shared.
Sunidhi Shende talked about her Augmented Reality project idea and Vatsal Patel and Harsh Kapadia advised her to break down her idea to eventually tackle the entire project idea. Targeting smaller targets can help in extrapolating to other use cases as well.
Kedar Karbele and Darshan Rander enquired about the requirement of Docker.
Sreekaran Srinath talked about his job offers.

Projects Showcased

Omkar Khair showcased Weebo, a two-wheel bot controlled over WiFi with a live camera stream.
- It works on a Raspberry Pi and uses WebSockets and Node.js.
- Video demo
- PPT
- GitHub
  - omkarkhair/weebo
  - omkarkhair/weebo-control
- The bot’s name Weebo is a namesake of the robot in Flubber.
- A similar project by Omkar himself: Telewalker
Jaden Furtado showcased a Mental Health web app with 3D robot that he built using Three.js and Spline.
Ishan Sharma showcased a new version of his portfolio which uses WebGL animations.
Sahil Prasad showcased a C program which simulated a bare-bones calculator using an if-else ladder.

Attendees

Meet Screenshot

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