 Enjoy the program. Now, I am very pleased to introduce Katzenparadoxon and Pretoriana to you. These two are organized in the Decentral Association in Leipzig, East Germany, Saxonia. And they will be able to tell you what all that old hardware that is gathering probably in the shelf behind you could be used other than being discarded. And here for you is hardware for future with discarded, helping with non-used hardware. My name is Jan Fuchs and my name is Alexander and we would like to tell you how hardware that is being put out of use can be helped to make people participate in the digital society. It started with a simple idea, there are many unused computers gathering dust in cellars and companies actually paying money to dispose of these old pieces of hardware. On the other hand, which probably you can't imagine, there are people that do not have a computer at home, so there is a digital injustice. And these old devices are a great burden to the environment. In 2017, for example, the German Statistics Authority had a certain number of kilograms of electronic waste per person. So this position isn't really done in the correct way, it's 10 kilograms per person. Electronic waste was often exported and ends up in the so-called toxic city in Ghana. It all started at the 36th Congress, which is called Resource Extortion. And the city of Leipzig has an own authority, a digital authority was looking for a project partner to enable digital participation. And the whole thing was seen in the context of the climate emergency that was announced in that year. And this is where the Decentrale Association in Leipzig comes into play. We worked with the office in the city, but we are in workshops and events, and the technology surgery that we ran was becoming more and more popular. And we gathered information and collected some interested people. And in early April, the broad planning was completed and the name Hardware for Future was born. The intention was clear. There are too many households in the city of Leipzig that don't have the means to buy a computer and participate in the digital world, which is difficult conditions for homeschooling, for example, in the lockdown. So many people are falling through the digital safety net and we had to act, therefore, and started by redesigning our hack space. A storage place was found that we could redesign and it contained work areas, storage, just cleaned all up, put in a few LEDs, and that's all fine, right? Well, we needed an email address, we needed a few other things. And we needed to gather donations, which came during that year from the city's IT partner. Then we got some publicity in the city and then we knew we really have to get started. But there were things still missing. So let's take a breath and see what needs to be done. We just use a few open source programs that we know anyway and the flood of mail, how come it you with that? Of course, we need a ticket system for that. We know that from work. So we installed OS Ticket with every new email, a ticket was created and we can give standard responses from templates. So that gave us the opportunity to sort through the queries and find whether this is a donation or whether it's an announcement of a need. And we could then send some pre-made answers and save some effort. So quite involuntarily, we had created the main program for getting in contact with our donors and the other item was next cloud. We had to have a space to leave some data, such as inventory lists and several things. And in order to work on documents collaboratively, we also use only office because next cloud gathers an amazing amount of functions through plugins. We could also introduce element there, which is a client for the metrics messenger system. And that's something we had wanted anyway. And we then created several channels to discuss various issues such as deployment of an inventory. It also serves as a point of call for questions and for interested people that may want to join us. And with Corona, of course, schools have to become the focus, a very special focus. And through some publications, we got in touch with many responsible people in schools and we defined the objectives early on. We wanted to make reuse of hardware easier and we wanted to make it accessible for unexperienced users. And from the beginning, our focus was on company donations, which gave us a lot of similar devices, but also created a problem because many people wanted to give us donations during work hours. But if you have a place you can call and someone telling us, we will give you 50 PCs next tomorrow. That made us realize that we don't have enough space to collect more than a few laptops, perhaps. But we don't want to reject any donations either. So we opened a third collection point and while we're at it, of course, we can just use the whole of the hack space, we said. And that was what happened. Every space in the storage room was used for the vast amounts of stuff we had to store and things were piling up to the ceiling. And of course, if we hadn't had the pandemic, which meant that many events were passed, we would have had many more problems. We got private donations as well, but these are very varied and often very old. But we could collect these after work hours. Some gave us some very interesting accessories, mice with balls, disk drives, old SATA hard disks. One of the few, one of the many, just some of the many examples that one of our early problems, which you probably cannot imagine, was we didn't have any socket and any electricity cables because we need two of those for every old computer for the tower and for the monitor. So you may be thinking, what? Everyone has boxes of those at home. True, but we didn't have any left. So we actually had to get and buy some electricity cables, which fortunately is no longer necessary, have actually raised our storage. And at the beginning, we were thinking of using USB sticks with ISO images for Linux installation. Of course, put them in and that's it we thought. And we opted for Ubuntu 2004 LTS because we wanted to make it easy for new users to find solutions for the problems they may encounter. So plug in the USB stick, boot it, and after a few key presses and about 10 minutes time, the Linux was really, really installed on a computer that we could then give out. Of course, there were a few teeth and problems. We hardly had any queries about the operating system. What you get are some home made problems from keyboard layout when people modified their keyboard layout settings or their language settings, but we could solve those easily. The question for the starting password is very, very popular one, which we could always answer by saying, please look at the sticker that we put onto your computer because that's where the information is. But there were some curious questions. How can I install the Bluetooth software? I've downloaded all kinds of things already. And of course the user question is, has the internet been built into the device already? And then we have the one that should not be named Windows 10. There was a license updates. So there was a program that we installed to quickly update Firefox and others. And we had to write a PowerShell script to deal with some privacy issues, but it still takes a whole lot of time. After 45 minutes and a lot of manual work, we had ready to use version. So the second version of our USB stick was based on FAY, fully automatic installation. And that was quite satisfactory to us, despite some very small problems. As the name says, the installation is automatic. And this has been an issue at the topic at the Chemnitz Linux days, a lot of several events. And it's quite easy to use. And that got us through the worst problems. The only thing that was left was to boot the computer via the network. So we'll watch the installation process for FAI in the screen grab. A mini-live system is first booted via PXE and ends up directly in the RAM of the computer. You can then choose your profile. You have to confirm once to erase the data on the desk. And the program explains how the computer is going to be partitioned, the hard disk, what packages are going to be installed, and those things. And that was also our first solution for the language problem. And the standard, the defaults for the configuration was also reflected, giving us a German-based system with the German keyboard layout quite easily. The profile uses Ubuntu, installs Firefox, LibreOffice, and other common pieces of software. And thanks to these profiles, there are some other bits that we can add easily. And we can also, by using this network-based booting, avoid having to copy data onto USB sticks. So we have a Ubuntu without having to... It's always recent the Ubuntu we install, we don't have to install updates after the installation. Since we would normally install several computers at the same time, we introduced a cache for the data so that we wouldn't have to download it from Ubuntu all the time. And we had an apt proxy that we configured, so we can download new packages and store them in the cache, and for each new installation downloaded directly from the LAN, which has a nice side effect, which is that we can actually also run the installations offline. We had an instance where Jan's company donated a computer, and this was supposed to be upgraded by him and his colleagues without overburdening the guest's Wi-Fi. And that was quite easy to implement using this technology, so there were no delays. And six or seven computers can be installed at the same time, because the computers do the most work as they install the packages on their drives. So we are in quite good control of the installation process. And so we prepare the so-called sysprep image on a hard disk, which is a normal Windows installation, actually. This is for Windows, I guess. And that is then added to with some necessary drivers, and the Windows is then downloaded in the regular way and can be installed on new computers. And ultimately, the software used is Clonesillar. So we added this as a menu item in the PXE menu, which starts Clonesillar. The images are on a server and copying these images then is the limiting factor for the installations. A single computer needs about five minutes to copy this, but if several computers are trying this at the same time, you have several hundreds of gigabytes going through the line. And that is the limiting factor. So we start the computers, see that the system is active, we have the licenses that we have to consider, and then we can run updates. And updates are the main disadvantage here, because we have to update the image that we install regularly in order to not have to install too many updates after the individual installations. We didn't have to install an extra VESU server, because that would have entailed other problems. Because we always have different computers, normally this kind of procedure is only really useful for larger donations from companies that gives us a larger number of identical devices. So how do the end users get their laptops? In the beginning we had an email address where people could contact us, and then we had a preliminary sorting, and we also asked them some questions to vet whether they really required a computer. And in case of cooperation with schools, the computers are delivered to the schools. We have already gotten and cleaned up and restored about 700 computers, which took a lot of work. And I would estimate that for one computer, all in all, all efforts included all the bureaucratics and everything, we have about one hour that we put into each device. So that was 700 hours of work. So that means 20 hours per work, all voluntary, all done by volunteers who do that on top of their day jobs and their familial engagements. So what did we learn from all of this? We learned that it is indeed a lot of work, so we are always still looking for ways to delegate efforts. For example, the distribution. We are always getting new requests, so we're really glad to see that there are similar projects in other cities, for example in Halle. We don't have problems updating and restoring normal systems, but the space really is a problem because many people need to work at the same time and not get in each other's way. And this is a very good project where you can also motivate companies to take part and to put in effort. But not all of our expectations could be matched. Reality just hits differently because many people don't have internet at home. So we usually ask people whether the computer is next to the router if they need a LAN cable or whether they need a router. One participant said, for example, that they only use internet on their phone or some people even don't use email. Some people were not aware that they'd just sent an email because they were missing the green check marks. Also, reference lines are an unknown thing for some people. Sometimes we get the whole message in the reference line or we get emails without reference lines. So sometimes we get emails with donation in the reference line and we don't know whether it's a donation that is going towards us or that they want us to donate hardware to them. And also without open source we wouldn't have been able to pull all of this through even if it requires many efforts. And we would rather spend money on Wi-Fi adapters rather than proprietary software. And also we're very grateful to have our volunteers who do so much work whether it be physical hauling computers from place to place or virtual checking tickets. And we need all of those contributions for the whole project to be a success. What do we want in the future? Blooming landscapes, of course, but we don't know concretely how much of that we can realize. We would like to offer workshops for people how to use computers. And when doing that we could also do crypto parties. We would like to get a better connection to our partners. For example, we could create a chat channel on the device where the community can help themselves. And of course we would like to get into schools more and enable digital participation and actively promote it. But before we get to that, a very simple organizational topic, our inventory. We want to have a new inventory system that allows us to track our devices better to see how many devices we've already installed and how many of those actually show up in the system while installing. And we don't want to have to update Excel sheets manually. And of course we're also very interested in secure hard disk deletion and to optimize that. That would be very useful for us, especially to take away the worries of our donators. We're working on a script but it isn't finalized yet. And the question is also whether that is possible because deleting hard disks is a very time-intensive and labor-intensive thing. And also we would like to do the windows image installation in the same step. And then we have the problem that not everyone has internet. And of course that would call for participation with Freifunk. Leipzig used to have a huge Freifunk community. Why not use that approach to enable more free internet for everyone? So that was it from our short introduction. Thank you for listening. And we're happy to receive hardware donations from whomever it may be. Thank you. Katzen, Paradox am and Pretoriana. Thank you very much for your presentation and your stories from the trenches of empowerment and technological enablement. We still have some time left for Q&A. So call for participation for anyone watching the stream. Post your questions into the chat and we'll try to answer them. I would like to start with the first question from the pad, which is how do you prevent in such a project self-exploitation? Well, self-exploitation is a very hard word. We knew that when we launched this project that it is a very important ecological topic. But also corona came on top. And digital injustice is very much exacerbated by the corona virus crisis. Of course, at the beginning, especially we invested much more time than would have been sensible. But the issue is just so pressing and important. And also a lot of people were motivated to help out so that we could put the load on more shoulders. And now we're also getting support from authorities and public organizations. Okay, we're seeing more and more questions. That's a very good thing. Next question. Regarding going to schools, there is also the Chaos macht Schule, chaos at school team in Germany and Austria. What is the difference to your efforts? Yeah, of course we have the chaos at school team. But us in Leipzig were very local. We went to local schools from the beginning. And started a collaboration and it's become more important to us the whole school thing because of corona. It made it very difficult to personally hand over the hardware. So, that is why we want to do it more in the future. Be more visible at school, involve teachers, social workers and so on in order to enable a decentral distribution of hardware. And you have to say it's different from school to school. It depends on the people involved. It depends on whether you find an interested and engaged teacher or principal and in the end communication is key. And personal contact is very important to build and maintain those personal relationships. So, it's not a one size fits all approach. You have to find individual ways to approach different schools. But that's also a good thing because we can distribute many computers to schools. Now we're getting a few technical questions. Most computers delivered with or without SSD and how do you get replacements? Most computers from companies are pretty complete and up to date. So, they're about three, four or five years old. But many computers still have outdated hard disks. We had computers with SSD, especially from private donors. That was almost always the case. SSDs help us and companies because they secure ways of deleting them. So, you don't have to overwrite them several times. You can put crypto on that so that the data will not be legible afterwards. Sometimes they also get computers without hard disks. And we buy SSDs in bulk, about 180 GB. And that is financed by support by the city and private donations. We would prefer saving a laptop that doesn't have a hard drive, a hard disk, rather than letting it go to waste. So, how can one send you things if you don't live? How if one does not live in Leipzig, Germany? Well, the best thing would be to build up a project locally yourself, rather than sending us things. In many cities, there is a need or an interest to support us. But what would be best is if people on the ground would be looking. What makespaces do I have in my area? Which companies are there that may be working in this field? And what perhaps like to start a project? But alternatively, if you are in the region, perhaps you could arrange to meet us. In corona times, it's of course not easy, not really possible to just drop in. And yes, you could also hand in your devices then. But we only work locally in Leipzig and surroundings. There are some larger organizations that approach this at a larger scale. Computer tours, one that didn't get the other one. And on their website, you find nice maps telling you where you can donate your devices locally without having to send them all the way to us. And there will be a talk in this divock as well from them. And that gets me to now give you two questions packed into one. How can you get organized, form gangs? So the question is, are you considering cooperating with similar projects? And how could a corporation be shaped? And I'll add to that the question, we are thinking about starting a similar project in our region. Could you help us building up such a project? Or do you help building up similar projects? We'd like to help if there are questions, technological support, or exchanging experiences about early mistakes. Computer tour and Realtor, these two offer help as well. So you can ask them as well. We haven't built up a repository of helpful information yet regarding cooperation. If people offer donations to us that are not really resource effective because they're not nearby, we are referring those to these other organizations. And there was an idea together with Computer Tour that two to four or more various organizations that work in this field should get together and form a round table to talk across Germany about how we can bundle our resources better. Locally, we are quite well networked, be it with the Computer Tour in Chemnitz or a project in Halle, which is quite nearby. So from the beginning, we have been able to give support. If you do have questions, come to us, write an email we could arrange to meet and tell you how we struggled at the beginning. And we do like to help with debugging the Ansible playbooks that you may be using. We have been able to get things running reasonably well. And I can add the next question directly, the one that came in last. How can people reach you best to get into contact? Well, the best way would be really to use the distance holo matrix server. We have a hard way for future channel, but you can use email, which would go through the usual ticket system then before it reaches us. So it may take a bit longer to be responded to. And should Corona at some point be more or less over, you are welcome to visit us once we are more or less safe from Corona. Okay, I'll now summarize two more questions into one. And one is regarding the talk, how did you get to cooperate with the municipality of Leipzig and how did companies become aware of you as well? Are these companies look, do they look for organizations? How do they find you? The city of Leipzig approached us at the Chaos Communication Congress in 2019, the 36 C3 saying that they wanted to do something for sustainability. And from that, the idea grew that digital participation should be furthered and that led to the hard way for future projects. We were very lucky there. And as we said in the talk, we have this office for digital cooperation in Leipzig, which gave us a lot of support financially but through contacts as well and for reaching the first companies too. Because the IT service provider for the city of Leipzig was able to donate and they were more flexible than others. And they were told, yeah, let's do something. And then other companies that become aware of us, well, we try to reach them to various channels, be it through personally, through people that we get in touch with as donors and ask that they talk with their employers. We have IT departments and we tell them that there are better ways to safely donate devices other than discarding them in the waste. So that is the message. It is possible to donate devices without disregarding data protection or privacy completely. We give help and tools that are cheap to use. And we don't have to have the admin working on the device and overriding the hard disk for 30 days or something and preferring them to just throw it away. There are ways to take care of these issues as the device is dislocated from the first place where it is. Just change the BitLocker encryption key or use some old number of Linux scripts that deal with the SSD and erase it safely. Interesting. Right. Here is the next question, which is something very different. Do the tax authorities want you to declare stuff, even if everything is free of cost? We try to the best of our conscience to work as safely as possible. We are a registered charity. We receive donations, which we have to give receipts for. And then we have to prove that the people that are given devices from us are in real need. So we have the IT office of the city on our back there or taking care of us there. Otherwise, we would have to apply all kinds of tests to make sure that that is the case. But luckily, through the city, we don't have to do this. We try to be as safe as possible because the charity stages of our hack space cannot be endangered through this. And also it has to be said, through these private donations, they are not really regulated. And that gives us an opportunity to supply people that may just fall out of the system for state support. So we have a bit of room for maneuver here with the private donations. And we are able to supply these people as well. Those that may be just above the limits for needing support from the state or being eligible for support from the state. So that's interesting how you get these things done. I can't see any further questions. Hang on. And then I would like to just thank someone from Halle, the people that produced the video with us. Thank you, Milo, from EPK in Halle. And a closing statement, perhaps. Something that you may want to tell those in the stream. If you have more questions at 6, after this there will be a big blue button session. You'll find the link in the pad. Otherwise, we have a website, dezentrale.space. Dezentrale being the German spelling for decentral. We have hardware for future.de. Our website that gives you information. Regularly talk to your IT department or if you are working in an IT department. Think about what you do with your old hardware. Could you donate infrastructure to Freifunk communities? Could you give computers maybe without the hard disk if necessary? I think companies say, okay, we'll give the old device together with the small financial contribution to save these devices from being put to waste. And digital injustice does exist out there. And due to corona and through donations to schools, that hasn't really helped much. And we are really, really happy to be able to work in this and we have put a lot of passion for this. We're giving all these devices and we get them ready and we give them out. And if we can continue like this, even then, all over Leipzig, we can't even reach a small percentage of the people that are in real need. So it's very, very important to have this kind of work going on all over Germany and more devices being donated and all that. That is very important. Okay. Thank you for that closing statement and the talk. And of course, thank you for your work. So Katzen, Paradoxon, Prateriana. Thank you. And if you want to keep in touch and talk more, join the big blue button session in five minutes. The link is in the pad, the one that you used for the questions. And enjoy the further discussion and keep giving people digital access. Thank you.