This Week

Join us in CSE/080 (The Pod) at 19:00 on Friday 28th March as we cast the floor wide open to topics ranging from Linux to cryptocurrency. Perhaps you're a Linux guru, looking at starting your own home server or are just interested in sharing some interesting projects! Either way, we're always glad to see new people so pop in and say hi. Should conversation run dry, I've dug out various online versions of the popular board game 'Scotland Yard' from GitHub for us to test and critique.

It wouldn't be an Open Sauce event without some sauce-based food so this week we'll be enjoying a Katsu curry. Dinner is on us, Bon Appetit!

A reminder what you can expect from our bi-weekly events:

• A presentation about a topic all kinds of topics in/around Free and Open Source Software; from Open Hardware to the Open Web
• A sauce-based foodstuff for us to open and enjoy 😋
• A random open-source game from the depths of GitHub
• Plenty of chat about current affairs, politics & computer science!

Have a great week everyone, looking forward to seeing you on Friday!
Will & The YorDevs Team

This week

We'll be asking: Should you trust smart homes? The dream of a 'smart home' is as old as the internet itself but plenty of today's commercial products turn that dream into a nightmare. We'll investigate: What's wrong? Is there a better way? Where are the red lines? Should some things just stay dumb? Whether you're house is already kitted out, you're curiously about connectivity or staunch Anti-Alexa, join us in PZA/113 on Friday 14th Feb @ 18:30!

This week we'll be opening a (hopefully delicious) tomato salsa alongside some nachos so enjoy an evening snack as you listen!

A reminder what you can expect from our bi-weekly events:

• A presentation about a topic all kinds of topics in/around Free and Open Source Software; from Open Hardware to the Open Web
• A sauce-based foodstuff for us to open and enjoy 😋
• A random open-source game from the depths of GitHub
• Plenty of chat about current affairs, politics & computer science!

Have a great week everyone!
Will & The YorDevs Team

Welcome to this very special newsletter as we launch the first event in what will hopefully become a bi-weekly fixture.

Following the success of our 'I ❤️ Free Software Day' talk, this new format will include include:

• A presentation about a topic all kinds of topics in/around Free and Open Source Software; from Open Hardware to the Open Web
• A sauce-based foodstuff for us to open and enjoy 😋
• A random open-source game from the depths of GitHub
• Plenty of chat about current affairs, politics & computer science!

This week

We'll be talking about Decentralisation Tech: What it is; What it isn't & Why its important. Decentralised networks have the power to reinvigorate our politics from the grassroots level, and are technically fascinating. But what are they, and why are they so important? Whether you're already familiar with the implementation and relevance of decentralised technology (especially on the internet) or aren't even sure what it entails, join us in PZA/113 on Friday 28th Feb @ 18:30!

This week we'll be opening a number of different sauces alongside some naan breads so if that sounds good, dinner is on us!

Presidential Address

Congratulations everyone, we've made it to Christmas (practically)! Its been an action packed semester with some of great YorDevs events (and hopefully plenty of great non-YorDevs moments too). In my opinion, 'Building a Chat App' from the 6th November was our best session so far and I'm hoping we can draw from that to deliver an even better array of exciting content in the new year!

There'll be no event from us this week (although do check out the CS Societies newsletter to see what else is happening). Before you go though, make sure you're on our Discord and feel free to share anything you get up to over the holidays! On that note, all that's left to do is wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Best wishes,
Will & The YorDevs Team

Presidential Address

As ring in December and enter the penultimate week before the Christmas holidays, things are noticeably drawing to a close on campus. I think a combination of this, the cold weather and people having things to catch up on before exams, is gradually devouring people's time and energy so we've decided to go for something that is a little bit lower effort in terms of preparation. Still, hopefully it'll be of interest and I'll see you there!

This Week's Event

Project Workspace (Formerly HTTP 418 Social)
Wednesday 4th December 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/114

This week we're all starting to spin down as the holidays approach so we've decided to go with a slightly lower maintenance event. I believe in previous years they called it a HTTP 418 Social (in reference to the HTTP status code 418: I am a teapot) but its essentially just a space for people to come along, bring their laptops and work on their own project. If there's something you've been working on, bring it along, show it off or just put a couple of hours graft into it!

Other than that, be safe, have a good week and the end is in sight.

Regards,
Will & The YorDevs Team

Presidential Address

Welcome to another YorDevs weekly email. Thank you to those who did come to our session last week about website security. Unfortunately it didn't quite go according to plan so perhaps its lucky attendance wasn't as good as I'd hoped! As they say, live and learn - maybe Dr Plump will be able to make another appearance later in the year. For now though, we've got a new event for you to get your teeth into.

This Week's Event

Fun w. The HTML Canvas
Wednesday 27th November 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/114

This week we'll be exploring how to use the HTML canvas to create dynamic web pages in a way that you might not have encountered before. We'll attempt to make a simple game using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, from which you'll see the power of the HTML canvas and learn how, when and when not to use it. Bring yourself and your laptop to PZA/114 on Wednesday and get ready to make a canvas masterpiece (no paints required)!

Have a good week,
Will & The YorDevs Team

There'll be no preamble this week, I want to get straight to the point.

This Week's Event

Malicious Requests: Defacing Dr Plump's Website
Thursday 21st November 17:00 - 19:30 @ CSE/270

This week we're going to be exploring website security by (cough) reverse-engineering an existing website. You'll have the chance to attack the website of a fictitious cosmetic surgeon called Dr Fergus Plump using techniques such as SQL Injection, client request modification and observing secrets. Examples of tasks we'll look at: revealing hidden negative reviews, getting free treatments and deleting all appointments from his schedule. I emphasize that such techniques should be practised with consent only and that this session is purely for educational purposes to help you better understand how to secure your own websites against similar attacks.

I've been talking about this event for weeks and it has taken me a lot of time to plan so I really hope you can join us in CSE/270 @ 17:00 on Thursday 21st November. Drop in at any time, even if you can't get there at 17:00. There will be content for all ability levels and so hopefully you'll have fun whether or not you've done this before. Membership is never required.

Have a good week,
Will & The YorDevs Team

Presidential Address

Good morning everyone, hope you are well! Firstly, thank you everyone who came to our event last week where we built a basic web-based chat application based on a REST API (I made the API purely for teaching purposes - find it here). This was a huge success and in my opinion one of the best events we've done. I've decided to follow up this week by sticking on the same theme but making it more realistic using WebSockets instead of polling. Notice that this week's event is on Thursday, not the usual Wednesday - this is because I'm attending an event about Cyber Security and Quantum Computing (read more here if you're interested). Depending on how this goes, I'm considering a permanent move to Thursdays in order to avoid clashing with CyberSoc's weekly events.

Last week, I also chaired a meeting with the other four CS-related societies (HackSoc, CyberSoc, DevSoc and AI Society) where we agreed to collaborate more closely to improve engagement, event visibility and possibly deliver collaborative events in the coming months. Keep an eye out for further developments on this but in the meantime, see you on Thursday!

This Week's Event

Mini Project: Using Websockets to make a Live Chat
Thursday 14th November 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/113

As I said above, last week's introduction to REST APIs via a chat application was a huge success! That's why this week, we're staying in a similar vain and learning about how WebSockets can enable proper real-time communication. I previously used this exact technology to make a real-time online game called the Pirate Game. I can certainly demo this if people are interested but we'll be focussing again on making a simple chat application. If you came to our event last week, you're welcome to adapt your own code; otherwise you'll still be able to follow - we'll have some template code to help you get up to speed quickly. Come and join us in PZA/113 with your laptop and we'll see you there!

Other than that, that's everything for this week. Have fun and see you soon!

Best Regards,
Will & The YorDevs Team

Presidential Address

Good morning everyone, wishing you a pleasant return after consolidation week. Before I talk about the events we've got coming up, an important admin announcement: YorkSU have removed our access to the 'Interested Members' list so if you have been receiving emails by virtue of being on this list, this will be your last email from us 😢. Don't worry though, if you're  still interested but don't want to buy membership, you can re-subscribe to the mailing list at (https://listmonk.yordevs.uk/subscription/form) or by clicking the email icon at the bottom of every email. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Another exciting development I've been working on is the YorDevs VPS. If you're not familiar, a VPS is a type of cloud computing, an entire virtual computer in the cloud. This has the benefit of being easily accessible on the public internet with a high connection speed. I'm still setting it up at the moment but when ready, this will be the perfect place for you to learn about deployment and host personal websites and projects at no cost!

Other than that, hope to see you at this week's event.

This Week's Event

Mini Project: Building A Chat App
Wednesday 6th November 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/113

Again, possibly not the most original project ever but it does provide scope to learn about some important concepts. We'll have a couple of options to cater to different ability levels and the usual flexibility around what skills people want to work on. If you came to our session two weeks ago about modern web development you might like to further your knowledge of Angular, otherwise you can use basic HTML and CSS. You could work on developing an elaborate front-end to your app or listen in as I explain how we can integrate APIs and add server-based functionality to a website, including what the benefits are compared to form-based server communication. By the end of the session you'll learn what a REST API is and how to use them, either in plain JavaScript or with Angular.

Other than that, that's everything for this week. Have fun and see you soon!

Regards,
Will & The YorDevs Team

Presidential Address

Happy Monday everyone! Consolidation week is in sight and I'm very glad of it, just got to get through 5 more days.

Before we get into the important YorDevs business, today's random public service announcement is that LNER are giving away free Tony's Chocolonely  at York Station next week (Wednesday 30th and Thursday 31st) to anyone who is a member of LNER Perks. I won't pretend that is especially relevant however I have received an email from our counterparts a few stops up the East-Coast Main Line at Durham University. They've asked us to share details about their 'DurHack' 24 hour Hackathon event - see below. I haven't decided whether I will be attending myself since it is during the week and 24 hours is a long time but you can find more details below.

One thing I will be attending though...

This Week's Event

Modern Web Development: Online Storefront
Wednesday 23rd October 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/113

Arguably not the most original project we could have dreamed up but making the front-end of an online store will be a good illustration of the power of modern component-based web frameworks. You'll learn about the concept of a component in Angular, how they interact with each other and how they can be re-used for maximum code maintainability. While I'll be teaching you how to work with Angular since that's what I'm most familiar with, the concepts you'll encounter are very much transferable to other frameworks such as React. The nature of these frameworks includes introduces some complexities, especially regarding inter-component relationships however they're still based on the good old fashioned HTML and CSS at their core so if you've never done any web development before you'll still find the session accessible. Hopefully after attending you'll have the skills to make simple websites independently using Angular. As usual, grab your laptop and drop by!

External Promotion: DurHack 2024

Presidential Address

Good morning everyone, as always, hope you are well. If you are not well then I learned the other day that, as society president and in absence of a dedicated appointment, I am your wellbeing officer: go figure 👨‍🌾.  This week you may notice I've also given our email template some TLC and have graduated to a proper email management system; its called listmonk if you're interested - open source of course. This means that the option to manually subscribe to the mailing list and view emails online should be available very soon.

Anyway, we've finally got our act together and got some events planned 👏: take a look at what other events you can look forward to beyond just this next one.

This Week's Event

Introduction To Web Development: Replicating Google
Wednesday 16th October 17:00 - 19:30 @ PZA/113

In 2 hours, you're going to replicate the ENTIRETY OF Google. Ok well maybe not. We're going to show you a range of basic web development concepts from placing elements on a page, through styling and positioning them to adding basic interactive functionality with JavaScript. The aim of the session will be to replicate the look of main Google search page at (https://google.com) but the concepts learned will allow you to build simple websites of your own including any of the features mentioned above. If you've already got experience with Web Development then still feel free to come along, help others or show us your best spoof Google website! As usual, bring your laptop and there is no obligation to stay for the full event duration.

Upcoming Events

• Week 5: An introduction to modern web development. How does developing 'real world' applications these days differ from the basics? Learn about the role of frameworks such as React or Angular and how these simplify large web development projects by offering greater structure, reusability and maintainability.
• Week 6: Mini-Project - Making a web-based chat room. In this session, we'll guide you through creating your very own custom web-chat. You'll be able to put your knowledge learned so far into practise, creating and styling a front-end for your application and adding interactive features. We can then explore how APIs and websockets facilitate communication between your web-page, a back-end server and, indirectly, other clients.
• Week 7: Malicious requests. I'm quite excited about this one. We'll be looking at an example website and you'll be getting hands on using SQL Injection, request interception and other tricks to make the website behave in ways it wasn't supposed to. In the process, you'll learn about website security best practises and how to ensure websites you build aren't vulnerable to the same exploits as Dr Plump's (nothing to do with Detlef Plump the lecturer).
• Week 8: IOT WebDev. We'll be pivoting to look at back end development, how can we write APIs for our web pages to interact with? How can we make these APIs usable for other processes? To make this more interesting, we'll hopefully be getting some EPS32 development boards so we can explore back-end development in the context of interacting with the real world!
• -- and more to follow --

I'm also going to be launching the Home Lab user group very soon, with the first session to be held in Week 6 just after consolidation week. If you're at all interested in Open Source or self-hosting then make sure you look out for that.

Other than that, have a good week, stay healthy and see you on Wednesday!

Regards,
Will & The YorDevs Team