The Discussion:
We started with an amusing “show and tell” session about our high-tech flashlights. which diverged into multi-voltage USB-c chargers and digital USB testers.
Dennis talked about the ssh regression issue and included a link which briefly describes it.
Gib mused about batteries for the home, but not AAA batteries for remotes. He focused on home power batteries and a Tesla power wall. There are people repurposing electric vehicle batteries to power their homes.
We spent some time discussing the differences between Linux and BSD. Pat posted articles about a Comparison of BSD operating systems and a List of BSD operating systems. BSD has a very strong security record and it does not natively support many typical desktop applications, which makes it an excellent choice for servers. However there are desktop versions available and ways to run Linux software. Having a background in any variety of Unix makes the transition easier, since BSD conventions (such as directory layout) are very different than what is found in Linux systems.
We then jumped into the topics of printers, all-in-one devices, scanning, smartphone apps for scanning, and programs to remove distortion and smudges from existing images. There are some very good options for preparing text for optical character recognition (OCR). Carl found this article which goes into more detail.