Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2011-11-28 The meeting was called to order by dwilson at 19:30. In attendance were Voting members: ezyang dwilson achernya jhamrick kaduk adehnert oremanj geofft | dhanus Associate members: tlyu zhangc asedeno quentin jhawk Prospectives: ine dlaw maria98 | vzh Guests: Administrivia ============= kaduk: mkc is out of commission due to a misseated heatsink. bbaren has been doing most of the work, but he is not here. dwilson: Today we will be having a membership election for vzh. Project Updates =============== ezyang: Scripts now has a shiny new Fedora 15 test server [indistinct muttering from Scripts team] Oh, yeah, that too! [achernya: Specifically, we did the cutover to Fedora 15, and nothing exploded] [quentin: We got like two tickets.] [geofft: The EECS Who's Who fell down.] [geofft: If EECS falls down but LDAP stays up, we're OK.] [tlyu: Where is RT hosted?] [geofft: Not Scripts. This is on purpose.] kaduk: Debathena Trac's machine has been hanging multiple times a day, and we don't really understand why. ine: I contacted all of the 2011 classes, and there will also be some new ones. I talked with anneh and she asked if we wanted to cosponsor some of course six's talks; I said yes to some of the ones that seem relevant; there's Jason Meryl on C++, Philip Greenspun on Relational Databases and Internet Applications. Anne did suggest that we should have at least one kind of edgy talk, to push the limit so they can convince us. Last year, we almost did "Why the army does security wrong." [oremanj: Why did she ask us to do that?] Probably more fun. [kaduk: When will they go live?] Hopefully soon. dwilson: Earlier today, Scripts EC met to confirm achernya as Scripts Architect. [applause] vzh: Cluedumps! There are two more of them! You should come! At 8PM geofft is going to talk to us about security at MIT, using as an example Lincoln Lab's capture the flag class and some SIPB services. Next week, we will have our last cluedump, which is the Secrets of Statistic Binary Analysis, given by Christian Ronks. geofft: There was going to be a discussion about packagefab, but we're going to have this next week after the meeting. So if you're interested, you should show up to next week's meeting. Other ===== achernya: We've had lots of problems with the heatsink overheating with mkc before, so I want to allocate $50 for a new heatsink. [jhawk: So you think the heatsink is less reliable than the processor?] As far as we know that the CPU is fine. But nevertheless, a good universal heatsink can be used on a new processor if necessary. [kaduk: White ballot.] Other Other ========== vzh: The Mars Science Laboratory was launched this past Saturday at 10:02, and that is exciting! It's the size of a mini-Cooper, and was sent to Mars to look at geology. [kaduk: It's got a diffractometer inside]. [oremanj: How many miles per gallons does it get?] [jhawk: How many clowns fit on it?] geofft: jdreed is currently testifyng for the UA Senate which may or may not exist tomorrow. kaduk: The building was closed the Friday after Thanksgiving, but not Thanksgiving itself. dlaw: Spring course schedules are posted by the registrar. Election of vzh =============== vzh: For those of you who have not checked your email in the last four months, I'm Veronica Hanus. I'm obviously a prospective. I studied Geology as an undergrad, and am interested in studying this further in grad school as planetary science. But there's a lot more computing in planetary science than in standard undergraduate courses. Also, you have a fantastic collection of staplers. adehnert: Would you like to fix the door mounted stapler? vzh: I would love to see it fixed, but I would leave it as a task for the next active prospective. kaduk: If another prospective is interested in fixing the outdoor stapler, talk to me. kaduk: Suppose you're sitting in the SIPB office, and there's, say Matt DeBergalis, and he leaves the laptop in the office. And then, someone else whom you've never seen before walks into the office, grabs his laptop, and begins to walk out. What would you do? vzh: If that were my laptop, I'd not be pleased, and ask him what he was doing. And then he'd either cut off my head and run, at which point I'd be less concerned about the whereabouts of the laptop. After he leaves, I would send a message Dear sipb-ec, and then I would look up the number for the campus police. Because obviously I can't physically stop this person, realistically speaking. kaduk: You don't happen to know the campus police number? vzh: No. But I bet it's on the list of important numbers. I would look at the door. kaduk: You can dial 100 from an MIT phone. asedeno: There are also convenient stickers on the handsets. jhawk: How do you feel about the power of digital photography for enabling citizens? [vzh: What way? I feel very enabled with a digital camera. I can take all the bad pictures I want, and it won't cost me to get them all disabled.] This was an intentionally vague question. You could nab the laptop thief. [vzh: Oh man, that's a really good use.] maria89: But you'd have to get him on the back of the head. If he sees you taking a picture, wouldn't he take the camera? vzh: If I started screaming, he'd probably get scared enough to leave. geofft: Two questions for you. First question. Someone walks into the office and says, "My email isn't working." vzh: Well, first thing I would do, is say, "What were you doing right before, what computer were you on?" I would ask them if they were using web or some other interface. [geofft: I forward my mail to GMail. If someone emails my MIT address, I don't get it.] I think what I would probably do, as I was getting on zephyr, would then be to try to ask questions "Have you had this problem in the past", anything. Then I would see if I could connect them with someone with more information on zephyr. Unfortunately, I don't think I would be able to fix it myself. geofft: Suppose that doesn't work either, we don't see a message if I email my own GMail account. vzh: I would then have to stifle myself; I would not say "That sounds like a personal problem." Since they're a beloved user, I can't treat them like that; I would probably articulate the problem. I would probably suggest they come back on another day and find people more knowledgeable on GMail. geofft: The trick is that GMail does not show emails you have sent, including emails you have sent to yourself. [dlaw: This has recently changed.] kaduk: How do you double-space a whiteboard? vzh: I don't need to answer this, I'd go to Google! [jhawk: Turns out, Google doesn't tell you this]. I like LaTeX. So if I ... excuse me . I would go: blah blah ... ... blah blah Do you have other questions? kaduk: [beard scratch] Not especially. jhawk: What do you do when you reach a whiteboard marker, use it, and discover it doesn't work. vzh: I could make a joke about it. geofft: Follow-up question about email. Given your understanding of MIT email, what changes would you make to MIT's email system to make spamming about cluedumps easier? vzh: I would automatically create a filter... At the beginning of term, I would say to people at Tetazoo, come hang out at SIPB! And then they would come up to me afterwards and say thank for letting me know. But then they said, I've stopped getting cluedumps emails. My conclusion was that they had an automated filter. But silliness aside, I think it would be kind of neat to have a filter where if it said SIPB it would show up in bold, so if you changed the spacing so it was double the line length or something... that would be pretty cool. [geofft: So... how you would double space in your email.] tlyu: Aren't there UTF-8 formatting characters you can use to do this? [jhawk: Should you?] jhawk: Why wouldn't you just hit return twice on the whiteboard? vzh: But sometimes, when you're typing, it's fairly standardized. What you see on the handwriting, some people have different spacing naturally, so if someone doesn't know that it's Veronica's handwriting, and this much space means a double space... I'm leaving room for individuality. dwilson: If you could come up with an idea of SIPB project which would help some aspect of planetary sciences, what would your project be? vzh: I know this doesn't affect everyone equally, but I know that some of the research groups that I've talked to have a lot of people that are good at doing one thing, but not good at using all of their resources. So something like a draft management software becomes really helpful--I was kind of surprised when I found a lot of people still do editing by sending huge 46-page disgusting Word documents back and forth. I think the need for education is great regardless of your field, and especially if you're not aware of all the things software can do for you. Even something like revision management. [maria89: Waverly!] I think I would make that available, and I think it would be useful to publicize outside of the SIPB science computing community. I'm sure departments are using things that are well integrated, but they're stuck sending out 8 drafts to people, then getting 8 back, and then saying "Oh god, what do we do!) [dwilson: Seven-way merge.] If I could have told my postdoc that, the world would have been a better place. So maybe something like an outreach thing. These are things that SIPB projects can do, and things you can do to make your lives easier. kaduk: Here in the SIPB office, we have things hanging from the office. But we don't have any planets. Which one would you add? vzh: Clearly Mars is the best planet. Earth is pretty good too. It has an atmosphere, I like that. [kaduk: It's useful.] [achernya: Where does it go?] It hangs out with the banana. Or the bunny man. jhawk: Previously, SIPB members with an interest in planets have focused on extra-solar planets. I'm curious why you trumpet intra-solar planets. What's the conflict? How do you choose? Many people think "Extra" is better. vzh: "Extra French Fries, Extra Solar". I'm an equal opportunity planet lover. But I think a lot of people love the planet that they do research on. Mars. It's red. [jhawk: War.] Yeah, that too. zhangc: The phone rings and [giggles] and you have another member and a prospective in the office in the room. And the prospective picks it up, and they're like, "Who?" Everyone's staring at them, because they're the ones on the phone. And you look at them. And then they say "It's the Boston Globe, and they want an interview, or something." vzh: Luckily, I was at the meeting where we discussed this, but it was a closed meeting... dwilson: I think you and Cathy are referring to separate incidents, although there are similar themes. vzh: As a general case, I would probably assume, if the prospective had not been present to a group discussion, that the prospective would know how to handle this. I would motion to them to hand me to the phone. I think I would take down the reporter's and refer them to our chair. It's not something that needs to be answered then, and I shouldn't make a comment right then. But if there's a comment to be made (or not made), it should be a decision that is thoughtfully made, and we give ourselves some time to think about. And it's important that SIPB has a cohesive answer to these kinds of questions. zhangc: My incident was, I was here with two prospectives, and they were asking for our opinion on the iPad release, that was going on Right Then. And we ended up hanging up on them. dwilson: Hanging up on them is a reasonable response. jhawk: For what it's worth, and maybe my opinion is different on this, I think it's fine if you make clear that you're not representing MIT and SIPB. It's fine for you to say what you think if you want to say what you think. When it involves iPad, it's different than when it involves alleged criminals. zhangc: But they're not listening to you anyway. jhawk: Then you lose. zhangc: You don't want to record the conversation to show that you properly couched the remarks. jhawk: Follow up aggressively if they fuck you over. vzh: I would feel most comfortable not commenting. achernya: You did a lot of social stuff organizing these talks. What is your favorite SIPB cluedump? vzh: Scripts? I think it's because I think ezyang is the man. That was the best talk. That aside, Scripts does lots of other good things. It's been really good to see at least a sampling of information. I hope to do more technical things in the future. zhangc: Do you have any recommendations for our IAP organizers? vzh: I have so many recommendations, I don't even know. [ine: We've been talking about this] When I got cluedumps, it seemed fairly straightforward, but the information I got made some assumptions about who was planning Cluedumps. The people who had been doing Cluedumps for a while assumed that they knew about MIT, about all the student events. I went through and said, "OK, if someone else came and said, I want to do Cluedumps, but I've only been at MIT two months." So I ended up with this ridiculous eight page document, it's all there. And it's beautiful. dwilson: What is your favorite object hanging from the ceiling? And the favorite object on the wall? vzh: I've always liked the "Don't Panic! jhawk is NOT speaking at LSC" sign. Root OOPS is also pretty good. Hanging objects? I guess I really like the dragon because he [dwilson: she] has a grippy mouth. [adehnert: Did it always have a gripping mouth?] [dwilson: It was surgically altered to make that.] And also the Ksplice tag. vzh: One extra thing for future organizers: try to target. What you're doing, talking to professors who have similar classes is really good. "Wouldn't it be neat if I...?" Oh god, there are so many things to do. So hopefully folks have more time to jump on things. geofft: Name one cluedump that we did not have, but should have, and one cluedump that we did not have, and were correct in not doing so. [adehnert and geofft have witty banter] [zhangc: We're SIPB, we're supposed to be awkward.] vzh: So, "How to talk to girls" last year. What did people think about that? [adehnert: I missed that cluedump. It was very sad.] [zhangc: I have an off the record comment.] I think the cluedump that we did lose, was jesstess's IAP "The Internet Shouldn't Work" and I was looking forward to that one, because I was kind of curious. Well, we clearly didn't have repeats, which was good. I think Cluedumps should be careful so they don't overlap with other events, but I think SIPB is fairly safe. [zhangc: Was that your reaction...] What does that mean? How *do* you talk to girls? I don't know, maybe we should have had it; I would have been in the front row. dwilson: Where is the save in case of fire box? vzh: I can tell you where the fire extinguisher is. dwilson: That's not a fire extinguisher. vzh: It's an electrical circuit doohickey. dwilson: The fire extinguisher is right outside, in the wall, where it says fire hose. dwilson: The save in case of fire box is in the drawer that says HERE. tlyu: Why do you want to become a SIPB member? vzh: Having a key would be neat. And it would be neat for several reasons. Something you see is that we have people late... and really late. Wouldn't it be neat if you had an early bird? [adehnert: What's your definition of early?] [dhanus: All the hours that you aren't here. All of them.] [adehnert: I'm usually here starting at 10.] I'll see if I can beat that. The lifetime Athena account is nice. Also, I've learned a lot being in the office and just hearing people come in with questions and seeing what kinds of answers come out of that and being on the email, and the response. And I think it would be really nice to be on the other side of that some more. And I think you already are seeing this, but I think it would be nice. In a a more official way. Also, the staplers. jhawk: I've concluded the battery of my four year old Thinkpad is that I should either replace the battery, or the laptop. So what's the criterion I should apply? dwilson: Whether or not the CPU meets your needs, and your current financial situation. achernya: Do you have a hardware annoyance? jhawk: [wireless] dlaw: How do you feel about 16 by 9 screen? jhawk: Meh. vzh: What I would do is I would steal someone's battery, switch it, and see what would happen. It would see if the sadness was battery or something else. meeting adjourned at 20:23. Minutes taken and submitted by ezyang.