Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2012-01-16 The meeting was called to order by dwilson at 19:30. In attendance were Voting members: ezyang geofft jhamrick dwilson bbaren afarrell achernya kaduk | adehnert Associate members: broder jbarnold quentin jhawk Prospectives: lfaraone ine amb lapentab omalley1 dennison Guests: Administrivia ============= dwilson: Today we will have membership elections for lfaraone and ine. Project Updates =============== achernya: Yesterday, ezyang and I prepared two more Scripts servers for general deployment. They'll be deployed shortly after the meeting. Their names are shining-armor and better-mousetrap. lfaraone: Debian and Ubuntu had a hackathon. It wasn't as well attended as other hackathons (partially because it was during the day), but it was good fun. ine: SIPB IAP is rolling around. Dropbox is actually bringing some folks around, for talks about internal search in HTML5 and clickjacking. We had a cancellation today, because the lady who was going to teach the class is in the hospital for complications during her pregnancy. The class was "Software Project Management". geofft: Linerva's test machine is making progress, my thesis is making slightly more progress. This is a good thing. lfaraone: The SIPB door sensor will now tell you if it doesn't know what the current state of the door is. lfaraone: I'd like to request the purchase of a Magstripe Writer, which is about $250. [dwilson: Do you have a specific use in mind?] General purposes. [iannucci: Is there a non-sketchy use?] Backups! [quentin: There are many legitimate uses.] [bbaren: Clearly we should have SIPB swipe cards.] [afarrell: Cokecomm cards!] [quentin: There are lots of possibilities.] [jhawks: I'm not prepared to entertain this idea right now.] [quentin: Seconds lfaraone's motion.] [geofft: What is money status?] [kaduk: Not to a great degree of certainty, I'm sure we have $1k.] [geofft: OK, that sounds fine.] [iannucci: Sounds like a nice thing to have.] [jhawk: What's the model?] [quentin: MSR 207 Clone] [bbaren: Does it need drivers?] [quentin: Just a serial device.] [broder: Serial devices with a documented format.] [jhawk: I'd rather not vote on this today, because I think it's awfully sketchy and we should have a clear idea about what it is. I am uncomfortable that we'll just encourage fraud with it. I can be convinced otherwise, but absent that feeling I'll have to vote no.] quentin: This weekend was Mystery Hunt, and neither XVM nor Scripts had any major outages! We hosted a number of hunting systems. jhamrick: Gutenbach is having a hackathon this weekend. You should come! Other ===== jhawk: MIT Computing. On December 26, I sent mail on this summer crap, but in case you recall, it was the observation that after finals (and the week after) Stellar was unusable allegedly because too many people were trying to check their grades. It seems that we should lobby IS&T to fix this, because this seems to be a persistent problem, or encourage people to adopt an asynchronous thing. [kaduk: My understanding was that the Stellar site has been partitioned so that it is not all running on one server.] [jhawk: But this caused problems because people couldn't enter grades. I guess I'm curious if anyone at SIPB is interested at looking into this.] [dwilson: What do you mean?] [jhawk: Lobby IS&T to fix the problem, it seems not to be a new one, and also encourage the registrar to figure out an asynchronous way of notifying emails.] [bbaren: I can bring this up at the next ISTAB meeting, as SIPB's representative. But I haven't looked beyond the email.] [dwilson: I do think that ISTAB is a reasonable venue for this, and jdreed is potentially a reasonable avenue, both of these entities existing for the purpose of communication with IS&T.] [jhawk: Part of my question is whether or not anyone cares.] [dwilson: My impression is people care at the time, but quickly forget things.] Other Other ========== broder: My name's Evan Broder, I'm a SIPB member, I graduated a few years ago, Redwood city, govt certified to have nicest weather in US, we do awesome stuff with virtualization and other stuff with Ubuntu. Contact me, we're looking for fulltime engineers and interns. [geofft: I can confirm that in fact they are looking for more people.] afarrell: I'm working for Panjiva, which is in lovely Kendall Square. We do supplier search, our goal is to help connect buyers and suppliers across borders. If you're interested in a fulltime job or internship come talk to me. [broder: I should clarify that cold weather is 40C for us.] [quentin: That's cold!] [iannucci: They aren't mentioning the fact that they're still wearing sandals!] lapentab: The male-female ratio is terribly skewed today. Election: ======== ine: Hi everyone, I'm a Junior, I came in Freshman year, jumped on Quickprint project, built a shiny interface for it, but the interface is now obsolete due to Pharos. I got reinvolved through achernya and afarrell, achernya told me he should come back to the office, and afarrell convinced me I should organize SIPB IAP. I think this is like Atlas and Hercules: he managed to hand me the task of managing SIPB IAP. lfaraone: My name is Luke Faraone, I guess I should explain my situation. I worked at Ksplice this past summer, since all of my colleagues spent their time on Zephyr, I ended up hanging out at SIPB; I flew out to run some hackathons, working on Debathena and other SIPB projects. geofft: Traditional. Isaac, how do you double space in the IAP guide? ine: My first question would be why. [geofft: Describe] [Ed. didn't catch all of the sequence] C-x ) Meta-0 OR [bbaren: I think that would actually triple space] In that case I'd redefine it [Ed. also didn't catch] lfaraone: [geofft: How would you double space in debhelper seven?] Hack up a Perl script. [geofft: How do you double space in CDBS?] Yell at the maintainer until he wrote that functionality. [geofft: How do you double space in Yada?] You would not use Yada. jhawk: For both, what are the singulars and plurals of the punctuation above the number keys on top of the keyboard, ine the odds, lfaraone the evens, in order. ine: exclamation mark, exclamation marks lfaraone: at sign, at signs ine: pound, pounds lfaraone: dollar, dollars ine: percent, percents lfaraone: caret, carets... ine: ampersand, ampersands lfaraone: star, stars ine: left parenthesis, left parentheses lfaraone: right parenthesis, right parentheses jhawk: [some indistinct correction] kaduk: How do you feel about Octothorpes? [lfaraone: I'm not using Unicode.] [bbaren: Is there actually a Unicode symbol?] [lfaraone: Yes there is.] [jhawk: Why did the Unicode standard get smaller] [broder: They switched from UCS-2 to UTF-8] [bbaren: But now Windows users can't read it.] [quentin: No, there's a BOM at the beginning. There is not, in fact, an Octothorpe Unicode character.] jbarnold: Where is the nearest fire extinguisher, circuit breaker, and first aid kit. [correct answers] broder: I feel like this answer is easier because we don't have the whiteboard anymore. [indistinct conversation, involving whether or not there actually is a first aid kit in the monolith] jhawk: What do you think about those poppy things on current strips, which pop out when you exceed permissible current? lfaraone: The inaccurate term would be a fuse. jhawk: Also known as a... [circuit breaker] bbaren: In keeping with do you know... where is the save in case of fire box? [ine and lfaraone point in different directions.] whiteboard _| dwilson: Isaac is closer broder: ine may be compensating for institute North kaduk: What direction is the enemy's gate? lfaraone: I know the reference, I don't recall the direction. [office collectively gasps at horror at lack of cultural training]. [lfaraone reasons a bit.] Therefore enemy's gate is down. bbaren: Where is MITSFS, so you can go there right after the election? [lfaraone points down.] broder: ...So towards the enemy's gate. afarrell: What would you do, with a drunking sailor, if he walked in and started wassailing you? lfaraone: Dial 100. geofft: What about a drunken CSAIL-er? [groans] [jhawk comments on Octothorpe in index of Unicode 4 but not 5] [broder: Isn't there version 6 now?] afarrell: Do either of you know the *actual* origin of the Sharkbanana? lfaraone: Yes. afarrell: For you ine, iannucci: Your choice for the origin of the plushie or the concept. ine: I would hypothesize that some SIPB member was in a foreign land with bananas, but not a landlocked foreign land because it involved a shark. Given this, maybe the SIPB member observed a take on a local custom which he thought jumped the shark (local sense) but failed to execute properly due to slipping on a banana. Thus he returned and created the SharkBanana! jhawk: U+0020 sign is the only one that is referred to as Octothorpe. So there is not a separate Unicode code for it. Thus giving verification to the choice of pound. ine: I'd like to state that I hate Unicode and prefer ASCII. bbaren: If you were in the SIPB office and you received a phone call, and it was from a "disseminator of information", and say they worked for a "large daily publication printed on newsprint", e.g. for the Boston Globe, and the reporter asks you to comment on the most recently released Apple iPhone 7X. What would you response be? ine: I believe original instance was involving an iPad? [bbaren: yes.] It seems like if you really wanted to get out without being too rude, you could plead complete ignorance and hang up phone. Or you could ask zephyr. Or you could take down their contact information and then tell them they'll be contacted again. [broder: How would you anticipate such a reaction interacting with the number?] lfaraone: Could not be reached for comment.] [iannucci: i,i that's not our problem] jhawk: I think that the 'make it the reporter's problem' is a good idea, because otherwise 'no comment' might get put down. kaduk: Suppose a user comes in, stands at the front of the table, and they're looking confused, and maybe they try a stapler, and they're still confused what do you do. lfaraone: Ask them if they need help. kaduk: "Yes, all of these staplers are out of staples." lfaraone: Reverify the stapler is being used properly, then go get staples from monolith, and then set off on a quest! kaduk: I'd like to note that there are staples in a central drawer, that are in the desk, and it should be clear which ones are which. broder: You are alone in the SIPB office, and someone comes running in frantically telling you that some SIPB service is down or misfunctional. Which service would it frighten you the most to hear about if you were alone in the SIPB office? ine: I'd say Scripts. Mostly because Scripts goes down a lot. lfaraone: Gutenbach, because music soothes the soul. quentin: Favorite, and least favorite service? lfaraone: Least favorite, stuff. Most favorite, Scripts ine: My favorite is XVM, first encounter with virtualization, least favorite is Quickprint, probably because it... afarrell: Someone whom you do not know walks into the office, leaves the laptop on laptop land, and then leaves. ine: Inspect the laptop to make sure it does not [indistinct] lfaraone: Inspect to make sure it's not downloading copies of JSTOR. iannucci: Taking, or leaving? What if it was a Mooninite [geofft: We should tell this story.] geofft: Related. Will you confiscate, or allow to be confiscated, deberg's laptop if he's working with Aaron Schwartz. (The original question was would you steal deberg's laptop.) [lfaraone: Depends on who it is.] [quentin: A laptop got stolen.] [jhawk: No, he just always asked people if they would watch it.] achernya: Which SIPB service could we trick^W convince you to maintain next week and not be too sad about it. lfaraone: Debathena. (Please don't.) ine: Scripts. geofft: Which SIPB service if we let you maintain it next week you would have the most fun with? ine: Gutenbach, because I wrote some stuff for it at the hackathon, and I had some random feature ideas involving weird transforms to the audio files, kinda interesting from S&S perspective. One thing that would be cool is playing Youtube. [ezyang: Black Hole's instance does know how to play YouTube!] [broder: I think we've packaged the fixed youtube-dl.] lfaraone: I wuold like XVM. Because, hey, excess computing capacity... dwilson: What should SIPB be doing differently than it is doing now? ine: One of the things that I've come to appreciate the most is that the office is a communal workspace. Coming here originally was not something i was really used to. I think if it was advertised more as such. I don't think I ever felt like I got an invitation to come here and spend time. lfaraone: Better documentation. There's an office manual that hasn't been updated since 2003. Most of it is out-of-date, and it's slightly less optimal. kaduk: We have a number of supplies in the monolith, which are not extensively catalogued but including things like pencils, pens. Is there anything you think we should have, either for general use or just if someone comes in and needs it. ine: A block of aerogel would be awesome. broder: I hear that stuff is unpleasant to come in contact with ine: It's a good insulator. It is extremely light, but not lighter than air. [achernya: It is advertised as lighter than air.] [discussion about whether or not aerogel is lighter than air, with the conclusion that it is not.] iannucci: Suppose it's the last week of IAP, a robot wanders into the office. Where do you send the robot? ine: I would ask the robot who made it, and then locate the person. [iannucci: It's the last week, you should know!] 6.270? [iannucci: Yep!] jhawk: What if it's a MASLAB robot? afarrell: Are you a member of, or have ever been, a member of the Students for a Democratic Society? [No comment.] iannucci: Are you familiar with the history of this question? Some of the peculiarities of how SIPB is set up have to do with preventing certain student groups joining SIPB en masse and then voting all of its resources to another. lfaraone: If that's actually important, then no. kaduk: Hanging on the wall behind me is a reason of Beasty. What do you think 4.4>5.4 means? ine: A split, and maybe 4.4? lfaraone: Daemon not supported on 5.4? adehnert: Supported on 4.4? geofft: 4.3? jbarnold: That's why BSD failed! jhawk: They're not on the same number version, and the poster asserts BSD is better than System 5. geofft: Two actual questions. For ine, one thing I attempted to do and failed in my long history of doing such things, was organizing something that was like SIPB IAP over the summer. What do you think? Do you think it's worthwhile? Should we do IAP style stuff outside of IAP? ine: IAP is good because people are here and have time for extra things. To support doing that, I'd like to know what percentage of students are here over the summer. I'll be close-ish but... the general question, I think there are more classes we could pull out of the expertise of SIPB and its affiliate.s I've been impressed. So if summer is a way to do more in the process, that's good. geofft: For lfaraone, you are joining a comupting group that is far from your home university. I assume that nothing similar exists at your home university. Do you have your thoughts whether you should create something to this effect, join Hacker Spaces? lfaraone: I'm not familiar with the hackerspaces in DC, since it's a nontrivial distance from where I am. It's kind of not comfortable. There are spaces at my university. It would be awesome. Whether it is feasible is how many people I can get involved, and get funding. geofft: What do you think is necessary to make SIPB happen? lfaraone: It's a very complicated; working towards a common goal? geofft: I move broder ask the question. broder: Why do you want to be a SIPB member? ine: Two things. First thing, is having a permanent MIT email would be awesome, because there are no tech companies I can see lasting for a 100 years. I have strong confidence MIT will be around for another 150 years. So that's a good digital planning asset. [But will email be around in 100 years? Will you be?] I've really enjoyed getting to know SIPB members in person, and draw on technical knowledge and expertise. lfaraone: The Athena account is nice. SIPB has been a lot of very awesome people, participating on it, I hope to participate more effectively on it, increase productivity. I think it's a really great place. <9-0-1 ine membered> <8-0-2 lfaraone membered> jhawk: Knuth's companion to the papers of Donald Knuth. I think we want the hard cover. [jhawk: Look it's Knuth all the way down.] [kaduk: I think the hard cover is more durable.] [iannuci: OK.] [jhawk: straw poll 5 hard, 2 paper, I'll keep motion as stated.] [iannuci: Objection withdrawn.] geofft: Give a brief shout-out to Boston Security meetup. It's a place of reasonable focus in the industry, in Boston area, independent consulting. They'll challenge your assumptions about Unix permissions being reasonable, in the real world. [broder: They're not?] They look at you funny if you see a dialup with user permissions as the security model. You get a case of beer if you present. [adehnert: Did you actually make good on that] [geofft: No... I can't drink it all.] ezyang: SIPB is sponsoring space for Hac Boston, a Boston Haskell hackathon! It will be awesome, there will be food, come to 4-159. meeting adjourned at 20:24. Minutes taken and submitted by ezyang.