Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2018-04-02


The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by mcyoung.

In attendance were

        Student keyholders: alvareza, mcyoung, mtheng, dzaefn, dukhovni, slz, cela, bpchen | ikdc

        Associate keyholders: achernya, asedeno | quentin

        Members: kevin21, wmoses, elefthei, amigdal, rsthomp, mcameron, wqian94 | npfoss

        Guests: '()

Administrivia:

        wmoses: SIPB's CPW is sooner than you think. It's in two weeks, you should all come an volunteer for things ... SIPBW would like to request an allocation of $60 for a prize for one of our events. The reason why [we can't use the existing $500] is because one of our events got moved to lunchtime [and it needs to be used for food].
        
        [white ballot: allocation for $60 for SIPBW prize]
        
        wmoses: I'd like to motion that the wonderful fuzzball that Miguel drew should be redrawn ... for SIPBW purposes.
        
        dzaefn: I propose that Miguel be coerced to learn Illustrator.
        
        mcyoung: I nominate CAPSLOCK.
        
        [rsthomp accepts the nomination]

Project Reports:

        cela: We have IP addresses ... we're using IP addresses we've already been given because they don't want to give us some more. We're in the process of moving our server room ... to 18.4.60.0/23.
        
        cela: Work on Hyades continues, we do not expect to be able to meet the end April deadline. So we're looking on how to improve our processes. If you have any suggestions... Coincidentally, we don't have any [expertise in] project management [on the dev team]... [may be related somehow].
        
        dukhovni: ... upgraded Mastodon [...] during the break. ... XVM doesn't have enough RAM for us to set up ElasticSearch. The hope is that once Hyades comes about...
        
        mcyoung: I was joking that once we have a Hyades, we could start giving out extra Hyades quota as prizes for stuff.
        
        cela: Please talk to the Hyades admin before you start giving out prizes for stuff.
        
        achernya: Hi I'm Alex! I'm a cruft. I'm maintaining scripts. Scripts needs your help... if you learn to help with scripts, you can one day help port scripts to Hyades. You should help with scripts ... come talk to me after the meeting.
        
        cela: You should do it. It's a [great] way to learn the fundamentals of how MIT computing works...

Other:

        mcyoung: Over the past week, I've been porting some C written in the '90s for [math stuff]. ... K&R C, function signature declarations, several structs with a single-element array at the end which a comment says is "more than that", and enough undefined behavior to give everyone on the Google readability committee a heart attack.
        
        achernya: ... long-winded way to single out a specific person in this room.
        
        achernya: [clang-format] [LLVM] [buildsystem]
        
        cela: East Campus is getting their IP addresses renumbered. The best part is that now all of our servers have to use DHCP to receive static addresses.
        
        slz: Linux 4.16 has been released.
        
        cela: Apparently CloudFlare's releasing 1.1.1.1 on April Fool's day but it's not an April Fools' joke.
        
        slz: I tried to access 1.1.1.1 but was getting not DNS, so I tried nmap-ing and was getting some Cisco thing, turns out MIT hijacks 1.1.1.1 because that's what Cisco recommends for one of their admin things.
        
        achernya: The hijack only appears on MIT-SECURE.
        
        slz: Meanwhile you can use 1.0.0.1.
        
        achernya: I would like to point out that these IP addresses are terrible is because they look like gateways.
        
        slz: [The reason why they managed to negotiate these IP addresses] is because every time they tried to use the IP addresses they got flooded by junk traffic because everyone uses it for [testing].
        
        npfoss: What's the useful service?
        
        slz: The useful thing is [...] DNS.
        
        wqian94: Last Wednesday there was a forum in Kendall square, where a bunch of networking people came together to talk about security, and the conclusion was that everyone thinks it sucks but no one wants to do anything about it ... so good luck Hyades.
        
        cela: We aren't actually investing that much time in it.
        
        wqian94: I meant manpower, or womanpower, or X-power...

Other Other:

        cela: There is an announcement from StackOverflow talking about a very interesting thing they're working on. They're working on a new type of authentication scheme... it's called DanceDanceAuthentication... we'll show you the video [after the meeting].
        
        wqian94: China announced new tariffs on American agricultural products, including apples. ... If it's a Granny's apple they probably won't care, but if it's a Fiji apple...
        
        dzaefn: How has this affected FoxConn?
        
        wqian94: I think they feed their employees apples.
        
        mcyoung: How has this affected Apple? Juicy ones or the grey, black and crunchy ones?
        
        wqian94: As far as I know, only the juicy ones, because the crunchy ones are made exclusively in China. Relatedly, there's a subset of Republicans in Colorado who hates poor people. In particular there's at least one person in that subset who got fired from the GOP's Twitter account.
        
        cela: Spring break is sooner than you think.
        
        achernya: For those who are not in the know, the [X] is sooner than you think is a tradition and I'm glad it's still gonig.
        
        elefthei: I went to LibrePlanet...
        
        cela: Taxes are also sooner than you think...
        
        npfoss: Actually it's later than you think...
        
        cela: It's still too soon.


The meeting was adjourned at 19:54.

        Minutes taken and submitted by mtheng.