Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2025-07-21 The meeting was called to order at 19:35 by psvenk. In attendance were Student keyholders: psvenk, innaavo, suufi, rgabriel, skylarh Associate keyholders: '() Members: jolting, Kshitij, guoj1112 Guests: Kirpal Administrivia: innaavo: I wanted to talk about our money, and last year's money, and the upcoming year. My goal for August is to do some analysis on what we spent our money on for FY25. I will try to present that the meeting before the first official meeting of the semester so that it can be a more internal discussion as opposed to making the frosh sit through that. I will also try to make somewhat of a budget or a guideline for how we might want to spend the current fiscal year's budget. If anyone has any thoughts on this please reach out. Project Reports: skylarh: I'm back from the dead to announce that I've rewritten Eventful from scratch. I want to deploy it without needing GitHub pages and have it be eventful.mit.edu. psvenk: You can ask for a domain name, and the scripts maintainers are authorized by IS&T to grant the domain name. psvenk: I think Python is supported, an older version of note is supported, I would check the documentation. Might also be a good idea to talk to amigdal on Mattermost; he's more knowledgeable about Scripts than I am. skylarh: I can try. skylarh: I think this means I am not going to do kerberos sign in, it will just be local for now, kind of like Hydrant. ilyag [via chat]: ARK continues rgabriel: Why not? skylarh: Because then I'd have to deal with old node. guoj1112: Hydrant continues. I added two things. I seperated the front end side and backend side CI test. I also have somewhat slowly ran a unit test for Hydrant starting with the src/lib folder that contains utility code. Once I get that in I will submit the unit tests as well. Future work could be upgrading Python to 3.12 since 3.7 is actually deprecated, and JSON schema validation which is a big can of worms. rgabriel: I was testing mise on scripts which allows running more recent versions of both Python and node! psvenk: What does the JSON schema validation have to do with this? guoj1112: We have a lot of JSON and TOML data. I want to validate that the JSON data is conformed to the schema the front end requires. psvenk: We already do that. The way that the overrides files are created is that, unless you are using about the straight data from the registrar, they are generated programmatically from the JSON schema. If you are talking about the catalog, I guess that would be a good thing to do. The code is written in light of the schema. There is some duplication. dtemkin also has thoughts. guoj1112: We can talk more later. guoj1112: ARK sort of continues. I have been trying to create UI mockups and those are not going quite well so I am probably just going to use raw HTML and ditch the CSS, and figure out how to write good CSS later on. psvenk: You are doing a mockup without CSS? guoj1112: Yes, I want to make ARK into a multipage website, but getting the aesthetic right is difficult, so I will forget about CSS for now, since it is not terribly important for an MVP. suufi: OpenGrades continues. I gotta figure out the raffle stuff and determine the winners. suufi: OpenGrades is a way for students to leave reviews for classes, and I am self-hosting the syllabus upload feature so that it is not Dropbox anymore. The raffle was sponsored by the UA Education fund, encouraging students to leave their evaluations so newer students know what to expect. This is because subject evaluations are usually hidden to students, and no way to know why a class may have lower ratings. psvenk: Hopefully this is less toxic than RateMyProfessors. We have a course evaluation system but those are typically shared only with the departments and not with the students. Some departments have an underground guide. It would be good to have a place for what do the syllabuses say which you can't figure out unless the course websites are up. suufi: Canvas links are not useful unless you are registered. Harvard does have open access. This way, knowledge about classes can persist even across 4+ generations. psvenk: Also, a big part of why people choose classes is by talking to upperclassmen and getting anecdotal experience about what they are like, what should I take next terms, which professors are good/bad in various ways, how much work is it going to be, how should I structure the rest of my schedule, etc. It would be nice if you didn't need to get lucky and know people, and currently the activation energy of getting this info is very high. You can ask people, and even higher if you mean to email older alumni. psvenk: Project reports is also a section where people propose new projects. [more talk about OpenGrades] suufi: What if I am interested in this one poet? It is not going to show up in the course descriptions, but it will be searchable via OpenGrades because of syllabus access etc. Other: '() Other Other: [ghost of tarang]: miss you all <333 i started my job today! xoxo o7 (long live SIPB or whatever) psvenk: :o likewise! Kshitij: I have something to bring up, is here good? psvenk: Sure unless it's some criminal plan. Kshitij: I wish I was a criminal. Kshitij: [shares screen - https://matrix.mit.edu/media/QuGdWPpMVmmyZbWtznQmwutl]. I want to get your opinion on this figure. Can you understand what the hell is going on there? [various]: science/chemistry Kshitij: What it's supposed to show is that the distribution... (I do see one problem: no units). The distribution of photons within certain energy bands becomes bimodal as you get into larger and larger energy bands. Is this understandable from this figure, with this context. If not, what would make it more understandable? psvenk: I think it is understandable, actually. However, the presence of the broad ones and the last 2 kind of detracts from that. [more discussion] psvenk: Overall, I think this is effective propaganda. Kshitij: I am hearing that "We can't understand what you're trying to say so why should we give you money?" Kirpal: Are you part of aeroastro club? Kshitij: I'm not an MIT student. How do I explain my presence? psvenk: However you'd like. Kshitij: I work in the Boston area and graduated last year from BU. I was bored because I work from home and it's very boring, and this club seemed interesting enough. guoj1112: The fall is sooner than you think The meeting was adjourned at 20:05. Minutes taken by psvenk, rgabriel, and guoj1112, and submitted by rgabriel.