Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2026-03-30 The meeting was called to order at 19:35 by turino14. In attendance were Student keyholders: psvenk, turino14, innaavo, nmorgan, hng, suufi Associate keyholders: scj643, kenta, almonds, petey Members: liani, madisutk, ryanruiz, veracity, guoj1112 Guests: jrf, Noy Administrivia: turino14: Welcome, everybody. We just had a SIPB Bytes & Bites, with some pizza left over. scj643: I still need to go to the Atlas Center and get reimbursement logistics figured out. I can probably do that on Friday. turino14: Yes, you should definitely get reimbursed. We don't want you to have to pay out of pocket. hng: The iFixit toolkit has been purchased on iFixit, and we now have an iFixit account with the tax exemption if we want any other tools. Please speak up if you would like any other tools. scj643: Can we get parts? hng: Yes, we can get parts, but I don't know if we should get parts for people's personal computers. scj643: I was asking for the Index power cable, which I believe had to be replaced. kenta: So, you've ordered the tools but they have not arrived yet? hng: They are in transit. turino14: There was one thing that I mentioned last meeting, which I'll say again here: What if in our website we were to maintain a list of tasks (e.g. mostly specific project tasks, read docs + learn introductory topics, simple administrative tasks, etc.)? Then, this can be a concrete location we can point new members to who are looking for stuff to hack on. The goal is that this would force us to give more thought and be more dynamic on how we onboard members, as opposed to projectdb's "here are all our projects, figure out if you're interested in any". nmorgan: Is there any hypothesized downside to this? innaavo: I do fear that this could be yet another thing that we ask project leads to do -- scj643: like docs -- innaavo: and never gets done. turino14: Yeah, we need to work on the details, but I'll write up some more ideas and details on it, and we can get started on implementing that on the website. almonds [in chat]: I've been hacking to rescue some of the iMacs in the office, to put AFS on them. One of their hard drives is so old it can't write data, so next week I would like to make an allocation for an SSD adapter and maybe an SSD. I don't have any quotes tonight though. scj643: Does SIPB have a heat gun? innaavo: I don't think so scj643: Should we allocate for that? I believe you need that to open the iMacs. nmorgan: And we're sure that this is going to be worth it? scj643: A heat gun is useful for repairing other things, too. almonds [in chat]: I have a heat gun at home I could take to the office kenta: IS&T is/was an Apple authorized service provider, and in the past we have taken our iMacs to IS&T so that they can use their magnets to fix things. scj643: They're an Apple authorized service provider?? kenta: I think so... or at least they used to be one. kenta: ...fuck Apple... psvenk: Would you like that in the minutes? kenta: Sure nmorgan: With your name attached? kenta: Yes, I would like my name attached to the statement "Fuck Apple and their designed obsolescence." innaavo: On an unrelated note, it would be nice if there would be an app with all the public transport options for an area. almonds [in chat]: I have experience with the MBTA API and would enjoy helping in that capacity suufi: You know who might be reading the minutes? A certain club that also makes software for MIT... scj643: I don't want AppDev to do this. They're going to make it proprietary! nmorgan: Do we not like AppDev? scj643: No! All their stuff is closed-source nmorgan: Is that an issue? scj643, hng: Yes! [discussion about importance of open source] psvenk: I do think we should be more conciliatory. I don't think the average person in AppDev hates SIPB and hates open source, and I would hate for that to become the case; we could reach out to AppDev about potential collaboration and we could bring this up, since we do have broadly similar goals in many of our projects. turino14: CPW is happening in a few weeks (April 16-19). Things we need to think about: food for the events, anything else? psvenk: Who is going to be in the office at what times nmorgan: We should have some sign-up process. turino14: Last year we had people sign up in the events Google Doc, right? psvenk: It might be a good idea to have a spreadsheet or when2meet, since we not only want a lot of members in the office during our events, but also we want the office to be well staffed throughout CPW kenta: We should figure out what we're doing for ASA Midway. hng: Have we not signed up for Midway?? [various]: No psvenk: The deadline was last night (!), apparently. I'll email ASA and beg to have ha place at Midway. Project Reports: nmorgan: ARKOS continues. Just code. Lots of code. Also, the NVIDIA grant continues; they don't want us applying right now, but they want us to apply in the end of April when they'll have a new category that is more relevant to us. So, TL;DR, still in the works, but we'll be workshopping it. turino14: Is that for the same type of hardware, or is it a different category? nmorgan: Not sure, but I think it's somewhat flexible. nmorgan [in chat]: ArkOS survey results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WC1mpfPM6QDNTq8Zb4nlsfJnkrB-wTK3WN3jCQbz2Gg/edit?usp=sharing nmorgan: One thing that stood out is that a lot of people identified email as a pain point. suufi: OpenGrades continues. It's pretty close to being put out for test release on mobile (without the Hydrant stuff). I do have a question (I did bring this up to some people): what do you think of this logo? [shows logo] Some people have said that this looks like an icon for an adult app. psvenk: Well, now that you say that, I can't unsee it! suufi: [shows some alternative logo ideas] [discussion] Noy: Slice it in half and have each half be a different color. One can be black and the other can be anything but orange. suufi: I lost access to LastPass... scj643: You probably shouldn't use LastPass. suufi: It's not my choice. MIT gives me the distribution password through LastPass. [more discussion] suufi: What are the MIT colors? kenta: MIT colors are blood on concrete. scj643: [laughs] That's the first time I've heard it described as that! psvenk: Back in the day, when things were more hardcore... turino14: Next Friday (April 10), we will be migrating the Matrix server (and potentially other servers, depending on what IS&T says) from W91 to the SMR. Currently our VLAN is stretched between the SMR and W91, but IS&T is not a huge fan of that, so we're going to either move the W91 servers to another VLAN or move them back to the SMR. suufi: How big are the servers? Does it fit in a sedan? turino14: Probably suufi: I could drive. scj643: Project proposal: SIPB accessibility. To make our projects more accessible. nmorgan: What exactly would this entail? I know Apple has a lot of on-device accessibility features. scj643: Having proper accessible HTML, for one. Also, I can't read what's on the screen. nmorgan, turino14: You could open the Jitsi on your computer. jrf: I believe there are linters for accessibility as well. scj643: A lot of these tools are made to fend against lawsuits to "make your site compliant" but don't actually make a site accessible. jrf: I think color sightedness is a pretty easy one to lint, for one. turino14: Yeah, we should take a look at accessibility. suufi: Part of the process of putting an app on the Apple App Store is that you need to let Apple test the app for reviewing. Do we still have the test Kerberos accounts from IS&T? turino14, psvenk: You could ask IS&T about that... or rgabriel probably would know about this. You can ask rgabriel and see what he says. almonds [in chat]: There are some notes in admin in AFS suufi: I vaguely remember something being in the back... almonds [in chat]: Yes the 2FA devices should be in the back psvenk: That could be an issue, since we can't give the Duo keys to the Apple testers physically, so it raises the question of how they'll clear 2FA. almonds [in chat]: I can't quite hear y'all, but if you message on Mattermatrix, someone might have guidance Other: kenta: Time is now flowing forward in the office; I have replaced the AA batteries of the wall clock. AA batteries are in the monolith, for future reference. kenta: Also, following up on the somewhat contentious stapler discussion a few weeks ago, SIPB does own a book stapler. It was under the table, but I have brought it up for demonstration. [demonstrates] nmorgan: Oh, so we do have a working stapler in the office! nmorgan: I believe smith141 already bought some staplers, but I'm not sure if they've already arrived. psvenk: You can never have too many staplers! kenta: Also, there exist holes on the outside of the office door, and those holes are designed to mount a Swingline 747 stapler. kenta: You can remove the top half and put a new top half in, if the top half breaks and the bottom half is still attached to the wall. Other Other: scj643: Don't buy from NVIDIA. They've specifically said "war is good for business". scj643: Anime Boston is sooner than you think. Also, Easter is sooner than you think! It's the same weekend. scj643: There's a broken ThinkPad X1 Yoga that xy brought. We think it has a broken motherboard. almonds [in chat]: Ginger beer is fun & rewarding to make -- infinite ginger beer every day, so long as I take care of it each day veracity [in chat]: i love ginger beer The meeting was adjourned at 20:17. Minutes taken and submitted by psvenk.