Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2026-04-13


The meeting was called to order at 19:35 by turino14.

In attendance were

        Student keyholders: turino14, psvenk, dtemkin, hng, anhad, suufi, smith141

        Associate keyholders: almonds, rgabriel

        Members: junhui, saron404, ryanruiz, kshitij.ark, veracity, ilyag

        Guests: '()

Administrivia:

        turino14: CPW is sooner than you think. It's this weekend! If you haven't seen it already, I've made a sign-up sheet so that you can sign up for events: <https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/edit/-rQ2-u7iUDsuncK7dmWZkhZ1/>. Please sign up for events!
        
        psvenk: Speaking of CPW... what sorts of food should we get? We've promised dinner at the Python bee and the game night, and we've also said that the grill out will have vegetarian options.
        
        turino14: We can have Saloniki at the project showcase or game night, and pizza at the Python Bee?
        
        psvenk: I think that's a good idea. Should we get the food at the project showcase (before CPW closing show) or the game night (after closing show)?
        
        turino14: Hmm... we could just get a lot of food at the project showcase and then have the leftovers at the game night. Worst case, we can order some pizza to supplement it if we run out.
        
        psvenk: Yeah, sounds like a plan. The only issue is that the food might get a bit cold, but that's not the worst thing in the world.
        
        turino14: Ok, shall we make an allocation for that? We also need to figure out the barbecue...
        
        psvenk: Someone should check with innaavo about that.
        
        turino14: Yeah, I've just messaged her. We might need to allocate some budget for the barbecue.
        
        turino14: What are some reasonable estimates?
        
        psvenk: I'd say $250 for pizza and $350 for Saloniki.
        
        turino14: Ok, adding $100 for pizza just in case Saloniki runs out, that's $700. Let's allocate $300 just in case for the barbecue, making an even $1000.
        
        turino14: Motion to allocate $1000 for CPW food expenses.
        
        psvenk: Seconded
        
        [motion passes 13-0-0]
        
        psvenk: Relatedly, we should also do a snack run before CPW. Could someone take point on that?
        
        anhad: I can do it.
        
        turino14: Thank you!
        
        turino14: I think we're due for an EC meeting. I sent a message to the EC channel. Looking at the Timeful, it looks like Tuesday is what works for most people. Let's do it tomorrow at 20:00, hybrid.
        
        hng: Is this going to be a recurring thing on Tuesdays?
        
        turino14: We can discuss at the meeting whether we want to do EC meetings on Tuesdays. We could also do post-general meeting, at 20:00 or something.
        
        psvenk: 20:00 cuts it a bit too close given that general meetings often go for >30 minutes.
        
        [discussion about EC meeting timing]
        
        psvenk: One last reminder, please sign up for CPW, especially the Project Showcase, it's on Saturday 4:30-5:30pm. It's really important to show the prefrosh what SIPB is about. Last year, we had a lot of prefrosh but not a lot of project members to talk about the different projects, and we don't want a repeat of that this year.
        
        turino14: Yes, please sign up, and let us have a very eventful CPW!
        
        ilyag: As for the snacks, when do they need to be bought by?
        
        turino14: By Thursday ideally
        
Project Reports:

        dtemkin: Hydrant continues. The departments have started sending us their overrides (again). Yay!
        
        kshitij.ark: Ark continues. Builds are failing because some things are mocked in the tests (long story).
        
        turino14: SIPB FPGAs continues. We just had a meeting with Monica to discuss onboarding new members, and we hope to get new members joining the project.
        
        turino14: HWOPS continues! On Friday, we migrated the Matrix server back from W91 to W20.
        
        almonds: The downtime was ~90 minutes, which is pretty good; there weren't any problems. Now we can fix things much more confidently, since if we need to do a reboot, we have physical access to the machine.
        
        psvenk: How about the other machines on the W91 subnet? Any update from IS&T on what their fate is going to be?
        
        turino14: The Hyades machines were not actually configured for the subnet, so IS&T removed the subnet for us; the current plan is that they're going to bring back the 470 subnet, but they might also reduce the size of the /23 subnet to /24.
        
        [discussion about W91]
        
        suufi: OpenGrades continues. colclark was the first Android tester. I just submitted it to Google for "external testing", so it should be on the Play Store soon (in 7 days?).
        
        scj643: What about iOS?
        
        suufi: The iOS app has been out for a minute.
        
        suufi: Next week I'll try to allocate something so that we can entice people to sign up in exchange for donuts.
        
        psvenk: Are there any plans to release the APK for non-Google devices? Like available on the website.
        
        suufi: I would have to manually do that for each build. I would have to update my pipeline to generate the APK locally. I can look into it.
        
        rgabriel: building an updating system would be a pain but: <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53040047/generate-an-apk-file-from-an-aab-file-android-app-bundle> <https://docs.expo.dev/build-reference/apk/>
        
        psvenk: You could publish on F-Droid; you don't even need to build, since they build your repo from source for you.
        
        ilyag: Also for Ark, we started developing a new frontend, but it's not very far along yet.
        
        hng: Recently, Firefox introduced an "AI kill switch"; is there any interest in implementing something similar for OpenGrades?
        
        turino14: SIPB Renovations continues. I made a Mattermost channel for it; we still need to bridge it to Matrix. I think it would be good to get the conversation started about how to improve the office. We have a good amount of budget that can be used for making the office a better place -- maybe getting new tables, or something like that. The limit is your imagination.
        
Other:

        scj643: CPW is sooner than you think.
        
        almonds: Has anyone's Wi-Fi been slower?
        
        psvenk, dtemkin: Yes
        
        scj643: I had to change my MAC address after NMAPing
        
Other Other:

        scj643: Taxes are due on Wednesday.
        
        kshitij.ark: https://teybannerman.com/strategy/2026/03/31/how-many-microsoft-copilot-are-there.html
        
        scj643: Wow, Microsoft is just speedrunning ruining their brand recognition, aren't they?
        
        turino14: Apparently there were zero-day exploits in Vim and Emacs.
        
        scj643: There's AI slop in Vim now
        
        almonds: I switched to ed
        
        scj643: AI is the reason why we can't have nice things.
        
        veracity: And the Massachusetts House of Representatives. (They just passed a bill for age verification on social media, to be considered by the Massachusetts Senate. Contact your senator to make your voice heard.)
        
        almonds: You can talk to me if you'd like more info.
        

The meeting was adjourned at 20:19.
 
        Minutes taken by psvenk, almonds and submitted by psvenk.