Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2026-07-06 The meeting was called to order at 19:38 by hng. In attendance were Student keyholders: hng, turino14 Associate keyholders: cjq, rgabriel, scj643 Members: ilyag, mniwheat, veracity Guests: '() Administrivia: hng: turino14 is online, so it is easier for me to run the meeting. scj643: Has the mini-HDMI cable been ordered yet for the drawing tablet? hng: If an allocation has been made to purchase this, you should send an email to the treasurer, and she will buy it. hng: We started organizing the office and moving a lot of the furniture in the office. We have modified the layout significantly, but there's still a lot of work to be done, a lot of things are more cluttered than before due to being moved around. We need help with finishing up the reorganization of the office. ilyag: I propose that we do one small thing a week so we get in the habit of organizing the office as a continuous maintenance hng: Any other thooughts on reorganizing the office? veracity: rgabriel, come get your fridge. hng: We should put some controls on the amount of cruft that gets deposited in the office. No fridges, drones, boxes of clothes, randomly lying around the office. hng: There's two boxes of clothes from random people in the office. veracity: On the mission of de-cluttering things, there is also a question of old monitors, iMacs, etc., that we will have to choose to rescue or sacrifice. What principles should be guiding those decisions? scj643: I think most of the iMacs should probably go, unless we use them as monitors or something. hng: Why do we have all these iMacs? They just keep showing up in the loading dock. [discussion about iMacs] scj643: We should get a large 4K monitor, at least 32 inches. This will help me have an accessible workstation. cjq: I think a large monitor is also cool for swag purposes. ilyag: For swag purposes, is there such a thing as a gold-plated monitor? veracity: We should suggest to HWOPS to build one for us. scj643: [The monitor] is most likely going to be part of Cortana 2. veracity: I agree with the principle of us having usable workstations. hng: We can get all the working office heads together and then work from there. scj643: I vaguely remember that we only have one 4K monitor, and it's [bad?] [discussion about crufting a monitor from the loading docks] [discussion about buying things that go toward SIPB projects] rgabriel (in chat): We have to draw things, logos, designs. veracity: Pro of [chaos?] buying things. We should decruft first, then decide which things will be more permanent. veracity: It's noted that large monitors are important for accessibility and we can incorporate that into the office renovation plan. scj643: I'm asking for a $500 monitor, not $1000 monitor. veracity: Should we decide on a recurring time for incremental office improvement? ilyag: After the meeting, perhaps? hng: People are not gonna come unless there's food, and we don't want to spend more money on food. veracity: Office cleanup after every SIPB meeting [sounds suitable]. Project Reports: ilyag: ark continues scj643: i've been keeping the office open turino14 (in chat): HWOPS continues virtually - I'm starting to work on the website. hng: I've been thinking about setting up a link shortener so that we can stop using tinyurl.com. I'm looking for the right software. Looks like I have to write something on my own to make it work with Touchstone auth. scj643: Why an interface? Can't we just have an nginx server and call it a day? hng: Don't want to SSH in whenever I need to make a shortlink. ilyag: Security by obscurity? hng: Bots will crawl and make links to sketchy websites. hng: This could have been a use case for scripts. [discussion of link shortener architecture] cjq (in chat): A Hydrant PR got merged within the last week. Thanks to dtemkin for finally reviewing. hng: Would be nice to have a non-tinyurl link shortener that more MIT people can use. rgabriel: tiny.mit.edu appears to be unclaimed. cjq: Do people know about yellkey? ilyag: It is a link shortener, where links only last 15 minutes with the benefit that the link is a dictionary word. hng: We can do both short-term and long-term link shortening. ilyag: Zawinski’s Law of Software Envelopment: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." hng: This would also be useful for the scenario of people forwarding dormspam around, and if you want a link to be only for MIT people, you can pull that off with our link shortener. Other: veracity: Can anyone think of a use for about 200 T-Mobile SIM cards? [discussion of SIPB offering/not offering SIM cards] cjq (in chat): I will also point out that SIPB has a long and storied history of providing office supplies on the fifth floor of the Stud. cjq: I do think that furthering the goals of SIPB isn't restricted to computing stuff---if it's convenient for us, we might as well do it. That's why we let people use staplers. But it could be argued SIM cards might not be easy for us to provide. scj643: Also, SIM cards are not that big. hng: We just don't want people bringing cruft into the office and keeping it here. cjq (in chat): At this point, if no one's touched the SIM cards in a year, we might as well toss it. scj643: If someone drops off $1000 in the office, should we toss it? veracity: If it's in quarters, probably. hng: The general rule is that you should consult with SIPB before leaving equipment in the office. Other Other: scj643: I got a Nintendo Switch 2 on Wednesday! veracity: What are the best Nintendo Switch 2 games? scj643: Pokopia. I don't understand why everyone's mad with [?], it's only ten dollars. And Animal Crossing. I also have Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Also [?] and Tears of the Kingdom. sjc643: The Switch 2 prices increased by $50 in September, but still the most cost-effective console on the market. The meeting was adjourned at 20:08. Minutes taken and submitted by cjq, veracity.