Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2013-03-11 The meeting was called to order at 7:30:01 by achernya. In attendance were Voting members: achernya adehnert bbaren dlaw dove dwilson phurst sqshemet | christy dennison Associate members: afarrell glasgall quentin| andersk Prospectives: abost adat belzner cdolan cereslee cjtenny codetaku tboning vasilvv sipb@camcope.me Propsective Introductions: achernya: We're starting a new section of the meeting today, New Prospective Introductions. Prospectives should say their username, name, course, what projects they're working on, if any, and any other information they want to provide. abost: I'm Alex Bost, username abost. I work at The Tech and in a physics lab. I'm not working on any projects right now, but I'm eyeing the IAP website redesign with dove. adehnert: Also, if you're looking to get involved with a project or struggling to do so, you can say that or email or talk to me. cdolan: Christopher Dolan, username cdolan, I'm a senior in 6-2, and a friend of achernya, ine, dennison, etc. This is my first meeting, and I'm interested in getting started before I graduate. I might be doing something with the Raspberry Pis? tboning: Hi, I'm Tom Boning, I live in Random, I'm 6-2, and involved in Scripts, which currently still has a dead queue, which is awesome. I'm also looking to get involved in Debathena glasgall: And he probably hasn't murdered anyone in the last few days. tboning: I'm also really involved in Guild. adat: I'm Ada, I'm a freshman, 6-2 in course and height. I'm looking for projects and trying not to get sucked into the black hole of Scripts. codetaku: I'm Nathan Arce, but I prefer to go by Fluffy. I'm a senior in 6-3, and TAing for 6.046, which means I don't have time for Barnowl, the project I'd like to work on, so I'm organizing CPW. There are no updates on that. elefthei: I'm Lef, username elefthei, I've been around for the last two years. I've worked on Scripts a little. I'm 6-2, and I work at BDOS doing research. cereslee: I'm Ceres Lee, username cereslee, a junior in 6-2 after switching from 20, and the Vicemaster at Guild. I've been helping with Scripts, and yay dead queue. glasgall: Ceres did one of the largest mass merges in Scripts history. belzner: I'm Megan Belzner, I'm a freshman, probably 6-2 or 3. I'm not currently involved in any projects. I helped advertise for things last semester and am planning on helping advertise for CPW. vasilvv: I'm Victor Vasiliev, username vasilvv. I'm involved in Scripts and strangely involved in Debathena. I'm also currently considering writing a mail archiver better than pipermail or discuss. cjtenny: Cam Tenny, with only one "e", I'm a 6-3/meng, so I guess 6P. My primary hobby is sitting around making snarky comments. I'm TAing 6.035, and 6.828 and snarking about those. I'm also looking into IS&T maintained lockers. They have a several second penalty for launching software. I started looking into this for 6.835 (for which I will probably also revamp the website). I'm interested in starting a project to make this less slow.So basically a faster add to avoid these penalties. If you're interested talk to me later. IS&T is not interested in changing this, the delay is intentional, so we'd have to do it. It's part of a user notification system that they have. They've decided that because several things are large and slow, like Matlab, no one should care about delays for most apps. achernya: Could we package this new tool in Debathena? cjtenney: I would prefer that. This has been a long introduction. sipb@camcope.me: I'm Cam Cope, username sipb7. I'm a Linux systems engineer at Brightcove, and cjtenny's friend. I'm interested in Debathena, but I haven't had time to do much. dlaw: What's Brightcove? sipb@camcope.me: Online streaming. cjtenney: We're interested in locker pony also; better locker dev tolls. We want to dpkg everything for each locker so we can apt-get install things into lockers. Administrivia: glasgall: achernya and I cleaned the bookshelves and removed assorted junk including two large hunks of broken glass. If you know why they're there, don't tell me. dlaw: Office rock. glasgall: bbaren and I moved meadow to the back of the room. There's now desk space by the door. In light of that, I propose we get rid of the recycling bin with the floor tile on top. We don't need it for laptop space anymore because the desk is there. quentin: That space is basically unusable because there are drawers where you would put your legs. glasgall: You can't sit there, but it's good for resting your laptop when using office heads. dove: If no one's going to sit there, we should move it anyway because there are drawers there. glasgall: We should move it because it takes up floorspace. abost: I'm sitting on it. I think I would rather have my laptop on the table. glasgall: bbaren and I also traced some cables and found the ones running from SIPB to SMR. We also found about 5 dollars in change in the couch, threw out a bunch of broken ethernet cables, and found some hideous cardigans, swim trunks, a shirt, and a hard hat. Take them if they're yours. They're hideous. Also, in recognition of his help, bbaren is hereby named deputy People's Kommisar. achernya: Yay! bbaren: I'd like to talk about moving or decommissioning oliver. It's pretty bad and slow. It's a pain to use, nobody uses it, and it takes up space on laptop land. I think it should be gone. glasgall: I wouldn't object achernya: No objections. dwilson: It's the only office head with Athena 9. achernya: Athena 9 doesn't boot. The mess of installs makes grub unable to load it. quentin: It was working within the last month or two. glasgall: We'll test it. bbaren: If we want an Athena 9 machine, we have portnoy and other officeheads. achernya: Installing it on a VM sounds like a good idea. bbaren: Also, glasgall and I have two other machines that we want to get deactivated. bbaren: Does anyone know how to get things deactivated? sqshemet: Your zephyr from earlier got a response. Something like send an email to John Erkkila with the MIT tag number or serial number, the reason for the deactivation, and your contact information. achernya: This is old limekiller. It's a Pentium 3. bbaren: Next time we run cables through the wall to SMR, we should use different colors so we can figure out which is which on which end. Speaking of which, there are two black cables going into SRM, but only one is plugged in. What's the unplugged one? glasgall: It's to plug into SMRnet from here. But it's plugged into a broken or not on switch. quentin: It's probably a remnant of when we had an office rack. It seems like a security hole. Also, many wires through the wall are labeled. bbaren: These were not. achernya: Speaking of cleanliness. I propose a new policy. Personal items should not be left in the office for longer than one week unless in a member's drawer. Opinions? vasilvv: What about backup chargers? I like to keep mine under the table. achernya: Email sipb-office@ for exceptions. bbaren: How about if you leave something in the office, and you don't come back to get in in a week, bad things might happen. adehnert: How do you distinguish unknown items from those belonging to people who have been here regularly? achernya: Things should not be left, even tagged, for more than a week. For example, kaduk's desktop from November which is still in the office. adehnert: Did you ask him to move it out? glasgall: Not yet. achernya: In general we shouldn't be leaving items in the office. tboning: What about prospectives? achernya: Maybe we can add a prospectives bucket or drawer. glasgall: We will be revisiting the drawer issue at a later date. christy: How about a system like that for bikes in many dorms? If you leave something it gets tagged, if it's not cleared after a week it gets removed. glasgall: That requires someone to do the tagging. I'm not going to be around enough to do it. dove: If no one's tagging things, how are we enforcing this policy? achernya: Email out about an item, wait to see if there's a response. If not, get rid of it. adehnert: Was this prompted by kaduk's desktop? achernya: No, it was caused by finding random labeled stuff in the bookshelf. These were definitely personal items, and they'd been here for an indefinite long amount of time. bbaren: Want the office copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People", afarrell? glasgall: It doesn't fit with the rest of the office's books. afarrell: We just bought a book that is similar in nature. We can put them together. It's a classic in communication. We shouldn't get rid of it. christy: I've been arranging SIPB/IEEE dinners. The next dinner will be with <>? I'll be sending out an email when I hear back from him. Also, I'm treasurer. Give me any applicable receipts. I really only want ereciepts, and I think I only need a pdf. cereslee: What about tea with Sussman? Is that happening? dove: And dinner with RMS. cjtenny: Only if you fulfill his speaking requirements. bbaren: He also lives down the road cjtenny: So shipping for his mattress should be cheap. christy: We can use interdepartmental mail. If there are office supplies we need, talk to me. glasgall: Work gloves. dove: MicroUSB cables? christy: Yes. glasgall: I'm thinking like gardening gloves, because cleaning the office is gross. cjtenny: Superglue? bbaren: Also more velcro cable ties. christy: Email me with ideas after the meeting. cjtenny: What about a heat gun? I often need one for replacing the glass on Apple devices. They're $30 at Home Depot. quentin: A temperature controlled one is? cjtenny: No. I wasn't thinking for soldering, mostly for replacing things. achernya: Talk to someone about it and make a proposal at the next meeting. bbaren: I was unable to find a USB to serial adapter the last time I needed one. glasgall: There's one in SMR. bbaren: Oh, I thought we had one in the office. We should get more. I move to allocate $25 for a good adapter with Linux driver support. quentin: That's going to get four. glasgall: Second and white ballot. [Motion passes] achernya: We found bell number one. christy: Can we hang it from the ceiling? office: NO! glasgall: Sorry this took so long. tboning: There are now three ethernet cables to latopland. SIPB Projects Report: achernya: SQL has SSDs now. They're superfast. But they're still in the secondary servers. Now we can take a backup in one hour, it took two and a half before. ALso, iowait is zero. Previously it was 100% on one core, now it's zero on the whole system. Also danjared pointed out that we got a better version than I asked for. MLC instead of TLW. Mulitlevel vs triple. They're more reliable. elefthei: What is happening to the old drives? achernya: We don't know yet. The best case would be to, wipe them and put them in the SIPB pool of spare drives. dlwa: How long to failure? achernya: We expect 3-4 years. They're in RAID one. We might want to pull on live out of primary-key and swap it into the new server. dlaw: Do they fail in a readable state? achernya: Maybe? But it might be useless because of journaling. adehnert: Could you dd data off of one, put it onto a writable drive, and recover the journal? achernya: Maybe. I've never tried it. achernya: The SD cards for the Raspberry Pis appeared. They have Raspy and Wheezy on them. They're in the box in the bookshelf by the fridge ghasgall: The cards are super small. achernya: There a small and blue case donated by lizdenys to mount a Rasberry Pi to the wall. I suggest this be used for the one that's going to run the door sensor. There are also three red and large cases to be used for other things. bbaren: Can the door Raspi also run the temperature sensors? achernya: Yup. glasgall: Due to poor decisions on my part, XVM is showing signs of life. I'll have more updates later. We're looking to get it off of Hardy and onto Precise before Raring happens. adehnert: geofft and Greg did work, you can build packages for XVM. Other: dove: Phil Lapsley has shipped a book for us. glasgall: Canononical announced a new display server project. Wayland, X, and whatever else weren't enough, so we have Mir now. vasilvv: We currently have a lot of ethernet cables in laptop land. Should we ask IS&T for a small switch? bbaren: We can't plug them in. achernya: We're SIPB, we're special, yes we can. vasilvv: Can we have a desk switch? achernya: How's an 8-port Netgear? quentin: It's a bad idea to use a switch. There are security features that will trip you up such that if you use a switch in W20 you can't use another port in W20. I can't be more specific because network can't figure out how to turn it off. dlaw: I don't know if that's true. I've connected my laptop to other ethernet switches in W20 before. quentin: I can explain after the meeting. We should have enough ports. bbaren: Running 6 cables from the wall to laptop land is nasty. achernya: We could run them through a plastic tube. dlaw: We could get a cable with a whole bunch of pairs in it. glasgall: What about twist ratios? It probably wouldn't be an ethernet cable any more. Other Other: bbaren: phurst, me, and jselover have a 6.035 team. We're accepting name suggestions for an optimization library. We're looking for something sillier than Hoopl, which is a Haskell optimization library. dove: Optimus Prime? cjtenny: We had a Flat Stanley component. Good luck. glasgall: Maybe bell one was gone because it was dangerous. vasilvv: Chris Montgomery who is a founder of Xiph.org foundation and involved in multiple awesome things like creating Ogg Vorbis, and is a SIPB member, made an awesome video called "Digital Show and Tell". It elaborates on multiple concepts related to audio and digital signal processing. It involves an analog oscilloscope. dove: Thanks to vasilvv, gbq now works. There was an issue with CUPS, you could only see jobs posted under your own username. Since it's been fixed, gbq works. glasgall: As usual the problem was CUPS. vasilvv: I might write a script that reads all of the files from the queue. dove: You still have to be smart about job name. We could make this better though. codetaku: Pi Day is Thursday. glasgall: Pycon is this weekend. bbarenL: There will be 2017s in a few days dwilson: Hi! The meeting was adjourned at 8:08:49. Minutes taken and submitted by sqshemet.