Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2014-04-21 The meeting was called to order at by dove. In attendance were Voting members: btidor cereslee codetaku dove dvorak42 k_sunter omalley1 phurst tboning vasilvv | dwilson Associate members: cesium glasgall | achernya davidben Prospectives: andreser asuhl dzaefn jarreds kacquah mingy Guests: Administrivia: dove: There will be 3 membership elections at the end of this meeting. Stick around. glasgall: Because people keep telling me they didn't know this, if you're a member you're entitled to a drawer if there's space and you want one. If you want one, talk to me. Drawers are currently available. dove: People who may be members by the end of tonight should also listen carefully. SIPB Projects Report: asuhl: The LED display arrived. You can use the remote to program it and have it scroll messages. The next step is taking the 'PC software' that comes on a small CD and reverse-engineering the protocol so we can get some kind of real computer talking to it. dove: Without virtualizing Windows? glasgall: That's cheating. omalley1: I know cdolan did something similar, so maybe talk to him. glasgall: Several of us on XVM went to W91 and installed an OS on the new raid. We're currently looking into setting up iSCSI on it, which I mostly figured out over the weekend; we'll have to figure out how to move stuff onto it. Further updates as they come. glasgall: Prospectives looking for a project: there are 3 things that need to be done. New website, replacement console viewer (that's not a Java applet), and a few more remctls to the control interface. If you're interested in any of these, talk to me or another XVM team maintainer. glasgall: If you have an XVM with address in the 18.181.0.* range, please consider letting us renumber it. Right now we're running up against the SMR address space range, and adding more addresses would split the current XVM block. andreser: The PGP signing server has had a month of uptime and one user. asuhl: Is the PGP website pgp.mit.edu? dove: Not the one I was talking about. This is a SIPB keysigning service that needs a website to instruct users how to actually use it. MIT's PGP keyserver isn't a SIPB project. New Prospective Introductions: '() Other: '() Other Other: dove: The marathon was today. I didn't go out early enough to see how crazy getting there was. kacquah: If you had a backpack, you didn't have a fun time. glasgall: I didn't have any trouble getting to work, but I also left late. codetaku: 4-day student weekend. dwilson: Tomorrow isn't a student holiday, but there are no classes. mingy: There's a meteor shower tonight. glasgall: Tax day happened. Hope you paid your taxes. Membership elections for andreser, kacquah, and mingy: dove: Tell us a little bit about yourselves, stuff you've done with SIPB, etc. kacquah: I'm Kojo, currently a senior, soon to be an M.Eng student. I've been around for quite a while, hanging out on and off, doing random stuff, since about sophomore year. I got involved later, helping out particularly lately with the Python class. Now I'm working on the scripts site with mingy and Joey, going to make it pretty. mingy: I'm Ming, currently a sophomore in course 18. I was involved in SIPB since I was a freshman, hanging around the office. I help answer scripts tickets, and work on the Scripts site with kacquah and Joey. I'm also helping fix the SIPB door situation. glasgall: He's also been very friendly and helpful on the Scripts queue. mingy: I was also moderately involved in the Debathena hackathon. nadresr: I'm Andres, I've mostly been working on the PGP keysigning service that any MIT student can use to have their key signed. I've also been working on dename, it's similar in intent but different in implementation; it creates a new PKI independent of the PGP one which hopefully is less of a pain to use. cereslee: kacquah, how do you double-space in Batman? omalley1: Revised, how do you double space a photograph? kacquah: You can always just open it up and save it twice as big. omalley1: Is that lossless? kacquah: It is. glasgall: mingy, what's the most interesting Scripts ticket you've worked on? mingy: On the day that the CPW matching algorithm was supposed to be ran, Admissions filed a ticket saying they couldn't find the algorithm. The reason was that the person that developed it was a student that hosted it on Scripts, and she graduated it last year, and the account was deactivated. What happened was that we referred them to Accounts to get the account reactivated. But apparently the web interface was buggy, and they couldn't upload the new CSV, and it was also broken on Safari, and a whole bunch of other problems. Eventually they managed to get it working because they contacted her directly, and she had to come back and fix it. They got it working for CPW, but a couple days late. glasgall: Although Scripts does host the CPW matching thing, if you hated your freshman-year roommate it's not our fault. dwilson: All three of you: how can SIPB better appeal to your technically-minded peers? andreser: SIPB are technically-minded people who like talking about what they do. Maybe I'd cut down a bit on the stuff hanging from the ceeling; I felt a little weird the first time I came into the office. mingy: Lots of people around campus know about some of our services, but they don't associate them with us, so they think it's an IS&T think. I think we can make it more obvious that Scripts is a SIPB project. phurst: Add a "Hosted by SIPB" header to every page served from Scripts. kacquah: I felt kind of intimated because I knew nothing, and I'm still pretty sure that I know nothing, but SIPB people were really helpful; just talking and interacting with people helped. So more interaction with freshmen and prefrosh. andreser: Cluedumps are very useful as an outreach event, even if they're not very technical or useful on some particular topic. Just telling people things is good. dove: We had some pretty good ones last fall along those lines. codetaku: If you could add or remove one item from the ceiling, what would it be? kacquah: I don't know what that thing is *points at the UserFriendly dustbunny*, but I do know that SIPB has a mascot. dwilson: That's from UserFriendly; it bears a striking resemblance to but is completely unrelated to the grumpy fuzzball. It came much earlier. mingy: Is that a barnowl above the nyancat? It seems kind of precarious. I'd put it on its own thing. andreser: I'd put it somewhere less prominent. cereslee: The dragon hanging from the ceiling comes to life and lights the entire office on fire. What do you do? kacquah: I would probably scream and run. mingy: Isn't the canonical answer to save whatever's inside the save in case of fire box, because Institute policy is to not fight fires? andreser: I've also read minutes, so... kacquah: To be fair, I looked at the box, it's pretty big. dvorak42: Not the whole cabinet, just the box inside the box. btidor: Just to be clear, the whole thing is a joke. cesium: What is your favorite office circuit breaker, and where is it located? andreser: Can I have two guesses? dove: You have three between the three of you! andreser: I choose behind the door. dove: You're right. kacquah: I'd also have to go for behind the door, though I don't gain any pleasure from tripping circuit breakers. mingy: I'll leave my decision to the majority. tboning: If you could design a new SIPB t-shirt, what would be on it? kacquah: A shirt that has a computer with SIPB services 'leaking out' of it; a floppy drive shooting out 'Scripts', the screen says XVM... mingy: I think the board has a couple interesting slogans. dvorak42: What is applesauce? dove: This is related to the machine room tour. kacquah: All I remember is a raised floor and a bunch of servers. mingy: Is it a server? dove: There's a jar of applesauce in the machine room. cereslee: Probably applesauce. glasgall: Please don't open it. [andreser is on his computer looking up old minutes.] andreser: Quoting kcr: you yell 'applesauce', and the other SIPB members do so, and hopefully you find each other before the rest of the crowd mauls you. dove: It's protocol for finding other SIPB members at an LSC event or what have you. cereslee: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Students for a Democratic Society? kacquah: I don't know what that is. glasgall: Way, way, way back in the day, in the 60s/70s, the SDS was a student group that tended to send members to infiltrate other student groups and vote to put the groups' budget towards SDS. mingy: Is that why we have members and prospectives? glasgall: Probably. btidor: Wait, only one of you answered. kacquah: No. mingy: No. andreser: No. btidor: What system/piece of software/aspect of a piece of software terrifies you the most, and what would you do if you wanted to learn about it? mingy: Poor documentation; I'd ask zephyr about it. kacquah: Ruby dependencies. The first time I used it I had to install a package manager to install another package manager to install a version manager and then install the right version of the packages. andreser: I don't really have anything to add. jarreds: On December 9th, 1985, what was the Infinite Corridor turned into? [Assorted "What?"s.] dove: I'll give you a hint: it was the Infinite High... no I mean the Infinite way. All 3: Infinite Highway? dove: The office is burning down, you're all running out, etc. You decide not to leave and fight the fire against the advice of MIT. Where's the fire extinguisher? [andreser points at the extinguisher]. dove: How is it labeled? kacquah: I would hope 'fire extinguisher'. dove: I think it says 'fire hose'. kacquah: Does it work? dove: We can find out. codetaku: andreser, how do you double-space your private key? mingy, how do you double-space the Scripts queue? andreser: Break it into small parts and distribute it over double the space? mingy: File a bunch of tickets? achernya: andreser, is your key subject to the axiom of choice? dvorak42: The SIPB fire is on office... the SIPB office is on fire, and you can only save one EC member. Who do you save? Who's on EC? andreser: You have to be a member to swing the hammer, right? dove: Well, technically... *offers jarreds the hammer* Swing the hammer... no. *takes it back*. [The prospectives point out the EC.] dove: Now, who do you save? kacquah: The guy with the hammer. cereslee: I feel betrayed. andreser: If I don't save the guy with the hammer, I might get hit running away. dove: This doesn't mean me, it just means whoever happens the hammer. dzaefn: Save in case of hammer? tboning: andreser, what is your favorite source of bad randomness? dvorak42: 17. andreser: return 4; [see http://xkcd.com/221/] dvorak42: What other student groups are you a member of? kacquah: Technique. mingy: MIT Singapore Students Society. andreser: The jiu-jitsu club. achernya: A certain SIPB alumni comes back and starts recruiting for his group, the Children of geofft, which exists to spread bad ideas through the world. Do you join, and why? kacquah: I guess no, since I don't know geofft? mingy: Same. dove: There's an interesting feature of this: if you're interested in bad ideas, the fact that you don't know geofft wouldn't dissuade you. cereslee: vim or emacs? glasgall: Friendly amendment: favorite text editor? cereslee: It better be vim or emacs. dove: Did you say vim? No? OK good. kacquah: Sublime, because both vim and emacs are old and annoying to use. dove: OK, you have two more chances to get this right. mingy: I personally use vim. andreser: Either; I know more vim than emacs. cesium: What is your maximum 2048 tile, and/or how many Dogecoins do you own? kacquah: I beat 2048 more times than I can count. omalley1: How high can you count? kacquah: Only powers of 2. I never got to 4096. It seems to get exponentially harder as you go on. mingy: I think it was 1024; I don't own Dogecoins. andreser: I don't own Dogecoins, and I never really played 2048. dzaefn: Can prospectives ask questions? dwilson: Yes, but that counts as your question. dzaefn: What is this? [gets out the ctrl-alt-delete stick] kacquah: I think it's called the ctrl-alt-delete stick, but I don't know what it's for. [dove demonstrates that you can, in fact, ctrl-alt-delete with it.] asuhl: For when it's so crashed, you don't want to get near it. btidor: You may not want to get that close to a Windows machine. kacquah: What is the bingo? dove: You can only ask each *other* questions. [andreser pulls out his laptop.] glasgall: What should SIPB be doing that it currently isn't? kacquah: I think a group-specific wiki or knowledgebase. glasgall: That's a totally awesome answer; you should talk to wings about doing that. andreser: Something similar; there are lots of projects that could use nicer presentation. kacquah: I took photos at a SIPB event, and I think they'd be useful for promotions, but there's no nice place to store images for SIPB. dove: Do we have any www maintainers? glasgall: It's ACLed to anybody. achernya: The last person that put effort into the webite was Biyeun, who you probably don't recognize. glasgall: When, if ever, do you think Alex will finish the new SQL website? achernya: It's only been a year since I started working on it! kacquah: What's the current one? achernya: It's like epsilon close. mingy: An epsilon time interval. kacquah: Two epsilon. asuhl: What is your favorite new TLD, or what would you want as a TLD? kacquah: .lol. achernya: I think Google got that. glasgall: Doesn't exist. mingy: I think they should stop making new TLD. phurst: So your new favorite is .ithinkpeopleshouldstopmakingnewtlds andreser: I think they're a bad idea. dove: This may be the first time this is ever going to happen. I move that dwilson ask the question. dwilson: Why do you want to be a SIPB member? kacquah: For me personally, I was initially interested in things people here know about, especially things like servers and websites. I thought Scripts was really cool. andreser: I like hacking on cool projects, and a lot of people here do too; being not alone makes it more fun. mingy: I guess coming here makes me think of resources that I couldn't have had back in Singapore, and SIPB helps provide those resources. dove: I'll ask the candidates and any prospectives to leave the office momentarily. [andreser elected 9-0-2, mingy elected 9-0-2, kacquah elected 10-0-1]. omalley1: Every single election, the answers for 'what would you fix' are fairly homogenous; it's always "SIPB is isolating, SIPB should fix these social issues". glasgall: We did just have several weeks of debate over the code of conduct. omalley1: I haven't been following any of this. It feels like we've had a lot of talk but not any do. dove: The two main things I've tried to do are create this footer thing when doing mass mail so people realize that SIPB exists. The other is encourage and insisting that people put SIPB's names on advertisements for our events. There are a lot of events that we do that we don't get credit for. achernya: Scripts's help ticket system now has a link in the footer that says that it's a SIPB service. dove: It wouldn't be wrong for all projects to say "SIPB Scripts" or "SIPB XVM" or something similar. achernya: btidor's been doing something similar. tboning: Shirts help. We don't really have shirts. achernya: There's a bucket of shirts back there, and every member is entitled to one free shirt. We might need to do a new shirt order, and in that case we might want to order 200. omalley1: Do we have anybody in a marketing position responsible for these type of things? dove: The closest would be me, since I'm kind of the public spokesperson. achernya: We should probably have a dedicated official CPW coordinator person. dove: Part of the problem with any of this stuff is that SIPB is largely a place where the things that get done depend on how many people to do them. We have EC positions that have written responsibilities, but they're very sort of simple roles. There aren't specific responsibilities. We could improve that. omalley1: I don't know if the org structure needs to change to facilitate that, or. dove: We could also use more members that are interested in doing outreach as opposed to technical projects. I do think this is a good conversation to have; maybe we should start an e-mail thread about it. omalley1: I'm happy to start it. Along those lines, maybe the grumpy fuzzball isn't the best mascot to have. achernya: Give him an alternative name? kacquah: At Technique, our mascot is the gorilla, and it's literally our identifying symbol. dove: If we had t-shirts with a big fuzzball and everyone wore them all around campus, people might ask "what's that fuzzball?" tboning: Also a better new project startup system. A lot of time people are told 'come back in 1-2 weeks when we have stup set up for you'. omalley1: Also on that note, people starting projects might not have significant project experience, so we might want a 'lead a project' crash course. dove: One thing that afarrell was interested in doing was a mentorship program. achernya: I don't advocate diving into reviving the existing one without research. dove: It's a useful discussion to have, we can continue it offline. tboning: One thing, let's give the secretary a round of applause for a solid hour of typing. btidor: Open Source Comes to Campus is happening this weekend Saturday and Sunday; we have some posters here, and I'll try to print them some more. If you'd like to put them up, that would be great. Please think about mentoring, there are a whole bunch of sessions that you can sign up for. If you want to learn, you can come and learn too; there's a sign-up form on openhatch.mit.edu. dove: Please go to the event, register, do stuff. The meeting was adjourned at 20:36. Minutes taken and submitted by phurst.