Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2016-03-07 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by slz. In attendance were Voting members: andersk, bpchen, dzaefn, ikdc, jselover, slz, vasilvv Associate members: achernya, asedeno, glasgall, kcr | jhawk Prospectives: dannybd, face, foner, hcope, Michael Gohde (mgohde@uccs.edu), nguyenin, sinback, vahle | acarney, mitchgu Guests: gibsons, jkarel, phageo Administrivia: slz: Welcome to the SIPB meeting! Secretary halt. glasgall: I move to allocate $80 to replace two disks for the twilight-zone development machine. slz: Motion to white ballot. [white ballot passes. $80 allocated for two replacement disks for twilight-zone] slz: I move to allocate $80 for EFF stickers and shipping, including laptop camera stickers. [glasgall seconds] face: Does the EFF have any slidable laptop camera stickers? slz: They're not slidable, but are easily removed and reapplied. slz: Motion to white ballot. [white ballot passes. $80 allocated for laptop camera stickers] achernya: A year ago we bought a bunch of Raspberry Pis. I hear the Raspberry Pi 3 is out. Should we do this again? vahle: There's also a compute module with a bunch of IO ports. [straw-poll for Raspberry Pi 3: ~9 people] vasilvv: There used to be a Dell U2515H monitor in the office. It was popular as a monitor into which people plugged in their laptops. Now that meatboy is using it, we should buy a new one. I move to allocate $400 for a new monitor. [achernya seconds] slz: Motion to white ballot. [white ballot passes. $400 allocated for a new monitor] vasilvv: Just a note: I am doing a big order of adapters, keyboards, and similar items for SIPB. If you have any adapters or keyboards you want ordered, you should email me. vahle: CokeComm has been restocked with 1200 cans of soda. glasgall: If S[redacted]v were here, those would be gone in hours. vahle: I have not run the CokeComm dots, but some people are in the hole and need to pay. slz: We should allocate money for hackathons. achernya: We should have a standing allocation of around $400 per year. vasilvv: Let's talk about this next time. slz: Treasurer, please find out what the status of standing allocations is. acarney: What kinds of things are purchased for hackathons? achernya: Usually food. slz: The next SIPB ExecComm meeting is Friday March 18 2016, two Fridays from now. We plan to make several amendments to the SIPB constitution. [jhawk walks in] dannybd: It's like the word "amendment" summoned you. achernya: Please make the amendments word-diffs. slz: Currently there are about 8 changes we're making. We're rephrasing the full and associate members section to make it clear that one does not get elected full or associate member. We are also making it clear that associate members shall not be elected to positions on ExecComm. achernya: Is that not the case? slz: They are currently banned only from holding positions on ExecComm, but not from being elected. vasilvv: Previously with absentee ballots, you had to submit exactly 9 votes for Member-At-Large. If one candidate then declined to run, there would be an absentee ballot with fewer than 9 votes, which was usually voided as it was unclear what should be done with them. We plan to prevent this situation from occurring. jselover: Are any of these changes to actual practice, or just fixes? vasilvv: There are material changes. slz: We want to make it clear that no one loses ExecComm membership unless they resign. achernya: This is formalizing existing practice. slz: We want to add section to formalize the status of policies in the SIPB constitution. There's currently a folder in the AFS locker called "policies", but it's unclear what standing these have. slz: We also want to make some changes to how officers are elected to the ExecComm. Current members can go to the archives to see the discussion, but we're currently considering either approval voting or Schulze's ranked pairs. achernya: I request that an implementation be proposed before this is voted on. andersk: I am willing to create such an implementation. achernya: Will it be formally verified? glasgall: Will the implementation verify that the winner is the Condorcet winner if one exists? andersk: It won't be verified initially, but it will check the Condorcet condition. slz: The presiding officer at a meeting, not only the chair, should have full control over a meeting; in particular they should be able to decide whether prospectives may vote on a motion, and whether a vote should be closed to non-members. achernya: This is formalizing existing practice. vasilvv: We want to add the clause that if no member of ExecComm is present at a meeting, the board cannot make any binding decisions. slz: The final amendment is to expand the discipline section and empower the ExecComm to remedy discipline matters in a more explicit way. In cases where an individual's behavior is destructive or detrimental to functioning and goals of SIPB, of course for severe cases, the ExecComm should have power to sanction such an individual by _, banning them from SIPB-controlled spaces, or even revoking the individual's status and privileges, up to and including membership. sinback: Do these proposed amendments satisfy an immediate need? vasilvv: These amendments have been suggested after many reflections, after having been SIPB chair, on what needs to change in order for SIPB to act properly. achernya: These are also the results of opinions other chairs and I had during our tenures, even since the era of bbaren's chairship. Also historically there were frequently constitutional amendments often, just not during vasilvv's chairship. jhawk: Is it the ExecComm's intention to vote on these amendments without a vote by the board? vasilvv: Yes, since this is the power given to ExecComm by the Constitution. jhawk: I suggest that while the ExecComm has that power, outside of an emergency they should still take a vote of the board before the final vote. vasilvv: That is not how these things have historically been done. jhawk: Nonetheless, I think it would be wise. foner: Does the constitution allow these disciplinary powers already? achernya: It implies certain powers, but is not explicit. vasilvv: It is my personal belief that disciplinary matters ought in general to be controlled by a small group, due to the need for the privacy of all people affected. [andersk leaves] Project Reports: foner: I just put up the first Ask SIPB column in the last 4-5 years. I am still looking for people to write columns and do cluedumps. achernya: If you don't volunteer, he'll start volunteering people. vahle: People wanted to do a cluedump on the BP200 Mini, a software-defined radio component. We will likely move SIPB to purchase it. foner: We should ask Peter to review it before buying it, but we could do a cluedump without it. vahle: No, we need live hardware. Anyway, if anyone is interested in SDR the BP200 Mini is very cool. bpchen: I put up a shoddy script in my locker that installs barnowl plugins for you quickly. If anyone wants me to host more plugins or has ideas on redirecting my efforts in the zephyr area, you should tell me. glasgall: You should ask sipb-afs-req for a barnowl-contrib locker. achernya: Also, your efforts and contributions to barnowl should be recognized. bpchen: Has anyone gotten PARs to work? glasgall: Kinda; loading works, reloading doesn't work, and AnyEvent is full of hate. achernya: We tried to fix sql.mit.edu this week. We plan to bring up the new server and activate the new website soon. acarney: We registered a booth for the Activities Midway and requested our old booth, as well as access to power. The ASA still hadn't told us when the midway was when we rescheduled our events. sinback: We're going to do a game hackathon thing in the office for prefrosh. acarney: It's been registered, but we wanted to change the time based on when the Midway was. We asked the CPW Committee whether they would consider allowing us to change the timing based on the Midway, and they said they'd take a vote of their ExecComm, but nothing happened. The Activities Midway will in fact be from 1-3 pm on Saturday. jselover: That conflicts with the time for the game event. acarney: They said we can't change it officially, but we can publish our own unofficial time changes. Also, we wanted to have some large machine there, and I need to know how big it is. slz: It's in that cabinet. [The VT100 is displayed] achernya: The UX on this is wonderful: you plug it in and you're done. Other: achernya: I want to burn SOAP. glasgall: Sometimes ntpd stops ntpd'ing. This makes me sad. achernya: This is a feature, not a bug. glasgall: It stops me from logging in. foner: There are vulnerabilities in ntpd that can kill you in one packet. slz: This weekend I learned I never want to be a web developer. I learned this after attempting to use CSS on my static blog. Other Other: vasilvv: Your pset is due sooner than you think. achernya: I heard Wednesday is going to be spring. foner: Daylight Savings transition is coming up in a week. The meeting was adjourned at 20:13. Minutes taken and submitted by ikdc.