Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2020-10-12 The meeting was called to order at 19:31 by wmoses. In attendance were Student keyholders: mrittenb, emmabat, wmoses, rihn, asahteck, jnoguera, bds, gshay, kjchen Associate keyholders: quentin, kenta, mcyoung, asedeno, slz, wqian94 Members: cbsu, huydai, jnwagner, kyeb, mcameron, mitimmy, tjmurphy Guests: carreter, jeffery, jerrym, darrenl, aslarus, andreags, jboyedoe, haze, reinerdb, mshafim, opheliaz, eyf, nickiemp, wongn, mehrab, denzel, stangs, pennyb, sualeh Administrivia: wmoses: Today, people will describe their projects! wmoses: We're SIPB, a computer club! We normally meet in our office, but now on zoom! [people introduce themselves] emmabat: If new people have questions, feel free to reach out to me, anyone else who wants, I'm emmabat@mit.edu. mrittenb: Message me to get added to our mailing lists (mrittenb@mit.edu). Project Reports: gshay: CourseRoad: a website where you can plan your classes, make sure you fulfil your requirements, in Vue JS, we want everyone, beginner friendly. mrittenb: Macathena: getting Athena packages to work on Apple's computers, using macports. I didn't know macports when I joined, we can teach you! slz: Mirrors: mirrors.mit.edu is an open-source software mirroring site. Lots of people use it, it makes it much faster to download packages at MIT. If you want to learn how to administer a Linux server, join us. If you want to be more ambitious, we may make a lot of changes to it soon. wmoses: If anyone has a project for better audio on video chats, we clearly need it. asahteck: Minecraft: We're building a replica of campus in Minecraft. We run the server, answer people's questions. We want a better website, better documentation, more plugins, interfacing with Next Haunt, tours. emmabat: Discord bots: SIPB helped make the discord authentication bots for the 2021 discord server and the CP* server. rihn: Badges: we are making online buttons for people! jnoguera: Uplink: A chat app that can use moira lists to control membership quentin: Scripts and XVM: Scripts is our web hosting platform with over a thousand websites at MIT, you can make a wordpress or a mediawiki or anything you want, we may be larger than MIT's official web service. We need help with server administration, web dev, answering tickets. If you have needs that aren't met by just web hosting, XVM is virtual machines for MIT, at xvm.mit.edu you can create a virtual machine running whatever OS you want, you can get whatever packages you want, you can mine bitcoin although we will be sad if you do that, it's not designed for heavy CPU usage. kyeb: Jupyter and cloud: AWS gave us a bunch of AWS credits, we're trying to distribute them to MIT students. We're trying to add MIT authentication to JupyterHub. wmoses: We have lots of cloud credits we want to give out, there are lots of distributed system and security questions here, the existing cloud providers make it hard to limit people. SIPB was originally founded to give students access to time share machines, so it's sort of going back to our roots. kenta: MIT has an Athena computer system, athena.dialup.mit.edu, in non-covid also Athena machines on campus. You can put software in lockers. For example, the version of haskell on Athena is 8.0.2, I wanted a new version, so 8.6.5 is in the ghc locker, also 9000 haskell software packages. Also in the outland locker, whichlocker tells you which locker software is in. If you want software on Athena, we can give you space and pointers on making it available. wmoses: Other projects: SIPB-WISP: We want our own wireless network atop various buildings. Right now we are making UI stuff while we wait to return to campus. Also Hyades, goal is to provide container infrastructure to MIT people. If you like docker, kubernetes, go code. Mattermost: open source slack alternative, we use it, Uplink is based on it. Mastodon: open-source twitter alternative. Cluedumps: People give talks on computing things, you can help organize these. Most important project: Our Stapler! During campus, our office is right next to the athena cluster, we have a stapler for people stapling things. There's a fake academic paper. There's a play. quentin: Debathena: the distribution (Ubuntu actually) that is run on all the linux computers around campus, we maintain the set of packages that is run on all of MIT's public servers. quentin: MIT and SIPB invented kerberos, x windowing system! We have a long history of doing networked computing. wmoses: SIPB meetings go administrivia, project reports, other, other other. After the meeting ends we will make breakout rooms for project maintainers. Other: wqian94: SIPB project fair is sooner than you think. kenta: If you search google for download digits of pi, SIPB website is number two. We host 1 billion digits of pi. I'm working on making more digits available. This is a lot of disk space, so I haven't figured it out yet. wqian94: Couldn't you do this on something like a ledger, and then make your own pi chain. wmoses: This isn't the worst thing I've heard the blockchain proposed for. kenta: You don't want them chained. wqian94: It was a joke. kenta: Yes, that's why my serious response was funny. wqian94: I was working around the gnome settings for ubuntu 20, the version is very bad, I reinstalled gnome, now zoom is clickable and my windows are quittable. It's a good feeling, but not one I expected in 2020. wmoses: a semi-functional UI! What a time to be alive. quentin: someone has made a bot to make GPT-3 respond to reddit posts. wmoses: Is this the guy who got a bunch of top articles on hackernews written by GPT-3? [quentin gives example GPT-3 reddit replies] wmoses: Nobel prizes were announced. emmabat: MIT's CRISPR scientist did not get the nobel prize, though he still has his patent. An MIT astrophysicist won the physics nobel, fourth woman. tjmurphy: Apparently over 10% of the linux kernel is just AMD GPU drivers. wmoses: At least they work. quentin: I found a manufacturer of an ethernet driver that tried to get linux to take it, they wouldn't. asahteck: One of my friends wrote a programming language that just sounds like clickbait headlines. Other Other: emmabat: Get a flu shot, register to vote, vote. quentin: If you think you're registered, double check. emmabat: You should check that your mail-in ballot has been received. tjmurphy: Make sure the signature they have on file for you works. wqian94: If third parties sent out fake ballots in some counties, look for the blue thing on the right. emmabat: Ask me any questions about voting, I'm part of MIT Vote quentin: Vote exactly once, unlike what some authority figures might tell you. [more voter registration discussion] wqian94: can we have SIPB I Voted stickers? I voted absentee and didn't get an I Voted sticker. quentin: Stickers were gone by noon. wqian94: I, like other patriotic americans, stand outside the polling place at dawn every time I have voted in person, which is zero. wmoses: Also, if you have SIPB socials ideas, we need those too! quentin: Scones round two! [more scone and cookie discussion] [challah discussion] asahteck: Anyone want a hair dye session at some point? wqian94: I'm trying to grow my hair out enough to donate for a wig, turns out making a wig with human hair is really hard. You need accurate measurements of the person's head. If you don't, the wind can actually blow the whole wig away. kenta: Fondue party with heat from GPU, someday. wmoses: threadripper used to cook a piece of meat asahteck: We're going to build a computer when we get back. Also we have a VR machine, beat saber and VR minecraft! The meeting was adjourned 20:32. Minutes taken and submitted by mrittenb.