Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2021-09-06 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by kjchen In attendance were Student keyholders: kjchen, asahteck, bds, jnwagner, maximo, zackpi, and huydai Associate keyholders: quentin | kenta Members: amigdal, mitimmy, ololade Guests: '() Administrivia: kjchen: On Activity Midway, thank you to CJ and emmabat for helping staff the booth. We got about 85 people who signed up on the form. I'll be sending out a welcoming e-mail to them and also people who showed interest during CPW. We should also be thinking about ways to get them engaged in SIPB soon. kjchen: I also want to talk about the possibility of doing an in-person meeting. I think it would be wise for us to have it outdoors, since the office is fairly small and a good number of new students may want to join. Anyone have any thoughts? quentin: Could we combine it with a picnic perhaps? gshay: I feel that would make it less safe since you have to take off your masks to eat quentin: I feel the current guidelines are okay with people eating in groups. gshay: I've also seen something about only allowing in groups of 4 or less quentin: That might have been in the Spring only but I'll check kjchen: I know a few weeks ago MIT has recently relaxed a lot of policies. I mean they did allow the East Side party happen asahteck: I also want to add that departments are doing their welcome back events with participant numbers on orders of magnitude much bigger than what a SIPB party would be. kjchen: Also it seems that MIT seems to put out a lot of guidelines for people to follow but are not necessarily enforcing them. gshay: Personally I would not be comfortable with eating. I think outside makes sense quentin: We could split the times for when there's food and when there isn't. bds: I'm also not sure if we want to split SIPB members to two separate meeting times like that. huydai: Could we also have snack rather than like food takeout? I agree that an outdoor meeting seems best. I don't really mind if there is food or not. asahteck: We could send out a form for people to fill out anonymously, since there are probably people who aren't here but would want to give their input kjchen: I can do that. I also want to consider if we are going to try any virtual component as part of the next SIPB meeting. I feel like it's hard to have people on laptops when we are doing something in Killian Court for example. asahteck: We could have a meeting with one computer that has a mic hooked up to it. gshay: Don't we already buy a bunch of equipment for hybrid meetings? quentin: We did at the start of covid which hasn't been used. gshay: Perhaps once we've paired down the numbers and feel more comfortable inside we could use those hybrid teleconference stuff kjchen: That's fair. I think next week we could consider it as a special meeting that is hosted in-person only to test out the format and see how people show up. For now, I would delegate the decisions for the next meeting to the EC-at-large quentin: We should make a decision fairly quickly so that the notification e-mail gets sent out soon kjchen: I agree. I was thinking we should make a decision by Thursday and have the e-mail sent out that night so students could have a few days to decide whether they want to show up to the meeting. kjchen: I also want to note that we have access to the SIPB office again since I went in last week to get stuff for Activity Midway asahteck: Also are the pandemic keyholders [def: students who became keyholders during the pandemic] getting theirs at some point? kjchen: Yes! bds: Ironically this is also the job of the vice-chair, but in this case Shayna doesn't have the key yet either kjchen: I found the e-mail that was last sent out for people to collect their keys. You can use this format Shayna *sends e-mail over* asahteck: Sounds good kenta: I visited the office and was having trouble with my key (though it eventually worked) bds: Yeah I think it's everyone that is having trouble. I think Cel got my key to work only one time *ever*. quentin: Perhaps you can try getting a replacement by IS&T. kenta: Maybe we should have the lock looked at by facilities kjchen: We (me and emmabat) had talked about it and weren't sure if they could replace the lock, since they may want to put a card scanner instead. Actually, I think that there is a card scanner on the door but it doesn't seem to be connected to anything quentin: Ah, there's a whole story behind that card scanner. I'll tell you after the meeting with Kelly. [Update: It was indeed an interesting story] kjchen: We also seem to be running slow on bits of merch to be giving out to people (like SIPB camera blockers and also SIPB temporary tattoos). If we would like to make more of those things, we have documentation for making more SIPB swags. asahteck: If someone is available this week to help me haul back Minecraft swag to the SIPB office (and has the key) from Next House that would be much appreciated *kjchen, bds, and huydai offered to help, time TBD* Project Reports: kenta: I visited the office. Some of the office heads are not working. Some I managed to make them work again. More work will be needed to get others to work. The main problem was AFS; machines need to be upgraded to a version of AFS that doesn't suck. kenta: One of the machines that is not working well is our Mac, called bender-bending-Rodriguez. I couldn't figure out what's the issue, and I think it would be a very useful machine to have since it has a built-in microphone that we could use for meetings. If someone who has more Mac experience could take a look and can *gender-bend* Rodriguez, that would be very helpful bds: Returning to campus is sooner than you think quentin: Deadline? bds: Classes starts on Wednesday, so I would hope Wednesday kjchen: Also registration is sooner than you think, except if you know that the Registration Day is tomorrow. Other: huydai: In other news, this past week China recently put a restriction on video game times for children under 18. In the new law, students are only allowed to play multiplayer games one hour on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. quentin: The one-hour is not just a time limit. It's actually a specific one-hour block (I believe 7:30 to 8:30 PM) when people are allowed on to the online server. bds: Does China have one time zone or multiple timezones? kjchen: I think they have one timezone, like one beefy timezone. bds: I was about to say, if they have multiple time zones they could have legally mandated load balancing, which would be nifty kenta: In this case it's legally mandated DDOS. Other Other: quentin: The FTC is investigating McDonalds ice cream machines based on grounds for right-to-repair laws. Apparently they are always broken and the ice cream vendor refuses to let anyone else repair them except their own vendor employees. quentin: if you read it into it, the machine is basically designed to fail. For example, if you happen to overfill them one time the machine is designed to permanently fault in a way that cannot be resolved without a tech present huydai: Perhaps to no one suprise recently there have been a new set of vulnerabilities (dubbed "BrackTooth") that are discovered in Bluetooth chipsets across 11 different vendors, including Intel, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, etc. Some of the vulnerabilities could lead to DDOS-ing of the Bluetooth devices to arbitrary code execution. People are suspecting that these vulnerabilities could affect more than a billion devices, which is scary. quentin: If anyone is using a Bluetooth keyboard you should stop immediately, because oftentimes they are sending their data packet and authentication details in cleartext. asahteck: That's why you gotta buy a mechanical keyboard with like a nine-tails USB cord quentin: There's gotta be someone who makes good wireless mechanical keyboard huydai: But you gotta that sub-nanosecond latency! What happens if you miss a frame in a game? The horror! kjchen: Then the minutes will be delayed! kenta: Just for clarification the vulnerability is separated from the fact that Bluetooth keyboards tend to send their data and password in cleartext right? quentin: Yes. The later deals more with the manufacturer's implementation of their Bluetooth devices than any inherent vulnerability with the protocol quentin: If you encounter the new card readers and your card is too old it will not work. kjchen: What's "old"? quentin: They say that check on the back of your card if it says "Charlie inside", which is a general check but not actually accurate. Apparently you should check for if it says "MIFARE" in tiny blue letters in the corner huydai: Are the new card readers the curved ones that sit next to the old ones? quentin: No, those are actually the new QR code readers. In the future you'll be able to use an app on your phone with a QR code that will allow you access to buildings. maximo: Today I saw someone use the QR reader and it wasn't working and they couldn't get in. quentin: I didn't think you could get the QR code maximo: I guess they somehow got it early bds: I'm sure we'll learn someday that you could send a specifically formatted QR code and it's break everything quentin: I hope things get back to normal soon quentin: Y'all just need to get vaccinated and convince everyone you know to get vaccinated kenta: Is there any special thing to let you know when a card is not working/ too old? quentin: It should not register / the new card readers should not detect it at all, since apparently the new card readers use a different frequency. However, new cards should work with the old card readers since they have RFID chips built in. The meeting was adjourned at 20:07. Minutes taken and submitted by huydai.