Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2024-02-05 The meeting was called to order at 19:35 by psvenk. In attendance were Student keyholders: aabreu, arjunjb, alwinfy, colclark, innaavo, jmvidal, nmorgan, psvenk, rgabriel, turino14 Associate keyholders: almonds, toomas Members: efjepsen, guoj1112, kbrought, lkronman, linjiang, sammit, vex Guests: annakwon, ariapero, nfelleke, ruejilem, shravika Administrivia: alwinfy: A couple things. Our old snack cart broke at the end of the last semester, so I went to the hardware store and bought a new one. alwinfy: Motion to allocate $60 to cover the cost of the new snack cart. If it's not approved, I will take the cart for my personal use. psvenk: Seconded jmvidal: Motion to white ballot alwinfy: Seconded [passes by white ballot] innaavo: Motion to allocate $160 for pizza that was purchased for cluedumps. psvenk: Seconded psvenk: Motion to white ballot rgabriel: Seconded [passes by white ballot] alwinfy: Motion to allocate $120 to cover office snacks that I purchased. psvenk: Seconded psvenk: Motion to white ballot almonds: Seconded [passes by white ballot] nmorgan: I'd like to update our library with some new books: Cracking the Coding Interview, and System Design Interview (parts 1 and 2). nmorgan: Motion to allocate $110. alwinfy: Seconded psvenk: Motion to white ballot jmvidal: Seconded [passes by white ballot] colclark: Hello. SIPB dinner. I want to actually make this happen. alwinfy: Are you going to attend this one? colclark: Yes. Anyway, let's do it this Friday (my last Friday as chair). Where do we want to go? It can be a late lunch, or an early dinner, or a regular dinner. nmorgan: Do you have a place in mind? colclark: As long as it costs a lot of money. colclark: How about hot pot? alwinfy: We can do Happy Lamb. [various]: Happy Lamb sounds good. colclark: Ok, what time? They close at 21:30. almonds: How about we get there are 18:00? colclark: That's pretty early. alwinfy: I would say meet at MIT at 18:00. psvenk: Let's meet in the SIPB office. colclark: How many people may show up? [11 people raise hands] colclark: I'll make the reservation at 17:00. alwinfy: If you don't make it, it will be on your head. colclark: Well, it it will only be on my head for 3 days. psvenk: What will happen to your head? nmorgan: We're going to chop it off. colclark: Let's just say my head game is on point. Project Reports: nmorgan: Hyades continues. psvenk: Hydrant continues. rgabriel: Matrix continues. I'm redesigning the class group chat picker, and I'll poster about it soon. guoj1112: Has either Hydrant or Matrix met recently? psvenk, rgabriel: No, but if you're interested we can start back up. almonds: LLMs continues. almonds: DormDigest continues. aabreu added a toggle to switch between sorting by date parsed and date sent. jmvidal: HWOPS continues. nmorgan: Project proposal: Ark (automated resource knowledgebase). It will aim to replace the smartphone with the assistance of AI, with the two primary modes of interaction being text and speech. It will not be an app-based device, and it should help people with medical conditions that prevent the usage of a traditional smartphone and also improve the workflow of people in general. I'm looking for new members for the project, and I plan on collaborating with members of other clubs, including the AI club. Currently, I'm looking for software engineers with any level of experience (Python and server knowledge are helpful), but the most important thing is a willingness to learn. You can email me at nmorgan@mit.edu with any questions, and I'll be dormspamming soon. End of my yapping session. alwinfy: What sort of support are you looking for from SIPB? Do you just want SIPB members to work on it, or do you also want resources? nmorgan: Both, since we'll need server. almonds: How does this FTGO specifically SIPB? nmorgan: By improving the lives of MIT students in helping people do their schoolwork. almonds: How would this project help students complete their schoolwork any better than ChatGPT already has? nmorgan: Unlike, say, ChatGPT, this device will store information about you, acting like a "brain outside of your brain". almonds: The next server we're going to have for LLMs will self-host an open-source speech-to-text service that you can use. I also want to know how this project is sufficiently different from the LLMs project. nmorgan: SIPB LLMs isn't planning to make a product that is tailored to every individual student at MIT. alwinfy: What action items do we have right now? Would you like to set up a meeting in the SIPB office at some regular interval? nmorgan: I have a document currently, and I have code on GitHub that I would say is a minimum viable product. I do think meetings at the SIPB office are something that we would like to look at in the future. lkronman: I'm still new, but I wonder about the distinction between a SIPB project and a startup. guoj1112: [explains definitions of terms] nmorgan: Our main goal is to improve the lives of people, so our target community at first will be MIT. So I think this is appropriate as a SIPB project. vex: SIPB Tor continues. We had a really productive meeting, and we now have server access for the Tor exit node. We're also meeting with some people from BU on Friday, and we have a Mattermost channel about this. rgabriel: One more project report. My web.lab project, "Unsubscribe", is a free food mailing list feed, and I would like to propose it as a SIPB project. DormDigest was thinking of integration. colclark: You can't just make this a part of DormDigest? almonds: It's sufficiently unique that I wouldn't mind having it be its own project, and then DormDigest and Unsubscribe can be friends. psvenk: It also won an award at web.lab. rgabriel: For getting the largest number of Facebook reactions. alwinfy: How are you going to make sure this is still maintained after you leave, rgabriel? rgabriel: Just like other SIPB projects. I'll make the list owned by SIPB, etc. alwinfy: More specifically, how broken would this be if it stays untouched for 5 years, and how hard would it be for someone to get on board? rgabriel: I could onboard someone. alwinfy: Any objections for making this a SIPB project? colclark: I still object and think this should be a part of DormDigest. alwinfy: Infrastructurally, they do seem correlated. colclark: I don't see why you can't just take the parser and add a "free food" tab to DormDigest. rgabriel: It could diverge more from DormDigest in the future. colclark: What is the specific feature that distinguishes this? rgabriel: I would still like to keep it independent, since there is potential for other features; e.g., one of my friends wanted to make a grocery data visualization website with specific prices. That could reasonably fit here since it's a food-based app, but it wouldn't fit with DormDigest. alwinfy: I say let's table this until we have more details. almonds: I just want to mention, the two seem sufficiently different, inside and out that, at least for now, it makes sense to me that they remain separate servers for the next few weeks, even if they end up under the same DormDigest umbrella. rgabriel: We can discuss the long-term goals another time, but I was wondering if we could have the hostname allocated for it. I have the server host to make a VM, and I have a VM already. Even if it ends up being a redirect to DormDigest in the future, are there any objections to allocating unsubscribe.mit.edu? shravika: Why is it called "Unsubscribe"? rgabriel: Lots of people say "unsubscribe" on mailing lists. Other: alwinfy: There is a Mattermost channel called "shopping list" if you want to suggest any snacks for the next round. Go ham. alwinfy: Similarly, there are a couple of housekeeping items that we are out of, including cups and Scotch tape. We might also want some scrap USB flash drives and SD cards, and some HDMI cables lying around. I don't have specific numbers right now, so no allocation yet. colclark: Also, most of the rubbing alcohol in the closet has expired and does not taste good anymore. Would you mind buying some more rubbing alcohol? My stomach thanks you. almonds [opens a bottle from Monolith]: It expires? It doesn't smell expired...? rgabriel: Concern nmorgan: Seems like I'll need to allocate more money for the books to account for taxes. [various]: MIT doesn't reimburse tax; use the exemption form. [discussion about Amazon account] colclark: In the future, I would recommend that the new treasurer takes care of all Amazon purchases. Other Other: guoj1112: Today is the first day of the spring semester. psvenk: Finals are sooner than you think. alwinfy: I don't think you're allowed to say that. At least let midterms pass. The meeting was adjourned at 20:07. Minutes taken by psvenk, almonds and submitted by psvenk.