Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2025-09-29


The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by psvenk.

In attendance were

        Student keyholders: psvenk, alwinfy, rgabriel, bzelnick, nmorgan, colclark

        Associate keyholders: almonds, kenta

        Members: ilyag, liani, angela5, ericsson, ryanruiz

        Guests: Kshitij, Lana

Administrivia:

        psvenk: we had an xvm meeting.
        
        rgabriel: I was there for the first part. It was pretty good, he was walking us through the [slides and GitHub?], and there was a lot of Q&A.
        
        turino14 [via Mattermost]: "The XVM meeting with price went phenomenal, I’ll share the video recording somewhere. I want to start organizing something for XVM soon, with the first goal of setting a development cluster. Send me a message if you might be interested or have questions."
        
        rgabriel: the meeting was recorded. 
        
        psvenk: we have a text record of a portion and a video record of the rest
        
        alwinfy: cables proposal, I would like to allcate $450 for the proposal written in a spreadsheet in the machine rooms mattermost channel.
        
        alwinfy: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fv6iMsc_DFPhsp5Oc0c7xR8mlow9kRcaWybVrf2PaXE/edit?gid=0#gid=0
        
        psvenk: I second the motion, any thoughts?  
        
        colclark: How would the HDMI-HDMI cables enhance the SIPB office specifically?
        
        alwinfy: Office heads or borrowing, we have a checkou sheet 
        
        colclark: Is there a system to make sure these stay within the office? 
        ilyag: we should tag them 
        
        alwinfy: there will be a method to tagging the cables
        
        [passes 7-0-0]
        n
        kenta: Are the USB hubs powered or not powered?
        
        alwinfy: Powered according to the amazon page
        
Project Reports:

        
        turino14 [via Mattermost]: HWOPS continues, we officially retired the old UPS (Children’s Television Workshop) and next Friday we will be installing the new UPS.
        
        alwinfy: Also related to HWOPS: I mucked out the cable cabinet in preparation for ordering cables.  the front crate has ethernet and usb. the back crate has older cables I am not sure what we really want
        
        almonds: Today, aabreu added a "Community Service" tag to DormSoup, requested by the UA.
        
        almonds: SIPB LLMs continues.
        
        psvenk: hydrant and courseroad continue, we are deciding on a new meeting time, our new meeting time will be Saturdays at 11 am. join the matrix or mattermost channel.
        
        nmorgan: ARK continues. A lot of new members. We have allocated individuals to take on various components of the project.. Thinking about applying for a Y Combinator grant for IAP to bring dev tools to the team (eg. cursor, claude code).
        
        bzelnick: SIPB Discord continues. Some people showed up to new member onboarding, two people. One has frontend experience, one doesn't have a lot of programming experience. The plan is to automated certain things that I've been doing by hand.
        
        psvenk: any other project reports? 
        
        
        
Other:

        alwinfy: we are out of cups
        
        almonds: we have bowls!
        
        psvenk: on friday I may go on a Market Basket run to buy supplies 

        alwinfy: we are also out of utensils and Ziploc bags
        
        psvenk: we need cups, we need Ziploc bags, I will check on the utensils situation 
        
        alwinfy: I stashed the cables in bags, please try to use the bags and dont just throw cables around 
        
Other Other:

        psvenk: harvard has migrated to Okta. They have also gotten rid of duo to switch to Okta verified. It is similar to duo and is not interoperable and you will have to download the app on your phone. They prioritize the passkeys and they want people to use windows hello and touch id. yubikeys are a last resort
        
        rgabriel: [in general] And they also allow password managers like bitwarden to use passkeys
         
        psvenk: IS&T will kill all certs by end of next year. We are migrating XVM and Scripts as they rely on certs
        
        
        colclark: 6.120 ASE is sooner than you think
        
        kshitij: Somehow I've never set up a remote desktop server before (24.04). Is it worth using the inbuilt remote desktop or whatever, or should I try to switch to xfce? Mostly worried about Gnome being more heavy.
        
        
        almonds: there are tradeoffs, I like xfce
        
        rgabriel: I feel even with 2025 files Gnome should not be a convern 
        
        psvenk: the issue is with the remote desktop part
        
        kshitij: there may be a remote desktop option built within Gnome 
        
        psvenk: the gnome philisophy is "it just works" 
        
        psvenk: if you want something more personalized use Xfce or Openblocks 
        
        colclark: Ubuntu is the "canonical" option.
        
        psvenk: Har har har.
        
        rgabriel: If you want a comprehensive list of options, check the Arch wiki. They're very comprehensive, even if you're not using Arch
        
        alwinfy: Add date is sooner than you think! In fact it's this Friday.
        
        almonds: government shutdown probably too
        
The meeting was adjourned at 20:00.

        Minutes taken by nmorgan, almonds, alwinfy, rgabriel and submitted by nmorgan.