From SIPB Cluedumps
SIPB Cluedumps are informal technical talks, well supplied with snacks.
Interrupt with questions at any time, or quietly get up for food.
Cluedumps ordinarily run at 8:30 PM Tuesday evenings.
Feel free to contact the Cluedump Series organizers at cluedumps at obvious dot edu.
Sign up for weekly announcements by blancheing yourself onto cluedump-announce, or mail us and we'll add you.
Google Calendar
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Next Cluedump
The Modern Linux Desktop
| Date: October 27, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Geoffrey Thomas (geofft)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Notes: http://geofft.mit.edu/p/desktop-linux-cluedump-2009.pdf
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| Abstract: The modern Linux desktop has grown significantly since Project Athena decided (in the mid-80's) that it needed a graphical environment and wrote the X Window System. While X is still as important as ever, many other layers of important desktop infrastructure have recently been added. I'll give an overview of a number of these projects, including D-Bus, HAL, udev, PolicyKit, ConsoleKit, DeviceKit, XDG, Avahi, GNOME, and related projects. We'll look at the architecture of these systems as well as ways you might configure them on your own desktop or laptop.
This talk is intended for anyone who's used a modern Linux desktop and is curious how the system works; people who have perhaps heard of a couple of the projects I mentioned, but haven't really used them, will get the most out of this talk.
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| Bio: Geoffrey Thomas '10 is a SIPB member and developer on the scripts.mit.edu and Debathena projects. The latter has just seen its biggest deployment shift from a single SSH server to several hundred graphical desktops.
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Upcoming
Understanding PGP and Using GPG
| Date: November 17, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Stephen Woodrow (woodrow)
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| Location: 4-237
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| Abstract: PGP (technically OpenPGP) is a public-key cryptography system that is useful for signing/verifying and encrypting/decrypting messages and data. Unlike other public-key infrastructures (such as MIT's X.509 certificate system) that rely on an absolutely trusted root principal to authenticate all other principals in the system, trust in PGP is an individual decision where principals in the system attest for the authenticity of others, forming a distributed "web of trust." In addition to providing a secure means of encrypting and signing messages for yourself or others you communicate with, PGP is also used for signing and verifying software distributions and packages (Linux kernel, Ubuntu/Debian packages, etc.), or for signing your own code (i.e. with git-tag) on projects you work on.
This cluedump will begin with a brief overview of PGP (and very brief overview of public-key crypto -- no discrete logarithms here) and why you should care, before diving into the details of the OpenPGP
protocol and how it works. The second part of the cluedump will focus on the ways you can use GNU Privacy Guard (GPG), a common implementation of OpenPGP, to take advantage of the benefits of PGP. In particular, I will present a tutorial on how to set up a well-thought-out GPG installation (based on my frustration at the lack of good tutorials online today).
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Upcoming (Dates To Be Determined)
A Technical Overview of Scripts
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Date: TBD
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Presenters: Geoffrey Thomas (geofft)
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| Location: 4-231
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Debathena
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Date: TBD
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Presenters: TBD
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| Location: 4-231
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The Law for Engineers
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Date: TBD
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Presenters: Keith Winstein (keithw)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Bio: Keith Winstein '03 is an associate member of SIPB, on leave from his Ph.D. at MIT. He works as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal in Boston, covering science and medicine.
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Previously
Understanding Git
| Date: September 29, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Nelson Elhage (nelhage)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Notes: Understanding Git (slides)
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| Abstract: Git is a free software distributed version control system originally written by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. It is increasingly commonly used, and learning to use it can be greatly benefited by a little help from those who understand how to use it. This talk will provide a brief tutorial on how to use Git and a technical overview of how it works under the covers.
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Invirt
| Date: October 6, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Evan Broder (broder)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Abstract: Invirt is the software behind XVM, SIPB's community virtualization hosting service. Since we launched less than a year ago, users have created over 400 VMs, of which about 200 are turned on at any given time. At this talk we'll be giving a whirlwind tour of XVM's infrastructure and architecture, including how the moving parts running on 7 different servers fit together. We'll also showcase a few aspects of Invirt that we think are particularly innovative. If you're interested in learning more about virtualization, helping us hack on Invirt/XVM (and we could always use more help), running your own install of Invirt, or just seeing a good case-study on building scalable systems, this should be a good talk for you.
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Statistics and the Non-Conflict between Bayesians and Frequentists
| Date: October 13, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Keith Winstein (keithw)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Notes: Statistics and the Non-Conflict between Bayesians and Frequentists (slides)
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| Abstract: I'll go over the building blocks of statistics and why you often hear about the conflict between "Bayesians" and "frequentists." Focusing on simple examples, I'll explain each camp and why I think they aren't really in disagreement. Hopefully we can get the audience shouting about this non-conflict. I'll also talk about some of my work on measuring the performance of confidence intervals and p-values, how you can make $800 million because of a lousy approximation, and "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False."
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| Bio: Keith Winstein '03 is an associate member of SIPB, on leave from his Ph.D. at MIT. He works as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal in Boston, covering science and medicine.
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Beyond Basic SQL
| Date: October 20, 2009, at 8:30 PM
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| Presenters: Matt DeBergalis (deberg)
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| Location: 4-231
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| Abstract: Many of us learned SQL in the context of hosted web applications, which often only make use of SQL's most basic capabilities. We'll start with a more mathematical framework for thinking about SQL queries. Then we'll leap into a survey of some of the more interesting capabilities of a modern SQL implementation, including advanced joins, constraints, rules and triggers, views, windowing functions, and performance considerations. I'll leave time for other topics of participants' choosing as well. The less SQL you know coming in, the less there is to unlearn.
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