- csc-general - CSC Mailman

Upcoming Events
by Computer Science Club 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

Greetings Programs, With reading week just around the corner, there are some awesome upcoming events and things to be aware of! --- * Racket's Magical match, by Theo Belaire, Monday, 2nd of February, 2015. In MC 4063 at 6:00pm. Theo Belaire, a fourth-year CS student, will show you the basics of how this amazing function works, and help you get your feet wet with some code examples. He will also cover some more advanced use cases and a little bit about the performance of match. If you’re interested in knowing about the more powerful features of Racket, then this is the talk for you! The material covered is especially useful for students in CS 241 who are writing their compiler in Racket, or are just curious about what that might look like. * (Hosted by the SCS) Making Robots Behave, by Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Thursday, 5th of February, 2015. In DC1302, 3:30-4:30pm. The fields of AI and robotics have made great improvements in many individual subfields, including in motion planning, symbolic planning, probabilistic reasoning, perception, and learning. Our goal is to develop an integrated approach to solving very large problems that are hopelessly intractable to solve optimally. We make a number of approximations during planning, including serializing subtasks, factoring distributions, and determinizing stochastic dynamics, but regain robustness and effectiveness through a continuous state-estimation and replanning process. This approach is demonstrated in three robotic domains, each of which integrates perception, estimation, planning, and manipulation. --- Your chairbeing extraordinaire, Calum T. Dalek.

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BOT Announcements: Upcoming Events and Volunteering
by Computer Science Club 20 Jan '15

20 Jan '15

Greetings Programs, Welcome and welcome back, and happy new year! We have a bunch of exciting events planned for this term; here they are, so mark your calendar pages, and finish those assignments to make sure you can come out! ~Alex Tsay, "High Availibility Distributed File Systems": Wednesday, January 21, 18:00, MC 2017. The CAP Theorem outlined the fundamental limitations of a distributed system. When designing a distributed system, one has to constantly be aware of the trade-off between consistency and availability. Most distributed systems are designed with consistency in mind. However, AeroFS has decided to build a high-availability file system instead. In this tech talk, I'll be presenting an overview of AeroFS file system, advantages and challenges of a high-availability file system, and examine the inner workings of AeroFS's core syncing algorithm. ~(WiCS) Leigh Honeywell, "Trust Your Gut: Adventures in the Worst Parts of the Tech Industry": Friday, January 23, 17:30, DC1302. Leigh Honeywell is a Security Engineer at Heroku, a Salesforce.com company. Prior to Heroku, she worked at Microsoft, MessageLabs/Symantec, and Bell Canada. Last year was Leigh's tenth year working in tech. From startups to the biggest tech companies in the world, she will share with her lessons learned about careers, sexism, secure software development, management, burnout and ambition. ~Office Training, Wednesday, January 28, TBD in MC 3036/3037. If you're around the office often, or just want to get a little more involved, come out and do office staff training! It'll help us keep the office open as much as possible, and you get a say in the awesome music that we hear in the office. --- Other than events, there are other interesting things going on this term! If you're interested in helping out with the CSC's infrastructure, looking for some great war stories to impress your friends, or interested in dev-ops, then get in touch with exec@, or syscom@. We're looking for volunteers to help out with the care and maintenance of our infrastructure, whether you have no experience, or you run a server farm out of your garage. --- Happy coding, Gianni Gambetti President Computer Science Club

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Nominations Closed, Candidates Announced
by Computer Science Club 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

Nominations for elections are now closed! The candidates are: President --------- Luke Franceschini (l3france) Gianni Gambetti (glgambet) Ford Peprah (hkpeprah) Khashayar Pourdeilami (kpourdei) Vice-President -------------- Luke Franceschini (l3france) Gianni Gambetti (glgambet) Patrick Melanson (pj2melan) Ford Peprah (hkpeprah) Khashayar Pourdeilami (kpourdei) Treasurer --------- Weitian Ding (wt2ding) Aishwarya Gupta (a72gupta) Edward Lee (e45lee) Secretary --------- Ilia "itchy" Chtcherbakov (ischtche) Luke Franceschini (l3france) Patrick Melanson (pj2melan) Ford Peprah (hkpeprah) Khashayar Pourdeilami (kpourdei) Additionally, Sarah Harvey (sharvey) and Murphy Berzish (mtberzi) have indicated interest in the Systems Administrator position, but this is not an elected position. You can send your absentee votes to cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. Please note that voting is restricted to current club members who are Social Members of the Mathematics Society.[*] See you tomorrow at the election! (Comfy Lounge, after the Google talk at 7PM.) Cheers, -- Elana Hashman Chief Returning Officer Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca [*] http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/about/constitution#membership

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Upcoming Events: Google Talk! Elections!
by Computer Science Club 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

Hey everyone, Happy Monday, and welcome back to campus! We have two events for you this week: 1. *Google Tech Talk (Google Fiber Internet: The Messy Bits)* A Google software engineer from the Google Fiber team, Avery Pennarun, will be giving a tech talk on *THURSDAY* at *6:00pm* in *MC 2065*! Avery graduated from Waterloo in Computer Engineering, started some startups and some open-source projects, and now works at Google Fiber on a small team building super fast wifi routers, TV settop boxes, and the firmware that runs on them. For the talk's abstract, please see here <http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/events/MC_2065-2015-01-15-6:00_PM>. Be sure to *RSVP* <http://bit.ly/GoogleFiberTalk> and show up on time to make sure you get some food (and swag)! 2. *Winter 2015 Elections* The Computer Science Club is holding elections on *THURSDAY* at *7:00pm* in the *Comfy (MC 3001)*, right after the Google talk. The president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary will be elected, the sysadmin will be ratified, and the librarian and office manager will be appointed. If you'd like to run for any of these positions, or nominate someone, you can: - write your name on the board in the CSC office (MC 3036/3037), - send our CRO, Elana, an email at cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca, - deposit nominations in the CSC mailbox in MathSoc (MC 3038), - let Elana know in person. Nominations close this *Wednesday* at *6:00pm*. *tl;dr:* 1. *Google Tech Talk: THURSDAY, 6:00pm, MC 2065* (RSVP here: http://bit.ly/GoogleFiberTalk.) 2. *Elections: THURSDAY, 7:00pm, Comfy (MC 3001)* (Nominations close Wednesday at 6:00pm.) If you have any questions, feel free to email us <exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca>, or drop by our office. Cheers, Jinny Kim President, Computer Science Club <http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/> University of Waterloo <https://uwaterloo.ca/>

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Jan. 15: Elections Time Change and Google Tech Talk
by Computer Science Club 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Hello all! Sorry for the second email. Prior to the elections on Thu. Jan. 15, I would like to announce a Google Tech Talk in MC 2065 at 6PM. Talk title and abstract to soon follow. The elections will follow the talk at 7PM in the Comfy Lounge. There will be no corresponding change in the nomination period. You can continue to send me nominations via the office whiteboard, via email at cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca, by mail (box is in MathSoc), and in person. Cheers, -- Elana Hashman Chief Returning Officer Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca

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Winter 2015 Elections: Thu. Jan. 15, 18:00
by Computer Science Club 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

Greetings, programs! The Computer Science Club will be holding its termly elections[*] this upcoming Thursday, Jan. 15 at 6PM in the Comfy Lounge (MC 3001). During the election, the president, vice-president, treasurer and secretary will be elected, the sysadmin will be ratified, and the librarian and office manager will be appointed. If you'd like to run for any of these positions or nominate someone, you can write your name on the board in the CSC office (MC 3036/3037) or send me an email at cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. You may also, if you wish, deposit nominations in the CSC mailbox in MathSoc or present them to me in person. Nominations will close at 6PM on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Both veteran members and newbies are welcome to run! Voting will be heads-down, hands-up, restricted to MathSoc social members. Cheers, -- Elana Hashman Chief Returning Officer Computer Science Club University of Waterloo ehashman(a)uwaterloo.ca [*] Here are the relevant sections of the constitution, for your reference: """ The election of officers shall be accomplished by the following procedure: 1. Before the end of the prior term, the then-Executive shall choose a willing Chief Returning Officer, who is responsible for carrying out elections according to this procedure. 2. The CRO shall set the date and time of the election meeting, and set the nomination period. The nomination shall be at least one week long and shall end at least 24 hours before the start of the election meeting. 3. Announcements of the election and the nomination procedure must be distributed to all members by the members' mailing list, and should also be advertised by posters in the MC building. 4. During the nomination period, the Chief Returning Officer (CRO) shall be available to receive nominations for the posts of officers of the club, either in person, by email, by depositing nomination forms in the CSC's mailbox in the MathSoc office, or by writing the nomination in a place in the CSC office to be specified by the CRO. 5. A nomination shall consist of the nominee's userid, and post(s) nominated for. Nominees must be full members of the Computer Science Club. A member may decline a nomination at any point prior to the taking of the vote. 6. The election shall commence with the offering of memberships for sale. After a reasonable time, control of the meeting is given to the CRO who will preside over the election of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary, in that order. 7. Each election shall be carried out by secret vote, in a manner to be decided on by the CRO, with the approval of the members at the meeting. A simple heads-down-hands-up method is considered acceptable. 8. The CRO shall not vote except to break a tie. 9. The CRO may, if feasible, accept absentee ballots from full members. No absentee vote from a member shall be counted if the member is present at the time the vote is taken. The CRO shall make a best effort to ensure that absentee ballots are compatible with the method of voting chosen; if this is not possible (for instance, if the CRO is overruled by the membership), then the absentee votes shall not be counted. 10. Immediately after the vote is taken, the CRO will announce the results of the election and the winner will be removed from subsequent contests. If, due to lack of candidates (because there were no nominations, or candidates withdrew or were eliminated), there is no one elected to an office, then the members at the meeting will decide whether or not to hold extra elections in accordance with the procedure for vacancies. If they choose not to, this does not prevent the Executive or a group of members from calling extra elections later in the term in accordance with the usual vacancy provisions. """

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Three more events!
by Computer Science Club 20 Nov '14

20 Nov '14

Hello everyone! The exec has organized three events to wrap up the term: 1. *Code Party 1 / SE Hack Day #13* [Nov.21 (TOMORROW), 18:00, M3 1006] Why sleep when you could be hacking on $SIDE_PROJECT, or working on $THE_NEXT_BIG_THING with some cool people? Come when you want, hack on something cool, demo before you leave. If you don't have a project, don't worry - we have a list of ideas, and people will be looking for a helping hand on their projects. *NOTE*: Due to the high interest, dinner and snacks will only be served to those working on projects/demoing during the event. 2. *TALK: C++ ABI (Sean Hunt)* [Nov.25 (Tuesday), 17:30, MC 4041] Our own sysadmin, Sean Hunt, will be giving a talk on the C++ compiler ABI, and how all of the magic in C++ is implemented at the binary level. 3. *TALK: Heroic Android HTTP (Jesse Wilson)* [Nov.27 (Thursday), 18:00, MC 4020] The network is unreliable. 3G networking is slow. Using WiFi drains your battery. The NSA is spying on you. Different versions of HttpURLConnection have different bugs. Jesse Wilson, a software developer at Square, will be talking about OkHttp, a library that he maintains, and how to use it to make your app's networking work even when conditions aren't ideal. He will talk about how to configure caching to improve behavior and save resources, cryptography, and he will give advice on which libraries to use to make good networking easy. *NOTE*: You *must* RSVP via this website <https://www.ticketfi.com/event/77/heroic-android-http> if you are attending! We need to have an accurate count for food. :) That's all, folks! Thanks for coming out to our events, and hope to see you next term! Cheers, Jinny Kim President, Computer Science Club <http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/> University of Waterloo <https://uwaterloo.ca/>

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Fwd: Upcoming Events, Nov. 12, 17
by Computer Science Club 11 Nov '14

11 Nov '14

Greetings, programs, We have upcoming events! 1. Machine Learning at Bloomberg [Tomorrow, Wednesday Nov 12th, 5:30 PM, EIT 1015] The financial world reacts very quickly to news. We will illustrate some examples that demonstrate this phenomenon and the difficulties involved. We will also show some of the machine learning applications at Bloomberg that are useful in this environment. (Food from Subway) 2. Why Pattern Recognition is Hard, and Why Deep Neural Networks Help [Monday, Nov 17th, 6:00 PM, QNC 1502] In the last few years, there has been breakthrough progress in pattern recognition -- problems like computer vision and voice recognition. This sudden progress has come from a powerful class of models called deep neural networks. This talk will explore what it means to do pattern recognition, why it is a hard problem, and why deep neural networks are so effective. We will also look at exciting and strange recent results, such as state of the art object recognition in images, neural nets playing video games, neural nets proving theorems, and neural nets learning to run python programs! 3. Code Party 1 [Nov 21st, 5:30pm, M3 1006] Come out, code, learn, mentor. We're partnering with SE Hackday to make this the best event we can.

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UW firewall may affect CSC servers
by Computer Science Club 10 Nov '14

10 Nov '14

Greetings programs, The University of Waterloo is currently in the process of putting a perimeter firewall in place around the campus, which will block incoming traffic on all but selectively-enabled ports. It will be enabled for the MC, including all CSC machines, sometime this week. We will be working with UW IST to ensure that exceptions are added to the firewall for the services normally operated by the CSC; however, if you run a server on a different port, or otherwise depend on incoming connections, this will no longer work. Connections from inside UW will continue to work normally. If you have a specific service for which you would like CSC systems committee to consider an exception to the firewall, please contact syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca and explain: - Which server(s) your service needs to be given exceptions on - Which port(s) you need opened - The purpose of the service Syscom will take each request under consideration, but please be aware that since we have not yet decided on a policy for exceptions, we cannot offer any guarantees that your request will be granted. Thanks for your patience, Sean Hunt CSC Sysadmin

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UW firewall may affect CSC servers
by Computer Science Club 10 Nov '14

10 Nov '14

Greetings programs, The University of Waterloo is currently in the process of putting a perimeter firewall in place around the campus, which will block incoming traffic on all but selectively-enabled ports. We will be working with UW IST to ensure that exceptions are added to the firewall for the services normally operated by the CSC, however, if you run a server on a different port or otherwise depend on incoming connections, this will no longer work. Connections from inside UW will continue to work normally. If you have a specific service that you would like CSC Syscom to consider for an exception to the firewall, please contact syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca and explain: - Which server(s) your service needs to be given exceptions on - Which port(s) you need opened - The purpose of the service Syscom will consider all requests but as we have not yet decided on a policy for exceptions, I cannot offer any guarantees that syscom will make a decision one way or another. Thanks for your patience, Sean Hunt CSC Sysadmin

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