Hello CSC members,
Welcome to a new school year! Here are a few of announcements for
September.
The Computer Science Club will be holding elections for Fall 2021
virtually. The president, vice-president, treasurer and assistant
vice-president (formerly secretary) will be elected and the sysadmin,
librarian and office manager will be appointed. If you'd like to run
for any of these positions, please email cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
Nominations will close on Tuesday, Sep 21 2021 at Midnight ET.
--------
DSC and CSC are bringing back Project Program for the Fall 2021 term and
we are looking for a team of reliable and knowledgeable mentors to help
create new and exciting projects!
Being a Project Program mentor is the perfect opportunity to develop
your leadership, enhance project management skills, and apply your
technical expertise to support students to give back to the Waterloo
community.
As a mentor, you’ll be tasked with helping teams of students create
roadmaps of their project, setting milestones, and making sure that
everyone stays on task. For more details about the role, you can find
all the information you need in the Mentor Role Description
(http://bit.ly/uwcsc-uwdsc-mentor-description).
If you’re interested, please sign up here:
https://forms.gle/61oPfNjDuxMJRj5a7! You won’t immediately be committing
to the role; we’ll have a secondary check-in to ensure that you’re
familiar with the responsibilities.
If you have any questions reach out to us at exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
--------
CSC is planning to host an alumni fireside chat! If you are an alumni of
the Math Faculty from the University of Waterloo, we are interested in
bringing you and your friends in front of undergraduate students to
speak and reminisce about your university experience! We are looking for
alumni who have graduated recently, graduated a while ago, and graduated
a very long time ago. As a part of this event, you will be able to catch
up with your former colleagues whilst providing guidance and direction
to current Computer Science and UWaterloo students. If this interests
you and your friends, please fill out the following signup form
(https://forms.gle/ii8vjLVxGS2Sxk5XA) or reply to this email! We can
help to reach out to your friends and bring you together for this event.
Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!
--
Neil Parikh
Treasurer, UWaterloo CSC
Hello CSC,
Due to the increasing security threats leveraging passwords, the University of
Waterloo has moved to require that all SSH Servers exposed to the public
Internet must enforce strong authentication by November 1st, 2021.
To comply with this requirement, we will be disabling password authentication
for SSH on all CSC general-use machines on October 15th, 2021. We
suggest that you add your SSH public key to your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
if you have not done so already.
We will still enable password authentication on the campus network. This
means that you may still login via SSH with your password if you are
physically on campus, are using a student CS machine as a jump host, or
are using the campus VPN. However, we still suggest setting up public key
auth anyways for non-campus access.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email the Systems
Committee at syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
--
Max Erenberg
Systems Administrator
Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo
Hello programs,
Here are a few announcements for July.
Join CSC for Alt-Tab, an event that consists of 10-15 minute talks by
students on some interesting topics in the field of tech! Some topics
that students have delivered talks on include virtual reality,
pathfinding, web development, and competitive programming. The event
will be hosted virtually at the end of July! Currently, we are looking
for speakers for the event who are passionate about tech and want to
gain some public-speaking experience. We would love to hear from
everyone!
Apply at https://bit.ly/csc-alt-tab-speaker-application ! Alternatively,
you can also email us at exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca with an outline of
your topic.
Application Deadline: Thursday, July 15th at 11:59pm ET.
------
CSC's next Afterhours is here! Afterhours is a series where we get the
opportunity to dive into uncomfortable topics and share our experiences,
as well as tips and tricks on how to overcome these problems.
It's unfortunately common to feel burnt out and exhausted, especially at
this point in the term. This Afterhours will be a discussion about
recognizing burnout, recovering from burnout, and preventing it from
occurring. Speakers will share their personal stories, and the
conversation will be open for all participants to discuss and share
their own experiences.
Event Date: Saturday July 17th, 8:00- 9:00pm ET via Zoom
Zoom Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83131978922?pwd=Tm1NLzgraGZ2U1VCQVpDSFZxbGpSdz09
------
There will be a planned power outage in MC Saturday, July 17 from 7:00
am to 9:00 pm. Most CSC services will be unavailable during this time.
CSC machines will be powered off one hour before the outage begins, at
6:00 am.
Please prepare for the outage by:
* Ensuring all running processes have their state saved (configuration,
data, etc.)
* Any important files are backed up off-site from the CSC
--
Neil Parikh
Treasurer, UWaterloo CSC
Hello all,
Hope you're all having a great summer so far. A few updates for the
month of June:
MathSoc has decided to waive club fees for the Spring 2021 term.
If you are a current CSC member who has already paid for Spring 2021
membership, your membership has been extended by one term.
If you are a current CSC member whose membership is expired for the
Spring 2021 term, you can email syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca to have your
membership renewed for the term at no cost.
-------
Spring 2021 elections have concluded. Here are your executives for the
term:
- President: Kallen Tu (k4tu)
- VP: Gordon Le (g2le)
- AVP: Ravindu Angammana (rbangamm)
- Treasurer: Neil Parikh (n3parikh)
- Sysadmin: Max Erenberg (merenber)
The unfilled positions this term are Office Manager, Librarian and
IMAPD.
-------
Become inspired in an upcoming talk by Titus Winters on June 10th from
7-8pm ET, who will share how good team culture can positively impact
code!
Titus Winters is a senior staff software engineer at Google, the chair
of the global subcommittee for the design of the C++ standard library, a
teacher and an author. Over the years, Titus has started several Google
projects that are believed to be in the top 10 largest refactorings in
human history. This unique scale and perspective has informed his
thinking on the care and feeding of software systems.
In this tech talk, Titus will discuss the roles of individual
contributors, team leads, and managers in fostering a good culture, and
show how this has a positive impact on project outcomes. Titus's talk
will hit many teamwork and leadership themes of the "Software
Engineering at Google" book, and the habits that have made his teams
successful.
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/97312996497?pwd=Vnl5ZXNFTEJHQkRqMndnR3N0VjlJZz09
Registration (optional):
http://bit.ly/csc-sesoc-google-tech-talk-signups
-------
We know a virtual Spring term is making meeting new friends even harder,
but we are happy to announce that our Speed-Friending event is back!
Come hop on a Zoom call with us to get a chance to connect with others
in our community.
Like last term's event, you will be able to meet others in groups of 3
or 4, with around 10 minutes to talk. An optional prompt will act as an
icebreaker, but feel free to discuss anything you want! Remember to
connect with the people in your groups if you'd like to stay in contact
afterwards!
Registration is optional; we'll just be sending you a reminder on the
day of, as well as a calendar invite.
Event Date: Tuesday, June 15th 2021, 8-9pm EST
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/94998577861?pwd=REFJK0FUZXUzWUdlQVRjQVo4WGtJZz09
Sign up at http://bit.ly/uwcsc-speed-friending-signups! Alternatively,
you can also email us at exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
--
Neil Parikh
Treasurer, UWaterloo CSC
Hello CSC,
Due to recent events involving the takeover of Freenode and the
departure of most of its staff, we have decided to migrate the #csc
channel on Freenode to libera.chat (https://libera.chat/).
We are currently using Matterbridge to bridge messages between the two
IRC networks, but this is only a temporary measure to ease the
transition. If you are in the #csc channel on Freenode, please migrate
to the #csc channel on libera.chat at your earliest convenience.
If you have any questions, please email syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
--
Max Erenberg
System Administrator
Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo
Hello all,
Welcome to the Spring term! Here are a few updates:
There will be a planned power outage in MC tomorrow (Saturday, May 15)
from 7:00 am to 11:00 am. Most CSC services will be unavailable during
this time. CSC machines will be powered off one hour before the outage
begins, at 6:00 am.
---------------
Mathsoc has currently not decided on whether club fees will be
collected
for the Spring 2021 term. If you are a current CSC member whose account
was active last term, you will retain access to CSC systems for all of
May. We will send another email once MathSoc has made a decision.
---------------
Due to the closure of campus this term, the Computer Science Club will
be holding elections for Spring 2021 virtually. The president,
vice-president, treasurer and assistant vice-president (formerly
secretary) will be elected and the sysadmin will be appointed. The
librarian and office manager will not be appointed, since the office
will be closed for the Spring term.
If you'd like to run for any of these positions, please email
cro(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. Nominations will close on Friday, May 21 2021
at Noon EDT.
---------------
Joining forces with Tech+, UW Data Science Club, and UW PM, we're
hosting live resume critiques!
The session will be held on Discord; you must sign up at
http://bit.ly/S21-resume-critique to gain access to the critiques.
Deadline to signup is Friday, May 14th at 11:59pm EDT.
---------------
Kick off your Spring term with CSC! Come join us on Discord
(https://discord.gg/pHfYBCg) on May 17th
at 8 PM to learn more about what we'll be up to this term and how you
can participate!
Afterwards, stick around for a relaxing and fun game night. See you
there!
--
Max Erenberg
System Administrator
Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo
Hello CSC,
Some time this week, we will be making changes to our SpamAssassin configs
to use a site-wide Bayesian learner instead of per-user. Given that the vast
majority of our spam is directed towards our mailing lists rather than
individual club members, I think this makes the most sense for us. We
will also be increasing the scores for the Bayes tests to keep spam out of
our inboxes more aggressively.
Unfortunately, this means that there will likely be some false
positives. I will try to adjust the Bayes test scores to keep this rate
low. Alternatively, you can set your own custom scores in
~/.spamassassin/user_prefs.
This means that all of the bayes* files in everyone's ~/.spamassassin
directories are now useless. If these files are taking up a lot of
space, it would probably be a good idea to delete them.
As a final reminder, SpamAssassin only adds headers to emails which it
flags as spam - it does not actually delete or move them. If you wish to
invoke some custom action on these flagged messages, you can use a
custom procmailrc file, as outlined in our wiki:
https://wiki.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/Mail#Spamfiltering
If you have any concerns or suggestions, please send a message to
syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca.
--
Max Erenberg
Systems Administrator | Computer Science Club
University of Waterloo
Hello CSC,
Computer Science Club systems and services will be unavailable on
Saturday, Mar. 20 due to a planned power outage in the Mathematics and Computer
Building (MC) from 7am to 5pm.
The CSC will begin shutting down machines at 6am in preparation of the outage.
This outage will impact:
- Web hosting (all personal and club websites)
- Email (@csclub.uwaterloo.ca email addresses)
- General-use machines
- The Lounge
- ZNC
- BigBlueButton
- Mattermost
We are hoping to keep mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca available for the
duration of the outage using a backup mirror.
Please prepare for the outage by:
- Ensuring all running processes have their state saved (configuration, data,
etc.)
- Any important files are backed up off-site from the CSC
If you have any questions/concerns, please email the Systems Committee at
syscom at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
--
Max Erenberg
Systems Administrator | Computer Science Club
University of Waterloo
Hi CSC,
We have two announcements to make in this email.
1. *Alt-Tab speaker applications now open*
Join Computer Science Club for Alt-Tab, a lightning tech talk series
presented by students. Alt-Tab consists of 10 to 15-minute talks about
anything related to tech.
We are currently looking for speakers! If you're passionate about a
technical topic and interested in public speaking, apply by filling
out this form: https://forms.gle/JpEsGTZK9WRbFUw46. Alternatively,
you can also email us at exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca to introduce yourself,
as well as an outline of your proposed 10-15 minute talk.
Applications are due on Friday, March 12th 11:59pm EST.
Hope to see you there!
2. *BigBlueButton now available*
CSC now hosts its own instance of BigBlueButton at
https://bbb.csclub.uwaterloo.ca, freely available for all members.
BigBlueButton is a free and open source video conferencing platform.
It runs directly in the browser, and includes many useful features
such as multi-user whiteboards, embedded videos, and interactive polls.
To get the most out of BBB, there are some tutorial videos you can watch
here: https://bigbluebutton.org/html5
Happy video calling!
--
Max Erenberg
Systems Committee | Computer Science Club
Hello CSC,
The Systems Committee (syscom) is currently recruiting new members for
W2021 and beyond.
What is syscom? Syscom is the committee responsible for the operation,
maintenance and upgraing of all CSC equipment. Here's a
non-exhaustive list of some of the services we provide:
* Web hosting
* Email hosting
* Git hosting
* Open source software mirroring
* CSC machine access
* Roundcube (web UI for email)
* The Lounge (web UI for IRC)
* ZNC (IRC bouncer)
* Mattermost
To join syscom, you should have at least some basic familiarity with the
command line and GNU/Linux. If you are interested in joining syscom,
please send an email to merenber(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca with the following
information:
* CSC username
* program and year of study
* any relevant experience you have with GNU/Linux
Please note that you are not making any commitment to the Systems
Committee by expressing your interest; you're under no obligation to
join in the future if you decide that it's not right for you.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Max Erenberg
CSC Systems Adminstrator