------------------------------- Wed Jun 18 06:29:05 PM EDT 2025 ------------------------------- Transcript of Chat box from BLU meeting, Wed, Jun 18, 2025 Meeting held online via Jitsi Meet Speaker(s): * Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) BLU officers: * John Abreau * Jerry Feldman * Bill Ricker Attendees (named): * Brandon Vogel * Brendan Kidwell (NYC) * Kurt Keville Attendees (anonymous): * Chuba * Raven/Redpanda/She/They -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:FYI the link on the BLU page to Violet's MIT bio page is incorrect. It reads: https://www.haystack.mit.edu/researcher/violet-pfeifferViolet It should be: https://www.haystack.mit.edu/researcher/violet-pfeiffer 18:35 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:I'm new to this group, been following it on the website and meet up for the better part of a year. Trying to figure out how to meet up with y'all. Just found the Jitsi link tonight. 👍 18:37 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) says:👋 18:38 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:I'm running a linux system that I had a BF install for me a few years back. Didn't count on his inability to teach me how to use it! 😂 18:39 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:PopOS! Ubuntu-deritive, right? 👍 18:44 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:A couple Thinkpads now come with Linux - it's rare but they do it for some models. 18:44 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) says: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/ 18:45 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:Framework is all the rage these days too - great Linux laptops. 18:48 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerry Feldman says:I have a Frameworks 18:48 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:Jerry, thanks that will be useful. 18:49 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) says: https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/ 18:51 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) says: https://pine64.com/product-category/pinebook-pro/ 18:51 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brendan Kidwell (NYC) says:Astounding - all PDFs maybe https://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/AST.htm Analog https://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/AN.htm 19:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:My dad used to brag about knowing seven different computer languages: DOS, Cobol, etc. 🔥 19:08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:MIT's 'Rust getting started' - a bit old (or rusty...) but still relevant: https://web.mit.edu/rust-lang_v1.25/arch/amd64_ubuntu1404/share/doc/rust/html/book/first-edition/getting-started.html 19:09 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:Event Horizon Telescope info: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/ 19:12 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:That's incredibly cool. 19:18 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:I think we have all made that exact same comment in our code at one point. 19:24 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerry Feldman says:My first major project was a COBOL banking software converted from IBM 360 assembler. All sorts of comments. Or the classical Unix one: "You are not expected to understand this" 19:27 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:The 'hardware is performing many years later' issue is a huge issue with Chandra and they have come up with many novel tools to measure that performance, which allowed for good compensation tools. 19:31 -------------------------------------------------------------------- John Abreau says:America is becoming a Banana Republic-an... 19:34 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:Is there a link to the slide deck somewhere? 19:34 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerry Feldman says:WRT: NULL terminated strings. Languages like Fortran and COBOL generally have different ways to represent strings. Fortran sometimes added a string length.. 19:38 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuba says:What methods do you employ to avoid moving data between servers and process data in a more distributed manner? Do you use anything like MapReduce? 19:41 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Biil R (desk) says:My tablet is slowly crashing ... 19:53 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuba says:You might to check out icdiff https://www.jefftk.com/icdiff 19:53 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Biil R (desk) says:all this talk of legacy data, diff to output of legacy edition is all very familiar 19:54 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Biil R (desk) says:Haystack Obs is fascinating. I came out for the open house several years ago. 19:56 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:Open House Events: https://www.haystack.mit.edu/about/open-house-events/#:~:text=MIT%20Haystack%20Observatory%20holds%20public,Thursday%20in%20May%20and%20October 19:57 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Violet Pfeiffer (MIT Haystack) says: https://www.haystack.mit.edu/ 19:57 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:What was the movie?! 20:03 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuba says:Sorry if I missed you saying this earlier, but what programming languages do you find yourself working on more frequently when you're not working on FORTRAN and Super Mongo? 20:04 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurt K says: https://mitcornellfaceoff.wordpress.com/ 20:05 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurt K says: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/mits-mysterious-observatory-rediscovered 20:07 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Biil R (desk) says:i hate that title for the article, it was never lost and wasn't mysterious ! 20:08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurt K says:LOL 20:08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Biil R (desk) says:(digging up the original sources of the frayed information board journal articles was the real research) 20:09 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurt K says:Debian and variants for me (heavy in Ubuntu). Looking at RevyOS right now because of RISC-V support 20:10 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:I'm on Mint, I'll need to upgrade soon. 20:10 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jerry Feldman says:Mint is a pretty decent distro 20:11 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:Thanks for a great talk! 20:12 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Kurt K says:this was awesome. Thanks. 20:13 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Brandon Vogel says:abreauj@gmail.com 20:20 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Raven/Redpanda/She/They says:Good night folks. I'll check out that Natick group. 20:20 -------------------------------------------------------------------- meeting ended at 8:23 pm