Residence EXploration 2009
CORRECTION TO THIS ARTICLE: The Daily Confusion published in Friday's Tech gave an incorrect date for the housemasters' welcome brunch. The event occurs on Sunday, August 30 at 12:30 p.m., not Saturday, August 29.
Institute Planning Task Force Suggests Major Cuts, Changes
No more paper Add/Drop forms? Undergrads forced out of their dorms after three years? Online master’s degrees? GIRs taught during the summer? Shuttered Athena clusters?
After Discussions, EC Residents and Admins Resolve Security Gate Conflict
A new parking security gate is being built between East Campus and Building 66. The gate’s construction sparked controversy among East Campus residents, who feared that the new gate would infringe upon residents’ ability to drive up to the dorm.
Rivest, MD5’s Creator, RemovesEntry from NIST’s Hash Contest
A team lead by Professor Ronald L. Rivest declared this summer that their new cryptographic hashing algorithm, MD6, was not suitable for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) competition. Because of new performance requirements for the second round of the contest, the MD6 algorithm no longer met NIST’s requirements.
‘The Tech’ Checks Out 31337 Conferences:Blackhat, DEFCON Spice Up Las Vegas
Code breaking, party going, and general electronic mayhem. These phrases describe the seemingly one constant in the world of information security: the passing of the annual DEFCON and Black Hat hacker conferences. Both held the same week of July 29, 2009 in blazing hot Las Vegas, Nevada, these conferences are the life blood of the industry and hobbyist communities alike.
MIT Partners with Island Nation To Build New Technology School
In line with its mission to advance scientific knowledge “that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century,” MIT is working on a new international collaboration that will include aid in overseeing the opening of a new design-based university and an international design center which will both be located in Singapore.
After Summer Hiatus, Student Center Post Office To Reopen
The MIT Post Office, located in the basement of the Student Center, will reopen and resume regular hours on Monday, August 31 after being closed for six weeks.
About the cuts
MIT’s endowment has shrunk by about 20 percent in the past year, Vice Chancellor Steven R. Lerman ’72 told the Graduate Student Council on Wednesday night. When the endowment shrinks, MIT plans to cut its $1 billion General Institute Budget, spending which doesn’t come from research money.
Police Log
<i>The following incidents were reported to the Campus Police between July 14 and August 19. The dates below reflect the dates incidents occurred. This information is compiled from the Campus Police’s crime log. The report does not include alarms, general service calls, or incidents not reported to the dispatcher.</i>
Shorts (left)
Even though financial stocks have rallied nearly 70 percent since the end of March, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued another grim quarterly report Thursday on the health of the nation’s banks.
Shorts (right)
For more than a decade, Dennis Rivera was New York’s mightiest labor leader, running a union of 300,000 health care workers that often bent Albany to its will as it scared — and angered — governors, Democratic and Republican, with its hard-hitting ads.
O-Rain-tation
With the Obamas in Martha’s Vineyard and the passing of Senator Kennedy, there hasn’t been a shortage of national news coverage of Massachusetts this past week. Nonetheless, tropical storm Denny is jockeying for attention as it makes its way towards Boston. Although there’s significant uncertainty in the storm’s track (and hence how much rain will fall here on campus), there is confidence in the prediction of the storms intensity. Because of the surrounding dry air, the upper-level convergence, and a southern shift of the jet stream, Denny will likely not become a hurricane.
Welcome to Boston
Congratulations freshmen! You have now officially become the envy of soon-to-be graduates. Why? You have that one thing that everyone seems to be running out of: time. I’m sure you just had a whole summer full of advice on all the potential you are about to unleash, so I’ll spare you the platitudes. Instead, I wanted to share with you the story of an epidemic that inflicts the thousands of college students that descend upon the greater Boston area each fall. I call it “student-bubble-ism” (SBI).
The Twitter Generation
Our generation has never really lived without the internet. Online fads come and go (remember MySpace?), but in recent years the Internet has seen an explosion of dynamic services. In fact, there seems to be so many means of connecting to people virtually that it has become overwhelming. The other day, I wanted to send a blog post to a friend. Below the entry were a slew of colorful icons, each representing a different means of communication: Facebook. Tumblr. Gmail. Delicious (I will not even ask about this one). Digg. Twitter. Wait — Twitter?
Letters to the Editor
Jeffry Picower is emerging as the #2 man in the Madoff scandal. The suit filed by a Madoff trustee against Picower says the huge phony gains and huge fraudulent tax loss statements delivered to Picower at his request were nothing more than payoffs for “perpetuating the Ponzi scheme.” Picower ended up with more cash from Madoff Ponzi in his pocket than anyone (blackmail?): $5.1 billion cash, not phony paper gains, but cash. The roughly 1 percent of that $5.1 billion that MIT accepted from Picower for the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory is clearly tainted.
Color (or the Lack of It) at Comic-Con…And Beyond
If I had to sum up the idea behind the huge pop culture Comic-Con convention of this past July in one word, it would be “diversity.” At least, this was certainly the undoubtedly noble goal that the comics world and its followers, from fans to experts, claimed to embrace.
CD REVIEW Tweedy Settles Down
I can remember, sometime in early spring, reading a blogger’s hilarious indie bulletin: “In other news, Wilco continues to take over the world.” Back then, before Wilco’s latest self-titled effort had even leaked, I reflected on this statement as a clear indicator of the upcoming year. Frontman Jeff Tweedy and his band of inidie-alt-folkers-whatever-you-wanna-call-ems (oh, all the genre dodging Wilco goes through) now sit close to the top of the music world, garnering steady attention ever since the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot debacle that cemented their name as true artists.
CD REVIEW Synth-Heavy and Self-Aware
Do you remember the goodie bags you used to get as party favors after an extravagant birthday party? It was usually a grab bag of treats: an obligatory shiny toy along with jelly beans that everyone tried to throw away. <i>Hot Mess</i>, Cobra Starship’s newest album, is akin to those grab bags. While there are a couple of catchy tracks and a few really good songs, others run the risk of being repetitive, and the dance-punk-synthpop style wears one’s patience thin.
RESTAURANT REVIEW Boston’s Finest (and Most Affordable) Al Fresco
Boston has had more than its fair share of rainy days this summer, but during its few sunny days, I managed to explore some of the city’s best outdoor dining options. Whether you are looking for a full meal or just a light afternoon snack, you can be sure to find an outdoor restaurant in one of Boston’s many neighborhoods. Here are some of my top picks.
Ask SIPB
Welcome, especially to freshmen and new grad students! Ask SIPB is a column published semi-regularly by the Student Information Processing Board, the volunteer student group concerned with computing at MIT, to help students like you learn more about the computing resources MIT provides and how to make effective use of them. Look for more columns in the future, and feel free to stop by the SIPB office (W20-557) or e-mail <i>sipb@mit.edu</i> with questions about computing at MIT.
Squid vs. Whale
You did it! You graduated! And now this fall you are going to leave MIT and enter the world as a man. That’s right. Class of 2009, bitches. Think of all that lies ahead of you. A new apartment, rocking the lower middle class with your entry-level salary. On your own now, limitless possibilities, unbounded awesomeness. Moving to the big city, impressing the ladies with your status, you professional auteur. Isn’t this exciting?
