Events Archive: Fall 2013

Disk Encryption

| 5:00 PM EST | MC 2038

The last lecture of our security and privacy series. By MMath alumnus Zak Blacher.

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In Zak's talk, "Disk Encryption: Digital Forensic Analysis & Full Volume Encryption", he aims to cover filesystem forensic analysis and counter forensics by addressing the entire design stack; starting with filesystem construction, design, and theory, and drilling down to the inner workings of hard drives (modern platter hdds, as well as mlc-ssds). This talk leads in to a discussion on full volume encryption, and how this helps to protect one's data.

The sixth and final lecture of our security and privacy series.

CSC Goes to Toronto Erlang Factory Lite 2013

| 12:00 AM EST | Toronto, ON

The CSC has been invited to attend this Erlang conference in Toronto. If you are interested in attending, please sign up on our [web form](<http://goo.gl/8XOELB>). We have submitted a MEF proposal to cover the transportation fees of up to 25 math undergraduates.

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The CSC has been invited to attend this Erlang conference in Toronto. If you are interested in attending, please sign up on our web form, so we can coordinate the group. We have submitted a MEF proposal to cover the transportation fees of up to 25 math undergraduates to attend. You will be responsible for your conference fee and transportation, and if the MEF proposal is granted, you can submit your bus tickets/mileage record and conference badge to MEF for a reimbursement. From the conference website:

"Our first ever Toronto Erlang Factory Lite has been confirmed. Join us on 23 November for a full day debate on Erlang as a powerful tool for building innovative, scalable and fault tolerant applications. Our speakers will showcase examples from their work experience and their personal success stories, thus presenting how Erlang solves the problems related to scalability and performance. At this event we will focus on what Erlang brings to the table in the multicore era."

Hackathon-Code Party!!

| 6:30 PM EST | MC 3001 (Comfy)

Join us for a night of code, food, and caffeine! There will be plenty of edibles and hacking for your enjoyment. If you are interested in getting involved in Open Source, there will be mentors on hand to get you started. Hope to see you there—bring your friends!

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Join us for a night of code, food, and caffeine! There will be plenty of edibles and hacking for your enjoyment, including a full catered dinner courtesy of the Mathematics Society.

There will be two Open Source projects featured at tonight's code party, with mentors on hand for each. Here is a quick summary of each of the projects available:

OpenHatch: Not sure where to start? Not to fear! OpenHatch is a project that seeks to introduce people to Open Source for the first time and help you get involved. There will be a presentation with an introduction to the tools and information you will need, and mentors present to help you get set up to fix your first bug.

Social Innovation Simulation Design Jam: The UWaterloo Games Institute and SiG@Waterloo will be partnering with us tonight to kick off their weekend hackathon Design Jam. They seek coders, artists, writers, database and graphics people to help them out with their project.

C++ Night 0x05 - C++ Seasoning

| 6:30 PM EST | PHY 150

The fifth in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Sean Parent.

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The fifth in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Sean Parent.

A look at many of the new features in C++ and a couple of old features you may not have known about. With the goal of correctness in mind, we’ll see how to utilize these features to create simple, clear, and beautiful code. Just a little pinch can really spice things up.

Trust in ISPs

| 5:00 PM EST | MC 4060

This is the fifth lecture of six in the Security and Privacy Lecture Series. By founding member of the Canadian Cybersecurity Institute and employee of local ISP Sentex Sean Howard.

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Bell's recent announcement of their use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) brings to light a long-standing issue: your internet service provider (ISP) pwns you. They control your IP allocation, your DNS, your ARP, the AS paths. The question has never been about ability—it's about trust. Whether Rogers, AT&T, Virgin, Telus, Vodafone or Wind, your onramp to the internet is your first and most potent point of security failure.

Founding member of the Canadian Cybersecurity Institute and employee of local ISP Sentex Sean Howard will vividly demo the reasons you need to be ble to trust your internet provider. Come for the talk, stay for the pizza!

This is the fifth lecture of six in the Security and Privacy Lecture Series.

C++ Night 0x04 - Writing Quick Code in C++, Quickly

| 6:30 PM EST | PHY 150

The fourth in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Andrei Alexandrescu.

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The fourth in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Andrei Alexandrescu.

Contemporary computer architectures make it possible for slow code to work reasonably well. They also make it difficult to write really fast code that exploits the CPU amenities to their fullest. And the smart money is on fast code—we’re running out of cool things to do with slow code, and the battle will be on doing really interesting and challenging things at the envelope of what the computing fabric endures.

So how to write quick code, quickly? Turns out it’s quite difficult because today’s complex architectures defy simple rules to be applied everywhere. It is not uncommon that innocuous high-level artifacts have a surprisingly high impact on the bottom line of an application’s run time (and power consumed).

This talk is an attempt to set forth a few pieces of tactical advice for writing quick code in C++. Applying these is not guaranteed to produce optimal code, but is likely to put it reasonably within the ballpark.

These tips are based on practical experience but also motivated by the inner workings of modern CPUs.

Hands On Seminar on Public Key Cryptography

| 6:00 PM EST | MC 3001 (Comfy)

The fourth event in our security and privacy series. By undergraduate students Murphy Berzish and Nick Guenther.

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Nick Guenther and Murphy Berzish will be holding a hands-on seminar in the Comfy to introduce you to public-private key crypto and how you can practically use it, so bring your laptops! You will learn about PGP, an encryption protocol that provides confidentiality and authenticity. At the seminar, you will learn how to use PGP to send encrypted email and files, provably identify yourself to others, and verify data. Bring a laptop so we can help help you generate your first keypair and give you the chance to form a Web of Trust with your peers.

A GSIntroducer from www.GSWoT.org will be on hand. If you are interested in obtaining an elevated level of trust, bring government-issued photo-ID.

There will also be balloons and cake.

C++ Night 0x03 - An Effective C++11/14 Sampler

| 6:30 PM EDT | PHY 150

The third in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Scott Meyers.

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The third in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Scott Meyers.

After years of intensive study (first of C++0x, then of C++11, and most recently of C++14), Scott thinks he finally has a clue. About the effective use of C++11, that is (including C++14 revisions). At last year’s Going Native, Herb Sutter predicted that Scott would produce a new version of Effective C++ in the 2013-14 time frame, and Scott’s working on proving him almost right. Rather than revise Effective C++, Scott decided to write a new book that focuses exclusively on C++11/14: on the things the experts almost always do (or almost always avoid doing) to produce clear, efficient, effective code. In this presentation, Scott will present a taste of the Items he expects to include in Effective C++11/14.

CSC Goes Bowling

| 6:00 PM EDT | Bingemans

All CSC members and their guests are invited for a night of free bowling at Bingemans! Transportation will be provided. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP using the online form by Oct. 18. You can find it by viewing this event in detail.

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We are pleased to kick off the term with free bowling for all interested members at Bingemans! Transportation will be provided. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP using this online form by Oct. 18.

Please note the event date change (Oct. 23 to Oct. 30). The bus will be leaving from the Davis Center at 6:00PM sharp on the 30th.

Practical Tor Usage

| 6:30 PM EDT | DC 1302

The third lecture of our security and privacy series. By undergraduate student Simon Gladstone.

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An introduction to and overview of how to use the Tor Browser Bundle to browse the "Deep Web" and increase security while browsing the Internet. Tor is not the be all end all of Internet security, but it is definitely a step up from using the more popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

The third lecture of our security and privacy series. By undergraduate student Simon Gladstone.

C++ Night 0x02 - Don't Help The Compiler

| 6:30 PM EDT | PHY 150

The second in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Stephan T. Lavavej.

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The second in a series of recorded talks from GoingNative 2013. Featuring Stephan T. Lavavej.

C++ has powerful rules for dealing with low-level program structure. Before a program is ever executed, the compiler determines valuable information about every expression in the source code. The compiler understands exactly how long each object's resources will be needed (lifetime), whether each expression refers to an object that the program has no other way of accessing (rvalueness), and what operations can be performed on each object (type). Using examples from C++98 through C++14, this presentation will demonstrate how to write code that works with the compiler's knowledge to increase robustness, efficiency, and clarity. This presentation will also demonstrate the horrible things that happen when programmers think they can do tasks that are better left to compilers.

Tunnels and Censorship

| 5:00 PM EDT | MC 4060

The second lecture of our security and privacy series. By undergraduate student Eric Dong.

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In this talk, I will discuss censorship firewalls used in countries such as China and Iran, and how to counteract them. The focus is on advanced application-layer and Deep Packet Inspection firewalls, and unexpected hurdles in overcoming censorship by these firewalls due to the need for very unconventional adversary models. Approaches of the privacy tool Tor, popular proprietary freeware Ultrasurf and Freegate, payware VPNs, and my own experimental Kirisurf project are examined, where strengths and difficulties with each system are noted.

The second lecture of our security and privacy series. By undergraduate student Eric Dong.

Why Should You Care About Security and Privacy

| 5:00 PM EDT | MC 4041

The first lecture of our security and privacy series. By PhD student Sarah Harvey.

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Recent media coverage has brought to light the presence of various government agencies' surveillance programs, along with the possible interference of governments in the establishment and development of standards and software. This brings to question of just how much we need to be concerned about the security and privacy of our information.

In this talk we will discuss what all this means in technological and social contexts, examine the status quo, and consider the long-standing implications. This talk assumes no background knowledge of security or privacy, nor any specific technical background. All students are welcome and encouraged to attend.

The first lecture of our security and privacy series. By PhD student Sarah Harvey.

C++ GoingNative Lectures

| 6:30 PM EDT | PHY 150

We will be showing GoingNative lectures from some of the top individuals working on C++ approximately biweekly on Thursdays at 6:30PM in the PHY 150 theatre. Every lecture will be accompanied with free pizza and drinks! Dates are Oct. 3, 17, 31 and Nov. 7 and 21. Please view this event in detail for more information.

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If you're not familiar with the C++ GoingNative series, you can check them out on the GoingNative website.

We will be showing lectures from some of the top individuals working on C++ approximately biweekly on Thursdays in the PHY 150 theatre. Every lecture will be accompanied with free pizza and drinks! Here is our schedule and the planned showings:

  • Thu. Oct. 3, 6:30PM: Stroustrup - The Essence of C++
  • Thu. Oct. 17, 6:30PM: Lavavej - Don't Help The Compiler
  • Thu. Oct. 31, 6:30PM: Meyers - An Effective C++ Sampler
  • Thu. Nov. 7, 6:30PM: Alexandrescu - Writing Quick C++ Code, Quickly
  • Thu. Nov. 21, 6:30PM: Parent - C++ Seasoning

Fall 2013 Elections

| 4:30 PM EDT | Comfy Lounge

Elections for Fall 2013 are being held! The Executive will be elected, and the Office Manager and Librarian will be appointed by the new executive.

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It's elections time again! On Tuesday, Sept 17 at 4:30PM, come to the Comfy Lounge on the 3rd floor of the MC to vote in this term's President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary. The Sysadmin, Librarian, and Office Manager will also be chosen at this time.

Nominations are open until 4:30PM on Monday, Sept 16, and can be written on the CSC office whiteboard (yes, you can nominate yourself). Full CSC members can vote and are invited to drop by. You may also send nominations to the Chief Returning Officer. A full list of candidates will be posted when nominations close.

Nominations are now closed. The candidates are:

  • President:- Dominik Chłobowski (dchlobow

    )

    • Elana Hashman (ehashman

      )

    • Sean Hunt (scshunt

      )

    • Marc Burns (m4burns

      )

    • Matt Thiffault (mthiffau

      )

  • Vice-President:- Dmitri Tkatch (dtkatch

    )

    • Marc Burns (m4burns

      )

    • Sean Hunt (scshunt

      )

    • Visha Vijayanand (vvijayan

      )

  • Treasurer:- Bernice Herghiligiu (baherghi

    )

    • Dominik Chłobowski (dchlobow

      )

    • Jonathan Bailey (jj2baile

      )

    • Marc Burns (m4burns

      )

  • Secretary:- Dominik Chłobowski (dchlobow

    )

    • Edward Lee (e45lee

      )

    • Marc Burns (m4burns

      )