The Jargon File

This file contains various utterances and tales from the oldest CS undergrad association on campus.

“Oh sh**, hoser”

A term exclaimed upon hosering something, whether it’s food, tech swag or any form of volunteary or involuntary handout.

Hoser (Excerpt from the CSUA Encyclopedia)

Hosers – those who hose. Typically, annoying computer users.

The origin of the word hosers is unknown, though many stories each claim to be the gospel. One says it comes from the movie Strange Brew. Another states it comes from hosier, which is a really old term meaning something about cutting other people’s ears off. A third story claims that it comes from old Crays being “hosed” when their coolant hoses were accidently removed.

Whatever the origin, hosers hose, and geeks battle against them.

Server of many names

Sometime in 2016/2017, sid.masih started work to get Nvidia to donate GPUs to the CSUA for use in a computing cluster for undergraduates. The deal for 8x Tesla P100 cards was finalized by summer of 2017, and jonathanjtan worked with Silicon Mechanics to spec and purchase the rest of the server on the CSUA’s behalf. After a long period of work, they arrived in late 2017. The original names for the server, smoothie and tesla, were taken, and during GM 3 in fall 2017, members were asked to propose names. rnithin proposed Maersk after the shipping company of the same name due to the fact that the computing server would run “containers”. An abuse of root staff privileges led to this being the official name for a few months until robertq suggested latte. After a month of running as latte during it’s development period, mark64 made a cron job to change the server’s name to a random word from /usr/share/dict/words every 3 hours, thereby avoiding anymore naming discussions.

Blockchain

In late 2017, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin experienced a meteoric rise from a few thousand dollars per bitcoin to well over 17000 dollars. This led to everyone and their mother investing in and writing about bitcoin and blockchain technology as a whole. Some really stupid ideas related to blockchain developed into startups during this time due to investor mania (as of summer 2018, this is still happening). This led blockchain to be viewed as a buzzword technology, and as a result, CSUA members began using the term as a joke. For example, if someone talked about creating a new web service, someone else would jokily suggest storing their data on the blockchain, or creating a new cryptocurrency to process transactions.

During GM3 in spring 2018, Mark Hill ran unopposed for Tech VP, and so ran on the platform of bringing more blockchain to the CSUA. Within hours of his election, CSUA-Cash was born. It is a git-based cryptocurrency, where people have a directory named after their username, and a file inside named cash. That file contains the amount of CSUA cash they own. To make payments, people can edit the balances of other members or ransack the pnunez account, then submit a pull request to the main repo. Since git is distributed, this currency is distributed. Since there are multiple repo admins, this repo is also decentralized. The currency has laughably bad security, but performs an automated Travis CI check to prevent currency inflation. Since it has a green build passed badge, it must be legit!

Slack

Sometime ago, by decree of the VP of Tech, the CSUA Slack was born. According to the creation date of #announcments, it’s been around since December 30, 2014, when alchu grabbed the name csua.slack.com.

The CSUA Slack is where most communication is done by the Politburo and officers. It is where a lot of internal announcements are made.

There is a feature that allows members to add custom emoji. This has spawned many emoji being developed for the CSUA Slack, including officer portraits and various memes.

Slack - #nsfwrandom

Created October 11 2016 and archived February 6 2017, #nsfwrandom was a quarantine for some objectionable content on the CSUA Slack.

League of Legends Club

Office Layout

NOT A DRINKING CLUB

Costco runs

No porn in the office

yui-md

Nick Weaver

Officer points

Artefacts

Computers

The CSUA has had a tradition of naming computers thematically, with the current generation VPs opting for a drink theme. Some of the machines have histories of their own.

Vokda: Won by a team represnting Cal at the NVIDIA Geforce Rivalries tournament against the school across the bay, circa November 2012. Photo. Vodka has written on her case that Bill Cao captained a team with Avi Patel, Ralph Arroyo, Daniel Koomarey, and Paul Levchenko.