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Summer and Early Fall Training The SSCC’s summer training is well underway, but we still have upcoming classes in Python, web scraping, regression and regression diagnostics taught in both Stata and R, and running big research computing jobs. Visit the training page for details and to register. Then in late August, just before the fall semester begins, we will teach another round of Stata, R, and Python classes. All are welcome, but these are especially valuable to new graduate students. If you are in touch with incoming graduate students, please make sure they know about these classes before it’s too late for them to arrange their schedules so that they can attend! Account Renewal Deadline Accounts that were not renewed during the renewal period will be disabled shortly. However, if you’re still at UW-Madison it is not too late to renew your account. SSCC Members should fill out the account renewal form. Drop-in users should email the Help Desk. You’ll know you need to renew your account if you suddenly can’t log in.  New Data Storage Hardware The SSCC recently purchased new data storage hardware, as our old storage was both out of space and reaching the end of its expected life. …

Introducing Slurm We are very excited to announce the launch of a pilot Slurm cluster at the SSCC. Slurm (Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management) is a powerful system for managing and scheduling computing jobs that is very popular at large-scale research computing centers. The SSCC is currently running a pilot with a small Slurm cluster as we all learn more about it, but we anticipate that it will become the main way SSCC researchers run large research computing jobs. The easy way to submit a job to Slurm is to log into Linstat and use the ssubmit command. For example: ssubmit –cores=32 –mem=20g “stata -b do my_do_file” Slurm will then find a server in the Slurm cluster that has 32 cores and 20GB of memory available, and run your Stata do file there. It’s possible your job might have to wait until those resources are free, but once it starts it is guaranteed exclusive use of them—no more having your job slow down or run out of memory because the server is busy. If you’re not sure how many cores and how much memory your job uses, Identifying the Computing Resources Used by a Linux Job will show you …

Winter Tech Update The SSCC implemented our Winter Tech update on 1/8/2022.  Alongside the usual updates for all of our servers and software, we are excited to announce that the web version of Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is now available on Winstat.  VSCode is a very popular editor for writing source code in many languages. SSCC VPN to Require Duo Authentication Starting this February, the SSCC will require the use of multifactor authentication (MFA) via Duo to access the SSCC network via VPN. Duo is the same MFA system you use for your NetID. Computers on VPN have direct access to SSCC resources, bypassing some security measures, so it’s important only authorized users be able to use it. We encourage you to set up your SSCC account in Duo now, so you’ll be ready to go when it becomes a requirement in February. You can do so at the SSCC’s Duo MFA portal. If you use Silo, you have already set up Duo and do not have to do so for VPN. More details will be announced before the change is implemented. Export Data from Silo Using Globus As of Wednesday, January 19th, Globus users will be able to export data …

Paul Boyer Leaving the SSCC We’re sad to announce that Paul Boyer, who has served the SSCC as one of our PC Support staff, is leaving at the end of November. Paul is taking the next step in his career by joining his alma mater, the Wisconsin School of Business, as a Windows System Administrator. Paul will be sorely missed, but we are thrilled for him to continue his career path to new horizons. With Paul’s departure, Cody Gerhartz will certainly be busy, but we are looking to hire a replacement for Paul as quickly as possible.  While we do our best to provide excellent service to our members, members may encounter some delays in response times. Need to Learn Statistical Software? Being able to manage and analyze data is essential for a quantitative social science researcher, but necessary statistical software and data wrangling skills are rarely taught in official classes. SSCC’s statistical consultants went through the pain of figuring all that out on our own and we don’t think you should have to. If you need to learn Stata, R, or Python, you can start today by working through our online training. We’ll also be teaching all three the …

Welcome, New Members! We want to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of the Social Science Computing Cooperative, whether you’re a new faculty member, staff member, or graduate student who will use our resources for research, or an undergraduate taking a class that uses SSCC resources. What is the SSCC? The SSCC provides servers, software, training, and consulting to support researchers (and future researchers) who do statistical analysis. If you didn’t attend an orientation session, feel free to email the SSCC Help Desk, tell us about yourself, and ask what we can do for you. What is SSCC News? SSCC News is one of our main ways of getting information to our members. It comes out about once every two months. Please look over the email when you get it and then read the articles that will affect you. If you’d rather not receive SSCC News, email helpdesk@ssc.wisc.edu and they can take care of that for you. If you’re no longer interested in SSCC News because you no longer use your SSCC account, they can close it for you. SSCC Fall Training SSCC’s fall training is underway, but it’s not too late to learn Stata or R, …