NEWS

Welcome, New Members!

We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of the Social Science Computing Cooperative (SSCC). Whether you're an undergraduate that's a member for the duration of a course you're taking that depends on SSCC resources, a graduate student who will be a member as long as you're at UW-Madison, or new faculty or staff who may be a member for life, we're glad to have you.

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 stop by our help desk in 4226 Sewell Social Sciences Building and find out 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 take care of closing it for you!

SSCC Training

SSCC's training is well underway, but if you hurry it's not too late to sign up for Introduction to Stata and Data Wrangling in Stata. After that, we have introductions to SAS and RStudio, and a Stata Workshop on Loops and Macros.

Stata Workshop: First Steps With Your Data is an extract from the new Data Wrangling in Stata class, designed for people who recently took Stata for Researchers. It contains many of the data science concepts and tools that will help you better understand and work with your data set. (Do not register for it if you have taken or will take Data Wrangling in Stata, as you'll have already seen all the material it covers.)

Supercomputing Conference Looking for Participants

UW-Madison will have a booth at the upcoming Supercomputing Conference, and they'd love to highlight research beyond the hard sciences. If large-scale computing plays a major role in your research and you'd like to participate, contact Dana Freiburger.

Reminder: End of Support for Windows 7

A reminder that Microsoft will end its support for Windows 7 in January 2020, and we expect hackers will then unleash a barrage of exploits they've been saving until Microsoft won't fix them. We plan to ban all Windows 7 machines from the SSCC network at that point, including home machines connecting via VPN. (We anticipate banning Mac OS 10.12 later this fall for similar reasons.)

All of our member agencies have plans underway to upgrade or replace their Windows 7 machines. If you have a University-owned Windows 7 machine and don't know the plan for it, get in touch with your department or the Help Desk.

Tip: Leave Your SSCC-Managed Computer On

SSCC's PC Support group has automated many of the tasks needed to keep your PC secure and running well, like updating Windows and other software or scanning for malware. Ideally those tasks will run at night or on weekends when you're not using your computer. But if your computer is off those tasks will run as soon as you turn it on, and you'll probably notice the performance hit.

When you're done using your computer for the day, sign out (or reboot) and then leave your computer running. It will quickly go into sleep mode and use minimal electricity, but allow our tools to run those necessary maintenance tasks while you're away.