Slashdot Mirror
Introducing Slashdot's New Build Section
Along with the rest of the mix that makes this site work, Slashdot has nearly two decades now of spotting and showing off interesting projects, inventions, technologies, and hobbies. Some of them are strictly personal, some are frankly commercial, and some are the fruits of ambitious organizations (or tiny teams) motivated by curiosity and passion (or even politics, or just plain fun). As outlined earlier, we've been gathering a lot of these into our new Build section; read on to learn a bit more about what that includes. (And watch out later today for the first part of our conversation with technology-inspiring Rennaisance Man Tim O'Reilly, and later in the week for answers to the questions you asked Bunnie Huang.)
The Build section puts under one big virtual roof makerspace visits, interviews with technologists and innovators, and hands-on projects and inventions. Not everything you'll find in the Build section can be built with a soldering iron and some duct tape (worthy projects can come from a large company, a university or a DARPA competition just as well as from a personal workshop, and different resources mean different constraints and possibilities), but all of it should be inspirational: it's a big umbrella, and it can include projects that incorporate biotech, new materials, creative use of sensors, 3-D printing, hardware built to be hackable, cooking, robots, and re-purposing equipment that without a dose of practical creativity might be consigned to a junk-heap, but don't have to be.
Just like the rest of Slashdot, the Build section combines reader-suggested, editor-curated stories with original content, like video visits to the hackerspaces and makerspaces where some of these projects and technologies emerge, and interviews with some of the people behind the (happily booming) culture of invention. Most of the stories that appear in the Build section will also appear on the main section of the site, but reading the Build section itself means getting a concentrated dose of cool endeavors, as well as some section-exclusive posts. Expect the occasional small give-away, and most importantly send along your tips and suggestions for projects you'd like to see explored here.
What inspires you, inspires Slashdot.
Just like the rest of Slashdot, the Build section combines reader-suggested, editor-curated stories with original content, like video visits to the hackerspaces and makerspaces where some of these projects and technologies emerge, and interviews with some of the people behind the (happily booming) culture of invention. Most of the stories that appear in the Build section will also appear on the main section of the site, but reading the Build section itself means getting a concentrated dose of cool endeavors, as well as some section-exclusive posts. Expect the occasional small give-away, and most importantly send along your tips and suggestions for projects you'd like to see explored here.
What inspires you, inspires Slashdot.
Does this mean we can finally stop flooding the front page with 3D printing, new uses for the Raspberry Pi, and Bitcoin?
Well ... only about 1 percent of the site's lifespan so far, by back-of-envelope figures ;)
But you're right -- we've been playing with it a while. Nifty new graphic (if you see the beta version of it), too. More changes and section-specific stuff eventually, too, but it's much readier to explore, now that we've added in a lot of the older stories that make sense in this section.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It occurs to me that we on Slashdot are a knowledgeable crowd. I was thinking about how many person-hours we've spent on saying "fuck beta". In a small fraction of that time, maybe five minutes each, we could suggest some CSS tweaks that would freshen the look (what Dice marketing department wants) without getting in the way of functionality (what we oldtimers want).
Obviously Dice Marketing doesn't understand the /. market. We old timers are not impressed by spacious, trendy design, we are impressed by concise content.
Or maybe they're trying to run the old timers off so they can full tilt ruin /. and the remaining n00bs will think it's awesome.
They asked for suggestions. Suggestions were given. They were ignored.
Windowed metro apps are coming, this is widely regarded as MS admitting that no one wants to use full screen metro apps when they can use a traditional desktop gui.
God you're an idiot Timothy. I've watched your fucking drivel for years and you're by far the worst "editor" Slashdot has ever had.
So, how do you really feel?
I love how people rant about the mindless, idiotic comments on sites like YouTube, but then it's totally ok to attach someone personally here on Slashdot, because We're Tech Geeks. We're Better Than Everyone Else©®
If the majority of your marketshare says NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and you still go ahead, I doubt that they are interested in your silly CSS sugestions.
If they REALLY were interested in customer input, they would make it possible to upload your own CSS file and use that. That way people would not need to use Stylish and then either make something yourself or use comunity made looks for slashdot.
If it looks ugly, it is YOUR problem.
It should not be too hard to load your personal /. css file when you are logged in. In the end it is just another field in the database, just like your name. As long as it isn't an extra feature for paying customers, because that would mean they will make it ugly on purpose.
They could even load three css files.
1) The standard
2) The (optional) users css file
3) The ads css
That way the ads will still be visible for those who have no right to turn them off. (Yes, I know that that won't be 100% proof and people will still be able to turn them off if they realy want.)
You will be able to just increase the font or only change the background, turn everything in OMGPonies or do a complete re-layout of almost everything.
For a site like /. I think that would be a solution to a lot of moaning. Finaly a good technical solution to a mainly social problem.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I, for one, welcome our new Making overlords. Or at least, I think this is a useful addition, so that those of us who are interested in 3D printers and Arduino and Raspberry Pi can find the articles that interest us, and those of you who aren't interested can more easily avoid them. I swear I've never heard of a group of more change-averse readers.
SILENCE! I have spoken!
Thanks for the clarification Timothy. I appreciate your work at /. - warts and all!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
User-uploaded CSS would be interesting. I bet I could figure out a way to do the following in pure CSS. Right now it's a user.js file. // ==UserScript== // @name NoAPK // @namespace http://yoursite.com/ // @include * // @version 1 // ==/UserScript==
It sets display: none on any posts by APK so I don't have to scroll past his spam on my phone.
if(window.location.hostname.indexOf("slashdot.org") > -1)
{
var xpath = '//li[contains(concat(" ", normalize-space(@class), " "), " comment ") and contains(., "hosts file") and contains(., "apk") and string-length(.) > 10000]';
apkposts = document.evaluate(xpath, document, null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for ( var i=0 ; i apkposts.snapshotLength; i++ )
{
apkposts.snapshotItem(i).style.display = 'none';
}
}
A couple of days ago Soylent News implemented Unicode support. Considering the far greater resources that Dice have and how few Soylent needed to get it done, you would think real features like that would be coming thick and fast. Instead they wasted all the effort on a cosmetic make-over that most people seem to hate and which isn't even functionally as good as the classic site.
Unfortunately I think Slashdot's problems go far deeper than can be fixed with a bit of CSS.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's gotten a lot better... all in all, it is just a blockier version of what we've got now, which I like.
It is still missing a couple of killer features in the comments area, the big one being the one-line display of comments that are above 0 but not above 2. This little thing is really essential to follow the conversation while only reading the good stuff. As soon as beta has it, I'll move; as long as they don't, I won't.