Slashdot Mirror
The State of Slashdot: Https, Poll Changes, Auto-Refresh, Videos, and More
As of yesterday, Slashdot now serves over https. In addition, the polls have been moved exclusively to the right rail, and will not show up with the other stories any longer. We've also disabled auto-refresh, and fixed various issues with search and other features. In the last few weeks, we've also discontinued videos, and removed the "Jobs" section of the site. You can follow all of the changes on the Slashdot blog.
Just kidding, I'm sure fixing slashcode for that is going to be a nightmare.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
All moves in the right direction. To ensure lights are staying on, how can I give you money?
and removed the "Jobs" section of the site
You're going to pay dearly for you lack of faith when HE returns to Earth save *pple yet again.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Meet the new boss: so much better than the old boss. -- The Who
Good, good, good, good, good... Wait, what is this? Positive changes, nothing to complain about?
I don't even know what to do.
Good job Slashdot, keep it up.
There might be some hiccups like this. Email feedback@slashdot.org if you find any. We will investigate this mobile posting ASAP.
Yes there are some issues here we will address soon
Congratulations to the new team, thats a big step towards keeping their loyal audience regaining goodwill among the tech crowd.
The quality of the improvements and the effort of the new team is visible, it even gets an A on ssl quality test.
Good job and don't rest on the laurels, get working on the Unicode support because that's one of the missing features.
...oh wait, nothing to complain about...well just make sure you don't step on my lawn then..move along
Thanks for getting rid of auto-refresh. It sucked to have the page refresh while typing or scrolling.
Be careful when you do unicode. I know that's often requested, so it'll probably be done, but be aware it makes protection from injection attacks (including sql & script) much trickier. You probably want do do encoding on output and bound parameters on input, rather than trying to filter input.
The last day or two I had error saying I was posting from an open proxy, on multiple devices and networks. It seems something went wrong with that detection- possibly detecting your own load balancer.
It's amazing what applying some focus can do in a short period of time.
Kudos.
Just had jump on and thank you guys for what you've done with the place so far. Much appreciated.
When connecting to Slashdot, I'm now cryptographically guaranteed to be talking to (drumroll please) Dice Holdings, Inc!
So... are we being MitM'd by Dice, trying to get their old property back?
No, not the facebook one!
All these changes were exactly what bugged me for the past little while here on /. , and I've been here for a while. Kudos!
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
just saying thanx
Absolutely not. AC is integral part of /.
Please restore the redundant "comments" link at the bottom of the summary. If I decide after reading the summary that it's worth reading the comments, it's annoying to have to scroll back if the top link has already scrolled past.
I hope you will. Sorry for getting irritated...
What's the verdict?
When I connect to wifi hotspots in things like Coffee shops, they intercept the web access and route the connection to their "accept our stupid legal thing you didn't read".
If I connect to a https web site, this doesn't work, because the redirected endpoint doesn't present the correct cert.
So I always start by connecting to Slashdot, because it's not https. Now I'm going to have to find a different non-https web site.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Now I can finally remove the [FUCK BETA] tag from my sig. Took only two years, but better late than never! :)
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
At one point in the last couple of years, I was on the verge of bringing up the change password dialog, typing a bunch of random characters, NOT recording it and logging out. So I would not be able to log in again even if tempted.
After some consideration, rather than just give up on the site, I moved /. to the bottom of my daily links list and started focusing my time and attention elsewhere, while checking back only occasionally.
I'm beginning to be glad I didn't. Thanks for the positive changes.
The real challenge will be to get those who did give up to return and give /. another try (and then stick around).
What's that strange feeling? Why, I believe it's hope. How unusual.
Whiplash,
When the company you work for took over SlashdotMedia and therefore Slashdot, I kinda flipped out and talked a whole lot of doom and gloom bullshit. No less, I was downright mean about it. In fact, I was mean and rude to you directly. As someone who has been here since day one, I was kinda panicked about Slashdot's continuation. In turn, your replies to my flaming were level-headed and even kind. It did not take me long to realize I was wrong about all if it and apologize. After reading this, I apologize twice over.
Hey, can you find me three digit ID account? It was attached to a long gone ihatehotmail1979@hotmail.com - I know that is a long shot of a question.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
All welcome changes. Thanks.
It's coming!
You means, it's what differentiates /.?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
We've made a concerted effort to stop linking to paywalled sites. Only exception would be if its breaking news not covered anywhere else
I for one welcome my new Slashdot overloads! Thanks for the positive changes guys!
Been here a good while, come most days...guess I like the place although Dice sure did their best to ruin it.
Glad I stuck it through, and "thanks" for the positive changes.
Against the flow, (but then again, I am a BSD neckbeard), don't listen to the bunnies screaming for UTF8.
It'll increase your attack surface, hence give you a butthurt of work if you do it right, for...what?
I've never seen a funny or insightful post that would have somehow been more hilarious or intelligent if it had accents in it.
I can now say "BOMB"
thank you
Not the same AC. The groupthink is a problem. There are also inherent biases in Slashdot. Misleading anti-Microsoft posts are often modded up disproportionately to factual posts that portray Microsoft in a more favorable way, even in the same article. An example is the debate over Windows 10 telemetry. Xenophobic and ultranationalist posts are moderated much more positively if the source appears to be European rather than American. There's also an inherent liberal (American definition of liberal) bias to Slashdot users. That's the nature of the site. The problem is when people use moderation to silence views they don't like and posters who hold those views. When someone throws five overrated downmods to five posts from a user, some of which are a few days old, it's clear they're using moderation to silence that user. It happens even to good users, and I recall reading at least drinkypoo and BarbaraHudson complaining about this. Posting as AC limits the ability of someone to abuse moderation in that manner. There are enough immature logged-in users willing to abuse moderation in that manner to make AC posting worthwhile. You're most likely to be a target of that abuse if you hold views that are contrary to the biases of Slashdot.
Yup, didn't get an account until they added moderation. The early, mostly anon years were fun, trolls and all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm sure a few people will come out of the woodwork asking for removal of the Anonymous Coward account. Please do not do so. There are times when folks around here have something to say that will genuinely add to the conversation. Something that should be +insightful or +Interesting. But anyone and everyone around here knows that the culture is so unpredictable, it is sometimes safest to post as AC. Without AC, we would be missing a lot of really good comments that in fact do get modded up. There are also times when someone has something relevant to say, but do to the nature of the story and their comment relative to working for a particular institution they do not dare post otherwise. Among a number of other things. Besides, we have meta-moderation for a reason.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
You say that, but as soon as there's any code logging/recording IPs it'll need changing to handle IPv6 as well (is that field now so much longer that it has knock-on effects on other things?). And if there's any code that tries to do checks/manipulations on the addresses then you have a load more work to do as well.
Thanks a bunch. I just logged in for the first time in forever.
We will have this fixed soon
It looks like the AC is talking about two different things. You got an answer about metamoderation, but there is also mod points which is normal moderation. Mod points are only given to users with excellent karma (I think), which shows on this page: https://slashdot.org/~Gaygirli... but I think only for you. I seem to get 5 or 15 points a week to use to moderate posts, which is done by clicking on a drop box that shows next to the Share link on the bottom of each post, but only when you have mod points.
If you have excellent karma, and still don't get mod points ever, it may be that your account was blacklisted by an editor for something, but that would be an unusual thing for them to do. Whipslash may be able to look into it and let you know why you never get mod points.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It is a pleasure to peruse the site again after its digression into... commercialism?!. I had almost given up on it. Thank you for working to bring it back.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
I'm a long time user (mid-90s?) and happy to see the site breathing a breath of fresh air!
Good work so far.
One thing though: can we please have GitHub flavored markdown for comments?
1. Faster/easier to type than verbose and pedantic HTML. (no more typing <br> after and between lines!)
2. It should make it easier on your end to sanitize input.
3. It should make it much easier to support posting snippets of code.
4. Previews could be generated as-you-type or on-click on the client-side. For example, see the StackEdit extension on Chrome.
I just turned off AdBlock for the first time in years.
I'd argue against seeing moderation data. Yeah, I've been modded down on comments that I thought shouldn't be modded down, but I don't really need to know who did it. We have enough noise on here without people calling out others who modded them down.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
On the subject of video, it's not inherently a bad thing. It was just never done well before. Poor editing and poor sound, poor choice of subjects, etc. I seem to remember one of some maker talking all about how his project worked, but no-one thought to actually get a decent shot of the thing in question.
If you've got a story about a new kind of 3D printer which, I dunno, prints sideways or something, I wouldn't say no to a short, small, illustrative video.
Now, have you fixed it so the "Ads disabled" button will stay ticked forever?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Thank you!
If you don't like the comment, DONT FUCKING READ IT.
Logical fail. The only way I can tell if I like a comment or not is to read it.
I'm sick of little pussies like you with their hurt feelings blaming your Facebook "sad face" sticker situation on the ACs
You must have me confused with someone else. I don't do Facebook.
Is it true that APK has a child molestation conviction? Because that's what I heard.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Is there an option to re-enable auto-refresh on a per-user basis? I actually appreciated that feature.
Way to listen to the userbase and make us feel at home again! Many thanks and keep up the good work!
OMG THANK YOU FOR REMOVING AUTO REFRESH.
That was the single most frustrating and annoying thing in the history of everything on the internet. It was worse than obnoxious ads even. The text you reading simply vanishing before your eyes and refreshing and landing in a difference spot every time and then having to find where you were at was just... urgh!!
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Just another low ID user offering some encouragement.
Thank you.
Metamoderation used to be "Here's a comment and a moderation to it, was that moderation appropriate?". Last opportunity I had it was "Here's a comment. Should it have been moderated up or down?" even if I wouldn't spend a mod point on it if the point were highly radioactive.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
With these changes I will go back to reading slashdot daily like i used to.
I am consistently modded down for having a conservative viewpoint. I generally don't even log-in anymore because when I do post a conservative viewpoint, my inbox is shortly after filled with "fu republican" type posts.
Funny. I've been posting as an evil, stealing-candy-from-babies Republican here for years (Note the nominally low UID? Yeah, that long.).
I can think of maybe, MAYBE one or two rude messages I've received from fellow users over the years.
And my karma's quite good...
So...Unless you're posting some absolutely whack-job stuff, I call bullshit.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Knowing who modded a comment makes moderation worthless. If they do that, I'm out of here. You'll never get honest moderation when the moderator has to fear retaliation.
All you'll have left is a bunch of people who agree with each other. You can lick each others' butts without me.
A few years ago (before the last buyout) /. was my main technical news source. I came primarily for the community, then for the content, and lastly for some humor at the polls. No, not reporting on current political campaign polls, although I do remember watching the politics section go live.
I want to share a little bit of my story: When I was a wee lad not yet in highschool my family got dial-up. I was so excited! The internet was new and so amazing. It was a very short time until I came across slashdot and for some reason I got hooked. I think it was the engineering humor and conversation (or perhaps jokes about a gritty Natalie Portman), but something about it stuck. This site tremendously sparked and influenced my love of technology. I'm now a successful fully-employed member of society (in an IT field no less!) and I can honestly blame ./ culture for much of my development.
I've learned services, like friends, come and go. I was active in, and then watched, Digg dissapear. I saw some of the glimmer of Kuroshin. I've piddled around in Reddit. Slashdot was always in the back there though, if sometimes only because of distantly fond memories.
I watched as certain strategic decisions ticked the "she's not going to make it jim" flag in my mind and I began to write Slashdot off. Recently however there is a new light behind the community. There is a new vibrancy. It's because you who are in charge are like us once again (one of us, one of us!). You understand that this isn't about the monies, it isn't about pageviews and numbers, it's about technologists by day who can take a few minutes to just be nerds and talk and discuss with each other. It's about having slashdot as hobby, an interest, someplace where I can hang up the coat and hang out for a while. You've started to remember that and it is showing. We, the community, see it. I feel at home here once again.
Keep up the good work - here's to hoping ./ and it's community can be a home for the geeks, the nerds, the techies and all those inspiring to be. Thanks guys, she's looking good again!
Thank you, whipslash!
And thanks also to your colleagues who did the work, provided support, and indeed those who made the tea or supplied the jokes. It's all useful, and progress has been made on Slashdot!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You might wanna look at what headers slashdot sends as well: https://securityheaders.io/?q=...
But surely you must admit that there are occasional prime comments by AC's. :)
As a long time lurker, since 99 or so if i have to guess. I've slept since then... I really appreciate the changes you are making. It's nice seeing optimism among the community, that's been a rare sight the past few years. Anyway, thanks and keep it up!
I'm a centrist who believes that there should be a lot of compromise, and your party currently hates compromise, so from my perspective if you're giving a "conservative viewpoint" that is the same as the Republican talking points, I'm going to down-mod for 2 reasons; it isn't actually your perspective, just party-flag-waving regurgitation, and it is probably not a reasoned viewpoint that allows other views to exist.
I down-mod people on the left for the same reason, usually from the Green Party. Democrats at least support compromise and their views don't exclude Republican views; they are openly and explicitly willing to compromise.
So I can see that depending on the actual common views in each party over time, there would be a different balance of down-mods for not being constructive, and just asserting conclusions, etc.
A lot of slashdot users are actually quite conservative, but they're not Republican Party flag-wavers and they don't regurgitate talking points. They're conservatives who still believe in compromise, in civic duty, in honesty.
What percent of modern "conservatives" will even agree that Democrats love America and love the Constitution? 1%? 2%? "They're tryin' to take er guns!" "Who?" "Them their liberaaals!" "But they say they support the 2nd Amendment too, and you can keep your guns." "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS YOU HIPPIE!" That is basically how the conversation goes.
Knowing who modded a comment makes moderation worthless. If they do that, I'm out of here. You'll never get honest moderation when the moderator has to fear retaliation.
Exactly. I already get clusters of down-mods sometimes, from days past, after making a controversial post, like saying something positive about systemd.
I had in fact been wondering for quite some time how come a technology oriented site isn't securing traffic with TLS.
Because until relatively recently (September 2013), ad networks did not support HTTPS. Thus browsers would block ads as mixed content. So in order to make the ads appear, Slashdot would redirect HTTPS visits from non-subscribers to HTTP.
Real nice to have an actual human posting up about what's going on, and responding to comments. /.
Thanks for thinking about us users (yeah, how about that!) and glad to be looking forward to future
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I am consistently modded down for having a conservative viewpoint. I generally don't even log-in anymore because when I do post a conservative viewpoint, my inbox is shortly after filled with "fu republican" type posts.
Then imagine what your inbox would look like if you started modding down some of the trolls that do deserve to be modded. Some people take comments that they don't like very personally to the extent that they send abusive PMs or even harrass you by replying to all your posts in other discussions to continue the fight. But think how much worse would that be if they knew exactly who modded them down to -1.
When you are moderating, you don't want to be so scared of certain, vindictive people that you avoid doing your duty for fear of retaliation.
Don't confuse "having a conservative viewpoint" with "having a conservative viewpoint and spouting bollocks", as while the two overlap, the criticism you receive is usually due to the bollocks-spouting and not the conservatism. This is patently obvious judging by the plethora of conservatives who are not regularly down-modded into oblivion. It's clearly not your being a conservative that is causing the backlash, but what you are doing with your conservatism. It's rather disingenuous to ignore the highly opinionated stance you've adopted over these last few years and simply blame everything on people hating on conservatives.
Any user on Slashdot who goes out of their way to repeatedly promote some narrative in the way you have should expect the ghosts of said narrative to follow them around.
after making a controversial post, like saying something positive about systemd
You're a braver man than me. That's the slashdot equivalent of calling the Pope the Anti-Christ on the Vatican web site.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have been around slashdot for a long while and these changes are very welcome.
Martley, Near Worcester UK.
YeaIh, I know: your strategy wasn't "how the hell can we get water-and-sewer to come back to slashdot?" But thought I'd say thanks: your changes to the site, but moreover, your APPROACH to the site, makes Slashdot the kind of place I'm excited to come back to.
Really glad to have a new team behind the steering wheel. This was my most-visited site on the Internet for many years, but over the past two I've probably visited a handful or so, and mostly to post snarky comments inviting people to check out other sites. Now, I'm back. ... and very impressed. Let me help you get the word out.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.