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    1. What will "classically trained" look like for computer science and digital literacy?

      This might be a weird framing but it's been bugging me for a few days. Many fields have a concept of classical training -- this is most common in music but applies in the humanities and many other...

      This might be a weird framing but it's been bugging me for a few days. Many fields have a concept of classical training -- this is most common in music but applies in the humanities and many other areas. For example I do a lot of CAD work for my job, but I received what I would consider a "classical education" in design...I learned to draft by hand and physically model before I was ever allowed to work digitally. I got a lot of value out of this approach and it still informs the way I work today.

      A lot of people view computers and technology as modern and almost anti-classical, but as the tech industry matures and the internet moves from something shiny and new to something foundational to our society, what will the new classicism look like?

      Thanks for reading my question.

      14 votes
    2. r/antiwork seems to be back (was it really gone?)

      tl;dr IDK what happened before, but r/antiwork is public now (again?). I just stumbled across this tildes thread from 2 weeks ago [EDIT: crap ... 1 year and 2 weeks ago; mixed up my "current year"...

      tl;dr IDK what happened before, but r/antiwork is public now (again?).

      I just stumbled across this tildes thread from 2 weeks ago [EDIT: crap ... 1 year and 2 weeks ago; mixed up my "current year" setting] ... which is right on the border between "keep posting in that thread" and "it's too old, start a new one" ... so here we are.

      I'm familiar with the ideas, but never heard of that specific subreddit before. Looking through the Fox interview, I must be missing something, because I don't understand what all the fuss was about. What "mistake" did the mod make in the interview? Why did everyone suddenly hate her? etc. Seemed perfectly innocuous to me (apart from, why even bother with Fox).

      But that aside, the previous thread indicates that r/antiwork was effectively bullied into going private. Looking at it this morning, it is not private. I am assuming that they just recently de-privatized it?

      On a side-note, top comment on the thread is about not supporting r/cringetopia ... which ... that subreddit is private. Is that also new? It had me confused for quite awhile this morning, trying to figure out which subreddit was actually under controversy and forced to go private.

      4 votes
    3. Sam Denby on how well negativity works on YouTube

      @Sam (from Wendover): One thing I hate is just how well negativity works. Of our top 10 performers over the past year, eight (in my view) include direct or indirect negativity in the title/thumbnail. (A🧵) pic.twitter.com/tqIz9v6CTh

      10 votes
    4. Unpopular opinion: Wikipedia's old look was much better than the new one

      I say that after throwing some caution to air because I understand that every new thing has some initial resistance or pushback due to the "past comfort zone" effect. But having said that, I feel...

      I say that after throwing some caution to air because I understand that every new thing has some initial resistance or pushback due to the "past comfort zone" effect.

      But having said that, I feel the aesthetics of the old site was much better than the new one. But then again, I'm from the old-school world who also prefers old reddit to the new one in browsing experience, so my opinion could be biased! But even considering the modern web design, don't you think the black icons on the top right have a somewhat odd look? And the "21 languages" feels a bit verbose, the I10N icon already conveys what that dropdown is about? And finally, that scrollable sidebar on the left looks a tad ugly?

      I just hope this is just a beta stage or something of Wikipedia's new version and a better one will evolve soon! But that's just one humble unpopular opinion, me thinks!

      15 votes
    5. Twitter cuts off access for popular third party clients

      Starting on Thursday night, Twitter cut off API access for some of the biggest third party clients. From The Verge: It’s hard to tell whether the third-party client outage is due to the API....

      Starting on Thursday night, Twitter cut off API access for some of the biggest third party clients.

      From The Verge:

      It’s hard to tell whether the third-party client outage is due to the API. Attempting certain calls from my individual Twitter developer account seemed to work, while Twitter’s own API explorer tool is currently broken.

      It definitely seems like it is on purpose. For it to last this long without any update definitely makes it feel like it was done on purpose. Many developers' apps have started showing up as "suspended". In looking at my own account, I can see that both Tweetbot and Fenix are gone from my list of connected apps.

      The Icon Factory (makers of Twitteriffic) have a blog post about it as well.

      The complete silence from Twitter is completely baffling. Burning more than a decade of working with developers overnight seems incredibly stupid. As Paul Hadad, one of the makers of Tweetbot said:

      Even during the darkest Twitter 1.0 days they were pretty open about what they were doing. I remember getting a call prior to the 4 quadrants token limit where they explained what was going to happen and answered questions. I wasn't happy but at least felt there was respect.

      27 votes
    6. To use Disqus or Giscus (Github Discussions) for comments is the conundrum

      I happen to host my blog https://prahladyeri.github.io/blog statically, built using Pelican and served on Github Pages. Plebs like us can't afford a backend server infrastructure, so we must rely...

      I happen to host my blog https://prahladyeri.github.io/blog statically, built using Pelican and served on Github Pages. Plebs like us can't afford a backend server infrastructure, so we must rely on external services like Disqus for comment hosting.

      So far, Disqus was the only fellow in town who allowed us to host comments on a free plan. Though there were some issues (bloat, adware, etc.), people seemed to be generally happy with it so far.

      But now, a new fellow named giscus commenting system has entered the town, it's basically powered by github. Since I already host my blog on github pages, this should be a natural choice for me, right? Many bloggers seem to be migrating to this new system and I might too soon. The downsides however are as follows:

      1. It won't allow me to export existing comments from the old disqus system. Understandable to an extent as those exact author usernames may not be on the Github platform?
      2. Disqus interface seems to have improved all of a sudden in last few days! There no longer seem to be any ad and even the comment interface seems to be less heavy or cluttered now. It might sound a bit conspiratorial in nature but could this be the result of rising competition in the form of Giscus!

      I'm a lazy status-quoist by nature and might well end up retaining disqus if they don't deviate too much from where they are now. But I'll keep an eye out on Giscus too and its progress. What do you guys suggest?

      5 votes