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LtU is migrating from Drupal

As many of you know we have been suffering for a long time from the deficiencies of Drupal. We have not updated our infrastructure for a long time. Among the features members have been asking for are better integration with other sites and more social features. In particular, many said they want to be able to mark the posts that they find particularly helpful. I am happy to announce that we have big news!

In the coming days we will be migrating LtU from Drupal to Facebook. All the awesome features of Facebook will be automatically available; in particular the "Like" mechanism. You will also be able to share photos with other PLT enthusiasts, re-share their shares etc. Best of all, you will be guaranteed the privacy standards of Facebook.

Rest assured, we have not made this decision without considering the alternatives. We studied Google+ but given Google's unprovoked assault on RSS with the decision to discontinue Google Reader we found it unconscionable to go with Google.

LtU's twitter feed will have to go, I am afraid, given the relationship between our new home and twitter. Hopefully this issue will be resolved once twitter gives up and is acquired by FB.

The LtU feed will have ads, per usual on FB. I know this is somewhat of an inconvenience, but at least the ads you will be served will be personalized[1].

Ehud and the LtU Team.

[1] I am assured that ads for dynamically typed and scripting languages will never be served to you again after you mark them as "offensive" once.


Update: No, we are not migrating to Facebook. This was an April Fools joke.

By Ehud Lamm at 2013-03-31 21:42 | Admin | other blogs | 17684 reads

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Haha!

Good one!

By Manuel J. Simoni at Sun, 2013-03-31 22:07 | login or register to post comments

thanks for all the fish

[Original version restored, until Tuesday.] I appreciate efforts you and others put into LtU over the years. Thank you for the nice environment, as well as the hard work of administration. I hope things go well in a new incarnation after migration. This is goodbye, unless I decide one day to get a Facebook account, which seems unlikely as of now. Good luck to you and the team. I'm rysmcc at gmail if you want to keep in touch.

By Rys McCusker at Sun, 2013-03-31 22:16 | login or register to post comments

You should have left it. It

You should have left it. It was great. I actually shed a tear.

By Ehud Lamm at Sun, 2013-03-31 22:18 | login or register to post comments

the importance of being earnest

A caricature of George Bernard Shaw appeared to me in a dream. The caption read, "Write more dialogs." I can write more tomorrow.

By Rys McCusker at Sun, 2013-03-31 22:49 | login or register to post comments

To those who are confused

What date is it today (or, in some time zones, tomorrow)? What holiday falls on that day?

By roryokane at Sun, 2013-03-31 22:50 | login or register to post comments

Seriously though (since it's

Seriously though (since it's still 31st around here), how come PLT enthusiasts weblog runs on PHP? Shouldn't it be something at least as exotic as HApps or arc? :)

By Eugene Toder at Sun, 2013-03-31 23:17 | login or register to post comments

No!!!!! Facebook is blocked

No!!!!!

Facebook is blocked in China. I would only be able to browse LtU at work or with a flaky VPN.

By Sean McDirmid at Sun, 2013-03-31 23:32 | login or register to post comments

Well, it's been clear that

Well, it's been clear that this was the direction the site was heading.

By Matt M at Mon, 2013-04-01 00:26 | login or register to post comments

Fool in April

Fooled for April first is better than being a fool on Facebook.

By del at Mon, 2013-04-01 02:35 | login or register to post comments

LoL

So in the future LtU will take fool advantage of FB.

By j4n bur53 at Mon, 2013-04-01 10:30 | login or register to post comments

Finally

I'm so relieved!

By Anton van Straaten at Mon, 2013-04-01 03:28 | login or register to post comments

LLOL. Thank you!

LLOL. Thank you!

By Jason Grossman at Mon, 2013-04-01 07:12 | login or register to post comments

Quite good.

Got me.

By Barry Watson at Mon, 2013-04-01 08:10 | login or register to post comments

foq yes

Congrats for continuing to be on the vanguard of PLT field (Programming Languages, The field).

Perhaps you can integrate the new site with my new lazy strongly-typed programming language, Foq; it doesn't bother running code until it has enough "likes". Social proof, you see. It is an offshoot of Fada, which provides security properties by only running (socially) approved code.

As you can see this is a growing field. Research into "contracts" and other partnership arrangements will be needed when integrating with legacy content. I am thinking this goes beyond LtU categories and will need a new developer program, for a nominal fee of course. Let me know if you are interested and I will have my lawyers draw up some papers.

By Andy Wingo at Mon, 2013-04-01 09:58 | login or register to post comments

Are terms of service already

Our terms of service already permit us to sell your data. You agreed to them by clicking on the url.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2013-04-01 13:14 | login or register to post comments

A capabilities-based system,

A capabilities-based system, I see.

By Andy Wingo at Mon, 2013-04-01 13:24 | login or register to post comments

It tells you something about

It tells you something about the state of the world that people could read the following line with a straight face: "All the awesome features of Facebook will be automatically available; in particular the "Like" mechanism. You will also be able to share photos with other PLT enthusiasts, re-share their shares etc. Best of all, you will be guaranteed the privacy standards of Facebook."

*I* chuckle when I read it. Awesome features; re-sharing; privacy standards?!

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2013-04-01 13:17 | login or register to post comments

state of the union

And yet I believed you until I saw Simoni's reply, making me slap my forehead. Of course you were kidding, because it would have been a big mistake, right? But that only requires someone you respect talk you into it, and for you to hold an optimistic view in advance of real world evidence about consequences (which can take so long to arrive that aborting a choice is difficult).

People make mistakes all the time. It's an almost continuous process of error and recovery. A lot of my humor leans heavily toward absurdism, cataloging errors presented as if reasonable — the more outlandish the better. The perseverance some folks bring to defense of absurd premises can be pretty funny. That's why it's so much fun to say something silly, then defend it seriously for a while, when it simulates a common grim position: "Wait, I can still make this work!"

To make absolutely sure folks know you're joking, it helps to finally include something so impossible for you to believe that others see you mean none of earlier parts. (Otherwise they may try to make it work.) Tipping off an April fools joke spoils a bit of the punch, so it's tricky to embed subtle clues.

I was going to write a longish dialog for laughs, but I see no one else has jokes, so that would make me stick out. Here's a very short one instead, about a related concept:

     Crash ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Wil quietly admired his new arrow-through-the-head gag, which Crash had carefully aligned with centers of the round test-dummy tattoos on both sides of his skull.
     "Do you ever construe your role as making other folks look normal?" Wil mused.
     "No," Crash looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

By Rys McCusker at Tue, 2013-04-02 02:19 | login or register to post comments

Nice. As for the April

Nice. As for the April Fools: I thought that the mention of FB privacy standards was a dead giveaway...

By Ehud Lamm at Tue, 2013-04-02 05:21 | login or register to post comments

PL memes! The one feature

PL memes! The one feature missing from LtU is the ability to post a picture with some sort of crazy PL-oriented caption on it.

By Sean McDirmid at Tue, 2013-04-02 07:38 | login or register to post comments