LOL - no worries. Given the 'no reading the TFA' I did think it was funny.

Side-note: One personal metric for how mature a web site is is whether or not the username "MikeTheGreat" is taken. I was MikeTheGreat on BitBucket but had to fall back to MikeTheTall on GitHub :)

I know that it's a tradition here on /. to never read TFA, but Zune is actually #2 on that list.

Next time I'm going to be more clear about what I'm trying to convey.

I wasn't criticizing the summary, I was amused by it, and then reflected that most non-US visitor probably feel like this all the time.

Clearly I need to use more smiley faces next time. :) :) :) :)

The article is fine, and it's actually nice to see something that's written some a more diverse (at least, non-US) perspective. It really struck me, and caused me to think about how all y'all non-US people must see all the (other) politics articles here on /.

...when there's a Slashdot article about the U.S.
This political story is nice and all, but none of these names even ring a bell, let alone mean anything :)

Agreed - that's exactly what I'm pushing. Here on /. we should be expected to know about technology, or have enough interest to go look it up (or be mature enough to ignore it). One of the ways that /. can differentiate itself from other websites is by attracting a more technically proficient audience, and part of that is to implicitly establish the 'floor' of knowledge expected of participants.

Personally, I find this to be a good way to figure out what I ought to know - if something comes up and I don't know what it is I might ignore it the first time. And the second time. By the third time it's clear that I need to know more about it because clearly it's important.

Also - I love your technology examples :)

One of the reasons why I come here is to be exposed to tech that I haven't seen before. See something that you're not familiar with? Look it up!
Especially for this topic - "Xamarin", just by itself, is an extremely unique search term thus enabling you to self-educate with almost no effort. And today the whole Xamarin+VS is at the top of any search results for either.

Slashdot is "news for nerds", not "news for people who kinda like plunking around on their computers in between their online first-person shooter games but don't really want to have to, y'know, think about this stuff"

Can I (genuinely) ask why people want Unicode?
It seems like all the articles that are linked to are in English (or a European language with the same alphabet + accent marks) so I don't quite follow why people want read article text and post comments in Unicode.

It's really, really nice to make Slashdot part of my 'daily rounds' of websites again. Thank you so very much for everything you've done!

Thank you for doing this! I didn't realize how much I loved and missed this site until I finally, finally admitted to myself that it's just not the same place anymore. This first step has me more hopeful for /. than I've been in years!

I want to support the idea of having actual humans choosing the stories.

My understanding of the firehose is that it's supposed to automate/crowd-source the stories we see, but when you've got valid accounts used by spammers to place their stories/comments then it no longer works. Even if the firehose is used to make something more noticeable to the editors we still need actual humans preventing stealth slashvertisements, etc.

I just wanted to support the idea of detecting & displaying controversial posts - it's a really good idea!

I could imagine an implementation wherein readers might have a checkbox available to them (perhaps right next to the 'what level do you want to browse at?' slider) to turn the display of controversial posts on / off.
But having a checkbox vs. always showing them vs. something else is just details - the main thing is that this is a really good idea.

I agree that the moderation system largely takes care of the trolls.

I think that 'Slashvertisements' are much, much worse. You'll see a string of articles for some product/service/etc over a couple of weeks or so that are clearly being paid for by somebody, and then their budget is spent and the articles stop. Bitcoin had a run like this, as did solar power, and a couple of others.

Is Amazon dropping all other streaming devices that don't support Prime Video? And if not, will that undermine their argument?

All of which is really putting the cart before the horse - in terms of legal arguments, does their rationale actually hold any water to start with?

...but isn't this the equivalent of going over to a bunch of kids on the playground and saying "That new kid over there said he could beat up each and every one of you! With one hand tied behind his back!"

What I'm wondering is: who paid to have this on /.'s front page so that armies of geekdom are mobilized to find all the new, Edgy exploits?