After months of shoving floppy disks into his Apple Lisa, Jason has finally gotten to the last one, and our new commenting system (all 83.4 megabytes!) should deploy some time this evening — certainly by tomorrow! What does this mean for you? Many of the features you’ve asked for will be available. Here are the details.
[Editor’s Note: But first, let’s get into the details of those floppy disks I was shoving into that Lisa, because they’re fascinating. They’re fascinating because they weren’t like other floppy disks of the era, they were weird-ass proprietary disks made by Apple just because they wanted to make their own disks, because of arrogance or madness or glee or all of that. They were called “Twiggy” disks, after the famously thin model, and they were weird.
They looked weird, they spun at variable speeds, unlike most floppies, and all that weirdness let Apple save about 870K per disk, which is incredible when you remember that the Apple II 5.25″ disks only stored 143K! They were notoriously fragile and unreliable, though, and were a dead end. Still, I’m glad I had enough around to get the new comment system loaded! – JT]
It should just work, but you may have to re-log in
Jason (actually, our wonderful tech team at Jazel) has worked hard to make this as seamless a transition as possible. We’ve also set the permissions so that, once you get a link, you’re not constantly asked to log in again. There’s a chance that you may need to log in again, but if you’ve transitioned your account via Memberful there’s also a chance you won’t need to. We will update this post when comments are fully deployed so you’ll know if you’re not seeing them.
There’s an edit button!
Of the many requested features, the biggest one seems to be an edit button. I’m not sure why. My language is prefect. For the rest of you, just hit the gear and it should give you the option to edit your post.
You Can Decide How You Want Comments Ordered
Do you want to see the most discussed article or do you want to see the most favorited? It’s up to you! Use the icons above to decide how you want to see comments. Because this is a friendly place, we’re not doing upvoting and downvoting. Your only choices are to give something a smiley face (favorite) or do nothing. We hope this also discourages trolling and keeps this a fun place to interact.
Notifications. Oh so many notifications.
Our new commenting system features a nice little comment notification system when you are within a post. The little comment circle floats with you and it gives you a couple of pieces of information. The first number is the number of comments on the post you’re reading, which is fairly straightforward.
The second number, which is orange, can give you even more information. If there’s an awesome conversation you want to keep tabs on without having to keep scrolling through everything, you can subscribe to it. You can also choose to just subscribe to your replies. If you do nothing, it should still alert you to replies when you’re on that post.
All Your Activity In One Place
In our current system, it’s hard to tell where your conversations are. Now using the “activity center” you can see all your most recent comments and also all your “subscriptions” (i.e. the conversations you saved). You can always reach this by clicking the little person and gear next to the comment counter on the articles.
We Will Be Adding Features As We Go
The new system includes numerous options we can turn on, including notification via email and user follows. Some of these features we’re going to hopefully roll out in the comings weeks and months, but for the moment we want to make sure the basic system works consistently without issues.
To that end: Please let us know if something isn’t working and please have patience if something breaks. You can email me if you see any issues: matt@theautopian.com.
This is gonna be great!
An Alternative Topshot
There was a lot of debate internally over whether or not the image of Steve Martin from The Jerk was too outdated of a reference. I don’t think it is, both because the film is a classic and because Steve Martin has persevered (he has a popular show on a streaming service right now). Just in case that didn’t land, here’s one inspired by the latest 100 gecs song (which is a total bop) [Editor’s Note: I have no idea what the hell Matt is talking about. I don’t know about “the Jerk” — which is, I assume, a film about the first derivative of acceleration — and I don’t know what a gec is, much less 100 of them. -DT].
Photo Credits: 100 Gecs, NBC Universal
“But first, let’s get into the details of those floppy disks I was shoving into that Lisa, because they’re fascinating. They’re fascinating because they weren’t like other floppy disks of the era, they were weird-ass proprietary disks made by Apple just because they wanted to make their own disks, because of arrogance or madness or glee or all of that.”
… I swear to god, Torch. You are exactly, exactly the person I would expect to somehow still have working Twiggy disks.
Now can we PLEASE at least upgrade to a VAX 8300 with a 9-track? I know the the idea of even seeing removable media with as much as 170MB of storage is borderline traumatic, but I promise, it’s not tha-oh, it despooled.
Uh…
I mean this Wyse PC286 with a whopping 50MB hard disk! Yes. That’s what I always meant.
That was a beautiful illustration of VAX computing, thank you! Lemme throw stacker on that 286, we’ll have so much disk space; who cares how long it takes to read a file?
Just wait till Jason finds out it’s got a staggering 2MB of RAM and two 1.44MB floppies! Stacker and QEMM, he’ll never have to upgrade again!
“I don’t know about “the Jerk” — which is, I assume, a film about the first derivative of acceleration … DT”
When I were a lad, calculus being the hot new fad at the time, we would tell one another to “stop being a third derivative”.
DT, being the Klugarsch that he is, started counting from the second derivative, i.e. acceleration. 😀
Oh yeah. the new commenting thingy is pretty cool, too. Looking forward to it!
I didn’t even say what the derivative was relative to! (time)
Kein Problem – we have exhausted what I may or may not remember about calc. (It’s been a while.)
Fun (?) fact: my high school instructor exclusively referred to graph paper as “Cartesian coordinate paper”. I still call it that in his honor. 🙂
HELL YEAH BROTHERRRRRR
My body is ready!
hello
Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! And it appears there will be inline ads in the comments! Be still my heart. I hope they automatically play videos. 😉
Sorry, If I had an edit button I think I would have toned down the sarc on this post.
Need a reoccurring segment on pop culture references that David doesn’t understand.
I wanna read some pop culture pieces on what he DOES understand.
(Anyway, this all makes me feel better about being a film grad who no longer really watches any film or TV, with rare, rare exceptions.)
That might not make the minimum word count for something to qualify as a post!
Edit: hey, this new commenting system isn’t half bad! Lets see how the notifications work out.
Finally I’ll be able to cover up, ahem… I mean correct my typographical incompetence.
My weekly request for a “REPORT” button – The spammers are lurking in the shadows.
Russ
And I never understood that. Every comment I get is moderated, but the spammers aren’t?
{Edit: Even this comment is awaiting Approval}
I don’t know how you got out of it, I’m still stuck in the “awaiting approval” limbo
If you need a newer Jerk picture, I can always send you a selfie.
The Jerk reference was perfect and I often quote it when “the new ____ is here!”
Oh and YAY on the commenting system updates! I don’t have time to read or respond to all posts here so being able to flag the ones I want to follow up on is great!
Things will really start happening for me now!
He hates these cans!
This is the best thing to ever happen to me.
it’s okay Matt, I know that movie.
Guys I love you and I don’t want to um actually you but I’m gonna because you need that edit button for the image that says “replys” instead of “replies.”
I though an Apple Lisa was a spotted horse.
Damn. That was good!
Take my smiley, you punny bastard.
but will it work like the tie rods on a ’72 Buick?
Very excite! What’s the word on images?
Well, usually, it’s a format used primarily for memes. Some common examples include sarcastic Willy Wonka, the I can haz cheezburgr cat, Grumpy Cat, and so on. However it may also be used to subtitle or caption an image, and sees frequent use in demotivational posters.
But that’s not important right now.
link test
I can LINK to Puffalumps (but not embed).
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp6J438pb6C/
and even do it like this
The new comments system is here! I’m somebody now!
Huzzah! Honestly I’m more hyped about this than anything else new in the car world currently!
And flying cars are going to be revealed tomorrow too. Oh oh, and level 5 autonomy. Oh shit, how about “clean diesel”?? All tomorrow?????
OMG those were the REAL floppies! I know the Jerk, not 100 gecs, am 45.
Are we getting JIFFS *cough* Gifs *cough* GIFs?
Oh shit, how about “clean diesel”??
Oh yeah, I can get you one of those by tomorrow! Just, take my word on them being clean and whatnot.
If they’re clean in a laboratory setting, you know they’ll be clean in real life!!!
I am 33 and appreciated the topshot of The Jerk. I have been telling my wife I want to watch it again. Steve Martin will live forever.
He’s been 65 since he was 30, so this checks out.
“Of the many requested features, the biggest one seems to be an edit button. I’m not sure why. My language is prefect.”
Egads, there’s got to be a brilliant joke in here tying in Ford’s hapless attempts at quality, a play on the name of Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker’s Guide, and “harmless/mostly harmless”. Sadly, I just can’t come up with anything worthy of publication.
Lets hope this isnt a Ford rollout
😉
Wow this guy really hates cans!
Came here for The Jerk reference.
And Shinola is after all a major sponsor of the Dual in Detroit IndyCar races these days…
And Shinola is a sponsor of the IndyCar Dual in Detroit these days…
link test
w00t w0000000000000000000000000000000000000000t
I hope it actually works
I worked on it myself using just flex-head ratchet wrenches.
…so bear with us a bit.
At least it wasn’t crescent wrenches. Then we’d never get it apart again.
that comment was under the old system, so here is my first under the new one 😀
link test
Apple Lisa? When did Jason upgrade from his Apple II and C64?
There’ll be an even bigger upgrade at some point when I get round to sending him the Spectrum 48k I promised him, currently residing in Mother Dearest’s loft.
Maybe we can all pitch in to help upgrade Autopian Central Control to an Amiga 1000 with (gasp) 256 KB of RAM and astonishingly capable double-density 880 KB 3.5” “floppies” (“hardies”? “stiffies”?). That’s almost a megabyte, man!
My amiga 1000 had 512 of chip ram and I think 1 gig in the sidecar.
Meg, not gig
Edit buttons?
Whoa, I didn’t know we had a friggin MILLIONAIRE in our midst…
It isn’t his, its actually in the G/O office downtown, they forgot to collect his ID card, so he can still get in after hours and use it.