One day, I’m posting here about how to address AI risks, the next, Daily Nous suffers from a “critical error” and goes down for over a week. Coincidence? Or evidence that the AI’s thought I was onto something?
Yes I know it was the former… probably.
What happened? Daily Nous and its server were hacked. This isn’t the first time the site has had problems. A month earlier, the site was subject to what looks like some kind of attack. And at several times over recent years, various types of malware have infected the site, causing assorted difficulties. I employ security and clean-up services, but they face an increasing number and variety of threats. Meanwhile, the site has been aging—it’s over 14 years old—with some of its components becoming outdated, mutually incompatible, and difficult or impossible to update. It had slowed down a bit, too.
So when this last hack occurred, my technical consultant, John Hunt, recommended the site be rebuilt: taken apart, inspected piece by piece, problem elements fixed or replaced if necessary, and then put back together again, with even more security. “But what if we have to replace all of the pieces?” I asked. “Will it still be the same blog?”
I wish I could say that the reason it has taken so long to get DN up and running again is that we were distracted by the metaphysics of blogular identity over time. But what really happened is that we just did what John recommended. And by “we” I mean mostly John. At the start of the process we thought it would only take a few days, but as it continued, various further issues were discovered that needed addressing.
The result is not really a redesign of the site. It should look roughly the same as it did before (despite that we had to ditch the original “theme”–the code that gave the site its look). But there are some functional improvements, and the site should run a little faster than it used to.
We haven’t finished putting everything back on the site just yet. Some posts that had embedded videos or spreadsheets may be missing them, for example. The Heap of Links is, fittingly enough, disordered at the moment. The ad placements aren’t quite right. Some settings may still have to be properly adjusted. And we may yet notice some mistakes we need to correct.
So things aren’t perfect yet, but, as you may have noticed over the years, I subscribe to the idea that one shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the blog.
You’ve all been quite patient. Thanks for that. And it seems you’ve all been quite cooperative, making barely any news while the site has been down, which I also appreciate. Or did I miss something? Let me know.
Welcome back! And it looks like you finally fixed my only pet peeve about the blog: when you click on a comment on “the latest comments” sidebar, it finally links to the actual comment! Phew, what a relief 🙂
Yes, I’m happy to have that in place, too! (Clicking on the commenter’s name in the sidebar will now take you to that particular comment; clicking on the post title will take you to that post.)
Welcome back! My only grip is that everything looks very…large. As in, fonts and such are bigger than they used to be, which for me makes it harder to see everything that’s on the page, including the heap of links.
These new big fonts are great – makes it easier for me to see than that tiny compressed font from before. I guess Justin can’t please everyone
A suggestion: Just Ctrl – (or +) to your preferred font size. This works in every browser that I use.
It’s not just the raw font size. It’s that the sizes are all over the place. On the version of Safari I’m using, who wrote the comment is in a tiny font, as is the text I’m typing into this box, but who it’s a reply to is twice as large.
Yes, I tried that, but what it does is make everything smaller in the center of the webpage. So the stie turns into three very narrow columns of text which is even harder to read. Maybe it’s a me issue…
I appreciate the feedback on the font sizes. Making adjustments to their size and appearance in various places on the site is on the to-do list, but it is helpful to hear from a variety of users with a variety of devices and browsers in figuring out what we should do.
Ability to adjust the font size is always a nice feature; I look forward to that. As suggested here, folks aren’t going to agree on the optimal font size.
Here, though, you have a more fundamental problem. It looks like your CSS needs to be rethought a bit. Certain page elements (article text, comment text and “Reply to” name (but not the commenter’s name), Heap of Links items, top menu, etc.) are out of proportion with the rest of page content. More to the point, the font size of those elements seems relatively impervious to resizing with Ctrl+ and Ctrl-. Resizing from 100% down to 25% shows no noticeable impact on the out-of-proportion elements, although the columns definitely respond by shrinking into the middle of the page. The result is pretty unreadable, so Ctrl- is not a solution for those of us who like smaller fonts. (I’m seeing this on current versions of Chrome and Edge.)
DON’T EVER LEAVE ME LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN
Hooray, we missed you! Re the “nothing” news: I request a thread on AI, math, the AI crisis in math, and what philosophy has to say about it
https://www.science.org/content/article/openai-breakthrough-triggers-existential-crisis-math
Good to have the site back! Is night mode (or whatever you call the mostly-black version of the page) coming back, too? I can’t find the little moon icon to toggle it. I hope it will return: I find the site much easier reading that way.
Yes, dark mode is on the to-do list.
Dark mode is now available. Look for the small circular button with a moon icon on it in the top right corner.
There was a noticeable rise in philosophers’ productivity while the site was down.
Just kidding. Happy to have you back.