University of British Columbia

Was going to post a reply on reddit but realised that maybe you guys have thoughts on this situation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/778315

Introducing the Lemmy Instance Assistant (browser extension)

Hey everyone :)

I started using Lemmy during the blackout, and I was finding it annoying to subscribe to new communities that I came across. I wanted to be able to quickly open a link on my home instance instead of copy/pasting the code, searching for it, and then subscribing. I looked around for an extension and didn’t see any * , so I started working on my first browser extension!

Firefox version is live, the Chrome version is still going through the review/approval stage. I’m working on getting it on other browsers as well.

https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/lemmy-instance-assistant

This extension will let you set your home instance (https://lemmy.ca/ for me), and then it will insert a button onto community pages on other Lemmy instances (see screenshots on extension page). I tried to mimic the existing design for the button, and I included some popular instances so you can quickly copy and paste when selecting your home instance.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Why doesn’t it redirect automatically?

Initially I tried to make it redirect, similar to ‘Old Reddit Redirect’. This is still possible, but it might be a little dangerous to have it set up that way. Since there is no way to predict what URL a Lemmy site will have, we can’t restrict the extension to specific domains. This means that the extension MAY run on other sites, depending on how it is detecting the Lemmy site. A button popping up is less harmful than being redirected unexpectedly.

Future plans:

GitHub link: https://github.com/cynber/lemmy-instance-assistant

• As mentioned above, we can’t specify which domains the extension should run on since that’s not something we can predict. I’d like to improve the specificity of which pages the button will appear on, to minimize unexpected behaviour. As this is my first extension, I’d appreciate help with this while I learn it myself!
• Right now the button does not appear if you are already viewing a community in a different instance, even if that is not YOUR instance (ex. You are looking at lemmy.world/c/technology@lemmy.ml, while your home instance is lemmy.ca). This limitation comes from the method I used to distinguish between the community page and your home instance page. I’m planning to change it to use the URL itself instead of card elements.
• It would be nice to be able to jump to a specific post. Currently, it appears that Lemmy post URLs do not include a slug for the community/instance, making it challenging to implement something like this. I plan on exploring this some more (relevant thread: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/875)
• I want to add a button next to other Lemmy links in the post body / comments. However, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do this and which links it should appear next to.

Other thoughts:

Some of the third party Reddit tools that I used the most were the browser extensions. Reddit Enhancement Suite made it a LOT easier to start using Reddit, and other extensions like Old Reddit Redirect (the inspiration for my extension) fixed other annoyances. While there are a lot of areas where Lemmy can improve, I think it makes more sense to implement certain enhancements through browser extensions and separate tools. That is to say, I’m happy to let this be pushed into Lemmy’s code, but right now I feel like it makes more sense as a separate extension.

(*) Also when I started building my extension, I didn’t see any similar ones listed. A few other ones have now popped up, and it looks like a lot of them were forked from this project. So if you don’t like mine, there are others that you can try :) Similarly, I’m happy to collaborate if you want to help / integrate my extension into a bigger project!

Just got this email. Just after midnight on the 18th did the fire alarm go off 3 times in an hour. Glad to see them actually send this out, its not often Ponderosa gets deliberate false alarms. Been there for 2 years and its typically rare (usually you can atleast smell smoke meaning someone burnt something bad).

Will not repeat the body text. I'll crosspost questions here that I answer or might be answerable by lemmy's population (mostly CS program questions).

If anyone's interested, I've created a !sfu@lemmy.ca.

Someday, we may have one-sided meme wars!

edit: I just read the sidebar note about contacting the mod team first about advertising. Apologies! Please remove this post with my enthusiastic blessing if you think that this isn't sufficiently relevant to the UBC community.

Title. With the ubc subreddit opening back up again it'll probably be much harder to enough of a network effect going unless we have some coordination with the reddit mods.

Personally I'm trying to transition away from user-hostile software and minimize my exposure to proprietary software in general. The reddit API changes didn't affect me personally but I don't want to support the company by continuing to use it. How about you guys?

What's everyone's favourite study spot on campus? I'll start with the Asian Library: it's so peaceful and quiet and I swear nobody knows that it exists. Plus, you get to walk around in the garden.

Course registration is definitely on everybody's minds right now. Feel free to discuss any insights you have or questions that you need answers to.

Here's a list of fun electives/GPA booster that served me well:

• PSYC 350A - Human sexuality
• COMM 412 - Negotiation
• COMM 312 - Business ethics leadership
• PHIL 333 - Biomedical ethics
• PHIL 331 - Business ethics
• PHIL 250 - Minds and Machines
• CNPS 363 - Career Counselling
• FNH 355 - International Nutrition
• EOSC 478 - Intro to Fisheries Science
• FMST 210 - Family Context of Human Development
• COHR 486D - Negotiation for Leaders
• SPPH 381A - Public Health Ethics
• SPPH 302 - Health Infomatics

Wondering how people got started in research, specifically in CS/ECE?

If you found this post, you're an eager beaver since we haven't set things up yet. Please bear with us as we work on setting up this community. We may change things rapidly as we learn more. We're all new to Lemmy / the fediverse just like you :)

If you have any feedback or thoughts on setting up the community, please let us know in this thread.

How do I make an account?

If you have already made an account on a different Lemmy instance/website, you can use that same account. Just copy "!ubc@lemmy.ca" into the search bar on your Lemmy instance. You may need to wait a few minutes if you're the first one to look for it from that instance.

If this is your first time, you can make an account by clicking the sign-up button above. You may need to wait for your account to be approved by the admins of lemmy.ca.

Plan for the future of this community

As of now, there is no formal plan for this community. However, you're welcome to discuss what you want to see moving forwards :)

I'm bored, what else can I do?

• Make some memes
• Complain about Reddit / about UBC
• Link some resources or other cool things you've found recently

To come:

• Guide on Lemmy / Fediverse
• Plan for the future of this community
• Updated resources (off site from Reddit)