cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/19034584

> When STEM tutorial YouTube channels were “popping off” in the early 2010s, Uytae Lee wondered how he could address the lack of comprehensive videos dedicated to teaching people about their cities. > > “If people can make physics so compelling and interesting, surely we can make transit policy interesting,” said Lee, now a UBC journalism adjunct professor.

> If you’re a connoisseur of all things local policy, — finding the solution to gentrification, bringing back front yard businesses, considering a non-capitalist approach to housing shortages — you may well have already run into Lee’s work before. He’s the mind behind the YouTube channel About Here. In his corner of the internet, Lee taps into virtually any issue that public buzz is attending to at a given moment.

> A collaboration of researchers including UBC scientists have observed gravitational waves from the collision of what is most likely a neutron star and an object likely to be a light black hole, 650 million light-years from Earth.

> Location: UBC Robson Sq. C680 HSBC Hall

> Join the CS department in a public lecture to learn more about the societal effects and implications for regulations in the development of Generative AI systems from the advancements of machine learning and cloud computing! The panel will include Prof. Lilian Edwards (Newcastle University), Prof. Christopher Millard (Queen Mary University of London), and Prof. Vered Shwartz from UBC Computer Science. For more info on the event and panel keynotes or to register, please visit myCS.

cross-post from parallel community: https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/1bsx1jv

> After years of reading the really weird stuff you all do in your free time, we have come to the conclusion that deep down, you are all flawed, generally terrible (but sometimes wonderful) Canada geese. > > For this reason, we've decided to rename the subreddit UBC Confessions, and embrace chaos. Get whatever it is off your chest. Just don't be terrible and don't post admissions questions. > > Oh, and if you don't like it, go post in r/SFU. > > In loving memory of UBC Confessions, I guess. > > Sincerely, > > 🧹Broom Admin

We didn't forget this year! Presenting: the Best of 2023 nominations thread.

Categories up for nomination:

Best comment

Best text post

Best image or video post

Most wholesome post/comment

Best meme

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Prizes are:

• A sense of pride and accomplishment
• The admiration of UBC students and community members for centuries to come
• Being listed on ubcwiki.ca/meta/community
• anything else the community might offer...

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Here are the rules:

Nominations

• You may only nominate submissions made in 2023
• Submissions must be in the Reddit or Lemmy communities (the latter doesn't have much content this year, but it will be included moving forwards)
  • Nomination post on REDDIT: reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/18fx4wo
  • Nomination post on LEMMY: lemmy.ca/post/11110616
• You can nominate anyone but yourself
• You must nominate underneath the mod comment for that category
• You must link directly to your nomination
• Each nomination must be for one piece of content only

Some helpful links

• Previous Best Of winners: ubcwiki.ca/meta/community
• Search and sort content on Reddit

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Winning

• A single post or comment can only win once, even if nominated in multiple categories
• The winner will be the entry in each category with the most upvotes
• Mods can be nominated, but if they win any of the categories, the prizes will go to the next eligible nominees

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Other Details

Reddit:

• All top-level comments and non-link comments will be removed.
• Please do not downvote
• This thread will be in contest mode, so nobody will know who is winning until we announce it.

Lemmy:

• This is the first year with our Lemmy community on the Fediverse. If you don't have a Reddit account anymore and would like to vote there, feel free to copy a nomination into the Lemmy thread, or to get in touch with us to on Lemmy to discuss.
• Lemmy does not have all the same features as Reddit yet, and so the experience will be a little different. Please reach out to us or make a separate post to talk about how we can do things differently next year.

Now, go forth and nominate your favourite content from the past year, and don't forget to upvote other nominations you think should win!

You can find it here: ubcwiki.ca/general/mental-health

Hi everyone, congratulations on making it to the end of the term! We're excited to have added a new section on ubcwiki.ca, which includes an extensive list of mental health resources available to UBC students and community members.

A big thank you to u/blacknwhitelife02 for assembling this guide. She rightfully pointed out that there are a lot of resources that people don't know about, and we hope this resource can address that gap.

As always, if you have ideas for new pages or wish to update existing content, you can contribute in various ways!

From the UBC Reddit/Lemmy mod team, congratulations and best of luck with finals!

You got this.

Update for this post: https://lemmy.ca/post/5548011

I heard back and got some more details about the position. It's not restricted to CS, or students for that matter. If you are interested in applying, send me a message (link), and I'll give you the email address to apply 😄 I just didn't want to post the email address publicly.

If you are in UBC CS, you can also go here: https://my.cs.ubc.ca/students/career/volunteers-art-justice-project

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Student Volunteer Opportunity- A.R.T. & Justice Project

Are you passionate about social impact work?

A.R.T. & Justice is looking for volunteers who are interested in a pilot project in collaboration with the UBC Learning Exchange. We are currently developing a technology learning program for people who have lived/living experience of incarceration. We are hoping to develop a program where we can provide support for those leaving carceral institutions who do not have a grasp of basic technological tools; such as cyber security, file sharing, calendars, file storage, etc. Our work is peer-led and we plan on co-developing a step by step guide that can be shared with those who are transitioning back into society. This volunteer work will both be in-person and online. We are currently meeting 30min-1 hour a week to go over our progress work. Work is expected to be done independently and as a team.

Qualifications:

• Previous experience volunteering (with marginalized or vulnerable populations an asset)
• An attitude of curiosity, caring and flexibility when working with our peers and knowing that all are welcomed
• A comfort, openness and respect for working with people as they are, including life experiences, culture, identity, beliefs, and values
• Strong interpersonal communications skills, specifically in the areas of empathy, listening, attentiveness and checking for understanding
• Intermediate knowledge of technological tools (such as google drive, outlook, etc)

Duties:

• Assist in-person work sessions
• Help with set-up and take-down of in-person sessions
• Work on co-developing a step-by-step guide for the project
• Attend project zoom meetings in regards to guide development updates
• Report to the Project Coordinator

Training:

• There is no formal training, there will be a welcome meeting to introduce you to the project and orient you to the tasks.

Time commitment:

• Volunteer screening: 15 min interview
• Zoom call: 30min- 1 hr weekly until project completion (Goal is January 2024)
• Independent work: TBD, based on project goals
• 3-hour test workshop to implement program and see if changes need to be made (Date TBD in November/December)

To apply:

Send an email sharing your previous experiences and why you are interested in working with us! We are happy to work with students on a one-time or re-occurring basis and will schedule meetings to work around student schedules.

> SEE TOP OF POST FOR EMAIL

I'm not involved, but I can pass on questions to a friend that knows more. If you are in CS, you should also be able to find this information in the UBC newsletters. I don't think the role is limited to people in CS, and I can pass on messages if you would like to apply but can't access the form.

> A.R.T and Justice Project > > Are you passionate about social impact work? A.R.T. & Justice is looking for volunteers who are interested in a pilot project in collaboration with the UBC Learning Exchange. We are currently developing a technology learning program for people who have lived/living experience of incarceration. > > We are hoping to develop a program where we can provide support for those leaving carceral institutions who do not have a grasp of basic technological tools; such as cyber security, file sharing, calendars, file storage, etc. Our work is peer-led and we plan on co-developing a step by step guide that can be shared with those who are transitioning back into society. This volunteer work will both be in-person and online. Interested students can learn more about the opportunity and application details on myCS.

Link: https://my.cs.ubc.ca/students/career/volunteers-art-justice-project (possibly just for UBC CS)

Link: ubcwiki.ca

As we head into the new school year, we are finally excited to announce the launch of the new UBC Wiki! This wiki was started years ago by the /r/UBC moderation team, and it just never got to a point where it was ready to be shared with the community. We are now ready to get it going again, and we hope that it will become a useful resource for everyone.

Over the next few days, we will be swapping out outdated links and content to this new wiki website. We hope that this new wiki will be easier to navigate and more accessible to all students. Having the wiki off site also means that we can make changes more quickly and easily, and that it isn't affected by the limitations of one platform.

Over the next while, we will be adding more content to the wiki, and updating content that was written for the old wiki. We will also periodically post a thread for one particular topic to crowdsource information from the community. This should help us keep the wiki up to date and detailed.

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The UBC Wiki is intended to be a community project, and we welcome contributions from all UBC community members. If you would like to contribute, you can see the instructions on this page, or see below:

• Submit your suggestions or corrections using this Google form
• Send us a modmail on Reddit or message Otter on Lemmy
• Discuss in the UBC Reddit and Lemmy communities
• Share the wiki with your friends and classmates

If you are familiar with GitHub, you can also create an issue, or implement the changes yourself and submit a pull request into the STAGING branch. New ideas submitted by other means will be added as issues.

---

Technical details about the wiki can be found on the ⚙️UBCWiki Project page.

---

We hope that you find this wiki useful, and we look forward to seeing it grow and improve over time. Welcome to the new school year, and good luck with your studies!

Quoted:

> UPDATE: UBC Okanagan is under evacuation order. Please leave campus immediately. If you are on campus and do not have access to transportation, please make your way to H Lot. > > Everyone else, please leave the area immediately in a calm and orderly manner.

Recieved from a friend with UBC staff. I'll update with a direct link once it's available

If you have the option, you may want to avoid that part of campus

> Powerhouse Construction has caused fumes to be released into Klinck building. Everyone is required to evacuate the building and not re-enter until advised.

Table of contents

1. Admissions

---

--- Content Past here has yet to be organized ---

FAQs:

• Incoming first year? No idea where to start? Look here for a tutorial on how to register and pick your classes.
• Official UBC Admissions Website

Student Resources:

• RENEW YOUR UPASS
• UBC Registration Tools - helpful tools for course registration / grades analysis.
• UBC Club and Student Group Database - Reviews of on-campus clubs and an actually usable alternative to the AMS Clubhouse directory.
• UBC Grades - grade distributions for previous offerings of all classes offered at UBC. Complemented by UBC Profstats, which offers grading variations by instructors.
• CourseRatings.ca - Reviews of UBC Courses
• Room Schedule/Timetable - find class and room schedules (and empty rooms to study in!)
• Vancouver General Hospital Access & Assessment Centre for referrals and assessment. It is a good starting point for getting help with improving your mental health.
• AMS Services: resources for UBC students such as a food bank, Safewalk, tutoring, advocacy, and Peer Support services
• Centre For Accessibility - For obtaining academic concessions, and other mattters relating to accommodation any physical and mental hardships.
• Student Support - A general index of all UBC support services for students, with support services for academic, financial, health and other issues.
• Student Health Service - medical clinic w/ Mental Health & Sports Medicine
• UBC Wayfinding - campus map and building information
• UBC Lost and Found - lost something on campus? Check here!
• Free software - You can get Office, MATLAB, a VPN, and more, all for free.
• Housing Chances & Improving your YRH Chances

Other Useful Places:

• The Ubyssey - your student-run campus newspaper
• CiTR - your student radio station

Stargazing with a Show

August 27 @ 8:00 pm - 11:30 pm UBC Botanical Garden 6804 SW Marine Drive Vancouver, V6T 1Z4

!event poster

Details quoted below:

> We welcome you to an evening of stargazing and entertainment, to combine science and wellness for a beautiful evening to end the summer! Get ready to be mesmerized by the wonders of the night sky as Saturn and the Moon are visible at the same time, while enjoying special acoustic performances from Fionn and LÉRAL! > > Bring your friends and family along to this incredible event where you’ll have the opportunity to witness the beauty of the cosmos up close. Our knowledgeable guides from the UBC Astronomy Club will lead you on an immersive journey through the night sky, pointing out constellations, planets, and other celestial objects. > > Whether you’re an astronomy enthusiast or simply looking for a unique evening out, Stargazing with a Show is the perfect event for you. Don’t miss this chance to connect with the universe and create lasting memories under the night sky.

Dates & Time: Every Wednesday from Wed. Jul. 5 to Wed. Aug. 23, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Location: Grass field by Main Mall & Stores Road (by ESB)

UTown@UBC is hosting weekly outdoor yoga on campus, rain or shine, every Wednesday starting from July 5 to August 23! Check out the details on what yoga classes there will be, what to bring, and more about the weekly event here.

He begins November 1, 2023. Thoughts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit-Antoine_Bacon

You can renew your U-Pass at this webpage.

Thanks for using public transit!

Original post by https://www.reddit.com/user/oui_oui-baguette

https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/150pupj/exciting_minecraft_ubc_project_update/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1418762

> I've made a number of improvements since the last time I was posting about my extension. The update is now available on both Firefox and Chrome web stores. > > For questions / support: !instance_assistant@lemmy.ca > > TLDR: See the respective download pages on Firefox & Chrome. The screenshots and features list are mostly self-explanatory. > > Note on versions: > * Firefox has a more recent 1.2.1 version, because my build script missed some files while uploading v1.2.0. It doesn't look like Chrome had this issue. > * I'm uploading v1.2.2 to both stores today, which will bring the two missing features to Chrome as well. After 1.2.2, all browsers should have the same features. See below for details. > > --- > > ## So how is this different from other similar extensions? > > You may have noticed the extension's name changed to be more generic (and include Kbin 🥳). I'm trying to make this a more well-rounded extension, and that means I've incorporated some features from the other extensions, in my own way. > > ### Lemmy Links, Kbin Links, and the other forks: > This is a great extension that replaces links on your page with versions that go to your home instance. However, in order for this to work, it needs to recursively check every element on your page whenever DOM content (the stuff the browser is reading) changes. This is somewhat resource intensive, and while testing I ran into lag and freezing issues. As such, I decided to not include this functionality in the same way. > > Instead, I've added a right click context menu that does the same thing. This way the user can pick which links they want the extension to convert, and it's a lot more efficient resource wise. While it's an extra click, I felt this was a reasonable compromise. However, I'm open to feedback! > > NOTE: The context menu is available on Firefox, and it will be available in Chrome in about a week, depending on when they approve my update. > > ### Lemmy Home Instance Helper > > This is another extension which checks if you are logged in to an instance, and it creates a button to the search page if you are not. As my extension creates a button on any foreign instance, the search page is only helpful when a community hasn't been loaded into your home instance yet (ex. because you're the first one to try accessing it). > > To deal with this, my extension modifies the "Community not found" pages with more instructions, as well as buttons to trigger the fetch process or to open the community elsewhere. See this screenshot for an example. Again, open to feedback! > > --- > > As always, I'd love to collaborate with other people while building this. I'm still cleaning up my code, but feel free to look at the GitHub. If this extension gets popular, I will definitely need help for translations and for things like getting the extension on Safari (I don't have a recent Apple device to sign the extension with). > > --- > > ## Note on permissions: > > * The current versions request "Access to all sites". This is because the extension needs access to any page that contains "/c/", "/m/", or "/post/" in order to create the sidebar buttons. While the extension only looks for those pages, it will show up as "Access to all sites" when installing. Once I have a proper welcome message and settings page, I plan on making this permission optional so you can just use the popup menu if you would like. > > --- > > ## Summary of Recent Changes: > - Added support for Kbin > - Fixed issue where button wouldn't load when navigating to a community within Lemmy (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week). > - (NEW) Right-click context menu on Lemmy/Kbin community links to let you open them directly. You can test them out here: https://lemmy.ca/post/1282303 (available on Firefox, should be on Chrome in a week) > - (NEW) Information and buttons added to "Community Not Found" error pages to let you fetch the community or open it elsewhere. > - Updates to sidebar button to state the current selected instance and provide more detailed instructions as a dropdownList > - Refactored the code to remove more unnecessary permissions. > - Another pile of bugfixes, UI improvements, and better wording for instructions. > > > ## Future Plans: > - This is complete and will be in v1.2.2. Bringing over the new changes to Google Chrome. Since chrome requires Manifest 3, I still need to iron out some issues with the service workers. The missing features are all related to the background processes that are running on the Firefox version > - Pushing to other browsers: Microsoft Edge & Opera are still reviewing v1.2.0. Unfortunately, I don't have any immediate plans for Safari, as I don't have a device that can sign the extension. I am looking into getting help for that. > - Setting up a proper Welcome page, Settings page, and Options menu to allow users to turn off features that they don't like. This will also let me make "access to all sites" optional. > - Finishing the translations' setup so that people can contribute other languages to the extension. > - Adding an option to save your own instances to the popup, for those that have multiple home instances.

What are your experiences with trying to get help through Science Advising/using the Academic Calendar to get answers? Personally I've never used Science Advising and found all of my info through the Academic Calendar. Inspired by the linked reddit post.

Compared to every other university community I've seen on lemmyverse.net/communities, we have a lot more members.

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?