Like last month, this is a once-monthly updates for LessWrong team activities and announcements.

Please also feel free to use the comments section on this post as a Schelling point to give feedback, file bug reports, or ask questions you have about the site. (You can also email us, ask a question, use Intercom, or message us via our FB page.)

Recent Features

Link Previews

We successfully shipped Link Previews in September. Now when you hover of an embedded link you get a pop-up, for internal links to LessWrong posts you get a preview. See the full announcement here.

Improvements to the Community Map

In the course of supporting SSC Meetups Everywhere, we've made a few improvements to the community map on our Community page.

In addition to Groups and Events, now users can also add themselves to the map together with some info about what they're looking for or willing to do, e.g. someone can list themselves as willing to arrange local meetups if there are enough people in their area.
You can sign up for event and group notifications, as well as notifications for once there are N people within a given radius from you.
The UI has been improved.
The map is now more performant.

For more information about the LessWrong community section, including the different event types (LW/SSC/EA/MIRIx), see the relevant section of our FAQ.

Upcoming Features

Although we hoped to deliver them in September, the subscriptions overhaul and new editor are still under works. Unless things go terribly wrong, they should be released this month. Convert Comments to Posts is currently blocked behind some tech debt.

We might announce plans for additional near-term features once we've completed our Q4 planning.

General Updates

Petrov Day

On September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a Russian lieutenant colonel, decided not to report an [in fact false] alarm of incoming missiles from the US, thereby likely preventing nuclear war. September 26 has since become a Rationalist community holiday celebrating the calamity that did not occur that day and reminding us of the dangers present in a world powerful dual-use technologies.

LessWrong commemorated Petrov Day this year from the unilateralist curse angle and turned the site into a live exercise and experiment. A big red button was placed on the homepage and 125 users were given launch codes with the power to bring down the frontpage for 24 hours.

The LessWrong fron...

aquilax

aquilax