Introducing Slashdot's New Build Section

Along with the rest of the mix that makes this site work, Slashdot has nearly two decades now of spotting and showing off interesting projects, inventions, technologies, and hobbies. Some of them are strictly personal, some are frankly commercial, and some are the fruits of ambitious organizations (or tiny teams) motivated by curiosity and passion (or even politics, or just plain fun). As outlined earlier, we've been gathering a lot of these into our new Build section; read on to learn a bit more about what that includes. (And watch out later today for the first part of our conversation with technology-inspiring Rennaisance Man Tim O'Reilly, and later in the week for answers to the questions you asked Bunnie Huang.)

The Build section puts under one big virtual roof makerspace visits, interviews with technologists and innovators, and hands-on projects and inventions. Not everything you'll find in the Build section can be built with a soldering iron and some duct tape (worthy projects can come from a large company, a university or a DARPA competition just as well as from a personal workshop, and different resources mean different constraints and possibilities), but all of it should be inspirational: it's a big umbrella, and it can include projects that incorporate biotech, new materials, creative use of sensors, 3-D printing, hardware built to be hackable, cooking, robots, and re-purposing equipment that without a dose of practical creativity might be consigned to a junk-heap, but don't have to be.

Just like the rest of Slashdot, the Build section combines reader-suggested, editor-curated stories with original content, like video visits to the hackerspaces and makerspaces where some of these projects and technologies emerge, and interviews with some of the people behind the (happily booming) culture of invention. Most of the stories that appear in the Build section will also appear on the main section of the site, but reading the Build section itself means getting a concentrated dose of cool endeavors, as well as some section-exclusive posts. Expect the occasional small give-away, and most importantly send along your tips and suggestions for projects you'd like to see explored here.

What inspires you, inspires Slashdot.

We commenters could freshen CSS, keep functions in

[raymorris]

It occurs to me that we on Slashdot are a knowledgeable crowd. I was thinking about how many person-hours we've spent on saying "fuck beta". In a small fraction of that time, maybe five minutes each, we could suggest some CSS tweaks that would freshen the look (what Dice marketing department wants) without getting in the way of functionality (what we oldtimers want).

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A bunch of whiners

[werepants]

I, for one, welcome our new Making overlords. Or at least, I think this is a useful addition, so that those of us who are interested in 3D printers and Arduino and Raspberry Pi can find the articles that interest us, and those of you who aren't interested can more easily avoid them. I swear I've never heard of a group of more change-averse readers.

Re:We commenters could freshen CSS, keep functions

[Anonymous Coward]

It's gotten a lot better... all in all, it is just a blockier version of what we've got now, which I like.

It is still missing a couple of killer features in the comments area, the big one being the one-line display of comments that are above 0 but not above 2. This little thing is really essential to follow the conversation while only reading the good stuff. As soon as beta has it, I'll move; as long as they don't, I won't.