Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Magic!

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Earlier this year, we rolled out the SlopeTalk discussion system. My original intent was to dispose of “classic comments“, but out of consideration of those who prefer the older system, I decided to keep them both. Since that time, we’ve been grappling with the famous “disappearing comments bug“, and here on the 69th floor of the the Slope skyscraper, we have spent a lot of time and energy debugging it.

We think……….we think!……….we’ve got it. For those of you who have experienced this bug, please, for the love of all that is holy, go to whatever you use (be it SlopeTalk or classic comments) and hit Shift-F5 to make sure you’re on the latest version. Hopefully you’ll never see a comment vanish again, and if you do, and you are 100% certain you’ve refreshed your browser, please email me directly. Thank you!

Richard Prior

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Slope often gets its best ideas from users. A few weeks ago, someone suggested that, within SlopeTalk, they should be able to move through posts without having to leave SlopeTalk itself. In other words, they could click on a post (from the left column), read it, and then go forward and backward through time to look at other posts, all within the confines of the same environment. Well, it’s all ready! When you look at a post, you’ll now see buttons that let you navigate. Thanks for the idea!

Slope’s First Robot

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Slope is going to turn 18 years old this month. During that time, we’ve had something like 36,000 posts, and for every single one of them, at the bottom, I’ve had to type the words NEW POST, hyperlinked to the next post. It was a way to let people using the comments system (specifically, what we now call the “classic” comments, since all the cool kids are in SlopeTalk) know that it was time to move to the next post. I’ve seen other sites copy my behavior in this respect.

I am delighted to say I have finally fired myself from this job. Henceforth, the system itself will create this “comment“, and even better, it doesn’t bother showing it in SlopeTalk (where it has absolutely no meaning and, is in fact, superfluous garbage).

Suffice it to say I’m glad to be relieved of this tedious but vital task. Maybe I should claim that AI is behind it in order to create a media frenzy around my site.

Gold for Only Pennies

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For the first time in Slope’s nearly 18 year history, I’m finally able to do something I’ve always wanted to do, which is to give people a free trial of the site. Well, not exactly free. I’ve found in my experience that people who go for $0.00 stuff aren’t exactly great customers, but after a lot of technical wrangling, I’ve created a way to give people a super cheap (like 99 cents cheap) way to try the site. To take advantage of it, click here. It’ll get you all the privileges of the Gold membership for less than a buck. If that’s too much of a risk for you, I seriously have no idea what you think you’re doing in the world of self-directed trading. Anyhoo……….