From time to time I find a dive into the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy useful for refreshing my memory on some ideas and concepts.

Also the MDN Learning Area is really useful for getting a handle on some web development details.

What others are you fond of, whether esoteric or exoteric*?

*

one of my other favorites is any sort of thesaurus that provides antonyms, 'cause some antonyms just aren’t as commonly used!

🤞 this federates properly this time (sorry if the old post eventually emerges, I initially posted this shortly after the Lemmy update kinda threw a wrench in things across instances)

  • steventhedev@lemmy.world
    485·
    2 years ago

    Whatever you do, make sure that you learn legally and avoid those horrible sites that steal the hard work of researchers and prevent publishers from properly incentivizing academic research by allowing just anyone to download research for free. You know, horrible sites like LibGen, SciHub, or Anna’s archive.

    Totally disgusting sites that you should definitely avoid.

    • centof@lemm.eeEnglish
      261·
      2 years ago

      Do not go to sci-hub.se! Can you believe someone had the audacity to allow access to government funded research papers for free? Everyone knows that only elite institutions deserve the benefits of publicly funded projects.

      Support your local capitalist by paying them for the content they rightfully stole.

    • stackPeek@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 years ago

      As an information, you can always rely on the wikipedia page for those sites to find the up-to-date domain, so you can avoid it at all cost!!

    • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 years ago

      As a quick reminder to everyone: Researchers have to pay to get their papers published in scientific journals. They receive no money back from those journals. The journals are all double-dipping by charging both the author and the reader to use them. It isn’t stealing from researchers when researchers don’t get paid for your usage regardless.

      In fact, one of the most ethical ways to get access to research papers is to go to journals, find the author(s) of the paper you want to read, and email them directly to politely ask for a copy. They’ll gladly send it to you for free, because they also hate the journal system that they’ve been forced into using.

    • minyakcurry@monyet.cc
      1·
      2 years ago

      I struggle to find recent publications on SciHub, y’know, to report them to the hardworking journals that tirelessly implemented paywalls.

      Any ideas how I can find papers that are within the past 6 months?

      • steventhedev@lemmy.world
        61·
        2 years ago

        Honestly - if it’s a specific article, then just email the author. Unless they’re a blowhard they’ll usually be happy to shoot off a copy of the final PDF or at least a preprint. Doubly so if you’re a grad student and say how excited you are about their research.

    • the_stat_man@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      Whoever set up these sites should be ashamed of themselves. How dare they make critical knowledge that can improve humanity freely available?

    • plactagonic@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      2 years ago

      Our teacher show us exactly how to access scihub, libgen and sites like this just for us to “avoid them”.