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Interview with the scientist who’s writing the Webb photos alt text
- curiousgal 4y ago
- blackbear_ 4y agoWhy is that?
- curiousgal 4y agoBecause it doesn't really mean anything nowadays does it? For instance the guy in question majored in History and Education.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoEducation isn't a science?
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoNo, why do you think it is? You can do science in an educational setting, and education often relies on results from psychology or biology, but it's not a science. Some would argue that educationalists often experiment on children, but that's not the goal (and of course that's a minor aspect of education).
- reaperducer 4y agoThis will be news to the millions of people who have earned Bachelors of Science degrees in Education.
- dwringer 4y agoIronically, Sir Isaac Newton (whom I'd consider a scientist) actually earned a Bachelor of Arts. I would say the degree doesn't matter, the practice of science is what makes a scientist.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Ironically, Sir Isaac Newton (whom I'd consider a scientist) actually earned a Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of Science didn't exist until the mid 19th century. Historically, the four faculties of arts, law, divinity, and theology each had bachelors and terminal (eventually standardized as doctor for all except arts, and master for arts) degrees. The explosion of other degrees (and masters as an intermediate degree, rather than a terminal one, in many fields) is a relatively recent phenomenon.
- bombcar 4y agoWhich is indicative of how the word has changed; scientist now means more "knowledge worker" than it does "person doing careful experiments to discover new things".
- curiousgal 4y agoHence my initial point ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- curlftpfs 4y agoOh come on, most attorneys have Juris Doctor degrees, we don't call them Dr. Lawyer. I know an illustrator with a B.S. in design.
- reaperducer 4y agoOh come on, most attorneys have Juris Doctor degrees, we don't call them Dr. Lawyer. There are lots of people we call "doctor." The ones with Ph.D's. And some of them are lawyers, and are addressed as "doctor." Also interesting: There was an HN comment a few weeks ago that pointed to a helpful link which demonstrated that the idea of "doctor" didn't start with medical doctors and spread to other disciplines, it was the other way around. I know I was surprised.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoIt sounds like you don't really know what science is, or education.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoYeah, science is so dumb, isn't it? /s
- O__________O 4y agoMeta: Super confusing how the way the links are formatted makes them look like strikethrough-text; this link explains the term if you’re not familiar with it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough
- ldjb 4y agoThe links appear underlined for me (using Firefox), not strikethroughed, and look perfectly fine.
- O__________O 4y agoAppears to be related to text-size settings, since if I enlarge the text, issue disappears.
- ldjb 4y agoInteresting. I know a lot of websites are designed with a font size of 16pt in mind, and you'll tend to encounter issues if you set the size to anything else. I find that rather a shame.
- O__________O 4y agoUsed the same text settings for years, never seen this issue before.
- curlftpfs 4y agoYeah, devs use `border-bottom` to get fancy but often don't test edge cases where it causes a strikethrough instead of an underline
- JoeyBananas 4y agoAn incredibly Lovecraftian job
- JoeyBananas 4y agoHe must have been the new guy.
- curlftpfs 4y agoIs "alt text" a colloquialism understood by laymen? I typically use the term "text alternatives" when speaking with clients. It's a specific attribute, it might be supplanted by `aria-label`, etc https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/conformance#text-alternatives https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/conformance#text...
- coldpie 4y agoI think it broadly is, yes. For example the text is available by an "ALT" button in the bottom-left of the image on Twitter, https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1546621080298835970 https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1546621080298835970 The name most likely comes from the "alt" attribute for "img" tags in HTML, if I were to guess.