I would like to start by thanking everyone who has supported this project through story-submissions, comments, feedback, patience, bug-hunting (the list goes on). Also a huge thanks for the many that have purchased subscriptions. While we can't pay any employees or lawyers yet, it looks like we'll be able to cover server costs going forward, which is a good start.
We'd like to spread the word about SoylentNews, and as we currently aren't pursuing social-media or advertising, we've been brainstorming ideas on how to do so. It occurred to us that word-of-mouth got us here, and it's part of the reason this community is so organic, so we are curious: where else do you spend your time on 'the net'? Would other communities with whom you're associated be interested in SoylentNews? Would they fit in here? Would you be willing to drop a link for us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:32PM
I also hang out at slashdot. Sure, I'll drop a link there.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:33PM
Hell yes. I hang out on Google+, and Linux & Android groups there would probably be quite interested in if they're not already of Soylent News. I think I did before, but as we're really still just starting up, posting something every few months would probably be a good idea. Despite what people think, Google+ is very active, it just tends to be more targeted to specific interests than FaceBook or Twitter.
(Score: 1) by FuzzyTheBear on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:35PM
The Register , good source of IT news . http://theresgister.co.uk/ [theresgister.co.uk] and in the older days the excellent Groklaw site now just a shadow of the past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:07PM
I gave up on the Register when it became obvious that a sizable number of its posters are total assholes, and the moderators couldn't give a flying fuck unless you dare criticise Lewis "Retarded Cockhole" Page in which case your posts get deleted and you get naughty-stepped. I still read it for the news most days (ignoring the likes of global warming articles and the tiresomely unamusing stabs at humour like Bootnotes and BOFH) but I gave up on the forums quite some time back.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:25PM
ISTR looking at the forum at some point and deciding not to bother in future. They vanished off my RSS list because they employ Andrew Orlowski (sp? Not looked at the site for a long time) to write click-bait stories. Eurogamer.net has been of rapidly decreasing quality since the last editor took over and I stopped reading that site when this Gamergate (and that's *still* a stupid name) shite broke; what was initially a moderately interesting story worthy of investigation - and eurogamer themselves seem, on the surface, to be clean and free of slashvertising, so were perhaps in a better place to investigate than outfits like Polygon or RPS - their response to the whole story was pure tabloid knee-jerk tripe worthy of the Daily Heil.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday October 08 2014, @01:19AM
Not a fan of Orlowski's articles either, but it doesn't diminish the worth of the rest of the site. There's still good IT news stuff there, and the writers are varied enough that I don't get that echo chamber feeling that most sites of the type seem to have. They have pro- and anti-apple writers, for example, so you get a bit of both sides depending on the article and the writer.
Even their fluff pieces are something of a guilty pleasure. The "Something for the Weekend, Sir?" pieces by Alistair Dabbs are usually amusing, and Lester Haines does a lot of oddball ranging from house tech projects to a "mutt's nuts" dictionary [theregister.co.uk].
As for Eurogamer, I'd say we're probably all better off avoiding the attention of them and probably any other gaming sites. Gaming journalism has never been particularly high-quality, but their migration to the internet seems to have attracted all the worst kind of commenters.
their response to the whole story was pure tabloid knee-jerk tripe worthy of the Daily Heil.
I already said this in that Intel/Gamasutra article at more length, but that's what happens when one side of a dispute has complete control of the "narrative". From that perspective, I find the whole thing interesting, because we're getting to see how narrative control can skew an issue and completely gloss over the parts that don't "fit the narrative" regardless of their merit or importance.
I play plenty of games, but don't really get involved in those communities, and I find the whole drama interesting because of it, even as an outside observer.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:08PM
The register is terrible, HURTS MY EYES to even LOOK at the headlines, let alone READ THE ARTICLE
(Score: 1) by jbernardo on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:25PM
The register used to be good, but I recently gave up and deleted my account there (dating back to 2002). The Microsoft adverts passing as articles were be, but suddenly any criticism of ANDrew ORlowski or of Lewis "climate change denier" Page rants, as well as any criticism of Microsoft or even of the dumb "right to privacy" decision of the European Court, become enough to land your commentator in a "naughty" list. From then on, all comments are subject to censorship before being published, and refused if you dare to criticise any of these subjects, even lightly.
I managed to praise the reg enough to be taken out of the list once, but as soon as I dared criticise one of the forbidden subjects, I was back again, and after having a couple of posts refused, I gave up.
AND/OR seems to still be butt-hurt with the old "second power" Google bomb twelve years ago, and Lewis seems a crazy militaristic climate change denier. The only writer there that still writes decently is Trevor Pott.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Preston on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:48PM
I've always felt that adding users for the sake of doing so, and begging others to join to be damaging to an online community. Simply sharing a story with a friend by sending them a link whenever something interesting comes about should suffice. I agree with the idea of not pushing the site via "social networks" but find link dropping tacky at best.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:57PM
Posting interesting stories in relevant online communities is a nice compromise too. Add "See comments for relevant discussion" to the post to make sure they see the benefit of a site like this.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:15PM
Posting interesting stories in relevant online communities is a nice compromise
Thank you. This is what I had in mind. Relevant links where applicable, get the word out to the right kinds of people, not just random link dropping.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:01PM
Do we really want to enable individuals from the cesspool that general social media is currently to come here? People can still find this site by them self if they bother to use search engines properly. Think of it as an implicit filter.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:09PM
Because this is a discussion site, I wouldn't think it would be high on a search list . A discussion site needs to build it's reputation by quality and there needs to be a little bit of effort put into spreading awareness.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:35PM
Then let's hope people will only make carefully selected sites aware of this site on purpose.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:01PM
Then let's hope people will only make carefully selected sites aware of this site on purpose.
I just posted links all over TMA. Can't go wrong with TMZ.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:28PM
My thoughts exactly. The last thing they need is another medium to post cat photos and stupid Internet memes.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Wednesday October 08 2014, @10:44AM
Well here's you a nice Unicode kitty: 🐱
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:45PM
Case in point: A colleague saw me watching this video, instead of sending him the link [youtube.com] I sent him the link to the comment [youtube.com] where I found the link. For other sites, I usually try to spread the primary source if I consider it interesting. When I find something interesting on soylentnews, I usually send the link to the summary here.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:46PM
F*ck. I meant this [soylentnews.org] message.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:17PM
I expected a rickroll, that being tradition, but that was actually a pretty interesting link.
(Score: 1) by zenlessyank on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:52PM
Well that tackiness is what got me here...... Saw a comment on Slashdot that basicly read "Enough of this shit..soylentnews.org", and since the thought of ground up humans for food as a website appealed to me, I decided to check it out. And here I am. Non-anon I might add. I believe the phrase goes like this.....ALL THINGS IN MODERATION.
Now back to topic....As someone mentioned...The Register is cool, and I also like HardOCP (http://www.hardocp.com), Guru3D (http://www.guru3d.com), AND for the Linux Virus(/s) I Like (http://lxer.com).
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Tuesday October 07 2014, @11:38PM
I'll go against the tide here and say that some new users would be good. I feel generally that a lot of the comments come from common sources that I frequent anyways, like Techdirt or Ars Technica, and I would like seeing a little more variety in the sources of articles posted. Another thing that I really liked about /. when it was cool was that we would get all kinds of technical experts commenting on matters from software and hardware to natural sciences to software patents (like Florian Mueller! ha ha).
I think it would also be nice if we had a few more people using their modpoints. A lot of the SN posts that I click on have over a hundred posts, but only 5-10 above score 3 which is the default for users with no cookies set.
I definitely agree that we don't want to get more posters and moderators simple for the purpose of increasing the noise level, but I do think a few more insightful eyes and mouths around here would be welcome.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:49PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zinho on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:50PM
From all the XKCD [xkcd.com] references posted here I'd guess there are more than a few connection between this site and that. The hangout part is the forums, [xkcd.com] whose link is currently a bit hidden. Come join the discussion!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:57PM
PS - link already dropped in June. [xkcd.com]
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:59PM
"Would other communities with whom you're associated be interested in SoylentNews?"
Hacker news, and probably not, they're really stuck deep in "success thru social conformity" and startup foolishness and intense focus on geography and meatspace because of the whole VC thing.
That said, some topics, at least one a day , are almost accidentally on topic both here and there.
Its kind of a cosmo magazine in that most of it doesn't mean anything important but it lets you know what "our" computer / internet / IT / CS equivalent of the fashion and fad world thinks, which is sometimes interesting, often kind of tiring.
Reddit is pretty interesting but I mostly just lurk there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:15PM
http://news.ycombinator.com/ [ycombinator.com]
I also visit that site, but a lot of the people there are surprisingly hostile to free/open source software. I think it's because a lot of them make money by selling software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:47PM
Many of them are just hostile to freedom in general. It isn't limited to software. It extends to freedom of thought and freedom of expression, too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cykros on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:46PM
All too true. The cheering over the removal of Mozilla's CEO was a little sickening, even to a pro-gay rights guy like myself. You either respect the rights of everyone, or you're doing nothing but supporting a division between privilege and oppression.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @12:38AM
That was an abysmal event. The intolerance they collectively engaged in far exceeded any that Eich may have exhibited.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:20PM
LOL AC there is a classic parody of HN along the lines of "I wrapped someone else's open source project in twitter bootstrap now where is my billion dollar buyout?"
I just about peed myself laughing at that because its so painfully accurate about HN culture and startup culture in general.
Its not ALL that bad, not at all.
(Score: 1) by pmontra on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:59PM
Me too. It's got a lot of interesting posts, usually a few hours or a full day before they appear here or on the other green site. Sadly I discovered it only because of the beta affair. Somebody mentioned it in a post about where to go next. I wish I had known about it much earlier than that.
(Score: 2) by Papas Fritas on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:02PM
Best regards,
Hugh Pickens
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:22PM
Correction, the stories you submit to HN the next day, or maybe the day after. Just sayin.
Sometimes SN is just HN on a two day tape delay which is weird deja vu.
(Score: 4, Informative) by GlennC on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:16PM
A couple of my favorite tech comedy sites are:
The Daily WTF - http://thedailywtf.com/ [thedailywtf.com]
Tech Support Comedy - http://www.techcomedy.com/ [techcomedy.com]
And a not necessarily tech site is Not Always Working - http://notalwaysworking.com/ [notalwaysworking.com]
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday October 08 2014, @01:36PM
If you like nowalwaysworking.com, you'll also like clientsfromhell.net [clientsfromhell.net]. Slightly different focus on type of stories, but otherwise, same thing.
I hadn't heard of a couple of these. Thanks for the new sites. :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:19PM
If you want to attract more users, you'll need more resources to cater to them. These resources will need to be paid for. At some point, if you want to keep the service (pseudo-)free, you'll sell out to the advertising and data mining companies that are up to no good, just to pay the bills. And then you'll turn into yet another "social network" that the initial users of your service so wanted to get away from.
Just keep SN quiet and let it putter along. Those who want it will find it. Those who don't don't need to be here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:31PM
Assuming SN doesn't start HOSTING videos, won't costs of running the site theoretically decline over time? Sooner if it was using cloud hardware.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:47PM
Traffic is likely to increase over time. The problem is that "modern" discussion sites implement the end user interface by using scripts and html. Whereas a server that just takes care of message processing would have a substantial lower load.
Cloud hardware is a bad idea because it will allow spying and manipulation without recourse.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:52PM
As far as i understand it there isnt really a benefit to running the slash code in a cloud set up.
The hosting costs at Linode arent bad; but the admins are looking at how best to have both failover and minimal setup.
As for how to pay for it - thats why we have subscriptions and the swag store.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:50PM
If the exact cost breakdown of running this site was explained to us in detail, I'm sure that many of us here could find ways to effectively reduce the expense.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:17PM
Either that, or figure out a way to do distributed hosting with it. No simple task, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be awesome if someone could figure out a decent way to make it work.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:26PM
I've been reading Risks Digest [ncl.ac.uk] for 20+ years. It taught me to look at software engineering from the perspective of "how will it break" rather than "depend on the best case scenario." It is kind of grey-beardy, it was grey-beardy even 20 years ago. But it is very low volume, a digest twice a week or so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:41PM
I made a comment (as AC) in this post and another AC even replied to me. Now both are missing. WTF?
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/10/06/0234252 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:40PM
I've had that happen multiple times as well.
When there are enough comments that those spill over to a 2nd page is when it will happen.
The long-form article page (sid=14/10/05/206249&startat=50) doesn't contain the comment, while the short-form subthread page (sid=4237&cid=103171) can still be accessed.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:43PM
Meh, it's worth a shot, if you do subtle name-dropping in forums like /g/ and /sci/, stay away from /b/ and the porn-related boards, and don't look like an obvious viral marketing campaign. You'll get a lot of smart people who enjoy arguing, which will make for lively discussion. The only problem is that there are a lot of people here with thin skin who go crying to mommy when people say bad words.
Should offset all the people whining about racism and sexism in the tech world, however.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:26PM
Should offset all the people whining about racism and sexism in the tech world, however.
I'm thinking name dropping in /pol/ might be a bit overboard.
What 4chan has a lot of is people who don't give a F about mass media journalism and conformity, because if they did, the endless idiotic attack pieces the mainstream media drops would repel them.
Of course moot is pissing people off with gamergate censorship and the like so there's the 8chan issue which is basically a repeat of how /. gave birth to SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:48PM
> people who enjoy arguing
I would much rather have civil discussion. It is more interesting and elucidating than arguing. A culture of argumentativeness promotes arguing for its own sake.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by arulatas on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:03PM
M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!
A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!
M: Oh! Oh I see!
A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y [youtube.com]
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Tuesday October 07 2014, @06:37PM
First, why? Why would you want to inflict 4chan on us? Did laminatorx eat your baby and you're trying to get back at him or something?
Second, the instant they figure out you're trying to "virally market" to them, expect SN to be overwhelmed with crapflooding.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:05PM
I can quite relate to your position, and I'm certainly not a regular, but the purely anonymous character of the board makes competence shine.
You can have a look ath the technology /g/ board, they have a rolling Lisp thread, algorithm roulette for when you're bored, and lots of interesting stuff... you just need to swim in a pool of shit to find it.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:16PM
WRT "Would they fit in here?", the target market would be people who don't fit there. Where "there" might very well be some parts of 4chan.
I don't think /pol/ and /b/ in general are coming here because they're pretty happy where they are, err, they aren't likely coming here anyway. So I wouldn't worry much about the overall behavior of /b/. /b/ are actually very nice people unless provoked. Once provoked you got outta control mob mentality where nobody is to blame for anything bad happening, so lots of bad happening occurs. But unless/until provoked, they're a good cross section of real society on average basically good folks with the occasional bad apple.
You might get individuals to occasionally come here and participate on topics that don't fit on 4chan but do fit here, so no problemo.
You are probably right about the viral bit. If /b/ comes as a group to visit due to miserably failed marketing, its not going to be to talk and its not going to be pretty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:48PM
No you won't.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday October 07 2014, @11:29PM
Well, you will. But they will be crowd surfing a wave of turds.
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Wednesday October 08 2014, @10:34AM
I'm all with you there. I enjoy /g/ a lot even if I noticed a sever drop in the overall quality of the posts there. I'm not really one of these "4chan is dead" kind of guy, but I think that the most clever and interesting users gradually move out... and I don't know where they're going.
All we have left are the usual battle-station threads, the dubious accusations of shilling gradually making it a "consumer electronics" board.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @12:17AM
> and I don't know where they're going.
Personally, I've been enjoying lainchan.org a lot more than /g/. it has more quality discussion, and the admin seems to show no mercy to people who want to start stuff like system wars.
(Score: 2) by ngarrang on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:57PM
I stopped going to many web sites directly a long time ago. I use Feedly as my RSS aggregator.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:24PM
Me too, and before Feedly I used Google Reader for many years.
I still have to open SoylentNews website every now and then to check for new polls,
as they are not included in the feed.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Tuesday October 07 2014, @06:15PM
At this time of year, I hang out in a tree in the woods, with my bow.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by Nerdanel on Tuesday October 07 2014, @06:20PM
I found All The Tropes [orain.org] and now that I look, it has a page for Slashdot, so Soylent News should fit in well too. I'm not sure exactly which tropes Soylent News adheres to (other than Message Board), so making a good, cross-referenced work page looks pretty difficult. Well, at least I can update the Slashdot page to mention the beta debacle, not that I expect that it will get widely read.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday October 07 2014, @06:21PM
osnews.com [osnews.com].
It's much slower-moving that Slashdot or Soylent. (Closer to Pipedot, I guess.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:12PM
Oh, and, as it seems no-one's mentioned them (I find this rather surprising): Pipedot [pipedot.org], SoylentNews's cousin in the we're-not-Slashdot space.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:08PM
I've seen sites ask for linkbombing and the results are always the same, you end up with every nutbar with a cause, from the SJWs to the ultra left and right, because these people are ALWAYS looking for yet another place to "spread the message" and shit their politics all over the screen. We already have enough of that with the flamebait YRO style political shit we have been getting lately, which I might add had exactly fuck and all to do with tech and read like something copypasta'd from HuffyPo, we really do NOT need to let the crazies know there is another place they can whip off an account in 3 minutes and start thumping their bibles!
If people come here let it be because they want actual TECH NEWS AND VIEWS instead of the usual slanted crap we see every day on Gawker and Escapist, not because we linkbombed trying to get warm bodies. If you want to go that route you might as well just fill the front page with links from articles by SJVN and HuffyPo flamebaits and troll for page views like PCWorld.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday October 08 2014, @12:11PM
Hmm but normal people don't fork or support forking websites and if you're not normal then normal people call you crazy so it's the normal people you don't want not the crazies :)
Other than that I agree.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:12PM
No, Linkbombing isn't what is being asked for; we dont need a viral or advertising type campaign.
What we need is more people interested in our type of news; and interested in discussing it.. and we have to find ways to get the site to those people. that has to happen by word of mouth/ posting links in appropriate places. otherwise we're not going to draw new people in.
Bombing a site, or a forum in a massive or concentrated effort is only going to make people hate us before they give us a chance.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday October 09 2014, @04:26AM
But what kind of defenses have you in place if this attracts those with a cause? Because from what I've seen on those terribly slanted YRO style articles we had in the past few weeks this site ALREADY has serious issues with modbombing and/or sockpuppetry, again see the Brown article where even those that asked for more info or said we should wait until the grand jury had finished before rushing to judgement got buried.
If you want an influx of new readers you had better be ready to deal with the bible thumpers and those with a cause because if you're not? See slash with Mikey(insert number) who is up to 4 digits on his account, see the problems I had with a cyberstalker, ATM I have serious doubts that if the users were to suddenly jump by a couple orders of magnitude the system will handle it. What are you doing to keep the mod system from having a political bias? What are you doing to insure that those at the top don't slant the conversation by rewarding their allies and punish their enemies, ala Timothy? what safeguards do you have in place to keep another modbomb like the brown article, which just FYI has modpoints in the hundreds used within a couple hours, from happening again?
I think before we try to recruit new users we should know what those users have in store, after all its OUR rep that is being put out there after all.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:59PM
"we currently aren't pursuing ... advertising"
I detect a slight flaw in the ointment. Can anyone think of any group on the entire internet more likely to have adblockers than SN users or theoretical future SN users?
Think of the kind of users most likely to have never heard of the concept of adblocking or actually enjoying looking at ads because they're so shiny. Someone I don't think they'll add much to the discussion.
I've seen the internet without ad blocking. Man, its ugly out there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:11PM
Google is the most successful advertising business in history and they do that without graphics or SWF or any such shit.
They do it with TEXT of various font densities, colors, and sizes plus HTML background colors. That's all.
-- gewg_ (who admits he has lots of stuff like ##div.sharedaddy in his AdBlock list; I may have to download that text-based shit, but I don't have to LOOK at it.) [adblockplus.org]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday October 08 2014, @12:47PM
They can't show the text if the script is blocked and I block everything from both Google and whatever site I'm visiting. It's the NoScript default and it's rare for me to make exceptions (and then only temporarily). If you think that makes me odd (and it does I guess, I have no idea how many people use NoScript, a few million people?) consider that some people simply remove/turn off all JavaScript. Either way they/I see no Google ads or any other ads (it wont even be downloaded) unless the ads are simple images hosted directly by the site (almost no sites do this).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @06:02PM
I was thinking of the stuff that appears on the google.com pages for search returns.
Everything there is text that is inline with the other text.
The pages are built in such a way that it's impossible to block.
I've tried. (The Aardvark extension for Gecko browsers is handy.)
Anyone who has been paying attention for the last decade is selective about what he allows to download|appear on his screen.
So, yeah, on my box, anything that isn't readable text--especially stuff hosted on a server other than the page I want to consume--gets blocked by default with the exception of a very short whitelist.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday October 11 2014, @09:57PM
Ah yes you're right, I didn't think about that.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday October 08 2014, @05:40AM
I would only add that not only are ads a severe malware vector which any IT guy with a brain is gonna block by default but that the funding drive was working great UNTIL...they started putting YRO articles like the brown case that had fuck all to do with tech or IT and was obviously meant to let the SJWs beat their bibles and modbomb all those that aren't in their camp. Before that the numbers were climbing steadily, after? donations dried up and blew away like a fart in the breeze.
You can't sell yourself as an alternative to slash and then pull that YRO flamebait bullshit, the guys that come here by and large came here to get AWAY from all the ultra left SJW political bullshit and just wanted a site like the old slash were nerds could come and talk about nerdy things. I have a feeling within 6 months this site will be another PCWorld, filled with flamebait articles to pump up the SJWs and get the clicks, if so what is the advantage of being here over slash?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:01PM
"we currently aren't pursuing ... advertising"
just for that reason. Ad block. If we had a poll i bet that 99% of the community has ad block on.
Still we have to look at ways to pay for the site - you can't run the place for free.
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:08PM
If anyone knows where The Baffler community hangs out, please let me know. I'll drop 'em links to a few choice discussions.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 1) by aiwarrior on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:49PM
A site/magazine I recently stumbled upon which often has very intriguing articles. Unfortunately they are available only temporarily because the site is part of a paid magazine. Even so, I have read read really good pieces. I have not invested on the issue itself because they don't seem to have an online only subscription. The additional fee to send to Europe is a bit on the high side for a mere student.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Tuesday October 07 2014, @09:43PM
Somehow it hadn't been mentioned by anyone here...
Also, /r/netsec over on reddit, and in #galaxy15radio on Freenode (not really a SERIOUS community, but bunch of guys working in various tech fields that like to drink and talk about tech news on the radio as an excuse to get away from the wives). ##Slackware on freenode as well, and a couple of stackexchange sites (unix, superuser, and once in a blue moon, serverfault or askubuntu).
I've namedropped soylentnews where I feel appropriate, to specific people. There has been interest, and I know some come around here now occasionally (whether or not they've registered, I'm not sure). I will however echo concerns about the overt "let's bulk up the userbase" campaign. Better to post links to specific stories wherever you'd normally post other news stories, and let people notice quality material as it pops up here, rather than just say "go check out the site" (sometimes, just looking at a list of articles is a bit less enticing than following a link to a specific set of stories because the headlines were enticing). Forcing things rarely helps anything, and honestly, I've only brought up the site in the absence of a specific link when Slashdot has come up in discussion (as happens often enough in tech circles). That, or when people get to talking about Soylent Green :-P.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @10:00AM
Because of being an IT professional, I check IT news every day. Because of time being a scarce resource, I had to limit myself to only 8 IT news sites - 4 in english, 4 in spanish. It was hard, quitting interesting sites such as The Register and Computerworld. The four english news sites I am reading are Ars Technica, Slashdot, Soylent News and US-CERT (of course, security matters). I read Slashdot and Soylent because I believe the most interesting news are the news submitted by the users, even tough I have never submitted one myself and are not even a registered user. Yes, I get a lot of news from Slashdot repeated in Soylent, but I don't mind.-Ignacio Agulló
(Score: 2) by bootsy on Wednesday October 08 2014, @02:15PM
Does everyone that hangs out here also check Pipedot and vice versa?
Pipedot seems to be updated a lot less frequently though. Is there anyone on that site who isn't here? Maybe I should ask that question on Pipedot.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday October 08 2014, @02:49PM
I'd suggest looking on on the Bad Science forum, which was originally started as an adjunct to Ben Goldacre's book, 'Bad Science'. I'm deliberately not linking to the book, as you can look it up easily, and I don't want to influence your choice of bookseller.
The Bad Science forums are here: http://badscience.net/forum/index.php [badscience.net]
The main forum discussing bad (or good) science is unsurprisingly the 'Bad Science' forum. The most active forum is the 'Meaningless Banter' forum, which is full of (mostly) British people, and *robust* British humour.
The Bad Science forums robot.txt disallows indexing, so you won't find postings on Google, or any other search engine that follows the rules, and the forums are *rabidly* anti-SPAM, and any form of advertising. I would advise against being a proponent of 'alternative therapies' too.
The Bad Science forums are definitely not to everybody's taste, so you may well not like them, but some Bad Science people may come here and like it. There are some *very* well qualified people that contribute.
What I would say is, if you go there, and like it, let people know that you found it via a SoylentNews posting in passing while making a sensible contribution. If your inital posting looks like an advert for SoylentNews, it will be deleted with extreme predjudice by a mod.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday October 08 2014, @03:36PM
Cloudy Nights [soylentnews.org], the definitive astronomy forum (At least in North America, not sure about other continents. There are a few other popular ones.). Though most of the Astronomy related topics that show up on SN have already been posted and well discussed there first.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:47PM
The strength of slashdot was always its moderation system. It works better than any other I've seen at floating the best comments to the top. And if I recall correctly, it took a long time for /. to organically grow on top of that to the size and influence it had in its heyday. I expect the same will be true here, too. And I don't mind it. The quality of the discussion is high, and I learn a lot from you guys who are experts in areas I'm not. I hope I contribute useful or interesting comments, too, but that's for the mods to judge, not me.
But there is a lot of room to grow in ways that mesh well with SN's raison-d'etre. I'd love to see how-to's or quasi-workshops like you'd get at a makerspace or used to in the old LUGs. Topics on the page that turn into new projects on github. Because that would take SN from being pure discussion to action and grassroots innovation, and that sort of thing lights my fire. You get that a little bit with the odd hackathon now and then, but those are so ephemeral and always stalked by so many creepy VC dudes that it kills the vibe. Having a hackathon side to the site here (with bragging rights being the top prize) would be great.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08 2014, @10:09PM
if you're a news junkie and you don't mind digging thru trash to get it then you can try the "flipboard" app on android devices?
i think it's a RSS reader you can only limitedly configure and with nice "flip" animations ... but hey INFO!