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[Ed Note 2: Damn devs have made a liar out of me... moved it back to the original schedule noted below. - cmn32480]
[TMB Note: Site update complete. Bumped so folks will notice.]
It has been a few months since we last updated SoylentNews, and we've not been content to rest on our laurels. Our next site update is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, 2017-05-21, depending on staff availability. We'll update this story when we know for sure when it will take place.
Since this post was started, other things have come to light, so there's a bit of everything in here. Read on for the full scoop:
Web Site Changes
In this latest update (scheduled around 00:00 UTC on 5.21.2017, but we are flexible), we have made the following improvements:
- Supported subscription payments made with Bitcoin [again].
- Fixed a bug which blocked non-whole-dollar bitcoin subscriptions.
- Provided immediate feedback of theme changes.
- Added button that, when clicked, marks all comments in a story as "unread".
- Added support for "<s>" and "<strike>" tags.
- Fixed bug where a plus sign "+" in a user's nickname made their user page inaccessible from site links.
- Removed unused Javascript code.
- Made minor, non-user-facing changes (code cleanup, etc.)
Backend Changes
As always, we appreciate constructive feedback. Reply with a comment to this story, join us in #dev on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), or submit a bug on GitHub.
Separately, the team has made great strides in moving to running on Gentoo. We are taking this step very methodically, making sure we have a solid foundation in place on one server before we even think of rolling it out to the rest of our systems. Yes, that means we will be free from systemd. Kudos to NCommander, Mechanicjay, Audioguy, TheMightyBuzzard, Paulej72, and Deucalion.
SoylentNews' Folding@Home Team Update
It's amazing how spare compute cycles add up! SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team which is helping researchers find a cure for diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's — among many others. Our team was launched on Feb. 12, 2016. In just over 15 months, we have amassed well over 300 million points which places us at Team 304 out of 226564! Barring any surprises, and continuing at our current rate, we are on track to break past 300 and into the 2xx's on or about May 28th, 2017.
We are always open to receiving new team members. Contact Sir Finkus for more information, either via email at this site, or via the #Soylent or #folding channels on our IRC -- Internet Relay Chat server.
Accounts Milestone
New account creation has been relatively consistent and steady over the past year averaging out to a new account pretty much every day. It is a pleasure to inform the community that, on May 18th, account number 6600 was registered on the site.
Funding Shortfall
Lastly, it is my sad duty to inform the community that our cash intake has been seriously deficient so far this year. Our budget for the six-month period of Jan 1, 2017 through June 30, 2017 is $3,000 and we are currently at approximately half that, with less than 6 weeks to go.
We have in excess of 100 users who have been active on the site within the last 30 days whose subscription has lapsed. It is easy enough to do — I have failed to notice my own subscription's end on more than one occasion!
Plain and simple, the site needs to pay its bills. Please look at your subscription page and consider making a contribution. The dollar amounts shown in the text-entry fields are the minimum amount required for that subscription duration. We've had a few users anonymously contribute significantly more than that in the past.
Some have chosen to give a gift subscription to NCommander (UID: 2) as a sign of support. However you choose to make a contribution, please do so now.
Thank-you
-- martyb
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Justin Case on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:10PM (21 children)
The addition of the "new" flag has the potential to elevate the discussion here from cheap potshots to actual dialogue. Yeah, I think the "new" flag is that important.
Without the "new" flag it is difficult to follow the evolution of the debate. It is much easier to read it once and move along. This rewards those who comment early with snarky insults. Even if one attempts to set them right, nobody is going to come back later and read it, much less go through several iterations of back and forth until clarification (if not consensus) emerges.
So the flag is a big improvement. But I might humbly suggest that you're thinking of it a bit wrong. Suppose instead of thinking "this is a new comment (from the perspective of Justin Case)" try thinking "this comment was posted after 10:00 today".
Then, a user could set the time at which they last read the full discussion and anything newer than that time would be "new".
This becomes an issue when you accidentally navigate away from a half-read page or otherwise reload. Suddenly all those comments you intended to read, but didn't yet, are no longer "new".
I haven't thought this through exhaustively but I'm imagining perhaps a timestamp in the URL (seconds since the epoch, of course) that most of us who hang around here could tinker with as desired. With the timestamp in the URL, a reload or navigate-away-and-back would not change the subset of comments marked "new". When someone wants to update the timestamp, maybe they could select a link that is populated with the current time.
(Score: 1) by Xyem on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:34PM (2 children)
I've made a note to investigate the feasibility of this being implemented as an option. I'd even personally use it in this mode, if it was available.
Thanks for the suggestion!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:27PM (1 child)
It's extremely feasible. It'd take one data-pulling sub, one anti-bobby-tables sub, a few template changes to add the <input> tag, and a bit of logic in the main script. Call it a week of mornings. Priority is another matter entirely.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:59AM
(speaking to myself: that's not anti-boobies, silly, don't panic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:38PM (3 children)
--
Unemployment hits 10 year low because Trump hates the poor so much he's making them not-poor.
Fucking liar where's my coal job?
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:02PM (2 children)
At first I was going to mod you offtopic but then I realized perhaps you are replying to my comment about cheap potshots by demonstrating that they are still possible.
Or perhaps you're a chatbot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:43AM (1 child)
Where's my fucking coal job, bitch??
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:51PM
Wouldn't that be a bit messy, with coal dust mixing with your bodily fluids? And good luck getting paid to do it...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:00PM (6 children)
I had the same thoughts for a long time but didn't want to pester the developers with it because I assumed they have their hands full.
(Score: 1) by Xyem on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:25PM (3 children)
As long as you have put a decent amount of thought into your suggestion (so it doesn't have a super-obvious fatal flaw), no-one is really gaining anything from you keeping it to yourself.
Sharing your suggestion isn't "pestering" either. If the developers are busy, they'll likely make a note of it or perhaps you could log it on GitHub as a reminder. Feel free to ask about progress every now and again. If you do go into "pestering" territory, I'm sure you'll be told and you can just back off a bit.. no big deal.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:50PM (2 children)
You haven't been on staff long enough to know this but we get plenty of pestering from the Eds to make their lives easier, so we're used to it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Xyem on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:05PM (1 child)
I have the feeling that being both dev/editor will result in me being a primary target for such pestering :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:28PM
Gods but I hope so!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmn32480 on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:47PM (1 child)
Pester the ever lovin' crap out of the devs.... it makes them feel loved.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:57PM
Pester the ever lovin' crap out of the devs.... it makes them feel
lovedneeded.FTFY. :)
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:06PM (6 children)
> [...] when you accidentally navigate away from a half-read page or otherwise reload.
Improvement #4 ought to help with that.
Added button that, when clicked, marks all comments in a story as "unread".
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:17PM (5 children)
Perhaps I wasn't clear. Let's take this discussion as an example.
As of now, X O-clock, I have read all comments in this article. Anything posted after X O-clock will be "new" when I reload the page later.
So, time passes (insert wavy screen effect here) and here we are at "later". Lo and behold the page has 90% old comments and 10% new comments. One of the new comments has an interesting-looking link to Wikipedia which I carelessly click instead of opening in a new tab. Oops! When I hit "Back" after reading Wikipedia those 10% new comments no longer show as new.
But I don't want to reset the 90% I did read back to new by marking all comments in a story as "unread". I just want SN to highlight the 10% of comments posted after X O-clock. Then I can find the distracting Wikipedia link again and continue down the page reading the "formerly-new" comments.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:36PM (2 children)
I haven't read the code so I don't understand how the "newness" of a comment is determined. My working assumption is that comments posted since the last time one has opened the page without setting noupdate in the URL are deemed new.
I think you're asking for the ability to "tell" the site what time you last read the discussion fully, and have it mark as new the comments that were posted after that. Such a feature would solve the problem you describe. For myself, I don't have that problem because I don't use the back button in my browser: I open each link in its own tab, and close the tab once I'm done. I do realise that tabbed browsing isn't available to everyone.
> When I hit "Back" after reading Wikipedia those 10% new comments no longer show as new.
If your browser has an offline mode, you ought to be able to, in that mode, go back to the page without reloading it.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:22AM
So do I and I still want this (and/or a "reload with same high-marker as used to generate what I'm looking at", being able to set the time for high-mark and shown page-generated-at-xx:xx is more flexible however).
Reason:
* Assume I read he comments first
* Reload to get more comments
* Only get halfway through them before being called away
* When I get back a few hours later it would be great to reload to get all comments without losing the current "new"-markers on the comments I didn't get to read.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:01AM
The drawback with the current approach is that the developers' rabid aversion to JavaScript means that it becomes useless if you close the tab before scrolling all of the way to the end of the page.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by charon on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:08AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:23AM
Nah, I could probably work that up in a week and have it pass the Bytram test. One or two mornings if you don't mind having it not be in all the places it should and be an sql-injection vector.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.