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SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the community++ dept.

[Update #2: Wed 20180606 @ 14:30 UTC: WOW! Since this story first posted, we have received 36 subscriptions totaling approximately $1126.27 which brings us to a total of approximately $2716.36 which works out to just over 90% of our $3000.00 goal!! I am extremely impressed with the showing of support from the community and reminds me why I volunteer so much of my time here. It really is the community! THANK YOU! --martyb]

[Update #1: Mon 20180604 @ 14:14 UTC: So far today we have received 16 subscriptions bringing us to just shy of $2000.00 raised for the period and just over $1000 to go. THANK-YOU! --martyb]

tl;dr: SoylentNews needs your financial support... $1400 by June 30th. Please Subscribe.

We have raised approximately $1590.09 towards our funding goal of $3000.00 which covers the period from 2018-01-01 though 2018-06-30.

We run the site with a team of volunteers — absolutely nobody gets paid for their work on this site... all the funds raised go directly into keeping the site up and running.

From the time we went live on February 17, 2014 through today, we have posted over 22,000 stories and nearly 120 polls. In kind, the community has posted over 3270 journal articles and over 688,000 comments.

We understand that not everyone can afford to support the site financially. Those who make contributions "in kind" through submitting stories or comments, making moderations, and the like... please accept my sincere "Thank-You!" Without your contributions, there would either be no site or no reason to come here.

For those of you who have previously subscribed, thank YOU for "keeping the lights on". Good wishes did not pay for servers, federal and state tax returns, or domain registrations... You did! Thank you!

A complicating factor came from our having a problem with the subscription page about a month ago... but TMB put up a fix and we've seen no regressions, since. Perhaps this bit you and you meant to "try again later"? (As of my writing this, we have 123 users who have accessed the site within the past month, who had previously subscribed, but whose subscription is now lapsed.)

Whether your subscription has lapsed or you never previously subscribed, would you please consider signing up? Go to the subscription page, pick a duration, and type in an amount that is at least the amount suggested for that duration (excess amounts are, of course, most welcome!). If you would like to help the site without getting a subscription for yourself, you can make a gift subscription by specifying a UID and an amount, instead. (If you have nobody in particular in mind, please feel free to use UID 6 — "mcasadevall")


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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday June 04 2018, @01:46PM (12 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 04 2018, @01:46PM (#688342) Journal

    Request development of a new feature: A button to randomly select a UID to gift a subscription to, along with a message field used to insult greet the person being gifted.

    The random number generator needs to use a sooper dooper algorithm with multiple sources of entropy. It should consume at least one separate compute node, if not multiple nodes. For redundancy and security!

    I would also point out, as I just discovered, you can renew a subscription early, and you can pay more than the asked rate.

    Also lettuce consider whether one should hide the fact that you are a subscriber. I had decided to hide before. Now I think differently. At least for today. But maybe not tomorrow. I want to be as steadfast, unerring, decisive, and ignorant in my decisions as the president would be.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Monday June 04 2018, @02:29PM (2 children)

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 04 2018, @02:29PM (#688371)

    Request development of a new feature: A button to randomly select a UID to gift a subscription to, along with a message field used to insult greet the person being gifted.

    The random number generator needs to use a sooper dooper algorithm with multiple sources of entropy. It should consume at least one separate compute node, if not multiple nodes. For redundancy and security!

    And it should return UID 5839 at least 50% of the time? ;)

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:47PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 06 2018, @03:47PM (#689349) Journal

      And it should return UID 5839 at least 50% of the time? ;)

      I suppose that would still qualify as random.

      Just as there is a random chance that the production server could be down on any given time you try to use it.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @10:44AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @10:44AM (#689804)

        Then buy more servers! Geez is it that hard?

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 04 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday June 04 2018, @03:39PM (#688408) Journal

    Also lettuce consider whether one should hide the fact that you are a subscriber.

    No, I don't think you should hide it -- wear it proudly so others will want to ketchup to you. If we don't get a lot of subscriptions, we'll be in quite a pickle. What would I read for entertainment then -- the Onion??

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 04 2018, @03:50PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 04 2018, @03:50PM (#688414) Journal

      > the Onion??

      the daily white house briefings.

      Now with pictures!

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:51PM

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:51PM (#689509)

      I hear it's a good place to go for leeks, but that's shallot.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cubancigar11 on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:50AM (5 children)

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:50AM (#689716) Homepage Journal

    I would also point out, as I just discovered, you can renew a subscription early, and you can pay more than the asked rate.

    I will have the business minded people behind SN know that it is a bad strategy to sell long term subscriptions to fulfill short term costs. It is like cannibalizing your own future. I would hope someone closes this "feature" asap.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 07 2018, @06:19AM (2 children)

      The costs aren't really any more short-term than the subscriptions; $120/year is $120/year whether you pay it all at once or $10/month for example. It does help that we don't have to hit everyone up around the holidays though. Not everyone has a lot to spare around then.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Thursday June 07 2018, @08:21AM (1 child)

        by cubancigar11 (330) on Thursday June 07 2018, @08:21AM (#689767) Homepage Journal

        As long as cost remains exactly 1v1 mapped to expense, but how realistic is that? All I am saying that don't let someone's 2 year subscriptions (2x$120 = $240) be used to to balance this year's expense of 240. Because next year you won't get even $120. As long as future earnings are not used for present expenses...

        This simple mistake has eaten companies form inside.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:34AM

          No worries. We're not quite foolish enough to only budget exactly what we know we're going to need. I'm not sure how much of a cushion we have because I'm not a money guy with access to the bank account but I do know we have a bit of one and every time we hit or exceed our goal hand-to-mouth existence gets pushed a little farther away.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:33PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 07 2018, @01:33PM (#689846) Journal

      I will have the business minded people behind SN know that it is a bad strategy to sell long term subscriptions to fulfill short term costs.

      The adults in the room, or smart people, whether adult or not, will realize that the "length" of subscription is just a meaningless number in a database. If I were to have a subscription up through the year 2100, I would not actually expect SN to have to stick around that long to "fulfill" my subscription. I might expect that of, say, BYTE magazine, back in the day. Or Popular Electronics. But not SN. In the case of BYTE / PE, I would be expecting an actual paper product for wanking over breadboards, dialects of BASIC, etc.

      Maybe a better feature to develop would be an option to make a donation, expecting nothing in return. This might also satisfy some of the Anonymous Cow Herds that would contribute something, but cannot risk their identity becoming known. (If such an option already exists, it is not obvious enough that I noticed it.)

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Friday June 08 2018, @04:23AM

        by cubancigar11 (330) on Friday June 08 2018, @04:23AM (#690196) Homepage Journal

        Yes but we are in such dire straits that future earnings are to be used in today's balance sheet, then I think community should now about it and we should see if community actually steps up to meet the today's demand, such as it has today.