SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It all started when Slashdot rolled out a new, "Beta" user interface that was soundly disliked. In response, they posted a story calling us an "audience". That did not go over well. At all. Cries of "Buck Feta" were numerous and frequent. Then came a call for a Slashdot boycott — a "Slashcott" — scheduled for the week of February 10-17, 2014.
While the Slashcott was going on, a handful of intrepid nerds pulled down the (horribly out-of-date and unmaintained) open source code dump of Slashcode, forked it, and started whacking it into shape. This culminated in our announcement to the world: Welcome to the World of Tomorrow... Today!.
Now, one could argue as to the exact date of our birth. Was it when the domain "soylentnews.org" was first registered? (2014-02-09T01:50:26Z) How about when the first user was registered to the site? (2014-02-12 06:00:06 "NCommander") Or, maybe, the very first story posted to the site? Welcome Testers ... (2014.02.11 21:28 UTC)
Whichever one of those you choose, it has now been at least FIVE years...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOYLENTNEWS!
We've had hiccups along the way. Even the past year was not problem-free. Server reboots so our hosting provider, Linode, could roll out mitigations for the Spectre and Meltdown attacks. Then we had a server go down on us, which would not be such a big deal except its mirror had already predeceased it, so there was nothing to fail over to. A couple more issues with Apache and nginx going off to who-knows-where and needing to be restarted. Oh, and our mailserver decided to stop serving mail at one point, too. There may have been another couple of things which happened over the past year that escape me at the moment, but all-in-all I would like to think we are doing a pretty good job of keeping things up and running. Consider we are an entirely volunteer organization. Consider, too, that big-named sites like Wells Fargo, TSB, Google, and others all had site-wide outages in one or more of their services... we've got a good group here and it has been truly a wonderful experience to be a part of what keeps this site running.
A quick look around the site reveals some interesting statistics. That by week's end, we will have posted our 26,000th story. To that, add the 3,994 journal entries that have been posted by the community. We had our 800,000th comment posted to the site just this week. We have had, however, comparatively few comment moderations: ~540,000. We have 7,333 registered users, too!
Many thanks are in order to those who have helped keep everything up and running. Not just the sysops who lurk in the background, but also those of you who have opened your wallets and bought the subscriptions which pay the server bills, domain registrations, as well as the CPA for filing taxes, and the like.
Ultimately, this site is for you, the community. We focus stories on those which have a technical or science (aka nerd) angle with maybe a politically oriented story posted each day. And an occasional story that looks like it might engender discussion. There are plenty of other sites which cater to the latest Hollywood gossip, political machinations, recipes, and cat pictures... you've made it clear you don't want a bunch of that here. Submit stories. Make journal entries. Post and moderate comments.
Yes, we have had many accomplishments over these years, but we know nothing is perfect. We are overdue for a site upgrade, but it's likely nothing much will happen for a few months until TheMightyBuzzard can free up some of his time to work on it. Complaining is easy, but if you have concrete suggestions on what we could do better and how we might go about it, we can't promise anything (one man's drink is another man's poison), but we will certainly give it serious consideration.
If you should run into an issue with the site, please send details to admin (at) soylentnews.org noting the date/time/timezone and any data you can provide to help us locate and isolate the problem. That includes the URL for the story or journal entry. If it pertains to a comment, then please also include a link to that, as well. (That is the link under the (#nnnnn) in the comment header). Fair warning: complaining in the comments about a story not being accepted or about the moderation of one of your comments is generally off-topic and often moderated that way. Exception: if you accidentally modded a comment as spam, or have had a comment of yours moderated as spam that you think is incorrect, please send an e-mail to the admin address and we will take a look at it. We are running a bit lean on staff ATM with several of us in the midst of time-consuming things IRL, so please be patient.
Thank you.
Thanks to all of you who have helped this site persevere all these years!
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:38AM (30 children)
A good question to ask in all of this is where does Slashdot stand now?
It's still there. At a glance it is covered with advertising, even with an ad blocker. I guess the dumbed down mobile-ish "beta" never really took off. It looks like they never fixed some of the browser rendering problems with their comment system.
Who owns them today? I thought I head that they left Dice, but I'd guess they are still some unrelated corporation.
I got tired of the community years ago. Commenters were getting dumber. Comments would get modded in to oblivion even if it was just an opinion that did not fit in their groupthink.
Quite sad really.
It is good to have soylentnews around. Not sure I'd recommend it to everyone though. I think the sarcastic description of "a news site started by former slashdot trolls" is too accurate really.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:10AM (5 children)
As far as I know, /. has done fuck-all since being acquired by the most recent corporate daddies. They haven't done anything at all on unicode support even though they announced they were going to when they got bought out and I offered to help if they needed it.
I'd say more pissed off people than trolls, though we do excel at that as well. We're definitely not for the faint of heart though. If you can't handle both well thought out dissent and someone telling you that you're going to burn in hell in a conversation about dark matter, I'd suggest another site.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday February 17 2019, @05:20AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @08:30AM (2 children)
Blame Aristarchus. He dreams of converting this place into a leftist utopia.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday February 17 2019, @09:19AM (1 child)
Dream of reality: People who can see reality. Truth and justice as far as the eye can see. Yes, that is it, and it is not leftist, it is reality, and justice. Thus Colbert said, "reality has a well known liberal bias", which when you parse it, says, Reality is reality, and all those rigiht-wing nut-jobs are off in la-la land. Build the WaLL! The Huang-di commands us! Bury the scholars, they criticize the Huang-di! And the Cnin Dynasty lasts 21 years, because they forced the people to build a Wall. Steven Miller sucks donkey dicks, on a regular basis! He is a self-hating Jew, a non-white white supremacist, and a motherfucking alt-right incel not married cocksucking neo-conservative sucker of cocks, especially dick "Dick" Cheney cocks, and "Newt" (I have no cock) Gringrinch cocks, and Seah Hannity "my cock fell off for the sake of a Cardinal, and I am not talking about a sports team" Hannity. Of course, the goddess of death, Annie Coulter, has decided to split. The President is an idiot, and that is our national emergency? She figured that out all by her self? Maybe blondes are not as dumb as the folklore suggests, except, with Kaleigh and Tomi, and Kellyanne, maybe they are.
So where were we? Leftist Utopia? Hell I would settle for a Realtity based community. And libertariantards are not that, even.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Gaaark on Sunday February 17 2019, @01:47PM
How about sucking Kellyanne (I have a tiny cock) Conway cocks....I like THOSE kinds of cocks! (Disclaimer: NOT specifically saying HER tiny cock) ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @09:53AM
24 khallows, for the bad faith.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:12AM (20 children)
I know most people here are techno-primitivists (that's a thing, shut up) and think a real computer is a beige desktop connected to a CRT, but it would be nice if SN could also work on a mobile browser. I try to use it on my phone and tablet sometimes and it's a pain; lots of pinching and zooming to read text that's set too wide and too small.
I prefer the desktop site, it's very efficient and functional. It would still be nice if it degraded gracefully for smaller, narrower, higher DPI screens.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 17 2019, @04:26AM (10 children)
I read your comment on mobile and I was doing the "thumb dance" at the time.
I'm planning on doing a new CSS theme, so I might look at mobile at the same time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 17 2019, @12:43PM
We have a mobile version sitting in my email, it was just written for the version of the site that was current at the time as opposed to all the fun stuff that had been merged into the master branch ahead of it, so it didn't get included due to not having the time to refactor it to reflect all the changes. If I ever manage a free day again, it's on the list.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:19PM (6 children)
Thumb dance. Nice.
A lot of sites don't scale well for mobile. I am happy to thumb dance is that is what it takes.
Open a beta channel for mobile users to test and provide feedback?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:25PM (5 children)
See TMB's reply.
As for my theme, it will be a red version of VT100.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @12:57AM (4 children)
Hey, man, if you want to take the contributed CSS for the mobile version and tweak it referenced to what's on dev, I'd welcome the hell out of it. My plate's so full at the moment between life and such that we'll be lucky to have another site update of any kind by summer.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 18 2019, @01:33AM (1 child)
Email it to me?
What do you mean by "tweak it referenced to what's on dev"?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @03:26AM
The site's CSS has changed some since it was written (before it was written actually but it didn't leave dev until later) and it would need to be updated to account for that since it replaces base.css I believe.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @02:02AM (1 child)
What project software do you use?
Git/hub/lab? Jira? Trello? Wiki? Etherpad?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @03:32AM
Github [github.com]. I think there's a link on the main page somewhere. Most of the coding is done in vim and tested on our dev server at the moment because the redistributable dev VM hasn't been updated in a long, long time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday February 19 2019, @06:11PM (1 child)
I use a Stylish theme called "SoylentNews Night Mode Red". Pretty and restful. Please don't break it (as sometimes happens when CSSs are layered).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 19 2019, @09:20PM
I'm planning on making 2 new themes in the list of themes to pick. VT100, except red/pink, monospace and non-monospaced versions. Other suggestions welcome.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @06:59AM (3 children)
Yep. Looking terrible and working terribly on mobile is one of two of SoylentNews' biggest faults today IMO. The other is that I really wish there was a five or ten minute window to edit comments to correct misspellings and such. I strongly suspect that I'm in the minority on the latter, however.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 17 2019, @08:33AM (2 children)
Mamy of is just dont caire aboot our tipos
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:12AM
FTFY, 'coz sum do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 17 2019, @12:45PM
Yes, we absolutely do care about typos. cmn32480 has a required class to make sure all new editors can keep up the number of typos we expect from a story, despite the red wavy lines.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EETech1 on Sunday February 17 2019, @07:39AM (2 children)
Use Opera browser!
Text Reflow!
Force Zoom!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday February 17 2019, @02:02PM (1 child)
+1 Opera browser.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Monday February 18 2019, @01:01PM
Chinese browser are safest browser!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 17 2019, @12:18PM (1 child)
Not at all. I'm writing this on a black laptop, and I haven't connected any computer to a CRT monitor since many years.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Sunday February 17 2019, @10:34PM
To be fair, I'm not sure what the original color was for the box on the far end of this cable. Come to think of it, I know this host name, but I'm not sure what actual hardware it runs on any more. Anyone remember the name of that utility that would flash Morris code on your hard drive LED? Hopefully I won't be confusing some poor server monkey at a VPS provider asking him to look for some random LED flashing "abracadabra."
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 17 2019, @08:28AM (1 child)
I just clicked on them. Page loads almost instantly, without a single ad visible. I have half the world's advertisers and trackers blocked at the router. It's hard to say which of my addons takes care of the rest, but I'll give most of the credit to Ublock Origins. Perhaps with another browser, I might see some of the crap. I have Cyberfox configured more strictly than some of my other options, so I never see an ad with it. I have Opera pretty much unshackled - I'm not willing to wander randomly around the net with that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Tuesday February 19 2019, @06:16PM
I don't even do that -- just naked SeaMonkey, a good HOSTS file, and NoScript (but no adblocker) so all JS is disabled, and modern Slashdot looks just like old Slashdot. No ads or other crap.
Looked at it with Borealis (kinda FF60 in a Palemoon wrapper), which doesn't support add-ons, and then there's some sponsored content, but easily ignorable. Guessing it's a lot more noxious on mobile, tho.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @05:43AM
Their new "D2" commenting system is software designed to control the narrative. Comments are regularly "filtered" from the main thread of a discussion and don't appear at all. To see them you have to use the classic interface which has everything except ease of commenting.
Right of reply does not exist, so if someone says something stupid to your insightful comment, sometimes your reply isn't displayed.
The entire moderation system has been hijacked. Compare the classic and D2 system and you see comment that are modded up in classic are 1 in D2 and visa versa.
People I argue with are just as censored as I am so I haven't cracked the motivation behind the censorship.
One thing is certain, whatever the narrative is, it certainly isn't the "community's" anymore. I've been spending more and more time here as /. breaks down a into a troll forum for those who communicate irrationally.