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SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday June 29 2020, @01:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the we've-been-here-for-you;-will-you-be-here-for-us? dept.

[20200629_140251 UTC: Update 1: Encourage taking care of personal/local needs, first.]
[20200629_191024 UTC: Update 2: Added stretch goal of $1000.00 ]
[20200630_023201 UTC: Update 3: Increased stretch goal from $1000.00 to $2000.00]


[20200630_023201 UTC] What is possibly one of the worst things to hear from an editor? "I'm at a loss for words." Well, it's happened. The SoylentNews community has done it, again! We started today needing $800 to cover projected operating expenses of $3500 for the first half of the year. And you did it! So, I added a stretch goal of an additional $1000. Now you have gone and reached that goal, too! We'd run at a significant loss ($6000 so far), so that is very much appreciated! THANK-YOU!!!. Stretch goal has now been increased to $2000 [so we can continue to track your subscriptions in the Site News block]. Dare I hope? --martyb

[20200629_191024 UTC] The SoylentNews community is AMAZING! In these especially difficult circumstances, we've reached our original goal for ongoing expenses... and then some!

Thank You!!!!

We started today (Monday June 29) needing over $700.00 to cover projected operating expenses for the first half of the year.

We not only reached our original goal of $3500.00, but I added a stretch goal of $1000.00 and we are already 66% of the way to reaching *that*!

Why a stretch goal? Because we have been running at a deficit for a few years. We are are still about $6,000.00 short of having sufficient funds to pay back our benefactor's original $10,000.00 outlay. Any additional funds raised will go towards that purpose whilst giving us a larger safety cushion. --martyb

The original story (after performing Update #1) appears below:


SoylentNews could use your help.

tl;dr The first half of our fiscal year runs Wed. January 1 through Tue. June 30, inclusive. We are at 80% of the funds needed to cover our expenses for the period. If money is tight for you, take care of yourself first. But, if you can help, it would mean a lot to help us to continue to be here for you.

Please subscribe. The subscription amount provided (e.g. $20.00 for 1 year) is the minimum amount for that period; you can change that default to any larger value.

To all who started a new subscription or renewed an existing subscription: Thank You!

Times are tough. First, please take care of yourself and those close to you. But, if you do have funds to spare, we would very much appreciate your support!

Where We Stand:

So far, we have had 106 subscriptions this year which have netted us an estimated $2,794.92 (after processing fees from Stripe/Paypal) towards our goal of $3,500.00.

We run a very lean operation; $20/day keeps everything going. Staffing is all-volunteer; nobody has ever been paid anything for their work on SoylentNews. That includes the editors who get the stories out on the main page. The sysadmins who keep everything running: the servers and all the services like the MySQL databases, Apache HTTP Server, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), email... it's a long list. That we so rarely have issues is a testament to how fortunate we are to have professionals who donate their free time to keep things running. We had to incorporate to be able to accept subscriptions to pay expenses. And with that there are fees for maintaining the incorporation, calculating taxes, and paying them.

Subscriptions Breakdown:

Number of subscriptions for each subscription amount, and the totals at that level, so far in 2020:

QtySub AmtTotal
7$4.00$28.00
12$5.00$60.00
2$12.00$24.00
63$20.00$1260.00
2$25.00$50.00
3$30.00$90.00
1$36.60$36.60
1$39.39$39.39
3$40.00$120.00
4$50.00$200.00
1$60.00$60.00
2$100.00$200.00
1$113.00$113.00
2$120.00$240.00

The Pandemic Sucks:

The world has changed in the past six months.

A lot.

The pandemic hit and with it came lock-downs, work-from-home, and social distancing. Closures of movie theaters, restaurants, and bars. Video conferencing became a norm as in-person gatherings were prohibited. And for good reason: worldwide, over 10 million are known to have been infected and over a half million have died. Untold struggles and suffering as we attempt to understand and adapt to a new reality.

We recognized that many of the community were struggling. On April 19th, we extended all subscriptions that were due to expire in April or May to the end of May. If money was tight and it was a choice of renewing your subscription or paying your bills, we'd rather you spend your money locally and so thereby help keep the money in your local community.

Folding@Home (F@H):

SoylentNews is helping in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. You might not be aware, but SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team. We are currently ranked in the top 300 teama in the world (#297 out of 254150 teams)!

F@H is a distributed computing project designed to help understand how proteins fold and thereby search for cures to various diseases. It was originally focused on Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases as well as cancer. With the appearance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, F@H has pivoted to trying to unravel the behavior of that virus. To this end, many large infrastructure companies (like AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google) have joined the effort.

How it works: Install the client on your computer, instruct it what amount of resources to use, and you are ready to go. The client will periodically download work units and, when completed, upload the results to the F@H servers. The faster the results are computed, the more points are earned. We are team #230319. If you have computes to spare, we'd love to have you join us!

Stories and Discussions:

Through all this, we here at SoylentNews have persevered. People from all over joined us in discussions on the pandemic and so many other topics. We aim for news with a technological focus but will occasionally offer something a little offbeat.

So far in 2020, SoylentNews has posted over 2,100 stories. Separately, the community has posted 700 journal entries. To these 2,800 items, the community has posted 76,000 comments — over 400 comments per day! In addition, there have been over 55,000 comment moderations — that's nearly 300 per day.

Server Upgrades:

We are continuing our efforts to move services from beryllium (our only Centos server) to aluminum (Gentoo). Deucalion (on IRC; aka Juggs on SoylentNews) has been trudging along trying to get things brought over for IRC (Internet Relate Chat). He reports he had a 100-hour long week at work last week, but still managed to make some progress on this over the weekend. There are significant differences between the two, so it has been quite the challenge. Getting userids added to the correct groups; setting up ACLs; chron syntax incompatibilities; the list goes on and on.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 29 2020, @11:13PM (4 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday June 29 2020, @11:13PM (#1014296) Journal

    I like to think we have a more interesting sort of trolls around here. They're like chimeras of the one-dimensional breeds you get elsewhere. Generally, they're a bit more intelligent than the average bear, but are far more delusional and inventive with their delirium, marbled with generous helpings of Asperger's and other maladies common to techies. Even our small handful of resident nazis (I mean real, literal nazis, not the broad, useless smear cast around these days) are much more interesting than anything you'd find on Stormfront.

    So when one of them latches on to you, like a demented little puppy suffering from distemper and irritable bowel syndrome, it's kind of endearing. Two years ago or so I attracted one who seems like a low-level government apparatchik at Foggy Bottom or Langley, up to his ears in the Kool-Aid, who has convinced himself in turns that I'm a Russian operative, a Chinese shill, and other things. I imagine that somewhere on a wall in his mom's basement he has printouts of my posts connected by lengths of red string, cross-indexed with clipped newspaper articles and fragments of maps.

    It's good times.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @02:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @02:53AM (#1014346)

    I imagine that somewhere on a wall in his mom's basement he has printouts of my posts connected by lengths of red string, cross-indexed with clipped newspaper articles and fragments of maps.

    That's a sample of quite a nice imagination. True, not yet to the level of "more delusional and inventive with their delirium".

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @04:31AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday June 30 2020, @04:31AM (#1014391)

    Great post- I'm laughing and crying. What bugs me is that some (most?) of the trolls are real users with mod points who hide under their AC bridges and nip at ankles by modding me "troll" when I was not trolling. I wish I could find them more entertaining but I'm more creeped out. I feel like I have a voyeur watching me wipe my butt. Maybe they're trying to learn something.

  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:30PM (1 child)

    by DECbot (832) on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:30PM (#1014627) Journal

    Tread lightly, here be dragons!
     
    It's all fun and games until you start spotting your personal trolls at the grocery store, post office, library, place of work, walking dogs in front of your house, etc... It's even worse when they're clever and don't alarm your neighbors when they are stalking you. Or when your neighbors are in on it too and completely deny hiding the troll in the attic or in the bushes when he's plainly just right there.

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:45AM

      by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:45AM (#1014796)

      The more I post, the more a kind of "Streisand effect" is happening here...