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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:10AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:10AM (#1014351)

    You are far more protected with a credit card than a debit card. If someone falsely charges the credit card they have defrauded either the bank or the merchant. Despite what banks try to claim in their contracts, you are not responsible for a debt you didn't incur.
    If someone scams your debit card the bank will simply say that the thief took your money. Tough luck.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:44AM (1 child)

    It's funny how credit card fraud lands on the merchant, debit card fraud lands on the individual, and nothing whatsoever lands on the banks. Not sure how that needs to be fixed but there's some serious fuckedupedness there that does need fixing.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:55AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:55AM (#1014370) Journal
      Credit card companies make the rules. CC companies > banks > card users > merchants.
  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:54AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:54AM (#1014801)

    Which is why you keep a special account for the debit card, and only deposit as much as you need for the transaction, and maybe a bit extra. I do it and it works. Maybe my bank is different, but they blocked an ebay purchase because every transaction is vetted by a 3rd party security company and the seller had been flagged (but not by ebay nor paypal).

    Only pain was- nobody would admit why the card was blocked until I pestered the bank several times. Overall it was a win and I'm grateful to the bank because as you said, they probably don't have to vet debit card transactions.