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SoylentNews
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:
Qty Sub Amt Total 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.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 30 2020, @04:38AM (4 children)
I don't even try to manage you, I'm showing a possible interpretation of what you wrote in the provided context.
Come on, show that the interpretation is impossible. Otherwise, how the heck am I going to learn the reality if you don't even.
I don't understand what's exactly you mean by "left-field interpretation". Care to explain or rephrase?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by RS3 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:13AM (3 children)
There's a saying "he's out in left field" meaning "way off base" meaning fantasy-land, not reality. You do too much reading into things, then deducing conclusions that are based on incorrect guesses and artifact. It's okay to ask questions, but you ask loaded questions- ones based on incorrect assumptions. Like I said, I think you do too much interpretation. But that said, I think a lot of people do far too much interpretation- especially these days. I think it causes some of the worst problems in the world. Read up on the "Dunning-Kruger effect". https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-dunning-kruger-effect-4160740 [verywellmind.com] I call it arrogance, or overly-confident, but someone got some grant money to study and document it. Possibly named "Dunning" and "Kruger"... (that's my sarcastic humor that many of my friends (real life ones) would get the humor right away. Mostly the making fun of ludicrous ideas that qualify for grant $. Read about this guy if you don't know him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko [wikipedia.org] )
You make a good point about subscribing, but a tiny subscription isn't going to pay big $ that the hosting costs. The current hosting is awesome and could handle vastly more size and traffic than SN has currently. I know the founders had high hopes for a large membership here, and I was hoping the same, but I see some problems that drive people (and their $) away, IMHO.
As the admin for a small hosting company I can do far more for SN by negotiating hosting for far far less $. Making any sense yet? I've been in private communication, a bit, that you know nothing about and isn't your business, about possibly hosting this site. I have a great deal of unused bandwidth available. Slightly used, but very awesome (more CPUs and RAM and TB than they have now) servers are available cheap ($160). I'm not (in any way) a salesman (and can't stand pushy people). I've made offers and if the admins here want to, they can contact me to discuss, brainstorm, and negotiate.
Does that make sense yet? Most people get it. I know there's a lot of good in you and I don't mind clarifying things- because you asked. :) When I was younger I didn't comprehend a lot of things in life, like movies. If it wasn't spelled out, I didn't get it, but I didn't make assumptions. Somehow my brain grew some connections and I'm able to deduce and connect things- so much that most movies and TV shows are boringly predictable. A few aren't. But I'm off topic. I don't mean to be so verbally mean, and I'm extra unhappy that I wrote sharply. You've trolled me before and I'm probably misunderstanding you- we misunderstand each other. I know I sometimes write- well, my attempts at brevity sometimes leave some people out. You like truth and hate BS (as do I) and you want backing info and citations, and that's okay, but you ask by attacking and putting me on the defensive. I'm learning, and I hope some of this is helpful to you and that we can become friends, and I mean it. Have a good day!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:37AM (2 children)
Thanks for the explanation.
I suspect a cultural reference so very specific to US, probably coming from baseball by the terminology it uses.
Apologies, after quite a large numbers of years in engineering, one gets to look of "what can go wrong" before it does.
Well, not providing enough context is bound... nay, highly likely to create a lot of problems too - my opinion leans those problems are far worse than those caused by reading too little.
And this simply because there are so many ways the things to go wrong and so few ways for things to go right.
Oh, how much of the meaning of your original message would have been more precise if you only added this tidbit to it as context.
Don't you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:01PM (1 child)
Yes, sorry for the USAian colloquialism. I don't know who's from where but iirc you're NZ or AUS maybe- no matter. Non-USAians love to point out how we USAians are not as world savvy as many esp. European and Oceanic. That said, we're getting better, I think, maybe? Some of us? Trying?
My best friend is not an engineer, but certainly does intense engineering R&D and he is stunning at telling me what and how something can go wrong with any ideas, mine included. It's one of the things I most like and revere about him. Most of life needs someone to do that- govt, engineering, medicine, business... And frankly he can be very direct, but somehow his delivery doesn't come across harshly at all. But knowing you're also an engineer helps a lot- we can be a very surly group. We're so focused on facts and truth and that's just how it ends up coming across.
All I was trying to say is: you're correct, I did not give all kinds of details. I'm big on context, and to me the context is this: if I read something that I don't comprehend because data / details / citations are missing, I move on. It wasn't intended for me. If it is for me, like a work assignment, I do my best to gather the info I need. One of the "engineers" (he had no degree but was a pretty poor code monkey) I used to work with was like that- assignments from the top boss would be met with insurmountable walls from monkey. I'm kind of the opposite- I'm the eager enthusiast who loves the challenge of making something work, and occasionally to a fault, with as little help as possible (especially from the grumpy crowd). :)
I don't mean to be demeaning, and sorry for redundancy, but again, my comments were brief and made sense for the targeted audience. If you're part of the SN admin team, or just wanted to be more "in" on the conversation, it's okay to ask. Skepticism is perfectly okay by me, but maybe a less surly approach?
I have NOTHING to do with the "Dilbert" comics, but today's is just too appropriate (and actually helped me understand you before I read your most recent post:
https://assets.amuniversal.com/e679f1a08d7f013808e1005056a9545d [amuniversal.com]
Thanks man!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:15PM
Touche.
About those cooties: LOL, thanks for that, made me feel good close to the time of day change (yes, I'm hailing from Australia).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford