posted by
mrcoolbp
on Friday October 30 2015, @03:00PM
from the you-eventually-get-what-you-pay-for dept.
from the you-eventually-get-what-you-pay-for dept.
Sometime recently, something in our setup (or in the bitpay API) changed and left us unable to receive notifications of bitcoin payments. The bad news is the payments still went through but the subscriptions were not rewarded on SoylentNews. We realized the error and credited the accounts (there were only 4 such cases) giving extra subscription time to make up for the error.
Bitcoin subscriptions are temporarily disabled until we can work out exactly what happened and avoid it in the future.
Thank you, and our apologies for any inconvenience.
~mrcoolbp and TheMightyBuzzard
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(Score: 3, Informative) by jdavidb on Friday October 30 2015, @03:11PM
I was one of the four - you guys took care of everything fast, and I thank you!
Sorry to hear bitcoin payments are suspended - it's great being able to shoot a bit of "instant" cash someone's way. But it's not so instant if your payment processor craps out on you.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday October 30 2015, @04:25PM
No problem. We'll get it resolved and back in action soon.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday October 30 2015, @05:35PM
I remember I granted you a freebie two week subscription :)
I'm happy to see you followed up with a real one!
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 30 2015, @06:48PM
My plan is to re-up some day, too. I hope to do my part (at least some of it) to keep this place alive and kicking.
(For all the blather I post, I figure it's the least I can do!)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by ArcticScavenger on Friday October 30 2015, @03:24PM
Thanks for taking care of the issue. I noticed that something went wrong, but figured that you still received payment which was the more important part. Keep up the good work!
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday October 30 2015, @04:27PM
Absolutely, thanks for the understanding/patience.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2015, @05:12PM
Someone has to be to blame. Whoever is most junior has to be blamed and skewered. If not skewered, then Ncommander should make him walk the plank.
Yeah, I'm being snarky, but I do have a serious question. How hard is it to check bitpay once a day, and see if any payments need to be processed? Am I just failing to understand the problem, and coming up with an over simplified semi-solution?
(Score: 4, Funny) by NCommander on Friday October 30 2015, @05:33PM
I don't make people walk the plank.
I MAKE THEM CODE IN PERL! ...
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 30 2015, @06:49PM
I'll code in Perl if I can get somebody to pay me for it!
Ironically today at $JAVA_JOB, my paycheck came up a day short. Still waiting for the powers that be in HR to sort that one out. They are telling me even after it's sorted out I probably won't see the money via ACH until Tuesday. If I were paid in Bitcoin, they could get it to me right now!
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Wednesday November 04 2015, @06:32AM
Look, they only asked for a punishment, not torture.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday October 30 2015, @06:45PM
Usually I check admin console here on SN, now I'll have to be more diligent and check paypal, bitpay, and SN more often.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 30 2015, @06:51PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 30 2015, @10:18PM
Surprisingly difficult. Generally only our treasurer keeps access to the bitpay/paypal/stripe accounts, so anyone but him checking them would be right out. And given the amount of work we pile on poor mrcoolbp's shoulders plus his day job and non-work life, it's a miracle he has time for it all.
Checking would have helped but honestly I expected someone would have emailed to say "Hey, this sub I paid for didn't get credited to me." Not the case, for whatever reason. On top of that, the bast^W fine gentlefolk over at bitpay had massively changed their api and their web UI does not show most of the details of a payment, so I spent the morning learning their new API and coding up a script to pull the missing invoices in full so we could credit the proper accounts at all. It would have been nice to get an email from BitPay about payment system breaking changes is all I'm saying.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 30 2015, @11:24PM
Yes, but, you're being rational. We aren't rational with junior personnel, we only keep them around to blame things on. I mean - why does any sane man have children? He's got to have someone to blame for the disappearing cookies, the missing ice cream, the broken window, the dent in the fender, etc ad nauseum. If we couldn't blame stuff on kids, we'd never HAVE any kids, right?
You heard NCommander - put mrcoolbp in the dungeon with the Perl code books! And, change his name to mrcollperl, that will teach him!
Meanwhile, if we can raise a half dozen volunteers, we can do a raid on bitpay. I don't know what we'll do there, kick their dog, steal their API, and tip over their vending machines maybe. We'll think of something.
(Score: 3, Funny) by NCommander on Friday October 30 2015, @11:43PM
He does our accounting. Give that or coding in perl, I'll take the perl, kthxbye :)
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by DonkeyChan on Friday October 30 2015, @09:12PM
I HIGHLY recommend building a thing that polls the BTC daemon or cron/grep 's the POST data.
I had a similar issue once and moving to a polling system took about 8 hours of coding a thing and I've had zero problems since.
Note, 8 hours because I didn't know what I was doing.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 30 2015, @10:33PM
Wouldn't have helped. They changed the api so much nothing I coded would have worked anymore. Only watching the logs extremely diligently (four transactions with them in six months) would have caught it unless they broke backwards compatibility in such a way that our script dumped an OMGWTFBBQ to the log if the response didn't contain precisely what we were expecting. They didn't by the way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by DonkeyChan on Saturday October 31 2015, @03:27AM
Well, poop.
Especially given the infrequency.
If you don't mind the tangent, what kind of changes to the API did they make? The notable ones I mean.
I'm just interested in the observance from your end for no real reason.
Or was it just a giant redesign across the board that would be too much to go through.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 31 2015, @11:49AM
Mostly the way you authenticate. Instead of having an api key that you simply had to keep stored securely, you have a public/private keypair that you have to keep stored securely and then you have to jump through several more hoops than before to authenticate with it. None of which are encryption though so it's still compromise one file and you own the billing system; zero actual security is gained, only headaches.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by DonkeyChan on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:34PM
Seems like they just added a layer of esoteric hoops for nearly no reason.
No encryption!? ffs...