SoylentNews

Local Motors is set to manufacture its first electric vehicle built through 3D-printing technologies.

The automotive firm says that AMT -- the Association For Manufacturing Technology -- is the first customer to line up for its 3D-printed car. The vehicle will be built and shown off at the International Manufacturing Technology Show 2014 in Chicago, Illinois, running 8 - 13 September this year.

Does it come in a flying version?

Online now. This is a Soylent exclusive, the above link is the only link on the internet. The index and previous chapter don't link yet.

Rority never showed up in his timeship, so we're stuck in the present today. Which isn't too bad, we're having a few days of, if not warmth, at least not below zero cold. And of course I don't mean Celcius or I'd simply said "freezing".

Not that the weather was actually nice yesterday, we had thunderstorms followed by high winds, with gusts almost hurricane level.

I tried to get to Soylent on my Kyocera Android Jelly Bean this morning, and I couldn't. Google apparently doesn't have a clue about soylent, at least from the phone. It sent me to food places and all other sorts of sites, but Soylent News was nowhere to be found.

Maybe this is a good thing. All the two digit IQs showing up at slashdot have annoyed me lately and I'm hoping they stay there and reddit where they came from. Or at least, if they show up here that they realize their ignorance and STFU. I have yet to see more than one moronic comment posted here, and it was from an AC.

In other news, today will be my last Friday. After today, Friday won't exist for me; every Friday from now on is Saturday -- I'm retiring from work. Thursday is my last day of wage slavery! My former shop steward, who is now not even in the union because they promoted him to management, said "Hey, short timer! Unemployed next week?"

"Nope," I said. "Self employed. I got a check in the mail for my book yesterday." Of course, we're not talking James patterson money, just beer money.

I got another positive review about Nobots last night at Felbers. I left a copy there for folks to read, as most of those rednecks' only internet connections are their phones, few have computers. I wish someone would give me a negative critique, "I loved you book" isn't vey helpful.

Apologies, I was unprepared. I usually do this on Saturdays when I have all day, but I'm kind of rushed, I have to go to work today.

A week from tomorrow I'm releasing the rest of the book, two weeks early. I'll post Chapter 33 Tuesday and link from here, slashdot will get this chapter tomorrow and 33 Wednesday.

A thank you to all who have started reading. Someone please leave a review!

Hi everyone,

I don't think that anyone will bother reading this journal. But it's a journal after all, and I have a spare minute (which doesn't happen often), because I'm commuting back home right now.

So I think that our new news site is great and I look forward into the bright future. No need to compulsively check /. again, because I know that better news will be here. And also if I stumble on something worthy, I will submit it too.

The "/." brings me to the question of how do we abbreviate our new site? SN? Barrabas was talking about how he wanted to setup a name submission form, with automatic checking if domain is available. Heck I even bought three domains that I wanted to suggest as possible names for voting, to prevent namesquatting. Also Barrabas elaborated about how he sees this as a two stage voting process, to make sure that the best name is selected. Understand me well - I'm not trolling that SN is a bad name, I just wonder if this planned voting on name was cancelled or there simply wasn't enough time, because bringing up slash is a plenty of work already.

But also, it is a relief to have this our great new site here. The old one became unbearable in recent years.

Also this place could become a real journal for me, when we will have MathJax support. Then I could write down my thoughts using language superior to english, and then I will even enjoy writing this journal. I wish that I had time to help implementing that myself. Heck here I am proposing a bounty: I will give 0.5 BTC to the person that will make MathJax a reality on this site. To claim the bounty just post a reply here with link to git commit, and a BTC address. Of course after it works here on this site :)

You can also find me on IRC as cosurgi, but sometimes I am away longer than a day or two. However I always stay logged in. If you want to say hi, you are welcome. If you start with "cosurgi:" then irssi client will highlight you in yellow, and I will notice you even after few days.

well, happy Soylenting!

Online now.

"Let's go back fifteen years and play some Quake!"

I groaned. "Fifteen years ago this month? NO! Hell, no, dammit Rority. That was a hell of a time. I'd been hosted for two months and lost half my visitors in the move, then my host got hacked and the place kept crashing and just disappeared in a black hole..."

"Oh, sorry," he said. "My bad; GamePlex was a mistake Gumal and I had to fix. But you recovered!"

"Yeah, after being kidnapped and tortured. I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition. No, I'm not going!"

"Your So You Want To Be a Webmaster, too article is gone, but we had nothing to do with that."

"Where did it go?"

"The Vogons destroyed Planet Quake to make way for a new interplanetary bypass. Let's go!"

"No!!!"

"We're going, and that's that."

Desatio frags 100
        Spew #100 came out last night, a live show with people there. Hear Desiato sing for the last time!
        He posts news of his and Yello's new "Arcadia" project- with a live link.
        Of the occasion, Sgt. Hulka said, "Holy giant butt zits Batman!"
        In other web nooze, Evil Avatar redesigned the Weakly Web - again. It has an "Illinois weather" theme; if you don't like it, wait a few minutes and it will change. 2/16/1999

Games can't escape GameSpy's BFG
        Version 2.08 is out- and I can't get it yet; all the ftp servers are full. When I finally do snag the sucker, you can get it here, where the server is never full.
        The GamePlex problem still isn't solved, so until I can access the Get Quake page again I'll have the new GameSpy on the main page... at least, when this REGISTERED USER actually gets a copy!
        UPDATE: It's downloaded, and is uploading as I type. Get the new GameSpy here. 2/17/1999

Yello frags Kneel
        In addition to Grannies, Yello admitted today to kidnapping Kneel Katalystic, and says he may release him. He has also kidnapped YOUR T-shirt, and demands that a ransom of (I think) $25 U.S. for delivery of your shirt be sent to:
Gimme Back my Yello shirt!
26 Claverham Park
Claverham
N.Somerset
BS49 4LR
UK
Yello plans to buy out Planet Quake with the proceeds.
        He also accurately misquotes PQ's "So you wanna be a web guy, huh??? Well think again loser boy!!" article (twice), has some quack 3 screen shots you don't want to miss, and has a GIANT interview. 2/17/1999

Fragfest should have used a smaller gun
        *sigh* I still can't log on; sounds like Flamethrower's troubles with Planet Quake last November. Again, I apologize; but I've at least mirrored the OldStuff page on FamVid's server so I could shorten this one.
        There are new links on the Links page, and a new command on the Commands page, but you'll have to wait until I can access gameperplexed again for the update. 2/19/1999

Kneel frags Yello
        In a stunning move, Kneel escaped from Yello's clutches, wrestled his weapon (a banana, I think) away, and kidnapped Yello. Yello had a backup weapon (a moldy dish rag), and each is keeping the other at bay, argueing about who is kidnapping who (or is that "whom"? Whom cares, anyway?)
        At any rate, the new Kat page may be back as soon as this weekend. Regular contributors are Yello, Kneel, Tron (3D Gamer's Edge), Morgan Parry (TenFour), Desiato (Spew), and Tom Cooney (I think "the Grin Reaper", but I'm not sure). I may contribute something once in a while if I can get my muse to stand still. Kat's new page is big and unfinished, and I have no idea how they're going to pull it off by this weekend. Maybe they'll use Yello's overcooked Puntyum 3 timewarp processor and force hundreds of alternate Ben Siskos to do the work.
        The new page will have, among other stuff: Editorials, Articles, Interviews, Game Reviews, Girl Gamers, Top Ten, Audiocadia (real audio? dunno, the link led to "AOL, er, 404 file not found". I said it wasn't done), Mod Reviews, Cheat Codes (blood 2 was up), Files, free Advertising for us po' folk that can't afford Planet Quake, Links, Give-aways, Stumble Throughs, and a weekly column by the captive Yello, who Kneel now has trapped in a bottle. 2/19/1999

Nacho Extreme joins the game
Nacho Extreme died
        Mail from Nacho- Nacho Extreme ain't gonna happen. Bummer too; it was a good page. He interviewed me, too. 2/18/1999 Update- Nacho Extreme will be here sooner or later; ok, later. Nacho is playing some game and helping to fix Gameplex. 2/19/1999

Hacker frags Gamesmania
        I finally got ICQ working again, and boy, are there a lot of messages! This one was among them: "okay, logins work for sure now. they've been up constantly since i last reset ownership. one of the reasons they were down is because gamesmania got hacked. and i also have heard of other instances of attempted hacks into the gameplex network. so you guys watch your backs. take care." 2/20/1999

Kat frags you
        Update to yesterday's post- The Grin Reaper's page is up, but not yet public. The Grin Reaper is a young Canadian named Brian Griffith who has "a bad habit of designing levels", so I guess when the Kat page is opened to the public, his link will be in the "mods, levels, etc" part.
        They're making great headway on the Kat page, they may just get it done after all! 2/20/1999
        UPDATE: It's finished! I hope they get all those Ben Siskos back to whatever weird dimensions they came from. I also hope he has a use for the ten million copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet all those monkeys wrote.
        See the new Kat page here 2/20/1999 (later)

Fragfest Disconnected
        I got access to Gameplex today, but don't know for how long. There are a few new links, and if you want to witness the Borg assimilating Quake, check out the Humor page (give the .wav a minute to load when you get there). 2/20/1999

Flamethrower joins the game
        Flamethrower, in danger of starting another "ticket to nowhere" contest, updated today, saying "There simply hasn't been ANYTHING that I could give a rats chuff about going on." He also says, "MIDWAY vs GT" - "If anyone (ANYONE) at Midway or GT would PLEASE write in about the spat I'd LOVE to hear from you. SHIT, if *anyone* has *any* rumors or interesting news, please let me [Flamethrower] know!!!"
        He also has a cool new link button. 2/20/1999

PQ Frags Webmasters
        Last week, Planet Quake published "So you want to be a webmaster", an editorial discussed widely over the net. I wrote a rebuttal, and rather than post it, I sent it to Planet Quake, who posted it here. 2/20/1999

Illinois State Government frags Y2K problem
        It seems the State of Illinois has reached Y2K compliance. This email reached my desk this morning:
        "Y2K Date Change Project Status
        "Our staff has completed the 18 months of work on time and on budget. We have gone through every line of code in every program in every system. We have analyzed all databases, all data files, including backups and historic archives, and modified all data to reflect the change. We are proud to report that we have completed the "Y2K" date change mission, and have now implemented all changes to all programs and all data to reflect your new standards:
        "Januark, Februark, March, April, Mak, June, Julk, August, September, October, November, December
        "As well as: Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak, Wednesdak, Thursdak, Fridak, Saturdak
        "I trust that this is satisfactory, because to be honest, none of this Y to K problem has made any sense to me. But I understand it is a global problem, and our team is glad to help in any way possible. And what does the year 2000 have to do with it? Speaking of which, what do you think we ought to do later this year when the two digit year rolls over from 99 to 00? We'll await your direction." 2/24/1999

Steve frags Arcadia
        When I got home from work last night, a rather large blanket was thrown over my head and I found myself in a large burlap bag, bouncing around as if in a truck. I could hear a pair of giggling, cackling old women, but couldn't make out what they were saying. I feared the bag was on fire, as I smelled something similar to burning burlap, only sweeter. Eventually the jostling stopped, the bag was removed, and there was a blinding light in my eyes. An obviously fake German accent (actually it sounded like a Brit impersonating a Spanard) spoke. I feared it was Todd Porter looking for Flamethrower. "Nya ha ha, we have you now, Meester Frogfast.......... There is no escape............. you WEEEELL tell us what you know..........."
        I tried to tell the voice that I didn't know who Flamethrower really was, but was silenced. I hadn't expected the Spanish Inquisition.
        "Nobody expects the SSSSSSpanish inquisitionnnnn................"
        After being being shown the torture chamber with its devious devices, including a "soft pillow" and a "comfy chair", I relented. And tried to think up some convincing lies, since I didn't have a clue as to the truth.
        It wasn't Porter after all, and he couldn't care less who Flamethrower really was. It was actually Kneel on a "recruiting" mission. Since I have a low tolerance for soft pillows and couldn't bear the thought of the comfy chair, I agreed to his "request". Especially since he was armed with a bowl of raspberries.
        So now you'll see me in a weekly column titled "The Electric Gamer's Weak End Hell Hole" at Arcadia. The first edition of the column may be up by Thursdak (which would be about four days early). 2/24/1999

Asylum frags Old Man Murray
        You might not have noticed this newish site buried in the links section. Maybe it would be more prominant in the Quake Asylum where it probably belongs (still too clean- cuss a little, Marvin).
        Murray claims his site to be the "official game site of the US Postal Service" and says, "Think about it: gun toting maniacs navigating the same tired route over and over again picking up and dropping off items. Have I just described quake players or mailmen?"
        Right now (but maybe not tomorrow, this is the internet) he has a comparison between John Romero and Oscar Romero.
        BTW, Murray says, "How do you like us now that we're pretty much in charge of the post office, Blues? Ignore us now and you get no mail, baby. You and your little friend Redwood."
        I know I'm scared! Uh, wait a minute, I have direct deposit and the bills and junk mail come by... HEY, MURRAY! Ya know what yer momma told me? 2/23/1999
Update: Murray says via email, "We're working to increase the amount of swearing." Since he also says he's working on a links page, he won't have to, since he'll have a button. 2/24/1999
'nother Update: That boy's fast. In his news section today, he not only used every cussword in existance, he even made up a new one! You will now find the old fart in the Quake Asylum, complete with straitjcket. And when he finishes his links page, he gets a front page button. 2/25/1999

Steve frags Webmasters
        I want to again thank all you folks that sent mail about that "webmaster too" article on Planet Quake. It seems I have one more regular visitor, who appears to be replacing a dropout. The rest must be Fragfest regulars, as my visitor count is actually down a bit this week (except Sunday and Monday).
        Of course, Planet Quake is being boycotted again by some of the regulars at Planet Crap.
        Nice timing, guys.
        At the last count, the boycott has made Planet Quake's 100,000 hits per day drop steeply to, oh, about 99,994 per day. Give or take half a dozen.
        Meanwhile, the boycotters' pages counts have risen to an average of a phenominal 9.5 hits per week.
        The boycott stems from Planet Quake's "stealing" a domain they paid for from a site they hosted. It does sound like they aren't being exactly nice to the guy, but wtf, I don't have a domain; why should he? Unless he can afford to blow the price of a Voodoo, in which case he would have had it before PQ hosted him anyway.
        Some people can't stand to see anybody make a buck. Commie bastards. 2/25/1999

Steve can't escape Kneel's... comfy chair?
        The (ouch) interrogation has been (ooh that hurts) completed, and I was allowed to go about my "business". Why anyone would want to read an interview with me is beyond my comprehension, but if you do, there's one over at Arcadia (or will be very soon).
        Also, if you can't get enough of my drivel here, Kneel has posted the first of my weekly "Weak End Gamer's Hell Hole" columns (also at Arcadia), where I actually get to write about something besides Quake and Quake people, places, and things, and don't quite manage to. 2/26/1999

Saved games can't escape Id's shotgun
        A reader has been gently chiding me to provide Quake 2 level cheats, and he's right; I should. Especially since I haven't found anywhere else that does, aside from the sketchy info in the manual. I just want you all to know I'm working on it, but I'm also working on making a living, raising my family, writing articles (see last week's Planet Quake article So you want to be a webmaster, too, and the new weekly column at Arcadia mentioned yesterday), scribbling out some art for Kat Media's Silicone Drive, and perfecting the "left hand mouse, right hand joystick" configuration so I can quit sucking at deathmatch (I've sucked ever since I tried the new config).
        Apologies; please be patient with me! 2/27/1999

Gameplex died
        !!!!! Also when I got home, I found Gameplex completely gone! And so was the page! Until I rebuild the structure over here, the internal links at the top of the page won't work.
        I haven't got a single email from anyone at Gameplex, and everyone on my ICQ list connected with Gameplex is offline. 2/28/1999

Levelord Frags Flamethrower
        Last week Levelord had a rash; actually, (to quote him completely out of context), he said in his Bitchslap page, "There seems to be a rash, yes, a rash"
        He had a bit of a rant against... I couldn't tell who he was bitching about, except it wasn't Old Man Murray or BitchX, since he said, "I love Old Man Murray and Bitch X.". (Hear that, Murray? Your threat of withholding his mail worked!).
        Who was it? Planet Crap? Planet Ho Slap? He refused to say.
        Almost at the end, he says "The absolute depths, though, were reached by publicizing a company's internal email." O.k., He must be talking about Flamethrower.
        I got home tonight from visiting relatives in Missouri, and saw that Flamethrower's column started, "Ooops. Looks like the trippy Levelord has..." and you'll have to surf over to his page to see the rest. 2/28/1999

So, given my last journal, a writeup on how they work today. For the most part, my original story on this topic is true, but I changed a fair bit since then and now, nor did I go much into the thought process in how it was divined.

In contrast to the original system, the current one wants to keep a specific number of moderation points always in circulation, with the concept that mod points are a constantly moving and fluid item. Moderation simply doesn't work if there isn't enough of the damn things, and having too many wasn't a problem at all (Overrated exists for a reason).

The original idea is we should dynamically generate our pool of modpoints based on our activity levels, so the original implementation of this script took the comment counts for the last 24 hours, with the basic notion that every comment should have the potential to be moderated at least once. This number was multiple by two, and provided our baseline moderation count. Since we were based our mod point count on a 24h window, mod points were set to expire every 24 hours instead of every 72. At this point, I hadn't realized the fundamental problem with the slashcode moderation system; my thoughts were "need lots of mod points", "this is incredibly complex, I can do better". That realization came as I was stripping the old one out of slash.

As part of this, I also changed the eligibility requirements for moderation. Instead of having a specific number of tokens, I wanted only users who were active to get mod points. The ability to retain drive by moderations by lurkers was something worth maintaining, and part of what I suspect makes up the bulk of Slashdot moderations.

I also wanted to avoid the problem of "moderator burnout", or users getting mod points too frequently, and just being turned off from moderation. I know that happened to me on slashdot, and others as well who ignored modpoints (or chose to become ineligible). As such, I wanted there to be a cooldown on how frequently someone can get modpoints.

That being said, I didn't want everyone and their mother being moderators all at once, so I decided that 30% of all active users (defined (at the time) as anyone active within the last 24 hours) who had neutral or better would be eligible for modpoints.

Version 1 was fairly simple. It basically took the comment count for the last 24 hours, multiple by 2, this is the minimum number of modpoints that exist at all times. Take all users who were active in the activity_period, take mod_points_to_issue/(elligable_moderators*.3), and hand out those points equally. As a failsafe, the system will hand out ten mod points minimum (the underlying thought here being that I don't just want to get one or two modpoints; more is better, so lets take Slashdot's 5 and multiple it by 2).

And for the most part it worked. When we were in closed alpha on Thursday, we opened the test site to 100 users to try and test it in something resembling real world logic. And, for the most part it worked, because everyone was very highly active. You might see the mistake with that logic when applied to a production site.

Come go-live. User counts surge through the roof, active users are flowing in (can't believe we hit 1k users in a single day), and the moderation script starts handing modpoints in the thousands. At one point, there was close to 2000 modpoints in circulation at any given time).

For that moment, moderation was working well. Then users started going offlining, and EODing, or worse, users were getting modpoints when they signed off, and not seeing them until they signed in. The script was happy, 30% of users were moderators, but there were a lot of +1s. When I looked at the database, most people who had modpoints hadn't been signed in for hours.

Suddenly in a flash of inspiration, I saw the mistake. Slashdot could get away with handing out users with no activity level because even with 80% of their system being moderators, most people would be inactive at any given time. With our 30%, there simply weren't enough modpoints in the hands of active users.

So, in an attempt to salvage the situation, I did a critical adjustment on how the damn thing works. Activity periods for users was seperated into a new variable, and dropped to 1 hour (then five minutes, so any logged in user has a chance), and process_moderation had its crontab shorted to five minutes (it used to run hourly).

To keep modpoints constantly in circulation, expiration time was dropped to four hours, so only people who are active RIGHT NOW were moderators, especially since our editor team had posted 20 articles that day already. Whenever a user looses his points (via expiration or using them all), their slot is freed up, and a new user immediately gets modpoints.

That change in logic underpins version 2 of this script. Now the minimum count is what we hand out, except in the very rare case that we need more modpoints in circulation, in which case, the active users start getting more and more (up to a cap of 50, then it spills past 30 of users). For the most part, it seems to be working, comment moderation scores are generally going up, but it may still require further tweaking to make it work well. I generally am not seeing as many +3-5s as I like, but its right now a whole hell a lot better than it used to be.

I'm open to any thoughts, criticisms, or whacky ideas relating to how mod points are being dished out. Let me hear them below.

So for the curious (or the morbid), I thought I'd do a bit of a writeup on how modpoints worked in the stock slashcode. To my knowledge, this is how they work on slashdot.org today, and all other Slash sites.That being said, caveat emperor. I'm not QUITE sure I understood the code correctly, and I'm writing this from memory, but if enough people want it, I'll fish the old code out of git, and paste it here.

In stock slashcode, every user has something called a "Token" count, which represents their chances at getting modpoints. The best way to think of tokens is like chances at winning a raffle. Keep this in mind, as it will become relevant in short order. Tokens are (theoretically) generated from various clicks in the site UI,and are granted off some serious voodoo involving magic numbers, and other such insanity.

My best understanding is tokens are only issued after a specific random number of clicks are hit, and are later pulled out of the access log by the process_modertion slashd script. But more on that later. The logic that does this is fairly uncommented perl spread across several perl modules, so its rather hard to keep track off.

Tokens convert to modpoints on a strict ratio (if I remember correctly, its 8 tokens becomes one mod point, so you need at least 40 tokens to be eligible to receive modpoints, stock slash only hands out modpoints in increments of five).

Having tokens is not however enough to make you eligible for mod points, it only represents your chances at getting modpoints. When process_moderate kicked, it would go through and essentially dump the entire user table for users that had tokens, were willing to moderate, was not banned from moderation and within the 80% percentile of oldest accounts. This is where metamoderation comes into play. (note: this was true when metamod existed, firehose replaced it, and I have no idea how the logic (if at all) has been changed to handle that)

For users that had been metamodded, those acted as a weight, either increasing or decreasing your chances at getting modpoints in the system. For moderations that were good, you got additional chances in the index, and the reverse decreased them. It also appears that your individual metamods were (somehow) taken into account, but I haven't quite pierced the logic of that. As the metamod module is broken, I never looked to see how it works in practice.

Now, none of this promises you'll actually GET modpoints. As I said, its a raffle. And its a raffle that includes accounts that been inactive but still have tokens. At this point, random users are choosen to get modpoints, which then converts your tokens to modpoints. If you get picked more than once, then you get another increment of 5.

So far, so good? Right now, you might be asking what's the problem with that. Aside from being perhaps a bit longwinded, there seems to be nothing wrong. The problem isn't that the algorithm is wrong, its fundamentally broken.

If you want a hint, I recommend checking out http://slashdot.jp or http://barrapunto.com/ (which are the only other slash sites still on the net that I know of), and look for +5 comments. Take your time, I'll wait.

The problem comes from what ISN'T in the algorithm; it takes no account into how many modpoints MUST be in circulation. I had the advantage of being a frequent poster on macslash.org while it was still around. In the years I was active on that site, I can count the number of +5 comments I saw on one hand. +4s were almost just as rare.

For a comment from an normal user to get to +5, it needs four seperate people with mod points to vote it up four times, and it needs that many people who 1. have modpoint 2. want to use them 3. want to use them on THAT comment.

That's a lot of freaking ifs. While this site was still in closed-testing, the stock modpoint algorithm ran from Monday to Friday until I ripped it out and replaced it with my version of it. In that entire time, it issued a grand whooping total of 10 modpoints (5 to my dummy account which I use for account testing, I don't remember where the other 5 went). At that point, we were getting about 20 comments per article.

In short, the stock modpoint method is not only broken, it is fundamentally broken, and it only works on Slashdot because their userbase is large enough that it works out of dumb luck. Even then, I question that as a lot of good comments never seem to get to +2 or +3, let alone the higher tears. This is was prompted the rewrite, which I'll document in my next journal.

Testing some UTF-8:

占星術を科学的でないと考える米国人の割合が減少しているという米国立科学財団(NSF)のリポート(/.J記事)に対し、実は「占星術

Current dev notes:

Admin privs work, sec levels are as such
100 = editor
500 = editor with security (can use security page)
1000 = admin
10000 = su_admin