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posted by NCommander on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the hrm dept.

So, during the last site update article, a discussion came up talking about how those who work and write for this site should get paid for said work. I've always wanted to get us to the point where we could cut a check to the contributors of SoylentNews, but as it stands, subscriptions more or less let us keep the lights on and that's about it.

As I was writing and responding to one specific thread, part of me started to wonder if there would be enough interest to try and crowdfund articles on specific topics. In general, meta articles in which we talk deploying HSTS or our use of Hesiod tend to generate a lot of interest. So, I wanted to try and see if there was an opportunity to both generate interesting content, and help get some funds back to those who donate their time to keep the lights on.

One idea that immediately comes to mind that I could write is deploying DNSSEC in the real world, and an active example of how it can help mitigate hijack attacks against misconfigured domains. Alternatively, on a retro-computing angle, I could cook something in 16-bit real mode assembly that can load an article from soylentnews.org. I could also do a series on doing (mostly) bare metal work; i.e., loading an article from PXE boot or UEFI.

However, before I get in too deep into building this idea, I want to see how the community feels about it. My initial thought is that the funds raised for a given article would dictate how long it would be, and the revenue would be split between the author, and the staff, with the staff section being divided at the end of the year as even as possible. The program would be open to any SN contributor. If the community is both interested and willing, I'll organize a staff meeting and we'll do a trial run to see if the idea is viable. If it flies, then we'll build out the system to be a semi-regular feature of the site

As always, leave your comments below, and we'll all be reading ...

~ NCommander

Related Stories

Review: Hesiod Name Services System 31 comments

Most system administrators working with a large number machines will be at least passingly familiar with LDAP, or it's Microsoft's incarnation as Active Directory. Like most organizations, we used LDAP to organize shell account information for SN's backend servers, and spent the last year and a half cursing because of it. As such, we've recently replaced LDAP with a much older technology known as Hesiod, which is a DNS-based system of storing user accounts and other similar information. Given Hesiod's unique history (and relative obscurity), I though it would be interesting to write a review and detailed history of this relic, as well as go more in-depth why we migrated.

In this novel:

  • Why We Dumped LDAP
  • Project Athena
  • Overview of Hesiod
  • Drawbacks
  • In Closing

Read past the break for a look at this piece of living history.

SoylentNews Deploys HSTS and Mandates HTTPS Everywhere 62 comments

So after an extended period of inactivity, I've finally decided to jump back into working on SoylentNews and rehash (the code that powers the site). As such, I've decided to scratch some long-standing itches. The first (and easiest) to deploy was HSTS to SoylentNews. What is HSTS you may ask?

HSTS stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security and is a special HTTP header that signifies that a site should only be connected to over HTTPS and causes the browser to automatically load encrypted versions of a website should it see a regular URL. We've forbid non-SSL connections to SN for over a year, but without HSTS in place, a man-in-the-middle downgrade attack was possible by intercepting the initial insecure page load.

One of the big views I have towards SoylentNews is we should be representative of "best practices" on the internet. To that end, we deployed IPv6 publicly last year, and went HTTPS-by-default not long after that. Deploying HSTS continues this trend, and I'm working towards implementing other good ideas that rarely seem to see the light of day.

Check past the break for more technical details.

[Continues...]

Notes From The Backend: SN Updates 30 comments

Since people seem to rather enjoy when I run articles on backend upgrades, here's another set of changes I made over the last week as I get back into the full swing working on the site.

The short list:

  • Migrated Beryllium (which hosts wiki+IRC+mail) to Apache 2.4
    • Upgraded said machine to PHP7
    • Needed to support OCSP stapling
    • Validating final checks before deploying HSTS to all public domains
    • Upgraded MediaWiki, SquirrelMail, and YOURLS to PHP7 compatible versions
  • Worked with TheMightyBuzzard and user comments to determine additional XSS protection headers we should deploy
  • Found (and removed) SSLv3 support on postfix and dovecot
  • Deployed DNSSEC on sylnt.us in preparation for signing soylentnews.org (here's the test results)

Read past the fold for more information.

Retro-Malware: Writing A Keylogger for DOS, Part 1 97 comments

I've made no secret that I'd like to bring original content to SoylentNews, and recently polled the community on their feelings for crowdfunding articles. The overall response was somewhat lukewarm mostly on dividing where money and paying authors. As such, taking that into account, I decided to write a series of articles for SN in an attempt to drive more subscriptions and readers to the site, and to scratch a personal itch on doing a retro-computing project. The question then became: What to write?

As part of a conversation on IRC, part of me wondered what a modern day keylogger would have looked running on DOS. In the world of 2016, its no secret that various three letter agencies engage in mass surveillance and cyberwarfare. A keylogger would be part of any basic set of attack tools. The question is what would a potential attack tool have looked like if it was written during the 1980s. Back in 1980, the world was a very different place both from a networking and programming perspective.

For example, in 1988 (the year I was born), the IBM PC/XT and AT would have been a relatively common fixture, and the PS/2 only recently released. Most of the personal computing market ran some version of DOS, networking (which was rare) frequently took the form of Token Ring or ARCNet equipment. Further up the stack, TCP/IP competed with IPX, NetBIOS, and several other protocols for dominance. From the programming side, coding for DOS is very different that any modern platform as you had to deal with Intel's segmented architecture, and interacting directly with both the BIOS, and hardware. As such its an interesting look at how technology has evolved since.

Now obviously, I don't want to release a ready-made attack tool to be abused for the masses especially since DOS is still frequently used in embedded and industry roles. As such, I'm going to target a non-IP based protocol for logging both to explore these technologies, while simultaneously making it as useless as possible. To the extent possible, I will try and keep everything accessible to non-programmers, but this isn't intended as a tutorial for real mode programming. As such I'm not going to go super in-depth in places, but will try to link relevant information. If anyone is confused, post a comment, and I'll answer questions or edit these articles as they go live.

More past the break ...

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  • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:42AM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:42AM (#389071) Journal

    So I can maybe get a few cents for writing submissions but can't get a contributor's star?

    It's a pretty nice idea, especially for those of us who'd like have professional content attached to our real (non-aliased) names, first-run here rather than say LinkedIn.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:04PM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:04PM (#389074) Homepage Journal

    We should probably put these in their own nexus so you can sift through them easier or block them if you don't like knowing things.

    We probably also should make these tied to the submitter's nick/uid so you can get someone's sorted list of paid stories from their user info page.

    Maybe do the above and give them an icon beside their nick on comments as well that directly links to their stories.

    I know, I'm creating a lot of extra work for us.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:27PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:27PM (#389077)

    Just tossing out an idea: 1/3 contributor 1/3 to the house (aka SN) 1/3 to a charity of submitters choice (childs play or EFF or whatever floats their boat ...) ?

    At least theoretically there's something everyone likes which might cut down on the complaining or squabbling about filthy lucre.

    Might get SN some nice PR to have SN fundraise a couple hundred bucks for childs play or whatever, just don't mention in the press release that that the "overhead" of the fundraiser was 2/3.

    I suppose you could go all humble bundle on it, assuming they don't have the concept of sliders patented.

    You could raffle stuff off, including virtual-ish stuff like getting to non-bindingly select the next campaign's charity. Or go levels, like $50 donation gets you a pinup calendar featuring the SN admin team. Assuming thats not already a gag gift, you could go the gag gift direction and the "winner" gets a copy of "Cobol for Dummies" (and yes that book does exist and it very sarcastically made the rounds at a former employer although it never landed on my desk)

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:26PM (#389124)

      like $50 donation gets you a pinup calendar featuring the SN admin team.

      How much does it cost to never have to think of that again?

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:49PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:49PM (#389135) Journal

      A good suggestion, but I'm not sure where we stand legally about making charitable donations - I'm simply ignorant about US law. Will it affect our current business status?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:48PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:48PM (#389350)

        As a PBC, probably not; if ratified by board and shareholders, definitely not.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:34PM (#389078)

    Even the green site doesn't pay submitters or mods. They do probably pay devs and editors (not sure about that now though) but they run ads.

    Money flowing into contributors' hands might kill this site, there would be arguments, gamesmanship, outrage, jealousy, etc.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:19PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:19PM (#389117) Homepage Journal

      Well, we're talking actual useful articles here rather than simply being news/discussion-worthy. So, yeah, different thing than just submitting a normal story.

      You make a good point on how to pick who gets paid for what content though.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:45PM (#389265)

      Jon Katz.

      For those too young to recognize the name, imagine Bennett Haselton being paid for what he contributes to the other site.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:52PM (#389352)

        Hey, just because you don't understand the capabilities of the Commodore 64, does make him a total idiot.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:15PM

        by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:15PM (#389365) Journal

        Did you dislike Jon Katz' postings on Slashdot (where he stylised his name as "JonKatz")? The GP says "the green site doesn't pay submitters" which may imply that Slashdot didn't pay Jon Katz. Am I wrong about that? Elsewhere, Jon Katz does write for pay. I suspect that he posted on Slashdot because it was a high-traffic site, not because he was paid to do so.

        Are you of the opinion that writing done for pay is typically of a lower quality than writing done for free? I'm certain that giving money to writers will attract writing that some readers will dislike. However it is likely to also attract some writing that at least some readers want to see. If payments bring on a flood of shit, perhaps the site's operators will discern that and shut down the experiment.

        some pages I didn't read carefully:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Katz [wikipedia.org]
        https://slashdot.org/story/99/03/20/2059255/running-to-the-internet-california-chapter-two [slashdot.org]
        http://www.theobvious.com/archive/1999/03/25.html [theobvious.com]
        http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/technology/afghan-e-mail-seen-as-too-geek-to-be-true.html [nytimes.com]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:05AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 18 2016, @02:05AM (#389443)

          I do remember some extended (sub)threads that railed about the submitter of the item (Katz).
          It seemed to me that he was a paid staffer and that Slashdotters expected better quality from him.
          Perhaps my perceptions were wrong and it was that the vitriol was so thick that left an undue impression on me.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:03PM (#389088)

    Will implementing this kind of system actually be able to pay for itself? Also, would the opportunity cost be worth it?

    If this site gets much bigger, then I could see something like this work but I don't think we are at that point yet. The size of the check for the contributors has to be large enough to cover the market value of their work. Think about what sort of quality the contributions (and the cost of editors going through them) would be if the size of the check is only developing country wages.

    I might bake a batch of cookies and give most of them away for free to co-workers, but if someone wants to buy them (pay for my time and materials to make them) then the price is going to have to be above market value to actually be worth it or I'll resent that person for taking advantage of social pressure to be "nice".

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:51PM (#389104)

      TIP The "baking cookies" analogy is always a killer...

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:21PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @02:21PM (#389119) Homepage Journal

      Will implementing this kind of system actually be able to pay for itself?

      Wouldn't cost anything but dev time, which is currently free.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by martyb on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:17PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:17PM (#389093) Journal

    I appreciate the idea and putting it out to the community for feedback. Take note it is early morning for me and I'm still waking up; the following are subject to change upon further wakefulness. =)

    My primary concern is that the site remains a going concern. As you mentioned, we are barely able to secure sufficient funds to keep the site going. Shout out to all those who have subscribed [soylentnews.org] and/or purchased swag [zazzle.com]!

    As we are set up as a PBC (Public Benefit Corporation), I am curious as to how raising funds and paying for submissions fits in with that. Also, there was some talk at one point about gaining tax status as a 501c(3) (I think that's the one -- correct me if I am wrong) whereby people could make an outright, tax-deductible donation to the site. I realize it is a bit of a catch-22 as it would take a fair amount of funds in order to set that up. ISTR there are both national and state-level issues with that... Hmmm, I wonder if we could bootstrap the process? Find someone in the US who can commit to a seed donation sufficient to set up tax-deductible status in that state. Then, from the later tax-deductible donations in that state, garner additional funds to go on to the next state, and eventually, cover the entire USA? How much would it cost, in total, to become able to accept tax-deductible donations across the entire USA? We cannot be the first organization who would be interested in doing this. What have other organizations done?

    As for paying for stories... Unless there is a HUGE desire for this, I would argue against it. This site has become what is has because of the generous donations of people's time and energy. My sense is that as soon as money gets involved, things change from "What can I do[nate] to help?" to "What is in it for me?" I've seen money mess up other well-intentioned organizations; I'd hate to see that happen here.

    If anything, I'd sooner see any excess funds that come in be used to reimburse the founders for their seed capital that got this site off the ground. Let's make them whole, first; show that we can meet our existing obligations before we step out into something else.

    Again, mostly thinking out loud here -- feedback welcome.

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by CoolHand on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:30PM

      by CoolHand (438) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:30PM (#389098) Journal
      I more or less wholeheartedly agree with martyb's statements.. I could easily see how money divvied up among staff could start to cause a lot of friction. If there was enough money to pay salaries for everyone, I think it would be better. But just paying out here or there could start to cause some jealousy quickly, even among the best intentioned and most reasonable people. We're only human afterall. I think it could possibly work, but there would have to be a very detailed framework created that was viewed as fair by everyone. I'm not sure how possible that is, but I know it would be a lot of work, and probably require a lot of modification through trial and error before becoming perfected. In the meantime, it would be causing friction. If money was crowdfunded, I'd just as soon it all go into the main general slush fund of the site (and some to charity would be fine too maybe as an above idea suggested), until such time as we had such an abundance that we were almost forced to start paying some reasonable salaries to people, and then that not based on a per story status, but just a general salary. I think if it was based per story, it would be really difficult to parcel those out fairly..
      --
      Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:20PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:20PM (#389144) Journal

      As an editor, and therefore someone who could benefit financially from this proposal, I share marty's concerns regarding the potential for it to create friction within both the team and the wider community. Of course I would like to be compensated for the several hundreds of hours (yep, it's not a lot spread over 2 years but it is quite a bit of my 'spare' time and it has come at a personal cost) of support given to this site. But how do you measure the value of a contribution between dev, editing, QA, management etc? Unless we have a recognised and agreed scale of remuneration, the likelihood of it creating problems is greater than the short term gains to the community as a whole.

      I know many of the team deserve something tangible in recognition of their efforts, and if we insist on doing this for free we might simply end up abusing the enthusiasm and generosity of a handful of individuals who really need to think about getting food on their table.

      I'm most certainly not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but I can see a lot of work being necessary to produce a system that is fair to all concerned - and which is viewed as such and accepted by the community. The idea has merit, but I don't think that we have identified a suitable implementation yet. However, that is what this thread is about so I look forward to seeing the comments and suggestions.

      If anything, I'd sooner see any excess funds that come in be used to reimburse the founders for their seed capital that got this site off the ground. Let's make them whole, first; show that we can meet our existing obligations before we step out into something else.

      I whole-heartedly agree.

    • (Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:19PM

      by AudioGuy (24) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:19PM (#389194) Journal

      I agree with these concerns.

      Money has a way of distorting things - and attracting the wrong sort of people.

      Right now we have staff who are happy to donate their time for a greater good, and part of that greater good is that the focus is on the communuty, not the 'business'.

      We have members of the community who freely donate their money to keep us going, with no return expected other than we keep the site up and functional for their use.

      We did what we set out to do, and it is working. I don't want to break it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @11:00PM (#389356)

      I don't think you understand the process for becoming a tax-exempt organization. Basically, you form a non-profit under some state's rules, then you apply for tax exempt status at the Federal level. The home state usually follows the lead of the IRS, but if not you apply there too. You may also have to apply to the PPB, if different. All other states hen recognize tax exempt status because they follow the IRS determination and because of FFC under the Constitution.

  • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:20PM

    by DECbot (832) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:20PM (#389094) Journal

    How about giving subscribers points proportional to their subscription level and these points can be awarded to articles they find interesting? That would link funds to articles and shape content. If subscribers like dancing bear articles more than singing cats, contributors are now given an incentive to write dancing bear articles.

    How many points one subscriber can give to an article is an exercise for the community to decide.

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:02PM

      by Zz9zZ (1348) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:02PM (#389216)

      Sounds too much like a regular newspaper with articles dropped because they don't "sell" well enough.

      --
      ~Tilting at windmills~
  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:27PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:27PM (#389097) Journal

    If the "All Authors" list in /search.pl [soylentnews.org] listed the most frequent submitters it might encourage more frequent submission. It would definitely be a bit more useful.

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:46PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:46PM (#389180) Journal

      https://soylentnews.org/hof.pl

      Sorry, butthurt, but you're not there yet... :-p

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:39PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:39PM (#389208) Journal

        Most Active Submitters

        I cry everytime.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:17PM

        by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:17PM (#389330) Journal

        Thanks for responding. If you didn't notice my handle listed on the Hall of Fame page (as takyon points out, it's there), that could be an indication of how little that page is used. It isn't linked directly from the main page. Before your comment, I had only looked at it once.

        I hadn't understood how the search by author worked. On further investigation I see that it searches for stories posted by a particular editor: "author" is a synonym for "editor."

        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:52PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @10:52PM (#389353) Journal

          What I meant was that you haven't reached the top yet ;)

    • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:45PM

      by Fnord666 (652) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @09:45PM (#389313) Homepage

      If the "All Authors" list in /search.pl listed the most frequent submitters it might encourage more frequent submission. It would definitely be a bit more useful.

      That only works if you value quantity over quality. Sure, I could troll RSS feeds all day and submit story after story but 99% of them wouldn't be worth the bits used to transmit them.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:17AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Thursday August 18 2016, @01:17AM (#389426) Journal

        As I mentioned in another post, I was mistaken: we actually can't search by submitter at all. What we can do is search for story submissions that have been accepted by the editors (termed "authors" on that page). Rejected submissions, unless I'm again mistaken, are not shown in the search results. I wasn't suggesting that rejected submissions should be searchable.

        In a recent thread, [soylentnews.org] editors seemed to be asking for a greater quantity of story submissions of the sort that would get approved.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:47PM (#389102)

    I would write content under the conditions mentioned in the summary. Writing quality content, especially technical content longer than 1000 words is very time intensive. It requires writing, testing, verifying, editing, fixing, editing, fixing, editing, fixing, and finally publishing.

    How would the SN staff decide on which article is a paid article? What if 3 people want to write the same article? Where is the funding going to come from?

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:54PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:54PM (#389185) Journal

      Hell, I'd submit articles for free. It just seems like the front-page isn't really a great fit for long-form submissions, though.
       
      Before we figure out paying authors maybe we should focus on providing a home for long-form writing.
       
      If there was a separate articles page that allowed text, images and some simple formatting people could submit longer articles in there. Then, they could post summaries to the front page.
       
      Articles could be fiction, product/movie/game reviews, interesting project builds, first-hand news, all sorts of stuff. I'd post in there...

  • (Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:48PM

    by SecurityGuy (1453) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:48PM (#389103)

    I get calls from vendors (like many of you, I'm sure) who want to send me a white paper if I'll do some trivial little survey. I always refuse because it's never been the case that I learned anything in a white paper that isn't readily available on the internet anyway, and very rarely is there even anything in it I don't already know, unless it's just not relevant to me. For the same reason, I'm pretty unlikely to contribute money to getting articles published. On most topics, there's probably an article already, or a mailing list with archives, or Safari, etc.

    There's also the time lag. Usually, when I want to know something on a technical topic, I want to know right now. If you had an archive of high-quality articles where I could pay a small amount to get access to one immediately, that might be of interest. If it's a chip-in-some-money-and-wait-a-while model, by time the article is published I'll already have found out what I needed to know.

    I'm not trying to discourage, just give you the feedback you asked for. The bottom line for me is that for this to be something I'd use, you have to be better in some way than the resources I already have.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 17 2016, @01:57PM (#389106)

      Yeah, but the white paper they want to send you is probably on "Problems you never knew you had which are solved instantly by the superior architecture of new Force FX Professional Edition".

    • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:20PM

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:20PM (#389164) Homepage Journal

      I've found a lot of those whitepapers to not only be dry as hell, but useless unless you are intimately familiar with the subject in which case they remain useless.

      --
      Still always moving
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:11PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:11PM (#389139) Journal

    10 U.S. cents worth of Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency buys a "submission point". Sell them in packs of 50. Users can spend as many submission points as they want on an article. The user that made the submission gets 20% of the value of any submission points spent on them... $0.02, and SoylentNews gets the other 80%. I'm not sure how the system would handle multiple merged submissions, since we sometimes roll them in haphazardly, or don't merge your dupe submission if it came in too late, and we have at least one non-user bot.

    I mention Bitcoin only because you don't want payment processing fees to eat into this. I'm not sure what Soylent uses for subscriptions.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:20PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @04:20PM (#389163) Journal

      I really like this idea, and I like decoupling it from subscriptions (contrary to DECbot's seemimgly similar suggestion [soylentnews.org] above). I'm not sure if there's a reason to treat story submissions different than journal entries and comments, I could see crowd-funded rewards for all sorts of content generation.

      I'm not sure about the 80% 20% ratio, but it would be less controversial to move it from that to 50% 50% at some future point than the other way around.

      I think SoylentNews is using Stripe for subscriptions. They used to accept bitcoins, but don't seem to anymore. Sadface. I've never renewed my subscription while they were still accepted, and I think I originally subscribed before they were (maybe PayPal was originally used?).

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:06PM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:06PM (#389190) Homepage Journal

        BitPay support was disabled because they broke their API and we haven't gotten a chance to fix it on our end. We've always supported paypal (as rehash came with that code) and Stripe was a recent addition.

        --
        Still always moving
        • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:28PM

          by JNCF (4317) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:28PM (#389239) Journal

          Ah, thanks for the explanation!

      • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:47PM

        by DECbot (832) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:47PM (#389211) Journal

        I think it's pretty much the same idea, except that I reward a user buying points with a subscriber star (i.e.i if you have points, you get a star). Or maybe the other way it could be implemented is a user with a 12 month subscription of 120$US provides you with 1000 points each month during your subscription. My thought was to bolt on something more to subscribers so that as you give to the site, you are given a tangible benefit. I think NCommander is correct that subscribers should not have features like early access to articles as that can change the community as subscribers could astroturf new articles. However, allowing users with an investment into Soylent (i.e. subscribers) a means to vote on content I thought to be a very interesting concept.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
        • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:25PM

          by JNCF (4317) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @06:25PM (#389238) Journal

          Yeah, I didn't think they were very far apart. My reasoning for prefering decoupling is that I think people should be able to buy a very tiny number of points. Currently, you can buy a 30 day subscription for $4, 180 day for $12, or 365 day for $20. I think it would be ideal if somebody could buy $1 of points if they wanted, or even less, and the only way to allow that while coupling the point system with the subscription system would be to make the existing subscription perks (subscriber star and ability to search entire archive) available much cheaper.

          The lower the barrier of entry, the more people will punch in their credit card number (or SoylentNews' Bitcoin address, or whatever). When somebody gives once, they're more likely to justify giving to the same cause in the future.

  • (Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:29PM

    by YeaWhatevs (5623) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:29PM (#389149)

    Or soylent green, I'll take either.

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:43PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:43PM (#389209)

    I'm all for the trial run. Any comments about what may or may not happen are people trying to predict the future. I know we have some scientists out there and i think they would prefer a test over conjecture.

    The only thing missing i think is that some "articles" will probably need a minimum amount of money raised to even attempt. Like your assembly that loads a webpage (sounds crazy but awesome to me!) would require a certain minimum to even get a bare-bones deliverable out there. If only 20$ was raised then that would translate into very little code. Probably too little to even have a deliverable. Kickstarter does minimums and then stretch goals. Something like that might be required.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
  • (Score: 2) by goodie on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:36PM

    by goodie (1877) on Wednesday August 17 2016, @07:36PM (#389259) Journal

    How would you be able to validate that the stuff written was not pumped up from some other site or a mashup of various sources that could potentially demand some form of payment as well? I am just asking because I have no idea how this process works in theory or in practice. I mean if we are talking about very small amounts this is probably not a concern.