On Monday February 17 2014, at 02:06AM SoylentNews announced itself to the world!
(That's exactly seven years ago from the time this story posts.) Does it seem possible? I know it certainly amazes me.
A lot can happen in a year. Here are some items of note. As always, if you are not interested in this kind of stuff, ignore this post — a new story will be along shortly. Otherwise, this story continues below the fold.
- Random Statistics
- Site News
- Staff Activity
- Folding@Home
NB: An earlier version of this story containing much more detail seems to have jumped into a bit bucket. Please forgive any errors that crept into this quick reincarnation attempt!
Random Statistics:
Over the past year, activity on the site comes to:
| Journals: | 2,161 |
| Stories: | 3,927 |
| Moderations: | 114,020 |
| Comments: | 155,098 |
We previously had a great number of posts on the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still with us, but vaccines are starting to be rolled out. Sadly, variants of the coronavirus have appeared, and some appear to be more contagious than the earlier strains. We had let up on our coverage of late, because trying to merge 20-30 story submissions was extremely demanding of time and energy — yet with decreasing amounts of discussion.
In spite of the hit that COVID-19 had on the community, we had a successful fundraiser last year. When we have official results, we will get them to you.
Site News:
We had a few hiccups and a burp or two, but the site has held up pretty well over the past year, all-in-all.
We had a site issue last June where the Most Recent Journal Entries Slashbox disappeared for a while. The Mighty Buzzard (aka TMB, Buzz), investigated, verified the DB was okay, restarted mysqld, bounced Apache/Varnish, and got that running again. Thanks again, Buzz!
We've also had a few (thankfully short) site outages and some issues. One of which, of course, coincided with TMB being on a week's vacation. I investigated, but it was well beyond my ken. TMB made a valiant effort, but being far from home and trying to remotely diagnose/fix problems with a borrowed Windows laptop with a chicklet keyboard was just too much. He got things stable until he could return. At that point, things were fixed up right-quick. Thanks bunches!!
Work continues, in fits and starts, to get our new Gentoo server aluminum up and running. It is slated to take over for our single CentOS server: beryllium. Thanks to TMB and juggs as well as mechanicjay and audioguy for all you do!
Staff Activity:
As noted in last year's anniversary post, TMB had been remodeling a church into a home. "(end of April is what we're currently shooting for as a best case scenario)". Looks like his estimate was pretty close, but just had the wrong year. 😁 As soon as that remodeling is done and he's moved in, we are hoping to start working on some site updates.
That said, there are some non-Perl updates that were made through the template system. We pushed out just such a change last March. When loading a story which contains a wall-of-text, one can now just click "[Skip to comment(s)]" in the story's title bar and save a bunch of scrolling. (Updated the in-memory copy of template: "dispStory;misc;default".)
requerdanos joined the editorial staff last December. We were hoping for maybe a couple stories per week, but in short order he has already posted 106 stories! Thanks so much!
Thanks, too, go to Fnord666 who has been a solid and consistent contributor to the site. He's posted 6,234 stories of which 1,816 have been in the past year — 4.975 stories a day, every day. (No, I have no idea what 0.025 stories looks like!) He has often posted half of the day's stories, and some days has posted every single story. I couldn't have asked for a better Alternate Editor-in-Chief!
Then there's chromas who has posted 158 stories over the past year. (lifetime total: 1,237 stories). He often "seconds" stories (provides a review of the initial editor's efforts) and thereby helps keep our "foe paws" from making it out for everyone else to see and laugh at. But wait, there's more! He also maintains his systemd 'bot' on IRC. It submits stories, resolves links, and looks up things on Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube. It even extracts and generates citations for journal references! I shudder to think of how much harder it would be to post stories without the assistance. Thanks so much!
Our emeritus EiC (Editor-in-Chief) janrinok has had limited spare time while providing primary supportive care for his spouse. Nevertheless, he pushed out 193 stories in the past year (lifetime total: 5,237 stories). Furthermore, he maintains Arthur T. Knackerbracket which extracts and submit stories. Thanks JR! I especially treasure your gentle and able guidance as I try to follow in your footsteps!
Though less frequently, we continue to get regular contributions from mrpg, CoolHand, and FatPhil. Every bit helps and is MUCH appreciated!
Then there's takyon who continues to occasionally post stories (23 over the past year, lifetime total: 1,365). More amazingly, he is a prodigious submitter of stories, too. They are almost always well-researched and well-formatted, with supporting links from other sites beyond the primary source. I suspect he may have been an understudy on Dragnet "Just the facts, ma'am." Whenever I see one of his stories in the submissions queue, I know it will be a simple one to push out into the story queue. In the past year he has had 378 of his story submissions accepted! Thanks takyon!
Hopefully I didn't overlook someone, but before I close here, I should mention that TMB posted 10 stories over the past year... in addition to his efforts to keep the site up and running. Thanks Buzz!
Folding@Home:
You might not be aware, but SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team that contributes spare CPU cycles to a distributed computing project. The effort seeks to determine how different proteins fold and, thereby, be better able to come up with cures. Besides Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, the past year's efforts have had a huge emphasis on the CARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID 19. Huge multinationals like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and many others have donated their spare compute power to fighting COVID-19. Yet, even measured against those heavy weights, SoylentNews is still ranked 368th in the WORLD. We have completed 163,441 work units. That has earned us 2,435,739,709 points so far. Yes, 2.4 Billion points!
Related Stories
Greetings Soylentils! And welcome to SoylentNews!
We are here to deliver the best community-sourced news, catered for all manner of nerd! Because this is a grassroots based platform, the content feeds are powered by readers like you. Our main objective is to highlight news stories on the web that are of importance to everyone, but especially nerds. In addition, SoylentNews will strive to go beyond simple news-aggregation, with some core principles:
- Providing a soapbox for experts to discuss their profession and solicit questions from a curious audience.
- Allowing the community to comment, without any mandatory registration.
- Staying mindful of the community's needs and wants while avoiding changes to satisfy an overarching corporate agenda.
We want to make this your source for news about technology, art, and science. We are the new kid on the block and are adapting quickly to satisfy our community's needs, as we look forward to exceeding your expectations and pushing boundaries like never before. Lastly, there will be no changes in format without a general consensus from the community. Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the ride!
~Dopefish
I have a couple things to bring to the attention of the community concerning site funding and comment moderations. As always, if you are not interested in these matters, feel free to skip past this one; another story will be along shortly. Otherwise read beyond the fold for an update.
[2020-03-23 01:32:11 UTC Update 1:Ed. Note - updated to clarify location of the skip to comments button.--fnord666]
[2020-03-23 12:56:40 UTC Update 2: Changed link target from "#acomments" to "#commentwrap" per suggestion in: https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=36704&page=1&cid=974278#commentwrap; added "Note-to-self". --martyb]
Thank You! Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on a new UI feature to the site; [Skip to comment(s)]" is now live on SoylentNews!
The SoylentNews' Main Page should function and look the same as before. The magic manifests only after a specific story has been opened. Code has been added to a site template so that "[Skip to comment(s)]" should now appear, right-justified, in the first of the two lines in the title bar that appears immediately below the story's title.
[Note to self: see in-memory version of template: "dispStory;misc;default" original implementation target fragid of "#acomments" changed to "#commentwrap" as of 2020-03-23 12:56:40 UTC--martyb]
Clicking the button will bring you to the comment header block. (That's where you can adjust Breakthrough, Threshold, and Threading preferences (either one-time-only, or save it away, permanently.)
Quite frankly, thanks to the community's feedback, it looks and behaves better than what I had originally envisioned!
Previously:
Changing Site UI to Make Long Stories Easier to Navigate -- Input Requested [superseded; see update]
Skip to comment(s) -- Second Try [Updated: 2020-03-21 15:06:00 UTC].)
Enjoy!
--martyb
This is to inform you we *are* aware of a problem with the site.
Symptom: The "Most Recent Journal Entries" box that normally appears on the right-hand-side of the main page is currently not currently displaying.
We have tried a few things, but have had no luck so far. We will update this story when we know more.
Problem first became apparent at about 17:45 UTC today.
Workaround: Use Search to look at the most recent journal entries. Specifically:
We will update this story when we know more. I have done all I (martyb) know how; hopefully TheMightyBuzzard will show up before too long and get things straightened out.
[Update-TMB]: The local mysqld instances on both web frontends both decided to be On The Crack for some reason or other. The database itself running over on the db servers was just fine and a restart of mysqld (and bouncing of Apache/Varnish which has to be done whenever mysqld is restarted) on the web frontends put things back to normal.
The cause of mysqld's drug use is unknown and shall remain so unless it happens more than once.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @02:26AM (11 children)
Happy all that, and the site is messed up right at the moment,
Still, I am grateful for all the volunteers, despite their no talent.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:01AM (3 children)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday February 18 2021, @02:12AM (2 children)
Works for me! :D
Thanks, guys, for keeping the lights on.
Side thought: I'm amazed at the ratio of posts to mod points spent.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Sunday February 21 2021, @12:28PM (1 child)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday February 21 2021, @02:23PM
AC comments are what, around a third of total comments? that would about cover the discrepancy.
I frequently use up all my mod points (anymore I probably mod more than I comment, tho lately mostly used to haul good posts back out of the -1 abyss). I do love having the daily ten, and being able to use 'em anywhere, any time.
[Tho it would be nice if once a post has been modded by myself, the mod dropdown would disappear, to aid against forgetful repetitions. The one /. feature I miss.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:32AM (3 children)
I performed some quick experiments (aka tests). When I moved the "Random Statistics" section from "Extended Copy" up into the "Intro Copy" of the story editor interface, the problem seems to have gone away.
The problem being that no subsequent stories on the main page would display until I clicked on the "[Continues...]" link at the end of this story.
Got things to a working state, have noted the issue, and at this point will leave well enough alone!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:20AM
Can't code properly? More lingering cognitive effects from your stroke? Or were you always this stupid?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:52AM (1 child)
Wasn't your butt-buddy TMB around to prevent you from making the mistake to begin with?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @04:24AM
Are you done posting AC spam, Azuma? We get it, you're butthurt about getting a time out from #Soylent. You earned your ban. Grow up.
(Score: 1) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:49AM (2 children)
<table> != </table> *chuckles*
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:15AM
!= </sarcasm>
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:24AM
I'm laughing at martyb, too. His intellect has declined markedly after his stroke. Now he's a total dumbshit. There's no other explanation for not being able to understand basic HTML tags.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @02:51AM (1 child)
It appears every story is a sub-story of this one, which they actually kind of are because there'd be no stories without SN, but it does look sort of funny to have just one story on the front page.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:18AM
It's the seven-year itch.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:18AM (4 children)
All messed up and it is still better than Slashdot.
Since things seem to be slow in the world of tech news latley, I have been checking slashdot every now and then. It still looks and works like shit, and is burried in annoying advertising.
It is nice to have a news site, like soylentnews, that does not try to rape my eyballs. Or bitch about my choice of technology.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:34AM
The users will do that instead.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:49AM
> does not try to rape my eyballs
VT100 mode (green on black) forever!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:44PM
I just stopped even going there several years ago now and then it just faded out of existence as something one, once upon a time, used to check daily.
(Score: 1) by WeekendMonkey on Friday February 19 2021, @09:13AM
Haven't been back there since I found SN. I do think about the old place occasionally, so thanks for the letting us know that it's not worth going back for a visit.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @04:34AM (2 children)
Oh, look! There's another aristarchus submission! And, . . . it's gone.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:11PM
What can I say, you've given the eds so much practice at culling shitty subs that they've gotten really efficient at it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:51PM
All working as intended then.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Wednesday February 17 2021, @05:17AM (1 child)
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:03PM
Thank you for that.
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Wednesday February 17 2021, @05:49AM (2 children)
Thank you so much, all responsible.
I don't know what I'd do without this site to scratch my S******t itch.
We're blessed that a site like this can still exist on the interwebs.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:13PM (1 child)
For now. Section 230 gets altered and that's not going to be the case.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday February 17 2021, @01:59PM
When Congress-critters started talking about messing with Section 230, one of my first thoughts was about SN. This may not be the best site on teh intarwebs, but I’d sure miss it if it weren’t here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gawdonblue on Wednesday February 17 2021, @08:03AM (2 children)
...that I've completely forgotten why Feta needed Bucking.
Still haven't forgiven them, though :)
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday February 17 2021, @08:22AM
Feta needed Bucking.
Contrary to what many believe, Feta does not come from goats but rather trees. The Feta tree is felled by loggers in the forests of northern Greece, who then buck it into short logs. From there it's loaded on to ox carts where it's split and ultimately ground in to a fine dust so that it can be mixed with water to form the stinky cheese we all know and love (or hate).
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday February 17 2021, @10:09AM
Feta is salty, but while it needs more voltage than a regular FET to start electrolysing the brine in which it's stored, it's not that much. The DC buck converter is used to drop the voltage down, while increasing the current density.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 17 2021, @11:52AM
Tempus really fugit.
Seems only yesterday, that Slashdot sold out for good and this site became a reality.
Thank you all for providing bandwidth, storage and your invaluable perspectives (even though i disagree with most of them) :D
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday February 17 2021, @12:58PM (2 children)
I gather that the moderation and comments are not equally distributed across the stories. But still it's kind of interesting to note that moderation points applied are not that far behind comments and that every story (ok not in reality) should at least have a few good comments.
That said I suspect that there are several stories that are punching way above the average such as various COVID- and Trump-stories, which is funny cause there is always someone complaining about that there are to many news- and political- stories and yet those are the once that suck all, or most, the people/comments/moderations in. I could be wrong but I don't think the nerd/tech news draw that kind of crowd -- or comment vitriol, but I could be wrong.
So what can we exchange our 2.4 billion points for? I assume it's like skee-ball and we get tickets or something, so 2.4 billion is what? One large stuffed teddy-bear?
(Score: 4, Touché) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday February 17 2021, @01:57PM (1 child)
I suspect it’s closer to one of the small yellow smiley face stickers than the large teddy bear. :-/
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday February 17 2021, @04:51PM
Ooh, but if it’s a stale pack of ZotZ!, I call DIBS!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZotZ_%28candy%29 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday February 17 2021, @03:25PM (3 children)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday February 18 2021, @02:17AM (2 children)
Pipedot is still technically alive. The most recent comment was posted about 3 weeks ago. Sadly, on a story from 3 years ago.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by iWantToKeepAnon on Thursday February 18 2021, @08:14PM (1 child)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday February 18 2021, @09:39PM
No idea, but if I were looking for a comment system, I sure prefer this general style (SN or PD) to most others.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Wednesday February 17 2021, @08:40PM
It has been an eventful few years … some ups and downs. As usual, there are a great bunch of volunteers who, work hard behind the scenes to, keep things running. Many thanks to all of you and a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Soylent News. All the best for the future !
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @01:44AM (1 child)
When do you plan to fix spam mod abuse? That would be a huge improvement. For example, this on-topic and non-repetitive comment [soylentnews.org] has been incorrectly flagged as spam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:47AM
I think it is pretty risky to post anything here that generalizes anyone by race, religion, or sex, but political orientation still seems to be acceptable. Personally, I can see the reasoning behind all four mods offered, although I did not consider that particular post worthy of any moderation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:43AM
This "story" is just another excuse for these con artists to beg for more of your hard-earned money for the staff to piss away.