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[Ed Note 2: Damn devs have made a liar out of me... moved it back to the original schedule noted below. - cmn32480]
[TMB Note: Site update complete. Bumped so folks will notice.]
It has been a few months since we last updated SoylentNews, and we've not been content to rest on our laurels. Our next site update is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, 2017-05-21, depending on staff availability. We'll update this story when we know for sure when it will take place.
Since this post was started, other things have come to light, so there's a bit of everything in here. Read on for the full scoop:
Web Site Changes
In this latest update (scheduled around 00:00 UTC on 5.21.2017, but we are flexible), we have made the following improvements:
- Supported subscription payments made with Bitcoin [again].
- Fixed a bug which blocked non-whole-dollar bitcoin subscriptions.
- Provided immediate feedback of theme changes.
- Added button that, when clicked, marks all comments in a story as "unread".
- Added support for "<s>" and "<strike>" tags.
- Fixed bug where a plus sign "+" in a user's nickname made their user page inaccessible from site links.
- Removed unused Javascript code.
- Made minor, non-user-facing changes (code cleanup, etc.)
Backend Changes
As always, we appreciate constructive feedback. Reply with a comment to this story, join us in #dev on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), or submit a bug on GitHub.
Separately, the team has made great strides in moving to running on Gentoo. We are taking this step very methodically, making sure we have a solid foundation in place on one server before we even think of rolling it out to the rest of our systems. Yes, that means we will be free from systemd. Kudos to NCommander, Mechanicjay, Audioguy, TheMightyBuzzard, Paulej72, and Deucalion.
SoylentNews' Folding@Home Team Update
It's amazing how spare compute cycles add up! SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team which is helping researchers find a cure for diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's — among many others. Our team was launched on Feb. 12, 2016. In just over 15 months, we have amassed well over 300 million points which places us at Team 304 out of 226564! Barring any surprises, and continuing at our current rate, we are on track to break past 300 and into the 2xx's on or about May 28th, 2017.
We are always open to receiving new team members. Contact Sir Finkus for more information, either via email at this site, or via the #Soylent or #folding channels on our IRC -- Internet Relay Chat server.
Accounts Milestone
New account creation has been relatively consistent and steady over the past year averaging out to a new account pretty much every day. It is a pleasure to inform the community that, on May 18th, account number 6600 was registered on the site.
Funding Shortfall
Lastly, it is my sad duty to inform the community that our cash intake has been seriously deficient so far this year. Our budget for the six-month period of Jan 1, 2017 through June 30, 2017 is $3,000 and we are currently at approximately half that, with less than 6 weeks to go.
We have in excess of 100 users who have been active on the site within the last 30 days whose subscription has lapsed. It is easy enough to do — I have failed to notice my own subscription's end on more than one occasion!
Plain and simple, the site needs to pay its bills. Please look at your subscription page and consider making a contribution. The dollar amounts shown in the text-entry fields are the minimum amount required for that subscription duration. We've had a few users anonymously contribute significantly more than that in the past.
Some have chosen to give a gift subscription to NCommander (UID: 2) as a sign of support. However you choose to make a contribution, please do so now.
Thank-you
-- martyb
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:26PM (5 children)
I've always paid my subscription by BTC, but payments haven't been possible that way for a year or more. Am I the weirdo here?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:36PM (3 children)
Coinbase broke their API about a year ago, and it required essentially rewriting a good part of the hooks required for it and other bull**** to get functional. Due to various $LIFE issues, it didn't get fixed 'til now :/.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:59PM (2 children)
BitPay not CoinBase, but yeah. I spent like a week trying to grok their new API (I was going to have to write a whole new perl module for it from scratch) and finally said "fuck this complexity for complexity's sake bullshit" and added like six lines to enable BitCoin through Stripe.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:29PM (1 child)
Aha, you mean, BTC does work now?
If so, could you update the subscriptions page? It still says "Currently we are not accepting BitCoin"
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by Xyem on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:43PM
Bitcoin payments will be enabled through Stripe in the update and that message will be removed.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:37PM
BitCoin should be a go by Monday morning. Turns out it was extremely easy to turn on BitCoin payments through Stripe. No, you're not the only one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
I rushed to the subscription page only to find the changes haven't gone live :-/
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:53PM
Yeah, we're probably doing the update tomorrow evening. Bytram wanted to be a weirdo and do the release notes post before the update this time though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:08PM (2 children)
I never use the features and don't care about the gold star so forgot about mine expiring entirely, but gosh darnit April was not a cheap month for me. I can't do $20s willynilly anymore!
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @01:51AM (1 child)
Reading the The addition of the "new" flag comment by Justin Case, makes me want to note that the page presentation I see is at the other end of the spectrum.
I like black text on a white background, no sidebars, and no images[1] so, pretty much all the time, I block everything that isn't readable text.
The site still Degrades Gracefully for me with only 3 minor quibbles which I can easily tolerate.
After visiting several sites lately that were complete crap except for those visitors who use the exact same browser setup that the dev was using, I can't give big enough props to our guys.
If the devs stick to the same route they're on, I'll still be shitting in tall cotton.
[1] I have the Subscriber star whitelisted because there's no indication of that in a text-only presentation.
I consider all other images to be chintz.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday May 29 2017, @08:42AM
Very much belated, but there's supposed to be alt text for the sub star (*). It MIGHT have gotten lost in the comments update though.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:32PM (5 children)
Not trying to be a dick but a couple of suggestions for cost reduction:
1. Why use Gandi SSL when Letsencrypt is free?
2. Consider using another VPS provider than Linode. OVH for example is much cheaper
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:15PM (2 children)
Well, we are using LE for everything except the base domain. The answer to your question though is "admin team consensus". We just talked about it last night and decided that while LE is certainly useful for ancillary services, we prefer the main site to only have breakage potential once every year or so.
Linode's really not that bad on a price:value comparison. OVH is right out for not supporting Gentoo though and for their "nickle and dime you to death" approach. Technically the site could be run on a shoestring budget and one server but it would be a very overloaded, insecure, and failure-prone way of doing things. About the only thing left we could safely consolidate away is the spare load balancer but since we're about to use it as an initial test deployment for our base Gentoo setup, that'll have to wait.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:03AM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:16PM
1. "I happen to run this lilliputian testing site for this free software discussion board software ..."
2. ???
3. PROFIT!11
(Score: 1) by hopdevil on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:29AM (1 child)
There are other options as well. I am not intimately familiar with the usage statistics of this site but are server-less architectures possibly cheaper? Even for static content? I am very familiar with Amazon services (S3, lambda) and these can be (based on my understanding) quite a bit cheaper than hosting your own solutions. I would even volunteer serving some content myself to offload bandwidth/storage. I also think that would be an interesting architecture for people supporting content in general.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:26AM
Serverless isn't really an option for the rehash code (apache/perl/mod_perl). Might be for some of the ancillary services though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday May 21 2017, @01:15AM (11 children)
I'm coming in a bit late but I hope at least a few people will see this. I'm going to reiterate what I've said a couple of other times during discussions of membership and funding. To wit...
WE NEED TO BE LOUDER ABOUT THE FACT THAT THIS SITE RUNS NO ADS AND IS ENTIRELY SUPPORTED BY USER SUBSCRIPTION.
New visitors finding their way here really have no practical way to know the history of this site, and if they are running ad blockers it would be easy to have no clue that this site runs no ads whatsoever. It's very easy not to notice the absence of something when you're already used to not seeing it elsewhere. Even for those of us here from the beginning, it's easy to forget that we have the privilege of visiting a site every day that is entirely run by volunteers and can't keep the lights on without our subscriptions.
I grew up listening to public radio and watching public television. Twice a year, every local public TV and radio station across the country does a funding drive to try and get members of the public to renew the monthly pledges that comprise a substantial part of their yearly budgets. They do this by partially INTERRUPTING THE STANDARD PROGRAMMING while they run telethons and bring in volunteers, celebrity guests, and many members of the public to talk about how much they enjoy public programming and stuff like that. They try to keep it entertaining, and they seem to try different strategies every few years. Often, they will promise to shut up and go right back to normal programming if they reach the pledge goal early for a particular time slot.
Main point being, if you tune into PBS or public radio during a pledge drive, it's pretty hard to not notice what's going on. Important things like the news/weather programs are broadcast in full and on time as usual, but other programs are either entirely people talking about pledges or they will interrupt a movie or something every 15 minutes or something, like on commercial television. The viewer/listener cannot fail to understand what is happening and why it is happening, and the message is clearly conveyed on a repeating loop that if enough people don't pledge that program might not be able to continue in the future.
So far, we do NOTHING like this on this site. It is my measured opinion that we need to start doing so. With a minimal effort this site should be able to attract many more registered members and be shooting well past the funding goal every year.
To say this another way, we need to find the courage to ANNOY PEOPLE for a couple of days, a couple of times per year. Just enough to get everyone's attention.
It really doesn't need to be anything drastic. I'm sure most of you have noticed the big banner that appears on Wikipedia for a few days every year. Same concept. We need a big, LOUD banner at the top of every page that appears for a few days in the spring and fall. Lay out clearly that this site is a [ whatever the hell it is, I forget, a public corporation or something? ], is not out for profit, is funded by user subscriptions, and that we run no ads.
I'm confident that even with a very low-key effort we should be able to double the number of reliable, long-term subscribers. Maybe even more, eventually. And of course, just as importantly, it will keep people from forgetting to renew.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:05AM
> we need to find the courage to ANNOY PEOPLE for a couple of days
Devs already have fun annoying us on April Fool's day, maybe that should also be the day for subscription reminders? Kill two birds with one stone, as they say...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 21 2017, @06:09AM (1 child)
I was thinking similarly. Branch out a bit on the funding. Really, it would be great if SN could raise funds from more places than the user base, if that can be done without making bad compromises such as plastering the site with ads. An endowment like so many universities have could solve the funding problems for a very long time. A long shot, I suppose, but there are charities such as this International Center for Journalists that might be willing to help.
Maybe a Kickstarter campaign could help, and with more than money, maybe it would bring more publicity?
Then. how about plain old attracting more readers? Ya know, I'm kinda looking forward to having the bragging rights of a 4 digit uid when the site hits 6 digits.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:28AM
Interesting ideas but the prollem is we mostly have coders and eds. Nobody willing/able to take on the publicist job.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:30AM (4 children)
I just turned my subscription on - for the reason I was NOT hounded about it.
I am very leery of donating to many places, as once I do it once, I get on their beg-list of gullibles, which they share with everyone else, and I quickly find my mailbox full of beg-letters.
Based on how these guys try to run this ship, I do not think they will do that here. I have already taken my chance a few minutes ago that they won't, and will keep my relationship with them between us, and not share it with every beg-letter generator out there.
I want to see this site survive. Its not like they are asking for much. Re-read Marty's story above, and its kinda obvious no-one's living in mansions over SN donations... a couple thousand bucks total cost for six months? I can't rent a cubicle for that. Most of this has to be volunteer work for a few guys training on how to build and run something like this, and they are asking us to chip in for a few servers, internet connectivity bill, and power to run 'em. A little dropped here will go a long way.
This site is not at all like the "58 dollar seed" guy who obviously does not need it. Now, if you guys wanna rail on someone who is completely irresponsible with your contribution, go rail on that guy.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:31AM
No worries. We're supposed to have a reminder email that goes out either a week or a month before your subscription lapses, and then again when it actually lapses, but they're broken more often than not and never get sent. Plus you're under no obligation to use a functional email address.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:05PM (2 children)
Unless you count the occassional beg post on the main index and subscription expiration notifications (which are broken, automated, and disableable in that order), we never bug our users for money on a 1:1 level.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday May 22 2017, @04:37AM (1 child)
NCommander:
First, thanks for replying to my post. I am impressed the top guy responded to it.
I did not see the story I am replying to right now as a beg post. I saw it more like a system status report. And it was indicating a fuel problem.
I also noted it was the last thing mentioned, and even then, brought up reluctantly.
I know what happens when my van runs out of fuel. I know what happens when bills don't get paid. And I know I have been derelict in the share I have been granted of this board.
I know if I want that van to start when I turn the key, I better see to it there is fuel in the tank. If I want the Soylentnews.org to be there, I better chip in too. Like many other users here have mentioned, this site is not ad-supported. Nor do I believe most of us would want it to be.
I see by the latest main index that the status story was successful in getting those of us who care about the existence of these forums to wake up and contribute a little more than words. Even with my modest contribution, I feel it will make a difference and won't be wasted.
If someone does not care, I do not believe any amount of cajoling with get them to change their minds. Some of the vitriolic comments I have seen on this thread reinforce my beliefs in this. Same as no amount of cajoling from the pulpit would make me believe in a 6,000 year old Earth. All it did was make me leave the church. Disgusted, and my faith in religious folk took one helluva big hit - probably one I will never recover from.
Hopefully, there will be enough overflow to buy you guys a few pizza and beer meets. You've sure earned 'em.
You guys are doing what I feel will save a helluva lot of us in the long run. I get the strong idea you guys are using SoylentNews to train your technologies on, just as I am using my van to train my technology on. Youv'e taken it one step further by sharing this thing as you bring it up. I am all with you guys learning social distribution technologies which do not depend on someone else giving you permission to run it. You are developing means for many of us to network and share thoughts and ideas without having to go through the censorship or datamining going on in the commercial social sites of the day -- not beholden to advertising or other nooses the ruling classes economically impose.
I very rarely contribute monetarily to anything. Because contributing forces me to reveal my identity and banking credentials. I can't trust most fund-raising people to keep it private, as they are already in bed with the "elite". I know how much the "elite" value lists of people who will voluntarily contribute to a cause, and share those lists amongst themselves - hounding the shit out of anybody whose name is on that list. Main thing I ask is to keep me off those sucker lists. I consider my involvement with SN to be private.
( "elite"="high class beggar". Same kind of people that hound people outside the grocery store, but they wear suits and ask for much larger sums of money )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday May 29 2017, @08:46AM
Belated reply, but yes, I've done a few things here that I've applied down the road. Mostly related to database scaleout, single-system login, and stupidly tighting up SSL settings.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday May 21 2017, @01:43PM (2 children)
A solution might be to run some simple adblock detection javascript that generates a small box mentioning the fact. Put the same box in <noscript> tag.
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| This site runs no ads and is completely member supported. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)
With the exception of the rare whitelisted item, I block EVERYTHING that isn't readable text.
This includes JavaScript.
It also includes almost all images.
Occasionally, I have encountered a site that has an image displayed in my page presentation.
At that point, I have said, "Hmmm. How did that get past my filters?"
Pulling up my list of blocked items, everything is in red. Hmmm.
Looking at the source code of the page, I have discovered the base64 thing in use.
So, if there is a desire by this site's crew to get a graphical notification past folks' AdBlockers, that's the way I've seen that is effective.
N.B. The reason this isn't done routinely for ads is because the advertisers like to have the ad content pulled from -their- sites so that they can keep a count of hits; the base64 stuff is embedded in the page's code on the other guy's site and they'd have to trust -his- count when it came to paying per-hit fees.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday May 22 2017, @12:26AM
I should have been clearer that I was talking about a div with a visible border-style containing a line of readable text.
As for blocking the javascript adblock detector; that javascript isn't for you, it's for people who run javascript and also run adblock. The noscript block would be for people like you, should you choose to accept it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:38AM (6 children)
This begging bullshit is getting tiresome. You know I see enough beggars In Real Life. Trumpland is full of beggars because there ain't no fucking jobs, bitch!
Here's an idea: raise some FUCKING CAPITAL and start a REAL BUSINESS and PAY ME TO WORK ON YOUR FUCKING SITE.
Here's a better idea: GO FUCK YOUR SELF. I wouldn't work for you assclowns even if you could PAY A LIVING WAGE which YOU CAN'T because you suck and your fucking fake news site sucks.
FUCK SN.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:02AM (3 children)
Look man, you shouldn't bottle your feelings up like that. Tell us what you really think.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:10AM (2 children)
Rather than downmod the parent (a newbie with limited four-letter-vocabulary), I thought a few +1 Funny mods might be the best way to make it clear that they are yelling in a vacuum.
(What happens if you yell in a vacuum? No one hears you, your face looks even more contorted, and you might die even faster?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:03AM (1 child)
So you have a couple of accounts? Or just convinced some other users to mod funny? Or are you TMB making some personal "corrections"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:37PM
Wrong:
I have exactly one account (it's early, 3 digits)
Most of the time I post as AC
I'm not TMB
For the record, I don't believe that TMB ever messes with mod points behind the scenes -- I hold his volunteer work in high respect (although we have very differing world views!)
Long ago I noticed that a frontal assault on assholes/trolls often made them bolder - thus a useful workaround for defusing the 4-letter-newbie might be a +1 Funny? I tossed in my +1, some others seem to have piled on.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday May 21 2017, @03:37AM (1 child)
Have you considered volunteering for SN in some capacity? It might give the others a chance to go masturbate in peace, as per your wishes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 21 2017, @05:05AM
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:30AM (5 children)
That funding goal box, just how often is that updated? At times it seems to be "when the decs remembers it is there".
Also, just to subtly get attention, make it dimmed when subscribed and undimmed when unsubscribed? (And set the dimming to be an option)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
Pretty good idea! Kinda subtle hint without being too forceful about it.
Maybe even a "Thank you for your support" or similar displayed to those who do.
I really don't want to see this site to be anything like those televangelists I abhor so much for their relentless begging.
I am not about to give resources to those who just squander it. I see no evidence S/N squanders anything.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:14AM
Would you like to?
If S/N doesn't, I can do it for cheaps, really.
Try me, first instalment gratis, just tell me of how much money you like to be squandered today and I'll tell you where to send them.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 21 2017, @10:35AM
About once or twice a month, if we get any subscriptions that month, give or take. Bytram's been doing it lately but it's generally considered the treasurer's job.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday May 21 2017, @06:44PM (1 child)
Thanks for asking! I've been maintaining the funding goal box for the past nine months or so. Every day or two, I would check what subscriptions came in, calculate an approximate net amount of what we received, and manually update the box. I've automated some of that, but it would be nice if we had an entirely separate slashbox strictly for funding, and had it automatically populated. There are some issues with the underlying historical data, but we just had a new volunteer come on board who has already made contributions to the site (Hi Xyem!). I might be able to twist his arm a bit and work to get that automated.
As for the apparent gaps in updates, we would often go stretches of days without any subscription activity; I can only report what is there.
That said, I've been absolutely gob-smacked to watch the subscriptions pour in since this story was posted. Community++ !!1!eleventy!!!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by Xyem on Monday May 22 2017, @02:37PM
> I might be able to twist his arm a bit and work to get that automated.
No twisting required. Added to my TODO, but feel free to poke me to start on this whenever you want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @07:27PM
I love this little intellectual island of ours. It's like the old days at the ... other place.
Thanks to everybody who is carrying a little gold star, to everybody submitting stories, to everybody editing them, to everybody moderating the comments, to everybody commenting, to everybody taking take of the backend and to everybody else I've overlooked who are doing their part to keep SN rocking.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- attributed to Margaret Mead
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @05:19PM
if funds aren't being raised sufficently then ui suggest your reexamine your biz model. you could make people pay for any submissions that have links. why give away free links. you would need to make the story page urls SEO friendly. what is this 1995? that's all you get. 2 ideas.if those suck i suggest you think for more than 30 seconds like i just did.