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posted by martyb on Monday August 31 2020, @10:00PM   Printer-friendly

The month of August is winding to a close. Here are a few updates on site activity. If you are interested, please read on after the fold. Otherwise, a new story will be along shortly.

Server Updates:
As I write this, The Mighty Buzzard is in the process of rebuilding three of our Gentoo servers: lithium (our development server; hosts https://dev.soylentnews.org/), aluminum (our eventual replacement for beryllium which is our sole CentOS server), and magnesium (which is one of our two load balancers; the other is sodium). All rebuilds are in progress and happening in the background. The only user-noticeable impact should be a brief outage when the dev server reboots. That is anticipated to occur later tonight (EDT). Thanks Buzz!

[TMB Note]: It's just installing boring old OS updates. Nothing you guys actually use should be impacted in any way.

Editor Activity:
First off, it's my pleasure to welcome Subsentient back to editing duties on SoylentNews after a bit of a hiatus. We look forward to his contributions to the site! Also, it gives me great pleasure to announce that chromas just posted his 1,200th story! And with that accomplishment, it also marks his moving up to 9th place among our Most Active Authors on the site's Hall of Fame! Congratulations! That represents a great commitment of time and energy in support of SoylentNews. (Not to mention his systemd bot on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) which offers several commands that make our jobs as editors so much easier. Thanks chromas!

Folding@Home (F@H):
Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that leverages spare computing resources on participant's computers. The majority of those resources are now being applied to better understand the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus which causes COVID-19. The current statistics reveal over 25 million cases world-wide with over 850,000 deaths. Note that many survivors have reported experiencing long term, debilitating consequences. Also, there is not just one virus. It has been mutating as it spreads, so continued monitoring and analysis is required to keep on top of things.

Back to F@H, it is my pleasure to report that Runaway1956 is now at the top of our team's standings with 396,857,185 Credits and 11,702 Work Units completed. That makes him the 2,461th-highest, single contributor in the world. Thank-you so much for your efforts in helping to fight this terrible disease!

Fundraising:
We are two months into the second half of the year. So far, we have netted $744.16 towards our goal of $3,500.00 for site expenses... that's 21.3% of what we need to pay for the servers, business fees and taxes, accountant, etc. For those who have subscribed, please accept my genuine and sincere thanks! It bears repeating that nobody at SoylentNews has ever received even one cent for their contributions to the site. All staff freely volunteer their spare time and energy to keep things running.

Final Note:
Many, many thanks to the community who supports SoylentNews by submitting and moderating comments. Thanks, especially, to those who have submitted stories. YOU are what makes SoylentNews happen. It is a privilege to serve you. Thank you for supporting my efforts as Editor-in-Chief; I hope to continue to earn your trust in the days and years that lie ahead!


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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:09AM (5 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:09AM (#1044767) Journal

    And here's to 1421 aristarchus submissions, most of which you have saved the world from. Ignorance is such a precious thing, and so fragile!

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:26AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:26AM (#1044769)

    > And here's to 1421 aristarchus submissions

    On your way to 1488...

    > Ignorance is such a precious thing, and so fragile!

    ...with this emergent self-awareness?

    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 01 2020, @09:19AM (2 children)

      by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday September 01 2020, @09:19AM (#1044860) Journal

      I wish you the best, AC! Self-awareness is a very good thing. As Heraclitus said, ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:32AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @10:32AM (#1044870)

        The great GooG at Mountain View has failed to translate edizisámin emeoytón (tried several different Ancient Greek translators).

        Perhaps this is something along the lines of more recent mystic from that part of the world-- G. I. Gurdjieff. From memory, I think he was known to say, "know yourself"?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff [wikipedia.org]

        • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:55PM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday September 02 2020, @08:55PM (#1045584) Journal

          You are thinking of the Delphic inscription: Γνώθι Σεαυτόν, know thyself. Heraclitus may have been riffing on that, but Ionic Greek is slighty, um, different.

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:55AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:55AM (#1044781) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, we're not perfect, a couple sneak through every now and then when you don't have time to add your usual amount of idiocy. We'll try to do better.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.