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So, in the background, the owners of the PBC have been working with staff to get the site moved over to a new legal entity and continue operations. This process is moving slowly, but it is moving, with the expectation that we should be able to fully hand off SN in the next month or so. However, the PBC has burned through its cash reserves, and we have an overdue Linode bill as is for $268 USD. I could write more, but the tl;dr, without money, SN will disappear off the Internet.
Most of the subscriptions understandably stopped due to the uncertainty with site ownership and management. However, we're not able to pay the bills with the trickle coming in. At this point, everyone involved has agreed with and are working towards a solution to move SN to a not-for-profit and 501(c)3, but we do need the communities financial support to get there. If we can raise $500 USD via subscriptions, direct donations, or other means, that would keep the site up past May. As such, if you have let your subscription lapse, or otherwise are able to support SN, please do so now.
Any funds raises will be donated to the *new* NFP as soon as it is able to accept funds. We'll run an update if/when we reach our funding goal.
- NCommander
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:22AM (7 children)
Email notifications are controlled by each account owner.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:34AM (6 children)
Some email providers are making arbitrary rules as to which sites they will accept emails from. I understand that this is for security reasons, but changing policy while not informing everyone is not a good move. Some of the bigger names are following this pattern and we have had several reports from users that they are also unable to send emails because of these changes, despite their own configuration complying fully with the relevant RFCs.
SoylentNews has had problems with sending some (but not all!) emails via these bigger names.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:36PM (3 children)
>Some email providers are making arbitrary rules as to which sites they will accept emails from.
This has been my experience for the past 20+ years, and so, approximately 19 years ago, I switched from using my own domain e-mail address and playing whack-a-mole whitelist chasing games to just "resigning to the beast" and using a @gmail.com address as my primary point of contact.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @03:58PM (2 children)
I know NCommander considered whether we should just farm our email handling to an external site before the decision was made to close down SN last May. The issue is if we pay someone else to do it then that means our monthly running costs will increase, and our begging for more subscriptions will also increase :) . I have no idea how much it would cost to do so, and I don't know how we would handle the various group addresses that we have e.g editors, admins, etc. and which we use internally quite a lot.
I really don't know which way the community would like this to go. At the end of the day it is their pockets that would have to support it. If you, or anyone else has any views, then please raise them. Now might be the time to sort this out.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 06 2024, @06:18PM (1 child)
Yeah, I sympathize with the general Google hate out there, but for my personal (home/family) business, @gmail is free (well, advertising supported) and it does what we need.
I worked at a company ~10 years back that used Google services to run everything... not sure what that looks like these days - it wasn't free, but it was pretty cheap back then and I think there might be a free tier that might accommodate the needs of something SN sized...
The thing to consider with "roll your own FOSS" solutions is the time/maintenance work involved in keeping it all going. If you've got the skillz up-to-date then it's probably trivial, but if your life is focused in other areas the investment can be considerable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2024, @02:26AM
The problem with email is that it is based on standard practices, reputation, and patterns in mail. Hosting your own mail vs. using an email host have their own pros and cons. And each makes some aspect easier to control but others more difficult. And which host you use can also make a big difference on the above as well as cost. Either way, it is up to the admins to have a proper setup and to keep up with the sender requirements because hosts, even paid ones, don't guarantee mail delivery if you don't. Email isn't that hard to do or keep on top of when set up with a system in place with a reputable host of any kind. But the real work is getting it to that point.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:31PM (1 child)
It would be helpful to know just who those "big names" are, so we'd know the unreliable ones. (I don't have a local mail server, so my incoming emails go through a redirect to a non-Google free service, my outgoing goes from that service, but with the "from" and "reply-to" set to my domain.)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 06 2024, @07:58PM
The biggest problem appears to be GMail, but there are others.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.