SoylentNews

martyb writes:

We strive for openness about site operations here at SoylentNews. This story continues in that tradition.

tl;dr: We believe all services are now functioning properly and all issues have been attended to.

Problem Symptoms: I learned at 1212 UTC on Sunday 2018-08-19, that some pages on the site were returning 50x error codes. Sometimes, choosing 'back' in the browser and trying to resubmit the page would work. Oftentimes, it did not. We also started receiving reports of problems with our RSS and Atom feeds.

Read on past the break if you are interested in the steps taken to isolate and correct the problems.

martyb writes:

First the good news. I just received word that janrinok, our Editor-in-Chief, is finally out of the hospital and back in his own home! He is very tired and has severe restrictions on his activities but is otherwise in excellent spirits. He very much appreciated the kind thoughts and wishes expressed by the community in our prior stories. It will still be many weeks or months before he can resume his prior level of activities on SoylentNews, but hopes to pop in once in a while to "second" stories that are in the story queue. Please join me in welcoming him back home!

Next, the good news. In janrinok's absence, the other editors have stepped up to the challenge. I'd like to call out chromas, fnord666, mrpg, and takyon who have all freely given from their spare time to make sure we have a steady stream of stories appearing here. I even saw CoolHand pop in on occasion to second some stories! teamwork++

Then, I have to bring up the good news that our development and systems staff have kept this whole thing running so smoothly. Besides the site, there is e-mail, the wiki, our IRC server, and a goodly number of other processes and procedures that make this all happen. That they are largely invisible attests to how well they have things set up and running!

Lastly, the good news. This is what's known in the press as the "silly season". Summer in the Northern Hemisphere means most educational institutions are on break, so less research is done and reported. other ventures are closed or running on reduced staffing levels. In short, the amount of news to draw from is greatly diminished. Yet, even in that environment, the vast majority of the time finds us with a selection of stories in the submissions queue to draw from.

We recently hit a low spot where I combed the web for a couple quick stories I could submit, but that has been the exception rather than the rule. Generally, we look for stories that have some kind of tech-related angle to them. The community has spoken loud and clear that there are plenty of other sites to read about celebrities, politics, and religion. We make a slight nod to politics in so much as it affects technical areas or has large scale ramifications (e.g. a story about President Trump having a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin would fit that description). Even then we generally try to keep it down to one story per day.

That said, if you see a story on the 'net that catches your fancy, please send it in! Feel free to draw upon titles listed on our Storybot page, then pop onto IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and simply issue the command ~arthur $code where $code is taken from the second column on the Storybot page.

Community++

Whether you contribute by submitting a story, buying a subscription, writing in one's journal, moderating or making a comment, we continue to provide a place where people can discuss, share knowledge and perspectives, and maybe learn a thing or two, too!

--martyb

Original Submission

martyb writes:

As you might recall, in an earlier story we noted that SoylentNews' Editor-in-Chief, janrinok, was scheduled for a medical procedure.

I have just received word that there were some (not totally unanticipated, but thought to be a very unlikely) complications and the expected 3 day hospital stay has now lasted over a week. In his own words:

No idea what will happen next is anybody's guess. My first objective is to be well enough to get home again but that looks like being the end of the week at the earliest.

He seemed to be in good spirits. In his inimitable style of humor, he noted the internet connection available to him in Hospital would lie in the bottom-most tier of our current poll!

I am torn in revealing personal details that were shared with me, and wish to not sound overly alarmist. I'll just leave here that I am reminded of a saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

JR has tirelessly (and tiredly, too) gone over and above in support of this site -- please keep him in your thoughts and, if you are of a mind to, your prayers. --martyb

Original Submission

martyb writes:

This is a followup to: SoylentNews Site Certificates Expiring... We ARE Working on It, But... [Updated]
and: Site Services Restored

Certs (Not Just a Breath Mint):

Thanks to the efforts of The Mighty Buzzard and NCommander we now have valid certs, issued by LetsEncrypt installed on all of our servers. Except that the IRC server needs to be bounced to make its cert active on the backup daemon, all should now be in effect. As in our original story, you can check our certificate status with these links:

https://crt.sh/?q=soylentnews.org
https://crt.sh/?q=%%25soylentnews.org
https://crt.sh/?q=sylnt.us
https://crt.sh/?q=%%25sylnt.us

Developers:

The past few days have brought into focus a situation that has been building for several months: We really only have a single person who is working on developing features for the site, The Mighty Buzzard. As with any large and on-going undertaking, this burden is taking its toll. I try to help out as I can, but as I am the primary QA/Test guy who is much better at the user-facing things than what all happens "under the covers", my abilities and assistance are limited. If you have any spare time and would like to lend a hand (and every bit helps), please reply in the comments or contact The Might Buzzard directly on IRC.

Community:

I recall in the early days of this site when things would fall over several times a day. That has largely become a thing of the past... to the point where it is unusual for any issues to appear on the site and the support services we maintain (email, wiki, IRC, etc.) The baseline code on which this site was founded (open-sourced, out-of-date, back-level, and non-functional) was not promising, but the staff managed to bludgeon it into shape and we now have a solid foundation. That it continues to run as smoothly as it has is a testament to our SysOps folk who toil largely in the background and just keep things working... as well as the continued care-and-feeding that TMB so generously provides. To all of you, please accept my heartfelt thanks and appreciation!

Some numbers: we are approaching the 23,000th story posted; have recently passed 700,000 comments submitted; have had over 3,300 journal articles posted; and are on the cusp of having our 120th Poll!

Though all numbers are approximate and unofficial, it appears we surpassed our funding goal for the first half of the year ($3,000) with a net subscription tally of just over $3,250! I'll leave it to our treasurer to collate and post the official numbers. I'll leave the "Funding Goal" side bar as is for a week or so to commemorate this accomplishment. Do note that subscriptions are still being accepted and will count towards the second half of the year's funding needs.

Folding@Home: Not all of you may be aware, but our soylentnews team for Folding@Home is currently at 240th place... in the world! It started with a single story posted to this site. Just over four years ago, we were at 230,319th place! If you have any spare computes you would like to contribute, especially GPU-based, we'd love to have you sign up! Just reply in the comments and I'm sure someone will get back to you.

Whenever I write one of these stories, I always fear I'll have omitted someone or something important. Please accept my humble apologies if I have done so as there is no intent to slight any contributor.

To the community, I offer my thanks for your contributions to the site as well as your patience and understanding during the challenges of the past few days. Contributions are not just financial (though we wouldn't be here without them -- Thank You!), but also submitting stories and comments, and moderating comments, too! The community continues to impress me with your wide-ranging knowledge and expertise; I have learned much from the exchanges in the story comments!

Lastly, please keep janrinok (our Editor-in-Chief) in your thoughts and wishes while he undergoes a medical procedure and attendant recovery period. Best of luck JR!

--martyb

Original Submission

Just a quick note, as previously noted, our SSL certificates were due to expire. Due to various headaches involving issues changing our DNS records, and my personal unavailability, we were unable to renew our certificates in time. Right now, soylentnews.org is running on a LetsEncrypt certificate that was issued after quite a bit of pain. We're still trying to fix the fundamental issues that prevented us from being issued a two year Gandi certificate. Currently, I'm unable to resolve this issue more in-depth, but I've granted access to TheMightyBuzzard to be able help handle the necessary issues that caused the downtime. I will try to get a full writeup of the situation, but for the time being, the main site is up. Secondary services remain down due to the same renewal issues.

Apologies for any inconvenience,

NCommander

martyb writes:

[Updated 2018/06/30 15:19:00 UTC. I've received word that "certificate renewed, but hasn't been issued" and that it will be installed as soon as we receive the new cert. Original story follows. --martyb]

We've been up front with the community right from the start... and intend to keep doing so in the future.

Where we are at:

We have encountered an issue with Lets Encrypt (LE), the certificate issuer for the majority of our [sub]domains. Even though we can 'see' these domains from any number of different servers... for some unknown reason, LE fails to see them. So, at the moment, we are unable to get them to generate certs for us.

Separately, the cert for soylentnews.org is handled by Gandhi. As far as I understand it (and I'm no sysadmin so take this with a healthy dose of salt) there are only two members of our staff who have the ability to update that cert. (We obviously don't want to let world+dog have access to that, right? My guess is that at that time, having a couple people seemed sufficiently redundant and secure).

What it means to you:

You may encounter a warning from your browser when trying to access the site that a certificate has expired. I cannot speak for all browsers, but I've generally seen that along with the warning is an option to trust the cert anyway. (Note: along with allowing that exception, I've sen at least one browser default a checkbox to make the exception permanent. It's entirely up to you, but I see no reason to make it a permanent exception at this point.)

We are working on it, and obviously hope to have things straightened out sooner than later! On the other hand, should things go sideways, I want to keep the community informed about what's up, what's happening, and what you can expect.

Checking status:

If you would like another means to check on the status of the certs, Comodo makes it easy with queries such as these:

https://crt.sh/?q=soylentnews.org
https://crt.sh/?q=%%25soylentnews.org
https://crt.sh/?q=sylnt.us
https://crt.sh/?q=%%25sylnt.us

tl;dr:

If the site becomes unavailable because of an expired cert, yeah, we know and we're working on it. Accept a temporary exception in your browser and we'll let you now when things are back to normal.

--martyb

P.S. Our Editor-in-Chief, janrinok, is currently undergoing preparations for a medical procedure... it's hard to say at this point, but it's likely he may be unavailable to help with the site for a couple weeks. Please join me in wishing him well for the procedure and for a speedy recovery!

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Just three days ago, I asked for the community's help to raise funds for continuing operations. Incoming funds were trending upwards — but way too slowly — and it was clear we were going to come up short. I was genuinely worried about our ability to continue as a going concern.

My fears were, apparently, unwarranted... over those three days we received 49 subscriptions totaling approximately $1534.74 which led us to exceed our base goal of $3000.00 for the first half of the year!

THANK-YOU!!

Of these 49 subscriptions, the vast majority were for $20.00 (36 of these), but we also had 3@$40.00, 1@$50, and (drum roll please) 3@$200.00! And for those who subscribed at other amounts, I also thank you. I've had times in my life when my finances did not allow me to help others as I'd wished. Every bit helps!

Let me interrupt the funding-focus for a moment to call attention to a notable accomplishment among our staff: Our Editor in Chief, janrinok (aka JR), just passed 4,000 stories posted to the site! There was a long stretch about a year or so into SoylentNews' existence when JR and LaminatorX (aka LamX) handled pretty much *all* of the story duties on the site. During that period, story submissions were rare and often little more than a bare link to a story of interest. So they'd tag-team finding stories on the web, making submissions, posting stories, and reviewing same. Were it not for their extended and heroic efforts, there would have been a period of months with almost no stories for us to read. LamX left us a couple years ago (would love to have ya back!) But JR has stuck with us, and we are forever indebted to him for his generous contributions of time, expertise, and guidance. Please join me in congratulating JR for reaching this amazing milestone!

Many thanks, too, for the feedback in the comments to the earlier story — I read every one of them — but am in severe crunch mode at work and lacked the spare time to respond individually as I would have liked. I'll respond to a couple items here.

There was a suggestion to set up a "war chest" from which we could draw off interest to support continuing operations among other things. I don't anticipate we will have $100K in the bank any time soon (one of the suggestions), but having a rainy-day fund "just in case" does seem prudent to me. In light of that, you may have noticed in the "Site News" slashbox there are now two goals listed: a base goal and a stretch goal.

So how much should the stretch goal be for?

martyb writes:

[Update #2: Wed 20180606 @ 14:30 UTC: WOW! Since this story first posted, we have received 36 subscriptions totaling approximately $1126.27 which brings us to a total of approximately $2716.36 which works out to just over 90% of our $3000.00 goal!! I am extremely impressed with the showing of support from the community and reminds me why I volunteer so much of my time here. It really is the community! THANK YOU! --martyb]

[Update #1: Mon 20180604 @ 14:14 UTC: So far today we have received 16 subscriptions bringing us to just shy of $2000.00 raised for the period and just over $1000 to go. THANK-YOU! --martyb]

tl;dr: SoylentNews needs your financial support... $1400 by June 30th. Please Subscribe.

We have raised approximately $1590.09 towards our funding goal of $3000.00 which covers the period from 2018-01-01 though 2018-06-30.

We run the site with a team of volunteers — absolutely nobody gets paid for their work on this site... all the funds raised go directly into keeping the site up and running.

From the time we went live on February 17, 2014 through today, we have posted over 22,000 stories and nearly 120 polls. In kind, the community has posted over 3270 journal articles and over 688,000 comments.

We understand that not everyone can afford to support the site financially. Those who make contributions "in kind" through submitting stories or comments, making moderations, and the like... please accept my sincere "Thank-You!" Without your contributions, there would either be no site or no reason to come here.

For those of you who have previously subscribed, thank YOU for "keeping the lights on". Good wishes did not pay for servers, federal and state tax returns, or domain registrations... You did! Thank you!

A complicating factor came from our having a problem with the subscription page about a month ago... but TMB put up a fix and we've seen no regressions, since. Perhaps this bit you and you meant to "try again later"? (As of my writing this, we have 123 users who have accessed the site within the past month, who had previously subscribed, but whose subscription is now lapsed.)

Whether your subscription has lapsed or you never previously subscribed, would you please consider signing up? Go to the subscription page, pick a duration, and type in an amount that is at least the amount suggested for that duration (excess amounts are, of course, most welcome!). If you would like to help the site without getting a subscription for yourself, you can make a gift subscription by specifying a UID and an amount, instead. (If you have nobody in particular in mind, please feel free to use UID 6 — "mcasadevall")

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[Update: as of 20180603_135454 UTC, all 4 server upgrades have completed and all servers should be running normally. --martyb]

Our server provider, Linode, has made available a free upgrade for our servers. Generally, it's a storage upgrade and sometimes a bandwidth upgrade, too. We use only the tiniest fraction of our bandwidth allocation each month (something like < 1%), but the extra storage IS useful.

We (read: The Mighty Buzzard) have already taken 4 of our servers out of rotation this morning. We anticipate no community-visible interruptions of service as a result of these upgrades.

So far, migrations of sodium, hydrogen, and lithium have completed. Migration of neon has started and should complete within the next 10 minutes or so.

Migrations of the remaining servers may cause some community-visible effects. We will provide advance notice before we perform those upgrades. Very tentatively planned for Thursday.

Original Submission