Since we've had that most recent crash a couple of months ago, and especially since finding about that fucking hack, I've been going through the old code base trying to proactively fix shit before it'll become an issue. In the process, I've been revamping and trying to streamline some of the back end features. One of which is the Karma system.

So godaddy updated some stuff last night, I guess. The SE code clearly did not like that. I'm working on fixing it now, but it's gonna take more time to get through it all.

I've got posting mostly working, main page, entries, and comments. I'll keep this post up to date with pages as I finish it. If you run into an error on a page that I've already marked off as fixed please post it in the comments here. Thanks.

So, the SELINK tag broke a month or so ago because youtube changed the way their opengraph tags were setup. I think I've fixed all that, but in addition I've been able to update the OpenGraph scraper code that both the Prep Post and SELINK uses. So now you can pretty much use SELINK for whatevs.

Examples in extended.

Also, the post prep should be a lot more accurate in automatically grabbing thumbnails and things from problematic news sites like wired, the guardian, nytimes, etc. Not perfect but better. :D

Wow. So, it's a been a bit of a year, huh?

Hopefully you have your passwords or your email account is up to date. If you can't get back in, email sensibleendowment at gmail and with your credit card and social security we'll verify your account and get you back in.

Just a couple of things. About a month ago I got a report from one of our users that an email they only used for SE has started receiving spam. I've been going through the logs since then and haven't seen anything indicating that we've been hacked, but it's also not impossible. Now SE doesn't store your passwords in plaintext, they're salted and hashed. The only thing they really could have gotten is your email address, browsing data, who owns what socks, etc. (aka, my retirement plan for when I sell out to facebook.) If you use your SE password for any other sites (Which you really shouldn't.) you should still probably change them.

Also, I've been doing a bit of updates on the consequences of low karma for dealing with spams and trolls. So the new karma rules (subject to change as I flesh them out) are that you need greater than -5 points to comment, 15 points to mod, and 30 points to post. Negative Karma regenerates, and 15 and 30 are more than easy enough to attain for someone that takes part in the community, in my opinion. I was also working on a captcha for low karma accounts, but things went south on that. So it's been put on hold for a bit.

Hope y'all are doing well. I'm so freaking hot, I think Florida may be on fire again.

Everything is A-O-K! Except for that little beta issue I'm working on. But other than that we're totally fine! I totally didn't accidentally upgrade my secondary host before remembering to upgrade certain outdated subscriber management scripts. But if I did, and the patches I made didn't work, I would want you to let me know if your subscription suddenly disappeared tomorrow. Okay? Not that that's what's going to happen, but you can talk to me about that sort of thing. We're cool like that, right? You know, when I was your age, my subscription benefits used to disappear all the time. It's totally a normal thing and nothing to be ashamed of. You're just at that age where everything is new and exciting, and sometimes software bugs happen. Alright, champ? We good? I'm glad we had this talk.

Oh, and use your mods every once in a while. They miss you.