General Operations & Actions Testimonial (GOAT statement - June 2017) (announcements)

submitted ago by PuttItOut

General Summary

It’s been about a month since the last GOAT statement (1) so it’s time for another one and we have some exciting things to share and some challenges to mention.

I have not gotten back to all the emails Voat has received so if you haven’t heard back from me please note you are on the list.

.NET Core Port (Cross Platform Voat)

We’ve been pushing very hard on porting Voat to .NET Core, as this will give us the most opportunity to cut costs and get more hands and help from the development community.

Today we have major news:

Voat has been successfully ported to .NET Core! (2)

Today’s commit took care of the last few failing unit tests. What originally was estimated at three months of work was accomplished in less than a month.

What a great day for this milestone to take place as today is my 3 year anniversary since I registered and then shortly afterwards started “working” for Voat. (3)

Anyways, it’s official, the upcoming version of Voat can be run on an entirely open source solution.

Unit Test Runs Using Various Configurations

Voat Core Port - Sql Server on Memory Cache

Voat Core Port - Sql Server on Redis Cache

Voat Core Port - PostgreSql on Memory Cache

Voat Core Port - PostgreSql on Redis Cache

The next step is to get Voat running a preview build so we can start having users test what works and what needs fixed. This should happen this week sometime. Please pay attention to v/voatdev for updates on this.

Finances

Revenue: 2017-05-22 – 2017-06-19

Store Revenue: $2,628.00 USD

Expenses: 5/1/2017 – 5/31/2017

Hosting: $7,005.23 USD

Monthly Misc: $200.00 USD

Yearly Misc: $105.00 USD

Please note that I did not scale down Voat’s hardware as I previously stated because at the time of that announcement reddit’s r/The_Donald was rumbling with discontentment and I couldn’t justify doing it during a potential growth opportunity (4). After this awkward advance and retreat, I still held off because Voat’s primary webserver CPU during peak times is maxed out.

While all my attention has been put into the .NET Core port, I will be spending this week figuring out where to cut costs in the short run.

Processor Shut Down (Why BitCoin Matters)

Voat’s primary credit card processor has decided, for reasons unknown, to discontinue their relationship with Voat. While they did claim that it was due to “risk”, I can only speculate as to the reasons. This means I will have to spend time looking for another processor which brings up all my memories of what PayPal did to Voat. On July 14th 2017 they will stop processing our store orders.

And thus, I am going to make a proclamation that each of you as Goats need to be educated on digital currency such as BitCoin. Decentralized currency such as BitCoin shifts the power structure from large conglomerates to you as an individual. It will increasingly become more and more important as our society moves to an entirely cashless model.

Bitcoin and related technologies provide a financial freedom that we should all embrace and exercise as much as Freedom of Speech.

All merchandising is put back on hold until we regroup from this setback.

Footnotes

  1. I will get on a regular schedule after this month by posting a GOAT statement on the 1st (or closest business day after) starting next month. First GOAT Statement if you missed it.

  2. This means all the unit tests are passing which is a close indicator that the majority of the code is correctly running and reliable. There are still functional issues and bugs, mostly with the UI, that need to be tested and fixed.

  3. Thank you everyone for the well-wishing on this day. I posted a comment about this earlier here: https://voat.co/v/OneTruePutt/1943481/9567603

  4. I want to apologize for asking you Goats to be nice to the new kids. While I don’t agree with scaring the hell out of new people to Voat, I also see why it’s important to not compromise on the values we hold. So, for those that I upset, I do apologize.

Canary

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806

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Voopin__Voopin ago

motherfucker. (not you, just in general)

Tinfoil hatter here; do you or @goldf1sh have any extra elaboration on this?

I'll do like @gabara and mail fucking cash, no problem. I can't get past the notion that there's not anonyminity in cryptocurrency........ isn't that the entire point?

edit: i'm not in the cryptocurrency game right now, for this very reason. I got no problem taking a 100 dollar bill and turning it into bitcoin. But If I can't do shit with it, for fear of future wrongthink regarding supporting a free speech site, what good is it?

ALSO is it generally advised to use a VPN any time you fuck with cryptocurrency?

RamblinRambo ago

If it's online, it's not anonymous. Just different degrees of kinda-anonymous. If you want to keep gov out of your shit, only use cash. The reason I've refused to donate to voat, even if I'd like to do so, is the lack of anonymous donations. I want an address so I can throw some Euros into an envelope and send it off.

Moabman ago

Pretend you want to buy drugs from silk road and look up the guides on that.

The hardest part is actually transferring the money. For that your best bet is to find a guy who sells them in person. If that's done, then you have to set up an encrypted wallet and communications account. Set up a VPN, possibly even boot to a linux desktop from an external HDD, pray that tor hasn't been 100% compromised by the NSA, which it has because all global data hard lines have been compromised by the nsa, sit back and hope you don't ping the radar hard enough to make someone kick in your door.

Make it as hard for them as you can, and give them as little reason as possible to come looking, aka buy a small bag of drugs every now and again, don't try to set up a terroristic cult, offer yourself as a hitman, buy a hitman, or distribute drugs. If god wills it, you'll get lost in the ocean of data and even if you ping the radar you'll be labelled low to no risk and filed away in the jedi archives until doomsday.

Voopin__Voopin ago

Thank you for the reply :) however, I am not even comfortable searching for the aforementioned guides. I feel like that would make me "ping the radar" so-to-speak.

go1dfish ago

First off it's go1dfish. Hence the delay in me seeing this.

If you're worried about the government that is a valid concern.

But that concern would also apply to the credit card payments Voat accepted previously.

If you can manage to trade a 100 dollar bill in person for bitcoin that you transfer entirely to Voat, you will be quite anonymous indeed if you practice solid networking opsec. (Use proxies/tor and tails maybe)

Voopin__Voopin ago

ah, danke. sorry for the fuckup; not sure if i should attribute to shit memory or touch of selective dyslexia. Probably a little from "column a" and a little from "column b" :)

EngelbertHumperdinck ago

Use VPN any time you fuck with the internet.

Also, there are coin 'washing' services which claim to break the chain of custody, or at least obfuscate it enough to make it more difficult to prove ownership. I can't vouch for any, personally, though.