The Hexapus's Garden

[Monsignor]

I wish I hadn't arrived to the party so late!!! Glad you're back WeaselCracker. I'll be at the next one!!!

Swing by and let me know what you think. My girl is in week 3 of flower.

 

[420]

I've been chipping away at your ten page pm, gonna need some more time for a proper reply brother. You'll get one though, thanks for your patience and good luck in your journey. Hope to see you around when you feel the time is right. Sending you lots of love and positive energy though the universe.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Ha ha ha. So true -it was a bit long. Thank you for taking the time.
I know you're super busy, and I heard what happened- about the forum being bought out by Kim Jong Un's gaming company and the staff being forced to take Korean language lessons. It all sounds very arduous

 

[420]

Ha ha ha. So true -it was a bit long. Thank you for taking the time.
I know you're super busy, and I heard what happened- about the forum being bought out by Kim Jong Un's gaming company and the staff being forced to take Korean language lessons. It all sounds very arduous

Very funny.

We upgraded the ReCaptcha plugin yesterday, which seems to have taken care of those pesky Korean spambots.

Our team worked tirelessly for weeks, combating thousands of them daily.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Looks like the war isn't over yet. This must be incredibly frustrating.

 

[AngryBird]

When it comes to any security, it is always as good as it is , until a hacker finds his/her way into it.
The good part is that constant updates on security is good.
It keeps them busy in trying to break it instead of posting their @#$#$#@ in our community.

 

[Tead]

Whack-a-mole. Sux.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Not being a tech guy- I always wonder why moles, kitchens, and Korean text can't be easily filtered by software which simply excludes such terms/members from the forum. It seems obvious- but it also seems obvious that it can't be, or it would be. It's still a confusing burning question for me and many others have made similar comments so if anyone ever feels like they can enlighten me on that...
As far as 'them' wasting their time- 'they' might be composed of nothing but electrons- and have all the time in the world to waste free of charge, for even the slightest payoff. Whereas we are human and eventually get grumpy and die of old age. What's bad for the forum is bad for us. Not sure what to do about it, other than try to shut up more and be less annoying
If there is any practical way of crowd sourcing out the workload I'm sure there would be many members who'd be happy to put a little time in.

 

[420]

Google plans to release Invisible ReCaptchas and when they do, we should be good to go.

Unless of course, these spambot threads are actually being created by humans.

Meanwhile, we are seeking another Moderator to join our team, specifically to deal with spambots during daylight hours PST.

 

[Kriaze]

Weasel you just found your calling in life, I think that might be the title you've been missing out on

 

[Weaselcracker]

Ha ha. No. Actually I was about to pm you

 

[Kriaze]

I think I'll leave that position to someone in the US mate lol, Rob has any details he needs from my last application, although I'm happy I didn't take that position on now (International Cannabis News) as it looks like a lot of hard work and I was selling myself on the cheap

 

[Tead]

Not being a tech guy- I always wonder why moles, kitchens, and Korean text can't be easily filtered by software which simply excludes such terms/members from the forum.

I feel an introduction to the landscape/background might hook you right up here. Pardon me while I get nerd on for a moment.

Let's speak of ideas around tech levels for a second.
There are many different general types of websites from a technical aspect. To be honest, the idea leads to a sort of biological branching sort of view on it. We'll be way high up on the tree... let's say at the mammal/fish division level.
Simple ad sites that deliver little or no functionality would be one major branch... let's give them the 'fish' label. These are cheap, standalone beasts that have little or no dependence on other 'services'. They can be easily implemented and maintained.
The mammalian branch (420Mag is a mammal) includes database connected dynamic beasts that can roll many complicated features together to create an ever undated version of themselves to humans (well, other beasts too, but that technical boredom need not enter this conversation).
Let's look at the mammal branch.
It's next major split is between custom codded websites that rely on a development team writing fancy web code and database queries
versus websites using a pre-construsted code-base rented or puchased, usually running on servers not under your control, administered via webpages.
An example of the latter would be 420Mag and a huge sea of others... any site running on Wordpress or any other number of backends. This is hugely cheap compared to custom code. Like.... many orders of magnitude. The only folks taking the custom code plunge are folks that really-really need that functionality/security/flexibility. The dollars involved in maintaining ninja coders vs running a Wordpress site is the difference between flying to Cuba for a fun weekend and traveling to the moon.
So... 420 is a Wordpress or other software sort of beast.... I could look, but that would bore me.
Plus, I would guess that they're running on servers not in their direct control. They might be running their own software on rented virtual servers... maybe real hardware, but probably not.... again, money. The might be on the Amazon or Google cloud.... again, I could look, but boring. Plus, from a backend perspective, they're probably sharing code-base and hardware/software with other sites.

So.... in a world where you're presented with an administrative interface to a fancy Wordpress (or whatever) site, you really don't have direct control to change things at the real level where the issue occurs. Your options are to get the vendor of whatever software bit that's giving you grief to correct the issue. Now, these vendors can actually be quite responsive... it's their biz after all.

If one had control of the servers and code-base, one could loose those ninja coders and mega-sexy sys admins (can you tell which category Tead falls into?) onto the problem and resolve it yourself... but again, money.

Hope this helps you with your views on the issue.

Disclaimer.... Tead has absolutely no knowledge of 420Mags systems... just guessing.

 

[420]

Quite the assumption there Tead, unfortunately a bit far from the truth. We've invested over a million dollars and even more hours into this website over the last 24 years; custom programming, software, hardware, hosting and human resources. I myself, work 12-18 hours a day, 6-7 days a week on keeping it going and modernizing it as technology evolves. While we may have started specific sections of our website with an inexpensive piece of software, we then spend a plethora of time, energy and money custom programming everything the way we want. You mention Wordpress, which is only the basic starter template for the home page, which has received hundreds, if not thousands of custom tweaks over the years. We're using 5 others pieces of software as well for the forums, listings, reviews, etc., with a hundred plugins and tens of thousands of custom tweaks. We have 23 staff members worldwide; admins, mods, customer service reps, programmers, developers, designers, system admins, writers, product reviewers, social networkers and the team at our host, not included in that number. There is no other site like ours worldwide, nor is there another with the same level of customer service and atmosphere we provide for our members. If there was, you would most likely not be here. Hope that helps to clear up the rationale that we're just a few lazy stoners using free software.

 

[Monsignor]

Triggered.

 

[Kriaze]

I'm a lazy stoner, here to share

 

[Tead]

Hope that helps to clear up the rationale that we're just a few lazy stoners using free software.

Oh baby.... I never meant for one moment to even insinuate such things. I'm well aware of the manpower involved in what you've rolled out. I never said those words or tried to give that message. I'm very sorry that was the message you received from my words.

I was really just pointing at the differences between the layer that your site runs on versus a site that needs the functionality of a fully custom development environment.
I've always looked at it as layers of abstraction starting inside the cpu, then radiating out to include other layers. Generally speaking, as one walks out the layers of abstraction, things get cheaper. For example, if you were to roll your own operating system for some reason, one would expect that to be really expensive as everything after the OS would have to be created as well.

Companies make choices... they choose the location in that abstraction layer map that makes the most sense for their business. You're at the perfect location in that map. If you bumped down a layer, you'd be in a position to create and maintain the tools you're currently using... and there's just no reason for that expense.

I'll share a fun applicable story for a moment. Remember Enron? They had 2 floors of server space in a downtown building back in the day. A younger Tead had 2 racks in their fancy facility. Tead's company was the ONLY customer in that entire space. When the story broke that Enron was doing many 'creative' things, Tead was not shocked. I used to try to do server maint on my way home in the evening sometimes. The area was not manned, so Tead would occasionally burn a bowl in front of the big blower inlet after his tasks were done.

Again.... sorry to send the message that you and your staff are 'lazy stoners'.

 

[420]

It's all good brother, sorry for misunderstanding. Been explaining myself to people for years, guess I got your message confused with the thousands of others previously. Must be my PTSD acting up from 24 years of troll attacks, which is why I try never to explain or debate publicly anymore. What we do in the back to provide this wonderful, safe and positive environment for you all out here, is like cleaning the monkey cages for us in the back. As we clean up their poo, they literally throw it at us. 24 years of it is enough to make anyone bitter and irritable. Just recently, I've learned that the stress from the thankless workload has destroyed my endocrine system with Adrenal Fatigue, which isn't helping matters much. Thank you for your understanding, contributions and support, we are truly grateful brother.

 

[AngryBird]

It's all good brother, sorry for misunderstanding. Been explaining myself to people for years, guess I got your message confused with the thousands of others previously. Must be my PTSD acting up from 24 years of troll attacks, which is why I try never to explain or debate publicly anymore. What we do in the back to provide this wonderful, safe and positive environment for you all out here, is like cleaning the monkey cages for us in the back. As we clean up their poo, they literally throw it at us. 24 years of it is enough to make anyone bitter and irritable. Just recently, I've learned that the stress from the thankless workload has destroyed my endocrine system with Adrenal Fatigue, which isn't helping matters much. Thank you for your understanding, contributions and support, we are truly grateful brother.

And this is for making this place so great

 

[santb]

Hey Weasel! Good to see you here... Is there some text missing from here after all?? Didn't think it was bad enough to delete...
But as long as you're still here, it's all good.... Please send me and invite to your new journal..