As I explained, I was going to donate. I did my due diligence about where my money would go and made my decision. I provided the link to Wikipedia’s own declared for the benefit of others and shared some of my reasonings elsewhere in this post.

But in your world, anyone who questions anything is a shill for Musk? Or just those who hold a differing opinion to yours?

salary expenses includes everyone from the HR department to the custodians, not just the rich CEOs.

No shit, Sherlock. But where did I mention CEOs? Where did I mention Musk, come to that?

Anyway, I’m done arguing with you. Goodbye.

Love that everyone on this thread is a financial analyst and a 501c consultant.

So people shouldn’t have an opinion unless they’re professionally qualified? I’m not sure that’s how the internet works.

And also, people absolutely should check how their money will be spent when they consider donating. It’s their money, remember.

If you support for this cause, donate. If you don’t, don’t donate or don’t use.

I get that, and it’s often true I think. But when the thing that they do that you use and like is such a tiny part of their spending, is it still true?

I care about Wikipedia’s website. I would donate to that. I don’t care about the other 90% of the things they would spent my donation on. Should I still donate?

Truthfully, it’s just an excuse to assuage the guilt arising from refusing to support these organisations.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it’s a pretty accurate statement.

I used to run a medium-large charity. I have a fair bit of experience in fundraising and management. Most donators would be shocked at how little their donation actually achieves in isolation. Also at the waste that often goes on, and certainly the salaries at the upper tiers.

And I could also say that guilt is exactly why people donate. It’s to feel good about themselves, they’re buying karma. Central heating for the soul. I won’t say that’s a bad thing, but it is a thing. It’s also exactly how charities fundraise, because it works. That’s why your post and tv adverts are full of pictures of sad children crying. Every successful charity today is that way because it knows how to manipulate potential supporters. Is that always wrong? Of course not, charities couldn’t do good things without money. But sometimes the ethics in fundraising are extremely flexible.

I actually took a look at Wikipedia’s accounts last week as I remembered that campaign when I saw the latest campaign and did some due diligence before donating. I didn’t donate, but I’m still glad Wikipedia exists.

What I remembered: That hosting costs were tiny and Wikimedia foundation had enough already saved up to operate for over a hundred years without raising any more.

What I saw: That if that was true, it isn’t any longer. It’s managed growth.

I don’t think they are at any risk of financial collapse, but they are cutting their cloth to suit their income. That’s normal in business, including charities. If you stop raising money, you stagnate. You find things to spend that money on that are within the charity’s existing aims.

Some highlights from 2024: $106million in wages. 26m in awards and grants. 6m in “travel and conferences”. Those last two look like optional spends to me, but may be rewards to the volunteer editors. The first seems high, but this is only a light skim

Net assets at EOY = $271 million. Hosting costs per year are $3million. It’s doing okay.

If you’re curious; https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

It’s not an uncommon view:

Cuba, which was considered Second World but remains Third World economically. - https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-third-world-country-definition-examples.html Some countries in the Eastern Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as Third World. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

That said, developing world is now the more commonly used phrase since it has fewer political connotations, and anyway, this study is specific to Sustainability targets.

How we’ve done it recently:

1. Put domain on cloudflare or another registrar that supports an API. Generate a token with the right privs.
2. Use certbot with the cloudflare plugin, and that token, and generate whatever certs you need within that domain using the DNS01 method.

No need to have port 80 open to the world, no need for a reverse proxy, no need for NAT rules to point it to the right machine, no need to even have DNS set up for the hostname. All of that BS is removed.

The token proves your authentication and LetsEncrypt will generate the certs.

Maintaining perl scripts from the 90s is my ball park!

Mind, I did write some of them, and they’re still whirring away making it a pretty easy job. Perl’s lack of breaking features is its strongest strength.

The ‘ghost’ of Christmas past.

50s here. I’ve had that too. Sometimes due to low mental health, but often just a change in interests. Gaming is one hobby I’ve kept coming back to since the early 1980s, and overall it’s pretty constant. Other hobbies have come and gone - I think it helps to have a variety of things to spend your time doing, rather than one big one.

What isn’t constant is the type of games. FPS used to be amazing, but now I get motion sickness with many, including some third person games. Also my reactions are slower with age, so online is often frustrating. I adapt by playing more cosy and strategy games. Factorio Space Age currently taking a lot of my time, but I’ve a few that I keep going back to.

It’s fine, but not going to be the cheapest.

Cheap to buy: Any old PC desktop, really. Most will run linux and windows fine, depending on what you want. Anywhere from free to £100. If you have an old desktop or laptop already, use that to start with.

Cheap to run: Any mini PC. I run a Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 for low power duties. Cost £40 and runs silently at 10watts, idle. (I have a secondary, much beefier server for other stuff that runs at around 100w which lives in the garage)

But plenty of people do run mac minis as home servers, often on Linux. They’re fine - just do your homework on the CPU ability, how much ram you can add, and whether you’re okay with external disks if you can’t fit enough inside.

What’s really insane is that sometimes the second identical test actually works.

Which is a plague that affects every country in the world - so isn’t a reason for America being so keen to jail people.

And then unsubscribe or block as soon as you’ve got it.

They’re hosting this 33Gb download for free - I don’t begrudge them trying to advertise a bit.

GPSrs generally takes several readings over a period of time to get an accurate fix. Photographers like to not to have to wait for a minute or so before the shutter fires, so it would need to be running all the time.

Have you played War for the Overworld? Based on DK but reworked and (imo at least) improved

War for the Overworld (I have many thousands of hours in this)

Settlers 2 Gold

(Both the above have a lot of user generated maps, which has given them most of their longevity.)

Factorio

I think you’ll find some ISPs will be reluctant to let go of CGNAT - they’re doing quite nicely by charging extra for ‘commercial’ services where it’s not in the way.

Fortunately, many of us know about cloudflare tunnelling and other services, so NAT really isn’t a problem to self hosters and even SMEs any more.

This is exactly why I never buy Early Access games. The biggest thrill for me is starting a new game, and if that isn’t as good as it can possibly be, then that opportunity has been wasted.

Sure, it /may/ get better at some undefined point in the future, but there’s just so many games out there that are complete, and won’t require re-visiting at some point because they got better. Once that first play is gone, it’s gone.

It’s actually 250 euros for the top tier (267 $us)

I mean, seriously, what the actual fucking fuck?

Obesity is increasingly a problem in low- and middle-income countries.

Isn’t that always going to be the case, regardless of ingredient adjustment? It feels like people who have had very little food will tend towards over-compensating during times of glut - perhaps not so much the generation directly affected, but the care they give to next generations.

As an example vaguely related but less extreme; I was born in 1970 in England to a lower middle-class family. My parents were wartime and post-war babies who had experienced rationing and as a result, I have very strong recollections of being made to “clear your plate” before I could leave the table. (Ironically given this topic, the “there are starving children in Africa who would like that” line was given quite often)

Wasting food was the absolute highest sin I could commit and that’s stayed with me to this day.