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Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

ntp.org

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Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#31

Post by johnisgood »

bmacho wrote: post #22
autoexec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why they'd try so hard to keep bots from paying them anyway. If someone wants to write a bot that constantly pays me good money I'm fine with that. I might rate limit it if the stream of payments coming in can't cover the cost of keeping the server from being DoS'd, but that's not going to inconvenience a human trying to submit a payment one time.

[deleted]

Money is money.

How do you know the cash you are using is not "blood money"? Come on.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#32

Post by simoncion »

tdeck wrote: post #20
simoncion wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not really clear why they need this money either? Really? The sentence at the top of the Donate page seems pretty clear to me: > Your donation helps Network Time Foundation maintain the NTP website and provide resources and support to NTP developers. Is it unclear to you?

It is kind of vague IMO. Especially since most of the actual NTP infrastructure is run by governments, universities, and companies. https://gist.github.com/mutin-sa/eea1c396b1e610a2da1e5550d94... But..it's $1k. This is basically pocket change on an institutional level. I've been part of some very scrappy and poorly funded community organizations and even they took in more than $1k every year. Even if you don't believ…

> It is kind of vague IMO.

How much more clear can they reasonably be?

It seems a big waste of effort to maintain -say- a damnable Trello board with upcoming priorities and roadmaps and Kickstarter stretch goals when their bug tracker and mailing list are visible to the public. (Though, it seems that they've recently put the list behind some broken moderation software, so you have to go to -say- the IETF's archive of the thing to read it. "AI" crawlers ruin everything.)

EDIT: Do note that that tax return you found is for the Network Time Foundation, not the NTP Project. I don't know if the two are separate entities for tax purposes, but do note that the NTF supports several projects, of which the NTP Project is one. The NTP Project is just for NTP.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#33

Post by Theodores »

So we have NTP begging to raise a grand yet we have hundreds of billions being spent on AI data centers.

NTP might not be able to generate AI cat videos full of hallucinations but it is a vital part of web infrastructure. The same can't be said about today's mega projects.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#34

Post by pigbearpig »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #8

I wish when accepting donations, websites would stop caching the total collected amount or give it a super short TTL. I like to see the little progress bar get closer to the goal thanks to my couple of bucks.

Perhaps they don't have the funds to implement that feature.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#35

Post by JimDabell »

autoexec wrote: post #21
jchw wrote: post #3

I tried to donate, but apparently I am not human: > 1 error prohibited this submission from being saved: > Looks like you are not a human Good to know.

I'm not sure why they'd try so hard to keep bots from paying them anyway. If someone wants to write a bot that constantly pays me good money I'm fine with that. I might rate limit it if the stream of payments coming in can't cover the cost of keeping the server from being DoS'd, but that's not going to inconvenience a human trying to submit a payment one time.

If you have small payments that can be made by bots easily, then your service can be used by thieves as an oracle to determine which of their stolen credit card numbers still work. Then you get lots of chargebacks to deal with.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#37

Post by michaelt »

op7 wrote: post #30
autoexec wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why they'd try so hard to keep bots from paying them anyway. If someone wants to write a bot that constantly pays me good money I'm fine with that. I might rate limit it if the stream of payments coming in can't cover the cost of keeping the server from being DoS'd, but that's not going to inconvenience a human trying to submit a payment one time.

Then when too many of the fradulent payments get charged back then your payment processor drops you

Sure, chargebacks cost money.

You know what else costs money? When someone wants to give you money, and you misidentify them as a bot and refuse their money.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#38

Post by slv77 »

autoexec wrote: post #21
jchw wrote: post #3

I tried to donate, but apparently I am not human: > 1 error prohibited this submission from being saved: > Looks like you are not a human Good to know.

I'm not sure why they'd try so hard to keep bots from paying them anyway. If someone wants to write a bot that constantly pays me good money I'm fine with that. I might rate limit it if the stream of payments coming in can't cover the cost of keeping the server from being DoS'd, but that's not going to inconvenience a human trying to submit a payment one time.

Bots use sites like this to validate lists of stolen cards with low dollar donations to validate the cards before using them on the target site. Without some one of protection sites like these are quickly flooded with fraudulent transactions and then fined and shut down by Visa and Mastercard.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#39

Post by littlestymaar »

mhovd wrote: post #2

I am surprised that NTP project is not funded, fully or partially, by larger organizations or governments, given the criticality of the project.

Large tech companies and free-riding critical internet commons, name a better duo.

Re: Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

#40

Post by great_wubwub »

iberator wrote: post #36

PTP is way better than NTP, but it might be possible that reference time is somehow taken from NTP anyway. What I Mean: Reference .gov atomic clock (not radium one) -> NTP -> ? -> ? -> satellite control station -> gps -> PTP Hahaha

PTP is more precise so it's much harder to synchronize over long distances. Even in data centers it benefits from hop-by-hop participation from the routers involved.
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