Attack site warning

[Fe 26]

I needed to buy some stuff through amazon today. I forget, which link am I suppose to use for Nick to get money? After all the christmas threads, searching pull up a few 100 references to the amazon.

[Fe 26]

Oh look, it is right under this section!

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/store/

I need to go make some coffee

[Nick]

Hosting costs $259 a month and there are associated costs like keeping a mailbox, keeping up a couple of domain names, buying business cards for the staff for E3, some promotional items, etc. Last year, I was shipping off product to the editors and paying for some articles, but I haven't done that for several months.

About $170 of that is offset by other hosted sites on the server. Ad money and Amazon money was good at the end of the year, but both revenue streams have dried up significantly.

[Dolemite]

What percentage do current subscribers figure into meeting your monthly costs?

[James]

Sadly, the ads in their current configuration have to go, and now. The site is simply broken unless they're turned off. I managed to pass off my PC troubles at work as a result of some work-related Google searching ending up at the wrong site, but getting nailed with a virus warning is a bad, bad thing. I've disabled ads at home (my PC's health trumps most other concerns) but that's just a workaround. In its current state, TNL is a site than can break the user's computer.

James

[bbobb]

So you'll be paying for TNL now then?

Good to know.

[James]

So you're good with a virus/malware infected computer? Explain how that works, because I don't get it.

James

[Shin Johnpv]

If you subscribe it turns off the ads. The revenue streams are either ads or subscription.

[Nick]

Well, I temporarily replaced most of the old ads with Amazon widgets. That cannot be a permanent change, though, as the widgets don't bring in consistent revenue.

I haven't gotten any warnings, but from what was said here, it sounds like that Adobe Acrobat malware that's going around. I hate Acrobat and the way it always tries to stay running in the background. If your program acts like a virus itself, it's no surprise when someone tries to take advantage of it. Fuck these programs that you use twice a week that act like they are essential to your life. That means Acrobat, QuickTime, and all that other garbage.

[James]

Cool, thanks Nick. I had an Acrobat file taking up 750MB of memory on my work computer today, and had to reboot due to some virus scan locking up my PC. It was a bit worrying. Management would have frowned at me most severely if I hadn't had a handy (and highly plausible) backup story.

James