August

online help system messed up!

Our online help system at http://help.riseup.net has been broken for a while, although we just discovered the problem. If you have a problem which we have not yet resolved, please fill out the help form again. Remember: the squeaky wheel gets the grease, direct action gets the goods, and if at first you don’t succeed, then you are in good company.

in person help desk in NYC!

A red cursor collective member will be in New York City for the RNC. Since people are coming in from all over, this seemed like as good a time as any to attempt an in person help desk. You come, you get your problem solved! Even better, if you are willing to share with your fellow travelers whatever mysterious computer knowledge you have, come on down and join the fun.

When: Wednesday 5pm-8pm. August 25th. Where: Gigantic Arts Space (GAS) 59 Franklin Street New York, NY

GAS will be used this week as the registration space for the Independent Media Convergence. Here is a map: http://www.giganticartspace.com/info.html

servers moved to a happy home!

It has taken months, but we have finally moved almost all the riseup.net servers to their new home and upgraded to used (but more reliable) hardware. The change has taken a huge amount of labor and money, but we believe this will make riseup.net a bazillion times faster and much more reliable.

Up until now, we have run on servers held together with duck tape (literally) and stashed away in people’s basements and overheated closets. Once, we had a house guest unplug a server because they figured someone left it on by accident. We have had birds poop on the DSL modem, lightning which fried hardware, and mail servers which would crash every couple days. It wasn’t pretty.

thank you, wonderful people!

Our past situation wasn’t all bad, but we are very happy to be able to put that chapter in riseup history behind us. Our ability to expand and improve services is made possible solely because of the hundreds of users like you who recognize the need for alternative infrastructure, secure communication, and the power of mutual aid.

If you would like to join them and donate to riseup.net, please visit:

http://riseup.net/donate