themantarays

Sorry for the late reply ! Actually, I dropped this little project of mine because I wasn't satisfied with it in the end. However, I started another project (always for bato.to) and finished it today, here a link : http://fav.me/dbf87s3

So I've been posting bits and pieces on the twitter and twitter is just so darn short...
 
Batoto runs on number of servers and there's one main server that's at the helm of all other servers. It controls what processing goes where, balances the load and handles certain key features including uploads.
 
I may be over personifying, but every computer/server has a personality. And you tend to see it more when you push it to the max. This main server has been finicky for quite some time. Sometimes it doesn't boot up right... Sometimes when it's pushed to extremes, it just starts being an ass. It's always made my maintenance longer than expected and a large reason to a huge chunk of downtime in percentage. 
 
Like the last tweet on May 17th (part1 part2) was about this server too. Whether it was intentional DDoS or a swarm of haywire bots (they happen surprisingly often... *cough* baidu *cough*), I didn't bother to investigate, but that ignited the jerkwad mode and the precipice of downtime. About 70%+ of my time sink and downtime was due to that. Historically, that wasn't even the worst event, but I don't intend to start another story time. Generally, after much effort, it goes back to being normal.
 
Today though... It just went poof. With no visible cause. Rather, it was it going poof that made me think it was having abnormal traffic as the outflow was off because it wasn't juggling the load properly.
 
It's still running. And throwing no errors. No error logs relating to hardware. Temperatures fine. etc. Everything says it's fine. But it's running at like 1/10th of the speed. And no matter how much I try to console it, doesn't seem to change.
 
So, I took the last resort and signed a new server entirely. Hooked everything up. And this is how performance has been restored now. (Would appreciate some donations. Actually not behind much since I'll be cancelling the previous later and I stick with monthly contracts.)
 
The main server is doing very little right now and adding even a tiny bit more would make it cry again.
 
The new server still needs to be handed over more of less demanding but still numerous tasks including handling of uploads (which is next in priority) (upload now complete). Once all of that is done, it will be the new main server. Do expect some minor down times as I still progress with this. But we should generally be online without super lag we've been seeing all day.
 
I'll keep y'all updated with any significant progress.

So since they are so short and I had a decent amount of free time on my hand I watched all of RWBY Chibi. They were actually really cute, some of the skits in particular were pretty clever. On the whole it's been an interesting and fun ride.

Now for the real information I wanted to talk about. I went to RTX 2016 this year, and, of course I went to the RWBY panel. So, info dump?

Yeah... Info dump.

On second thought I'm putting it in spoiler tabs because... well, it contains implied spoilers for Volume 3's finale

I want more Pyrrha

 

Spoiler

;-;

Here you go.

Spoiler

Iykwim

Hello people,

TL;DR: LINE Webtoon is hiring freelance translators and proofreaders, send them a resume in English to [email protected] if you're interested. Please pass the word around if you know somebody who might. (and/or pass along the attached file).

I'm a member of the Oddsquad Scanlation group, and I was contacted a while ago by a member of LINE/Naver staff. He wanted to get in contact with our translators, and some of them agreed to have a chat.

Long story short, he wanted to hire them, and one of our translators was very interested (she even went in Korea to complete her studies; that is not necessary however). She was hired, and she's currently quite happy with it.

The staff member from LINE asked me if I knew more people willing to be hired. I personally don't, but the community is big.  I'm posting here because it's the first one that came to my mind.

Lezhin made a similar annoucement (with the help of Grumpy), don't hesitate to compare the offers (competition is good for salary rates! ^^).

I don't exactly know why they don't take this kind of announcement in their own hands, but I guess publishers are still shy about publicly conversing with the scanlation scene. It's up to us to change the scenery, and promote freelance translation!

I included the attachment they gave me, which describes succintly the offer.

So............... this is happening.

http://readms.com/r/rwby/001/3071/1?t=2&f=0

Other thread is so clogged, felt like a new announcement would be more visible. This thread is locked and purely for announcement only.

Bot Mitigation

I will be implementing some bot mitigation techniques. This will be the first of changes along with different reader. From the brainstorms, I've learned a few things that may assist in curbing bots, in addition what I thought of implementing. Some of it will be a bit more of an enterprise solution, some of it will be custom solutions, and some of it will just be basic changes that make crawling more of a hassle.

These will be added over a long period of time. Almost all of these are machine targeting machine. And you won't even see it.

Changes to Reader

To assist with the bot mitigation and reduction of resource usage, the reader will be changed a bit. It will look mostly the same, some might not even notice. But it is coded in a way that'll help me track the abuses more as well as making it lighter weight. So, the users should be able to hit next page faster too. Yay! This is already coded and being tested.

Unfortunately, this comes with new URL scheme. Old URLs will be shut down once new is fully operational and without issues.

Also, it will now require javascript & cookies to function. So... to the <1% that has it off. Sorry.

Membership Requirement

This has been a source of lot of controversy, but I do still find it almost certain it will happen. Yes, some users will leave. Ad revenue may go down, but so will operating costs. They always move together. I foresee no financial concern from this change. On top of that, kenshin has offered more help that's acting as a safety net in terms of cost issues. And if that means I get to have more horsepower to serve the members that care, I see no real concern. I believe what made Batoto into the giant that we have grown into are the contributors. And by contributors, I mean from people who's uploaded thousands of chapters and to people who's made a single comment about their thoughts. Contents are what makes this site, and they already are members.

There are no plans to close membership nor anything like a paywall. You can register anytime you want, and become part of this community.

Membership requirement will not be a sudden switch. It will be eased in. And what requires membership will slowly grow. The slow pace will give me the numbers to confirm/break my expectations. And that is from where I'll ultimately draw the final choice, not from guesses or what might be. I can't see the future, nor can anyone else from thin air.

Uploader's Private Direct Link

This is one change of direction I realized may be helpful after reading the feedbacks in various places. The uploader, optionally can generate a second URL to the chapter. It will not be mentioned anywhere on this site, but people coming to that URL from the source site won't need membership to view. That way, we can still provide a reliable way for uploaders to share without affecting the anti-crawl of our system.

I will likely add this sometime while membership requirement is being eased in. Hopefully in early stage.

Why are Changes Being Made Now?

Quite a lot seemed confused about this. I do apologize for lack of clarity initially. I've said before, but complete prevention of copying Batoto isn't the goal. It's just not possible. I know that some of them have humans to copy from Batoto in rare occasions that I troll them with fake contents. Goal is to reduce it.

Over the years of maintaining Batoto, I didn't do it alone. I have hired other professionals in the past occasionally to help. And their first reaction to my server is always that I'm getting DDoS'ed. If that were true, this is the longest DDoS in history of the internet. (They do eventually know that it's not) We just get crawled that much. We have to get it down to a reasonable level where it's manageable. This, is a viable goal.

It's not that Batoto's going to die tomorrow without making the change. Or a month or etc. It's an ever growing problem and has to be tackled sometime. Doing nothing is to just shut down.

After

Hopefully focus can be sent back to bunch of stuff that's like 80% done but never finalized... Like follows overhaul. Flattr/changetip that was started like years ago... So much in queue.

Self-Published Titles

None of this applies to self published titles. Except automatic bot mitigation.

That's very worrying...

Spoiler

(To the point that this topic has actually caused me to sign into my account for the first time in a couple years just to offer my opinion here)

I'll be honest... I trust you, Grumpy. You've run Batoto extraordinarily well, stuck close to your stated ideals, kept ads minimal/generally unobtrusive, and made the site the best it can be. So when you say that this move is "most likely inevitable", I believe you and think your intentions are good.

But I do think this will "kill" the site as we all know and love it. Only a small fraction of those nonmembers will register an account to continue using Batoto; the rest will simply shrug and move on to some other aggregator.

I don't know if this is necessarily good or bad... I've never run a big website, so I just don't know how such a huge loss of traffic will affect you and the site's future ad revenue. I'm also worried about the possibility that even if the revenue system is fine, the loss of traffic will have other effects... maybe some scanlators won't feel like hosting their projects here anymore, either because they oppose the move or simply don't think uploading releases to a much smaller Batoto is worthwhile? I can imagine the situation potentially snowballing from there... Of course, it's hard to say what will truly happen, and this could just be me overthinking/overreacting (and everything will turn out ok).

If this move could allow you to more easily track and crack down on the aggregator bots who rip chapters from Batoto, then that's a major plus. I'd love to see that work out.

But I agree with ku4eto; if you're going to move forward with this plan, it's imperative to start promoting registrations on the main page.The sooner, the better.

 
 
[Play the song Mr DJ!]
 
Tiny-Clamor is much like every other large city. It's entirely ordinary as far as the world is concerned. The weather is fine, fair, generally warm-ish but with a chill breeze for most of the year. It rains regularly. And it's not on a coast. So there isn't much of a tourism trade. It's full of all the usual sights and sounds and smells you'd find in a city of it's size. Though the people tend to bit a little more relaxed. Like somehow the city never quite lost that easy going feeling from when it was a small village. Even it's very name hints to it's humble nature. Tiny-Clamor. It sounds a little bit rowdy, but not really anything to worry about. Like a pub garden full of merry drinkers singing along to Don't Stop Believing on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

All of this leads up to a pleasant place, but not really a memorable one. The sort of place you pass through on your way to your destination and have a nice meal. You then think to yourself that it was a nice place to take a break from driving and you'll have to come back on the return trip. But then you forget and take the bypass because it's a little bit quicker.

Basically, when choosing a place to visit one would look at Tiny-Clamor and get immediately distracted by Vegas or some other city, forgetting Tiny-Clamor even existed at all.

And that's just the way those who live in Tiny-Clamor like it.

Because underneath all of that pleasant dullness lies a city that is jam packed with the weird and wonderful, the stupendous and the scary, the fabulous and the freaky. It's all gone nuttier than a squirrels secret stash. Hidden right in plain sight are all manner of strange things. Most of them love having the cover of Tiny-Clamor to hide them. Though some would be happy to tear away the veil and show people the man behind the curtain.

And so one day a group of these no good peace-haters decided they were going to be, well... less than stealthy.
 
The day these people chose was, like roughly a seventh of the days in Tiny-Clamor, a Sunday. And a very nice, casual Sunday it was. The kind of Sunday that gives you a cheeky wink and a nudge, tells you you haven't got anything important to do today and kindly lets you to curl up on the sofa in your pajamas and fluffy slippers for as long as you want. And from that comfortable position you would look out the window to see the city basking gently in a soft cloud of mist. You might see the wind playing on the tree leaves. You'd barely even notice how few people were around. Because they, like you, must also be enjoying their lazy Sunday morning. It was certainly a good day for it. Who'd want to be going out on a day like this? Who would be willing to deal with all that hassle? Not anyone you'd associate with. You can't think of anyone who'd bother going out today. In fact, you can't think of anyone at all. You might suppose that you should be worried about that, but you're probably just tired, you have been working hard today. You deserve a rest, you might think. You might decide that maybe you'll just get a quick nap in before you set about making that breakfast or whatever that thing was you were going to do. Just a quick nap. A little one. You probably won't even get to sleep, you'll just be resting your eyes for a bit really. It's fine... It's all fine.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

Suddenly John sprang from his sofa and up onto his feet. His wife's soft pink bunny slippers only half managing to cover his feet. He had no idea when he'd put them on, but he decided he liked them. A decision that was now a secret he would take the the grave. His pajamas hung from his bony shoulders like he was a human coat hanger. A look that was only accentuated by the fact that he was wearing his old pajamas, from before William had helped him lose all that weight. He shook his head gently from side to side and rubbed his eyes in an effort to wake up. Even though he was up and standing he felt like he was still half asleep. It took him a moment to realize why he'd even been woken up. He looked around for a second in confusion before seeing his emergency phone laying at his feet, screen bright and blinking. Every now and then it would shake and make another series of beep noises. He sluggishly leaned down to snatch it up and pressed the only button on it. A large button in the shape of a stylized MB. The Mystery Busters logo. Williams voice emerged.

"DON'T GO TO SLEEP!" His voice screamed right into Johns ear, he winced and rubbed his tired eyes again. "IT'S NOT A GOOD TIME TO SLEEP JOHN IT'S NOT GOOD AT ALL. THEY'RE GUNNA COME AND STEAL YOUR FACES!" John was very much awake now. In fact, he thought he was awake permanently now.

"Wh-what?! Who, eh- uhh, what? Why?! What- Faces?! I've only got one face!" He stammered. His voice doing that high-pitched thing that it does when he gets nervous.

"Well if you go to sleep you'll be wishing you had some spare." John felt faint. The world seemed to spin for a moment. He may never have really been a massive fan of his own face but he at least liked to know it was there. "John, hey! JOHN! Listen John. Okay? It's gunna be fine if you do what I say. Just don't go to sleep. Remember that. It's important. Sleep is bad." Williams breath was coming out harsh and ragged like he'd just been running way further than he was happy about. Though he still had that usual care-free tone to his voice. "I'm sending you a message John. I need you to put it on the website okay? Use the special account, send an MB Alert. Dramus'll know what to do from there." And with that he put the phone down.

John kicked into action. He rushed to his computer. Fought the urge to have a quick nap as it booted up, and opened the Mystery Busters website. Almost as if William had been waiting for the perfect moment to send it, the message he'd promised came through on his phone. So John typed it up word for word and hit send. Then he hoped silently to himself that Dramus was paying attention somewhere. He then set off to find some duct tape to try and stick his eyes open. He couldn't go sleep with open eyes right?

Elsewhere in Tiny-Clamor the members of the Mystery Busters! were finding themselves, for reasons unknown, highly driven in their desire to take a look at the Mystery Busters! website. Some, perhaps, may have been sleeping. Falling prey to the strange sleepiness of the day. But even they would find themselves waking up and feeling a desire to check the website. And when they did they would find something different about the website. Because instantly upon entering the site they would be greeted with massive letters in flashing green and blue stating, simply, ALERT! After clicking on the alert pop-up they would be taken to a message from the one and only leader of the Myster Busters! The handsome one himself. Grand Myster. Though some call him William. For that is his name.

ALERT!

Spoiler

Grand Myster: Calling all Mystery Busters! Calling all Mystery Busters! We've got a situation over here at the Lindol Memorial Park... Uhh... I think you're going to want to see this. Got a quick photo before anyone saw me. Check it out. Things are going crazy right now.

Spoiler

Yeah. You're not wrong. It's cultists. That's right. Cultists. I freaking HATE cultists! Bunch of amateurs diddling around on the professional level! It's just so wrong! It's like, you don't let a two year old try and re-touch the faded bits on the Sistine Chapel! RIGHT?! Goddamn it! If I ever find out who supplied these idiots I'm reeeeaally going to enjoy slapping them around the face.

Anyway!

The point is, we kinda need your help right about now.

Me and the Grand Syster are just sort of hiding in a tree. And I mean, I know you all think I'm some sort of omnipotent genius. And I am. Obviously. But I forgot to bring my anti-cultist device that I've been working on. It's quite a tough thing to make, even with magic. Like. How do you define a cultist? Sure, you know them when you see them, but that logic doesn't work in a spell. Well, maybe... The point is, we're up doo-doo river without a paddle. We could kinda use some help here. So I figured it was a good time for the first official Mystery Busters! mystery bust! It's gunna be fun guys! Come on down!
 
Oh!
 
Don't go to sleep! It's cultist sleep, not normal sleep. Cultist sleep is always sinister. I wouldn't risk it guys. Just come down here and fight baddies with us instead! It's way more fun!
 
Shoot! Almost forgot! Grand Syster says to tell you that the cultists are gathered in the oldest part of the park, that's the place with the biggest trees. So you might wanna give that a pass or whatever. Also, you can find us in a tree near the playground bit. You know, the one with the awesome slide and the swings you can wrap around the bar. I did a loop-de-loop there once. It was awesome. Anyway, see ya soon hopefully. Just as long as you don't get eaten by cultists or something.

In continuing attempt to see what alternative means of ads we can run, I've now enabled pop up (mostly under) on web comic format chapters. This replaces the existing two banner ads. They will popup on click.

The popup will only happen once a day. Not as in every 24hrs, as in once each day at most based on UTC/GMT timezone.

I've been running popups in beta with fair bit of success and hopefully it'll be good in live as well. The goal is to see if this is a viable alternative to banner ads which:

• Take up space in viewing area
• Cause loading delay
• Loading large number of ads, increasing probability of unwanted ads.

The objective of this test is to have less ads in total, annoying the users less. Popups are indeed more annoying, but given the ratio of 1 each day vs 2 every page, this seems less annoying in the end.

ps. I'm aware this makes adblock's whitelist impossible since the popup itself will be on another domain.

Hello everyone!

Since the last announcement about image servers, I have unexpected and actually received an offer. RKenshin has generously offered us to use his (business) network to distribute the images.

What this means:

• More distribution nodes, including Asia! The biggest boost in speeds should be felt by Asian users as the CDN offers nodes there--something we couldn't do due to costs until now. (Side note: optimization is not yet complete, still copying over some files to singapore location)
• Reduced cost! Over long term, if we are able to load more and more onto RKenshin's CDN, we'll be able to reduce the server costs that we currently pay, which in turn means even less ads that need to be on this site.

How to use it:

• When reading, press the gear icon and select CDN, then submit.

Please note that this is a testing phase, but should be fully functional. Any issues you see with this should be reported here so that issues can be resolved.

I would like to welcome everyone to try it out and tell us how it works.

Major item for me, though, you guys don't really have to do anything as it'll all be handled smoothly, hopefully...
I guess this announcement might get a bit technical. Only part that I do want everyone to know is that if there's hiccups, just use the gear button to change image servers.
 
You can stop reading now unless you want to actually learn the plans.............................
 
Image servers are getting swapped to different hardware and locations. Generally to spread it out more and get more bandwidth throughput in total.

• US1 image server is being taken down. It has already been removed from DNS and will be offline from 30th of April.
• US1 is being replaced with nothing because the newest one as I'm expecting CA1 to just handle the load. Whether or not it can is something I'll have to watch. Early stats show promise...
• By mid ~ end of May, I will likely remove US2 as well, in place of new server also in the US (but central us).

Why is this change being made?

• US1 has been very buggy... Goes down very often and generally under-performing to expectations. I think a good portion of image server complaints go here.
• US1 and US2 are located in eastern USA. And I know people from Asia have a difficult time getting a good connection to our image servers.
• CA1 is even more east than US1 and US2 (two US are in same location). So, I really want a more western one to counter and give Asia better traffic.

One actually in Asia would work best, but honestly just can't even remotely afford it. International bandwidth for servers in Asia is crazy expensive. That and some of our 2MB per black and white image aren't exactly a good match. Seriously, what the hell guys.
One in west coast usa is next best performer for asia, and still trying to find one. If I do find one, it'll be there. But again, not finding any in good price range right now, so may have to settle for central USA.
 
Longer down the road sometime... I will be replacing the one in Netherlands with a bigger but generally same area (Germany, France, other Netherlands... they're all kinda close).
 
 
Once all the image server moving is complete... (no date promises)

• We'll actually only have 3 image servers from previous 4, but expecting higher capacity.
• I will begin experimenting optional compression of images (default will be full, and user can select compressed). That will, again, provide better speeds to people in Asia, should they choose to.
• I'm going to try to make the server assignment to be more location based. For example, if you're from Europe, you will almost always be assigned the EU server rather than something else. Currently, it's mostly which server can afford to give you as some of them have caps.

In case you need pics.

Spoiler

 

I don't know why I redrew same arrows...