Apollo: News

[Len]

To be or not to be... — 18.07.2017

As many have noticed, we are all once again bereft of access to our tracker (surprise, surprise). The same reasons still apply: A has the keys, he refuses to make contact with staff and we still have no control over the servers nor the apollo.rip domain. Our only known fact: the latest downtime is a product of A's inability to pay the monthly server bill on time. Alas, there is a somewhat pleasant finality to the realization that A, despite whatever negligible amount of faith we continued to have in him, is never going to change his present course of action.

We are here to firmly and unequivocally say that, in its current state and despite whether or not it resurfaces, apollo.rip should be presumed dead.

Fret not, however, as work on our backup site has been receiving all of staff's attention since the FUBAR announcement. The coding phase is nearly over and hardware integration is the next big step, with a set of servers, proxy servers and server security parameters meticulously chosen to continue our mission. Here is the big kicker: the Apollo BTC account is also under A's control, meaning none other than him have access to Apollo's past donations - funds that are conducive to spurring this new site. This fact was one of the key reasons why staff have been hesitant to speak aloud about A's absence, as the loss of your donations could spell an almost certain death for us. With longevity in mind, it was critical that we did everything in our power to save the website (and your donations if possible) prior to burning this final bridge between us and A. To that end, community updates have remained infrequent on a need-to-know basis in order to keep communication lines open and civil. Now that we are full steam ahead with this new venture, problems of this sort will no longer be a burden for both staff and users alike. But, with access to the old donation pool lost, the final hurdle right now is acquiring startup costs.

As we have inched nearer to the final stages, staff have recently conferred and all have unanimously come to a sobering but important conclusion: Apollo was, is and shall continue to be a tracker built for the people and with the people's input/ideas shaping it's potentially grand future (hence the initial name change to "Apollo", our long-awaited bonus points system, etc). From staff's perspective, it was initially assumed that we would pay for this migration, which seems fair at face value but is ultimately a death sentence in and of itself. As such, we have decided against this plan. The fact is, if Apollo is to continue, it will be doing so with the support and continuing interest of our users. We believe this to be the only course of action that guarantees a successful reboot and potential re-imagining of the standard to which all music trackers currently adhere to.

Asking for your hard-earned money at this juncture may seem wrong, given the excessive frustration everyone has experienced in the last several months. For those who scoff at this decision, we simply ask you to ponder our current fork in the road and question "what would be in Apollo's best interest long-term?". Since the days of Xanax, we have aimed to be as progressive a music tracker as possible, with special attention being given to the collective voice of our user-base. Regardless of whatever reservations you may have, please understand that staff simply cannot be asked to bring Apollo back to life on our own. With the indelible loss of trust we have gained from these issues, coupled with the obscene amount of work we have done behind the scenes to keep it together amidst the chaos, the potential for seeing our beloved site come back online due to YOU is the only true and approachable cure - a type of catharsis which will undoubtedly give us the perfect foundation to begin again.

The upfront cost of migrating is nearing the 1500 euro mark, and everything is ready to go sans the funds to kickstart this new and improved Apollo. If you would like to donate, please do so to the following Bitcoin address: (We only accept Bitcoin)

3HyioN5s2B6RNxrjE83zFmWKNAvPLLxHQ9

Important: If/when the old site returns, we ask that Apollo members refrain from contributing via donations to the BTC account hosted there. We do not know the balance in that account at this time (best guesstimate is between 0-1000 euro) but we are regarding any remaining donations residing there as lost.

Plan of action

As donations begin to trickle in, many changes will begin to immediately take shape. In order of importance, this money will be put towards these necessities:

1) A new domain (this has already been chosen and will be announced once purchased) 2) A new IRCD 3) Proxy Servers 4) Main Servers 5) Security

If everything goes as planned, we expect to be up and running no later than August 17th of this year. That may seem like a long time to some, but we refuse to half-ass anything for fear of running into the same issues once again. If you give us a second chance, trust it will not be squandered. We care about this place too!

As a side note, we know you care about your money and where it goes, especially if this project never gets off the ground. If that happens, we will revisit with the community and discuss where it should be funneled. To state the obvious: no, it will never end up in staff's pockets.

A word about future communication

As long as we are able, future announcements will continue to be made here, on irc.apollo.rip. We are also expanding our Reddit presence and will be simultaneously posting any and all announcements there as well. Expect to see Athena, Ellipsis, Sea, and Tea making the rounds over at r/trackers. We will continue to monitor your questions and concerns and anyone is free to contact us there at any point, for any reason.

In the likely event of our IRCD going the way of the dinosaur, we also want to remind our users of the old backup ircchannel:

Network: irc.p2p-network.net Port: +7000 for SSL Channel: #apl-chat

Obviously, this should only be used as a last resort.

The End?

Surely not! Because we are nearly there, friends. We love you and appreciate you immensely. Staff are hopeful and excited about the future and we trust there are several of you out there who feel similarly. Some of the greatest achievements are born out of much work and strife and we wish to parallel those examples with our own, and with your help.

Onward and upwards!

-APL Staff-