UPDATE 11/10/2016 12:00PM ET
Democratic Underground is still down, but we're not out! While Elad works on the site's back-end, we've decided to go old-school.
When DU first launched 16 years ago, the Web was a much plainer, simpler experience. Way back in the day we used to accept article submissions from DU members via email, which we would then publish manually on our HTML homepage over our 56K modem connection (yes, we're old).
So given that our super-duper up-to-date modern technology is letting us down in this time of need, we're going to to things the old-fashioned way. We'll post a question of the day, and then you email us your answer. We'll publish the best ones right here on our 503 error page while we're working to get the rest of the site back up. You don't have to write a book, or even a long essay -- just give us your thoughts.
Here's Thursday's Question Of The Day:
How are you feeling now that the election is over?
Send your answer to
mail@democraticunderground.com. Make the subject of your email "Question of the Day".
Please make sure to include your DU username in the email so that we can publish it when we publish your response.
When we publish new answers, we'll post an update on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We look forward to hearing from you, and thanks again for your patience while we work to restore normal service!
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UPDATE 11/9/2016 1:00PM ET
We have now come to believe it is possible that the hacker may have been able to gain access to certain member information on our server, including: Usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses. Passwords were not as easily accessible, and at this point we do not know if it was possible for the hacker to access them. (Further note that passwords on DU are "hashed" and saved in a cryptographically scrambled format rather than as plain text, so if the hacker could access a member's password information they would not have direct access to the password itself -- only to the hash.)
We can say for certain that donor data, such as credit card numbers or addresses, were not compromised because that information is handled by PayPal and never passes through to our servers.
We are not going to bring our website back online until we believe that we are no longer vulnerable to attack and our members' user information is secure. Unfortunately we do not know how long this process will take, and it could possibly take days.
We will be posting updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Thank you again for your patience and understanding.
11/8/2016 (EDITED)
Around 4:30pm on Tuesday November 8, Democratic Underground was hacked, apparently by a supporter of Donald Trump. This person clearly knew what they were doing, and despite our best efforts we have not yet been able to resolve the issues caused by the hack.
We are confident that donor data has not been compromised because that information is handled by PayPal and never passes through to our servers. But at this time we are unable to bring our discussion forum online.
The hack was clearly aimed to cause maximum disruption on our busiest night of the year, and we deeply regret that we won't be able to spend election night with our great community of members. We ask for your patience while we continue to work to fix this problem, and while we do not have a time frame we will do our best to get DU back online as soon as possible.
If anyone has any information about the hack, or has knowledge that might help us to fix it, please feel free to contact us:
admin@democraticunderground.com
We will be posting updates on Facebook and Twitter.
We are deeply disappointed that this has happened. But we'll be back.
Skinner, EarlG, and Elad
DU Administrators
http://www.democraticunderground.com/503.php
Are they already posting from GWB's Paraguayan ranch or Jeffrey Epstein's island, or are they still in Langley?
Now do we finally see the damage the weaponised CIA term "conspiracy theory" has done? Any questioning of Authority, however justified, is paranoia.