Donations are now possible

[Laird]

Ian and Laird had already decided to defray their past expenses with the first donations, I thought that was an unwise decision for themselves, as that was their original stake in the site.

Totally understand where you're coming from, Max. I expressed my own concern about this privately with Ian and in the founders' forum. Here's what it comes down to:

Since Ian and I are responsible for paying for the various services in our name no matter what, since there have been more donations so far than costs, and since those excess donations are simply going to be sitting in my PayPal (or bank) account until we next have to pay for something, then whether those donations are considered to have defrayed our (Ian and my) existing expenses (wiping out our "donations") or to be contributing to future expenses (in which case, Ian and I have still "donated" something) is a somewhat meaningless (academic) question. It makes it easier though and less confusing when interpreting the spreadsheet to stipulate that all preexisting costs incurred by Ian and me have been defrayed.

But we recognise that this makes it look like, and in some sense is the case that, Ian and I have not donated anything and are sponging off the donations of everybody else. That's why, after discussing it privately, Ian and I decided to make explicit donations, as I described in this post. In a sense, these donations are simply promises not to use the donations of others to defray our own incurred costs, to the amount that we (Ian and Laird) have donated.

With the size of my donation, I was simply trying to give folks an idea of what a "minimally necessary" donation would be given the number of donors and our actual costs so far. I don't want folks to feel that they need to donate massive amounts when we have so many donors willing to contribute. On the other hand, this is not an expression of dissatisfaction with donors who have been so generous: their generosity is of course very welcome and appreciated!

But after thinking about it, I've doubled my donation so that it now covers four years' worth of costs rather than just two.

when I later saw Malf and Linda’s contributions, I realised Laird might feel a little constrained by the donations.

Ah, no. As Ian has said, donations don't protect from any future moderation action - not that any moderation action is planned against malf or Linda.

clearly something had motivated such a long post.

I had two main motivations: (1) to do due diligence, given that you had suggested that if I were to do some reading on RNGs, then I would see that your claims were justified, and (2) to defend against unwarranted claims that the GCP results could be explained in non-anomalous terms (other than fraud/deception). The post came so late simply because I had not until then found the energy/motivation/opportunity to catch up on it. It was a "Hey, I've neglected this for too long, let's finally get onto it - and do a proper job" kind of post.