Hey all,

That time of the week again, and it is time to see how things have been going over the last week (and a bit)!

In case you’ve not read them, and want some light Sunday reading:
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7

TL;DR

  • Small Lemmy update to 0.18.4
  • Small uptime wins
  • Change to front-end clients
  • Administration & Defederation policy
  • Funding
  • Interaction
  • Stats

Lemmy updated to 0.18.4

We quietly updated to 0.18.4 following its release. Only minor changes to comments and misc fixes, with no changes to the database, so we were pretty confident about this one not crashing the server! Thankfully we had 0 downtime and the update was applied seamlessly.

Uptime wins

Previously we’ve been having issues with the server spiking and crashing, the DB locking up and causing the back-end to freeze, and general odd behaviour. Many other instances faced these issues too. I’m glad to say over the last week (and a bit) we’ve had 100% uptime since the upgrade to 0.18.3 was applied, which has been great. I’ve also tweaked the nginx settings to prevent old.lemmy.zip from timing out so often due to rate limiting.

Front end Clients

Following the release of Voyager as an app we’ve moved the front-ends around a little for those not aware.

  • m.lemmy.zip now leads to the Photon front end
  • v.lemmy.zip now leads to Voyager if people still want to use it as a web app
  • old.lemmy.zip still leads to the reddit look-alike.
  • beta.lemmy.zip now doesn’t lead anywhere.

This isn’t the end of the movements we’re making, Photon will likely have a new home (probably p.lemmy.zip or photon.lemmy.zip) and we’re always looking for cool new front-ends to implement.

If there are any other front-ends you’ve seen that you’d like us to host, let me know.

Administration and Defederation Policy

Following this week’s recent events, we’ve implemented an Administration and Defederation Policy to make it clear when and how we as an admin team take action.

Please have a read and let me know if you have any questions.

Funding

Our users continue to be incredibly generous, and we’re in a really solid position with funding at the moment. I am continuing to keep the OpenCollective website updated with expenses if you want to have a nosy, and if feel you want to donate be assured every single bit goes to keeping the server going (and if we are secure enough, we’ll be upgrading the server for better performance).

Anyone who does donate will get their name in the Thank You Thread. If you use your real name and want me to put your Lemmy.zip username instead, please send me a PM and I’ll update it ASAP.

Interaction

Just a quick hello to all new Lemmy.zip users - I hope you’re enjoying your time here on Lemmy!

This is my general weekly reminder to new and existing users that interaction is what keeps Lemmy growing. An upvote here, a quick comment there… it all goes to keeping Lemmy growing.

If you see content you like, please interact with it!

Stats

Now for the interesting bit :)

CPU usage over the last 7 days:\

Some network stats:

Backblaze image storage stats:

(Well on our way to 100gb!)

Cloudflare stats over the last 7 days:

And finally, the race between Finland and the USA is back on, with the USA creeping narrowly back into the lead:

This week’s post was brought to you by Fred Again’s Boiler Room set.

Thats all there is this week, hopefully normal service will resume! As always, let me know if there is anything else you’d like to see.

Demigodrick.

  • hoodlem@hoodlem.me
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    11 months ago

    Thanks for continuing to share this stuff, it’s super interesting.

    A question if you don’t mind. Are you planning on a retention policy for the Backblaze image storage?

    • DemigodrickOPMA
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      11 months ago

      I have no immediate plans (unless someone points out a good reason why we need one!) but storage is cheap so we’d currently keep everything unless the content is illegal or someone specifically requests a purge of their data in line with their legal rights (which we have set up on the legal tab). Does that answer the question?

  • Blxter
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    11 months ago

    I only have one question that I saw before on if we should defederate from those 2 instances (exploding heads or something). Do you view the piracy content and servers as “illegal” and reason to be removed. Weather we consume or post to it?

    No idea if this how we are to ask questions. Edit no idea why my text is so large. Or it just looks large to me.

    • DemigodrickOPMA
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      11 months ago

      Simple answer - no.

      Long answer - The instances that discuss piracy (db0 etc) host those discussions on their own instance, we don’t host that information. As long as there isn’t any illegal content specifically on this server (which is what happens with images that federate, we end up with the images/thumbnails hosted on this server hence why our blocks have been on instances that include illegal material in images) then we have no issues with it. If there was a piracy community on this instance, I’d be fine with discussions about piracy, but we wouldn’t allow copyrighted material on here. What you do off-instance is entirely up to you as long as it doesn’t break that instance’s rules or put this instance into disrepute, i.e. uploading CSAM to an external instance would be a ban here. Discussing piracy isn’t illegal so there are no issues there.

      • Blxter
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        11 months ago

        Ok thanks for clearing it up for me :).

  • LegoManIAm94
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    11 months ago

    Any plans to allow donations in crypto? As far as I know, all you need to do is put the crypto wallet address in the site wide sidebar for others to copy and paste into their crypto wallets.

    • SamiMA
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      11 months ago

      Hey, yes that is an option. You can DM @[email protected] for the wallet address and he’ll convert to fiat and add it to the OpenCollective page for transparency.

      • LegoManIAm94
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        11 months ago

        Sweet! You should add this info to the site wide sidebar under funding.

        • DemigodrickOPMA
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          11 months ago

          Thank you - I have done now :) As Sami said, any received crypto is converted into fiat and added to OpenCollective for transparency.

          But people should make sure they let me know they’ve donated with crypto so I know who to attribute it to!

          • LegoManIAm94
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            11 months ago

            Excellent! Any plans to accept Monero for donations? And will you still use donated crypto funds that are not declaired (aka anonymous funds)?

            • DemigodrickOPMA
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              11 months ago

              I can probably accept almost any mainstream crypto - I’ll add monero to the sidebar in a sec.

              I’ll always use the funds for the server, even if they’re anonymous, but I dont want people to miss out if they send crytpo and dont get added to the thread!

              • LegoManIAm94
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                11 months ago

                Sweet, thank you for adding XMR! Make sure you keep those private keys safe of all of those wallets.

                What would you do if two or more people claim to have donated with the same transaction ID? Most cryptos are transparent and I can use the crypto address provided to see the activity of those wallets.

                • DemigodrickOPMA
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                  11 months ago

                  Thats a very good question! Hopefully though a screenshot or something would be sufficient to show legitimacy, or send a small portion back and see which wallet it ends up in etc :)

                  Truthfully I hope we never end up in that position.