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For all things relating to Lemmy.zip.
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founded 2 years ago
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Hello and welcome to the Lemmy.zip December Server Update!
This update is stuffed fuller than a turkey on thanksgiving (I'm not American, I have no idea if you stuff turkeys. I've seen that one gets pardoned every year though, which seems a touch like psychological turkey warfare) - all the stuff that has happened over the last month is below, and it's a busy one!
Communities
Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe and join in with the conversation!
- Luanti (Formerly Minetest, a community for the open source voxel game engine)
- Retro Gaming (A community based around retro gaming and retro hardware)
- Soulslike (A community based around the Soulslike gaming subgenre)
- Captain's Mess (Star Trek memes!)
- Shitty Admin (I probably belong on here)
Thank you to all the mods who take their time to foster these communities :)
Server Update
Bit of chunky one, after a lot of waiting we finally saw Lemmy version 0.19.6 released (post) which brought a host of new improvements. In all, it took roughly an hour to apply the update, mostly due to database migrations that run during the upgrade, which prevent the site from running until they're done. As I alluded to in the linked post above, the site didn't come back up like it usually does, instead the UI container refused to talk to the database container (everything is dockerised, if you weren't aware).
The usual "turn it off and back on" method unfortunately didn't fix this, instead I actually had to do some real work, and read some log files. I noticed that the proxy container was complaining that it couldn't find the "lemmy-ui" hostname, which was odd because I didn't think anything had changed there. Sure enough, looking at the lemmy UI container, I could see the hostname was just randomly generated and not "lemmy-ui". Updating this and restarting the container brought everything back to life.
Potentially this is an artifact left over from when we moved to our current server, because I did everything manually rather than run the ansible script like I did on day 1 of setting the site up. I assume it's set in there, but we're so far off the ansible script in terms of custom stuff, it's quicker for me to just set the containers up manually now. I should probably learn ansible though. It's on the to-do list.
Anyway, the update worked and all was good. Lemmy 0.19.7 was also released a couple of days later, but as it had no database migration I quietly applied it with minimal downtime (not enough to register on the myriad of downtime detectors I use).
We also now have a working ban email system, which sends an email when a Lemmy.zip account receives a ban from Lemmy.zip, which looks a little something like this:
This has resulted in some high quality appeals, such as:
🙄
You may notice, if you use the default UI or Tesseract that we're trying out some spotlights for communities. I've put the top 20ish most active communities, and I'll try to update this semi-regularly too. If you don't see them, they look like this:
Hopefully people don't mind them - I'm open to feedback!
I believe the next version of Lemmy is planned to be 0.20.0, which should bring with it many requested features, such as private invite-only communities, SSO options, the option to disable private messages if you don't want, and more. Hopefully the wait isn't too long, as there are many features I'm looking forwards to using.
Hetzner also did some maintenance on some of their routers which directly impacted on the site, taking it offline for around 20 minutes:
Still, my experience with Hetzner has been flawless from Lemmy.zip starting out on one of their smallest cloud servers, to growing until we hit almost the top of their VPS offering, to now running on a dedicated server.
Finally, ZippyBot continues to be worked on with bug fixes, tidying up of features, and some new moderation features in the pipeline, if I can get them to work reliably.
Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)
If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)
I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.
It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.
If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.
If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
Did someone say graphs?!
These are all over the last 30 days unless otherwise stated:
CPU:
(That gap is the 0.19.6 upgrade downtime)
RAM:
(You may notice that this looks a little choppier than usual, at least if you stare at these graphs as much as I do. That may be because of changes to how Lemmy works, it also may be because I'm ✨testing in production✨!)
Storage:
(I need to delete some unused docker images. Otherwise this is fine!)
There are things right now as I type this.
Not as you read this though, you'd need a time machine for that.
Image storage: (Lifetime)
Cloudflare overview:
Requests:
Bandwidth:
Unique visitors:
Region traffic:
And that's it for this month. The next time I write this, it will be 2025. That is, if you'll excuse my language, fucking nuts. I still remember writing the December 2023 update thinking "how on earth have we made it to the end of the year, this is wild", and here we are another year later, still going and still (IMO) the best Lemmy instance. I would say this, of course, I am slightly biased.
I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who uses Lemmy.zip, who has helped support the instance, and especially those who are regular posters and moderators - without you all, there wouldn't be much point to this!
I hope you all have a peaceful and joyful festive period, and I hope you get to spend some time with your loved ones.
See you in 2025!
Demigodrick
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Hello and welcome to the November 2024 edition of the Lemmy.zip Server Update!
Long time readers will know the format by now, but please have a good read and give this an upvote if you enjoy it :)
Communities
Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)
As I said last time, I was going to start clearing up old and unused communities. I've reviewed most of the communities and mods have been very good at coming back to me, so thank you. We've managed to reduce the list of communities now, which should make it a bit easier for those looking to host communities here or those that are new to Lemmy in general.
Server Update
We've had a couple of maintenance periods for the usual front end and back end updates, but I'm glad to report that the server has been mostly stable for a good few months now. I made some little tweaks to the database based on some feedback around shared memory running out (thank you @BrikoX!) otherwise our uptime in 2024 (so far, let's not jinx it) has been 99.8946% (including maintenance downtimes, i.e. when we moved server).
I have also recently taken the time to update the Terms of Service - nothing has changed materially, just an update to wording around GDPR and age limits/NSFW content.
Finally, my plan is to try and complete work on our "ban notifier" - we don't issue many bans, but there is no communication from lemmy if we do this. So a banned person has no idea why or for how long. Using webhooks we can share this information with the user and give them an appeals channel, I just need to put the finishing touches on it.
Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)
If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)
I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.
It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.
If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.
If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
It's Graph Time!
As I missed the update for last month, these graphs are over 60 days instead of the usual 30 days.
CPU:
RAM:
(The drops here coincide with the server/database container being restarted.)
Storage:
(Yeah that one is pretty boring)
Here are things right now as I type this:
Image storage:
And now for Cloudflare stats (which are back to 30 days)
Requests:
Bandwidth:
Unique visitors:
Region traffic:
(as a reminder, Lemmy.world and lemm.ee are hosted in Finland - as is Lemmy.zip! - which is why we see so much traffic from there.)
Anyway, that's it for now.
As always, if there is anything you'd like me to add to these going forward, let me know! Otherwise I hope everyone has nice November and I'll see you again in December :)
Cheers,
Demigodrick
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Hi All!
Welcome to another monthly Lemmy.zip server update!
I have been increasingly busy in "real life" so haven't had much time to dedicate to Lemmy.zip recently (I got married!) however things are calming down now and I'm able to spend a bit more time keeping an eye on things. I had a few messages/requests and I think I've responded to them all, but let me know if I've missed anything.
Communities
Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)
There are also some existing communities that are looking for mods. Fancy trying out being a mod with a pre-existing community? Now is your chance!
PS - I finally have some time to start clearing up old/unused communities - I will be PM'ing mods soon!
Server Updates
It's been a little while since my last update so I'll go over some of the things that have happened or are happening:
We had a great Canvas event again, with the Lemmy.zip logo once again being lovingly recreated, and a few of our community's logos popping up, including the amazing SquaredCircle logo too!
You can see more on the completed Canvas here.
Did you know - we have a public dashboard showing all of our up to date federation/server data? You can check it out here!
Given some of the recent wider fediverse moderation issues/drama that has happened recently, I thought it might be sensible to confirm our position on moderation and how we decide what actions we take. We're not a massive instance, and we do get very few issues deriving from Lemmy.zip thankfully (I know moderators on larger instances probably have a trickier time of it), however our aim is not to interfere, silence, or in any way censor our communities, as long as the content is legal (in the UK/EU specifically, as that's where we're hosted) and it isn't going to cause harm to someone. You can see our full set of policies on our legal site - if you think something isn't clear enough or is missing, let me know and I will update/add it!
I'm also not usually one for podcasts, but I did stumble across this podcast on spotify that in the latest episode talks a bit about moderation in the wider Fediverse (more mastodon leaning, but the points I thought were interesting given the different ways servers are run). I am not one for mass block lists, we take each server as it interacts with us. Anyway if you're interested in that sort of thing, then I would recommend taking a listen - It's called DotSocial if you want to have a look on other platforms.
Finally, the Status Page has had a bit of a tidy up and now lists each frontend for clarity. I'm happy with the current set of frontends, but if you see one being used elsewhere you think we could host, let me know!
Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)
If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)
I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.
It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.
If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.
If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
Graphs n' stats n' stuff
Pretty graph time:
CPU usage over the last 30 days:
Memory (RAM) usage over the last 30 days:
Disk space use:
Image storage:
Cloudflare overall stats:
Requests:
Bandwidth:
Unique visitors:
Top country taffic:
That's it from me this month, I'll probably also miss the next one of these too covering September as I'll be in a much hotter country than the UK at the end of the month for a holiday, but will try to play catch up when I'm back.
As always, if I've missed anything or there is something you'd like to see added to these, let me know! I'm always open to adding more to this.
Cheers,
Demigodrick
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cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/4077161
the event has concluded! thank you all for participating!
this has been incredibly fun to run, as it was last year (although there was a bit more hiccups this time around)
⚠ Crossposters: link back to this post as it will be updated with more information ⚠
Event date: July 12th, 2024 @ 4am UTC til ~~July 15th @ 4am UTC (72 hours)~~ July 16th @ 4am UTC (72 hours + 24 hours) (it was extended due to a massive performance issue that caused major downtime)
Future events
I'm planning to host another one next year, so stay tuned 👀
If you have suggestions for canvas 2025 or any other events, post them in this post (thanks Ategon)
Supporting the project 💜💜💜
I have spent a little over 6 months completely rebuilding Canvas from the ground up to support future features, and i would love to work on more fediverse events
poster sales
posters of the final canvas will be sold, if you would like to stay updated with information on those, follow the Mastodon account or send an email to
[email protected]💜the shop site will also include stickers for the following instances:
- mastodon.world
- lemmy.world
- blahaj.zone
- toot.community
- toast.ooo
- Canvas 2024
✨ I wanted to have the shop setup before the event ending, but i couldn't get it setup quick enough unfortunately
direct donations
Donating via Stripe is the best way to donate directly
contributing to the code
canvas is open-source and is on a self-hosted gitlab instance at https://git.sc07.company/sc07/canvas
at time of writing; the gitlab server randomly restarts due to resource limits
Timelapses
i need to rewrite the timelapse script as some people pointed out some weirdness with the other ones (that's also what delayed this post by almost 3 hours)
Data
The database has all of the pixel placements, so it's possible to regenerate the log file, but that's currently not implemented (so nothing is lost) Format:
{timestamp}\t{username}\t{action}\t{x}\t{y}\t{hex}(for the most part)
- Raw pixel log file (could be missing pixels due to crashes, i'm unable to confirm at time of writing) (47mb)
- Possibly patched pixel log file (contains the first 10ish minutes that got dropped from the raw file + an attempted patch, but could include duplicated pixels) (47mb)
chat.fediverse.events
This will stay up as long as i can keep it running for, i'll make some improvements eventually as well
tools (like a canvas atlas)
if anyone is wanting to build something for canvas, i'd be willing to host the project & give it a subdomain of
.fediverse.eventsjust send me a matrix dm, a dm on discord (
grahhnt) or an email[email protected]Special thanks
thank you to the moderators that helped me this year, even with how stressful it was 🔨
- Ategon (https://ategon.dev/)
- Sugar (sc07)
- Bigcheese
- TheWaffleLord
and the contributors to the code once the event started: 💻
- Ategon
- Marius
- soda_cans
and thank you, once again, for participating this year, i hope you enjoyed it as much as i did 💜
i'm going to now go enjoy my 21st 🥳🎉
- grant
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cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/4043001
oh hey the canvas also looks a bit different...
- PeerTube: https://sc07.tv/w/6XZFB8qQy8KCRgaF7UsuFb
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK2Cho0DSXQ
- Raw File: https://cdn.sc07.company/canvas/2024/24h.mp4
If this is your first Canvas post you've seen...
Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas, much similar to r/place
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Canvas is over!
And just like that, Canvas 2024 has come to a close. Here's the final version of our logo as it appears on the final version of this year's version of the Canvas:
Thanks again to everyone who participated! I hope to see you all back here next year for Canvas 2025!
The logo is done!
Special thanks to @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] and anyone else I might've missed for getting this done so quickly! (Second special shoutout to the wonderful ategon for bringing p.d over after they finished their logo!)
For context, last year's Canvas took about a day and a half and I only listed 5 other names on the 'thanks' post. Now 16 of us got it done well within the first 24 hours!
I must also note @[email protected] and @[email protected] for tarballing us lol
And congrats to our own [email protected], who also finished their logo just to the north east of us
The template is still available below for ongoing maintenance needs. Otherwise, get out there and contribute to other art (or find a place to start your own) elsewhere on the Canvas!
🔴 CANVAS IS LIVE!
Start placing pixels!
I put us in the bottom center, just over the upper left corner of programming.dev and south east of [email protected]
Original post
Hey everyone! In case you haven't heard yet, the next instance of Canvas is almost here, starting on Friday the 12th at 12:00 AM EDT (July 12, 04:00 UTC). Canvas is a collaborative art project on the Fediverse, akin to Reddit's r/place, where everyone gets a few pixels at a time to add to a shared canvas.
Last year, we added our instance logo to the canvas, and I think it would be great to do something like that again this year.
Here's a template-ready version based on last year's final result. It's 71x47 pixels:
(in the actual final version, the orange line under the ".zip" was extended into a full border all the way around, but ran into the bottom of the nose and lower left whisker, so i trimmed it off. if we want to add that back, it should be nudged one pixel lower)
Here's the template so you can see how it'll look on the Canvas.
UPDATE: Here's a version with the border, this bumps it up to 73x49px: 
You may notice the Canvas is only 500x500 this time (as opposed to 1000x1000 last year), and it's also been opened to the entire Fediverse (versus just Lemmy last time), so we may have to fight a little to keep our space.
The big question is where to put it? Should we arrange a space for ourselves now or just wing it and find a blank spot a few hours in?
If anyone has any other ideas for things we could add alongside/instead of the logo, feel free to shout them out! If you're in the Lemmy.zip Matrix space, you can also join the Canvas Talk room for discussion and coordination
If you want to join any other projects, I know our [email protected] has a plan, there's a dedicated group organization post on the host community [email protected], and of course there's nothing stopping from putting your own by yourself
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Hi all,
Welcome to the July edition of the server update! Let's take a look at how things went in June and might go in July.
Communities
Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)
There are also some existing communities that are looking for mods. Fancy trying out being a mod with a pre-existing community? Now is your chance!
Server Updates
Since the last update, we upgraded Lemmy to versions 0.19.4, then version 0.19.5 which fixed a few UI bugs. There is still a known issue with code blocks (text that looks like this) where if you're on the default theme on the website, the text displays with a white background. There should be a fix for this in 0.19.6.
The next Canvas event starts on Friday July 12th - we'll make a post with the details about this a bit closer to the time. Last year was great, the Lemmy.zip logo looked great on the board!
I'm thinking about adding another Admin or two to Lemmy.zip, with a focus on content creation and engagement. The time I have to dedicate to the site is rapidly decreasing, so if you're interested, drop me a message here or on matrix and we can have a chat!
Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)
If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)
I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.
It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.
If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.
Please don't be a lurker! :)
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
Graph time!
Here's some screenshots to show the performance of the server over the last 30 days:
RAM usage:
Image storage:
Cloudflare overview:
Requests:
Bandwidth:
Unique visitors:
Worldwide traffic:
That's it for now - as always, let me know if you have any questions or there any other metrics you want to see!
Cheers
Demigodrick
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