Mander

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Lemmy needs more donations (join-lemmy.org)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink

The developers of Lemmy are currently under-funded and are asking for donations.

Community funding of projects like Lemmy offers an alternative to the commercial system in which projects are funded by investors looking to make a profit in the long run.

Unfortunately, community funding is not easy. Sometimes it might be because many of the users are unable and/or unwilling to donate, but sometimes it might also be that it is not clear that donations are needed, or users may underestimate the impact of their "small" donation. I am glad that the developers are explicitly asking for help at this point, and hope that they find support to continue.

Cross-posting and pinning this here to help them spread their call for help. I recommend placing comments directly to the original post so that it is visible to them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:

Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto

If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name "Luigi".

Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.

Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can't go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.

Donate

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Can we get a lichen/lichenology community? (i.imgur.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink

I have tried to find one all over lemmy and have had no luck aside from the odd mycology community. While lichenology does fit within the borders of mycology I think it's a subject that warrants and is deserving of its own community. I have left reddit now and the sub I miss most is r/lichens, its a small but dedicated community and I think we could have that here. I'd love to see more people learn about lichens. Pic: Letharia vulpina or Wolf Lichen

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I found Sal. (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink

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Instance has been upgraded to version 0.19.11 (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

3 comments fedilink

Sorry for the delay! The instance is now up-to-date running version 0.19.11

Important note: Moderators now have the ability to see what users upvote and downvote posts and comments within the communities that they moderate.

You can read the rest of the release notes here: https://mander.xyz/post/27810123

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3

Plans to update? (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink

Hear me out, I'm not trying to complain or be impatient. I've just been on a few instances that have had various problems.

I don't care when, but is there a plan to update in the long run?

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This place is back online! (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink

Yay, nice to see mander back up and running.

May I ask, do we know what happened?

Also, should we maybe have a matrix chat or something as a backup communication channel?

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3

🤔 Does my Lemmy instance support video streaming? (aeharding.github.io)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27361885

Just figured I’d share this here for informational purposes.

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Issue with images expected during a 12 hour period today (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink

The server's images are stored and served using object storage.

The object storage provider has sent a message stating that they will perform a 12-hour migration tomorrow, March 10th, from 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM CET, so downtime of the object storage service is expected. Site images will likely not be displayed during this time.

In these past days users have reported issues with image uploads. I suspect that the issue is related to this same migration. If so, images should be back and the upload issue resolved by tomorrow night. If uploads are still causing problems I will investigate further.

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Trouble uploading images (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink

Anyone else having trouble uploading images? Here is the message I am getting.


{"data":{"files":null,"msg":"Invalid status 403 Forbidden for None - <html><body><h1>403 Forbidden</h1>\nRequest forbidden by administrative rules.\n</body></html>\n\n"},"state":"success"}

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Supporting Mander (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink

This might be a silly question and I might have missed the info, if it is posted somewhere, but is there a way (and need) to support this instance financially? I like it here and would love to help out a bit. I'd offer any other kind of help needed, but I'm not tech savvy, so money would have to do.

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Issue with the images on the site [Solved] (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

Edit: The issue appears to have been some intermittent problem and it was solved (perhaps by chance) a few minutes after contacting support.

I woke up this morning to find out that the images are not accessible through the site.

This seems to be an issue on the side of the object storage provider, as the "bucket" is not accessible through the provider's web portal. I have reached out to them to hopefully sort this out ASAP.

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1

posts blackholed on the onion instance (mander.xyz)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

1 comments fedilink

I just got burnt. Wrote up a relatively high-effort post in:

http://mandermybrewn3sll4kptj2ubeyuiujz6felbaanzj3ympcrlykfs2id.onion/c/water

clicked sumbit, and it simply ate my msg. Redrew a blank form.. no way to recover the info loss. This is my 1st use of the onion, so I did not think to enable 1st party j/s (which is strangely off be default in noScript on Tor Browser despite clearnet sites having 1st party js enabled by default). It’s unclear if it’s a JS problem or if it’s because the onion version uses a quite old/classic reddit-like theme. In any case, it sucks.. it’s a defect for sure.

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Whenever I follow an external link, I'm not logged in. (mander.xyz)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

I'm experiencing a weird bug lately.

When I'm logged in, if I follow an external link (from lemmyverse.net, for instance) to here, the tab that opens is not logged in, and stays that way even if I navigate around the instance. If I then open another new tab, and directly visit mander.xyz, I'm logged in correctly as normal.

I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing this? I don't know what could cause this or how to find out if it's a bug with lemmy, mander, or my browser config.

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I constantly get errors loading images. (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

It happens consistently with any mander.xyz community. Errors nearly identical to this:

{"error":"unknown","message":"Request error: error sending request for url (http://pictrs:8080/image/original/4083b4bb-ab1d-45cc-9ff0-72280ce5c2ff.jpeg): operation timed out"}

This time it was this image:

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/4083b4bb-ab1d-45cc-9ff0-72280ce5c2ff.jpeg

It only happens with images. I only browse on mobile, android. I've had it happen in Firefox and the boost app, haven't tried it anywhere else. Let me know if I can provide any other info that will help.

This only happens to me with mander.xyz, and consistently happens every evening with nearly all images. Maybe 1 out of 20 times I'll get lucky and an image will load. There are too many communities I like here so I haven't just blocked it yet, hoping it can be fixed eventually. :)

Edit: I did see that other post about broken images but it looked like the error was different from the one I always get so I made a separate post.

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Lots of 429s and broken images from mander.xyz (vger.social)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

Anyone else noticing? It seems to be affecting other instances as well, since instances hot link to eachother.

The rate limiting seems to get much worse in the evenings.

lemmy.world:

mander.xyz:

{
  "code": "object-request-error",
  "msg": "Invalid status 429 Too Many Requests for Some(\\"01/90/24/ad/1d/8d/7e/8a/82/ee/7104ff150707.png\\") - {\n \\"message\\":\\"Too many requests\\"\n}"
}

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Putting Mander on Canvas! (canvas.fediverse.events)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

I'm working on re-creating a logo we had last year onto this year's #Canvas. The site, complete with template, is linked above!

#Canvas2024

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2

This instance is flyiiing (super fast)! (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

After all these recent upgrades, updates and improvements, things are going veeert smoothly and fast!🔥 I think this comment I made about a week ago about experiencing slow responses is no longer valid!

Sal and anyone else who helped, you did a great job! Thank you!☺️

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1

Version update and server upgrade! (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

The instance has been updated to version 0.19.4!

You can see the official release post and notes here: https://lemmy.ml/post/16585359?scrollToComments=true

Since this update required some manual intervention anyway to update the database version, I took the opportunity to perform some overdue server maintenance and upgrades.

I have migrated the server to a more powerful configuration, and changed the way image files are being stored and served (object storage as opposed to filesystem storage).

I am also aware of some federation issues that have affected this and other instances. I am not sure whether this upgrade will deal with these problems automatically. I will be looking into it and hopefully will implement some solution soon.

Sorry for the downtime experienced in the past few days, but hopefully with the more powerful server the experience will be smoother and will remain so for a while.

For other admins and users interested, this is a bit of information about the server

The previous configuration:

Hosting provider: serverspace.io

8 GB RAM

4 Core CPU

50 Mbps network

400 GB SSD

Cost: $55 / month

The 400 GB SSD was being used to store both the server's database and the image files, and this component in isolation had a monthly cost of $36. I have migrated the images to an object storage provider ($6/month for 500 GB), and used the resources previously used for disk space to increase the other parameters. The new configuration is a lot better and less expensive.

New configuration:

Hosting provider: serverspace.io

Object storage provider: contabo.com

16 GB RAM

6 core CPU

50 Mbps network

100 GB SSD

500 GB Object storage

Cost: $47/month

Thanks a lot to the lemmy and pict-rs devs for the hard work they put into developing the infrastructure!

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1

kbin.social federation issue (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

Hello everyone!

About 2 weeks ago, kbin.social went down due to maintenance issues, but it seems like federation hasn't been restored on this instance.

Specifically, I am subscribed to https://kbin.social/m/greece which federates with lemmy.world, but on this instance posts since 2 weeks ago and later dont seem to be federating.

Could you please check it and maybe re-enable it in the future?

(I know that currently there's a migration happening and we'll soon(?) update to 0.19.4, so this issue I'm pointing may have to wait till all these finish first (or updating may fix it without any extra work)).

Thank you for maintaining this instance! :)

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1

[Done] Migrating images to object storage, images will be inaccessible for a bit (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

I am performing a migration that moves the images files from disk storage to object storage. During this migration the image back-end needs to be turned off, and so images will not be accessible.

It should still be possible to comment.

I am not sure how long this will take.

This is part of a few optimizations that I plan to do before I upgrade the instance to version 0.19.4.

EDIT: Update, June 17 06:08 UTC

The transfer is working, but, after 12 hours, only ~50 GB have been transferred to Contabo's object storage (rate of about 1.16 MB/s). This is a lot slower than I imagined, and, if this rate continues, it will take about 3 more days to transfer the remaining 300 GB.

I am not sure if this slow rate is to be expected for moving files to object storage, or if something is wrong. If any of you has experience with this I would appreciate some tips! I have also asked in the Matrix chat in case someone there can provide me some feedback as well.

EDIT: Update, June 18, 07:44 UTC

Migration is done!

272.16 GB of image data has been transferred to object storage. This took about 37 hours. This means that transfer occurred at a rate of 2 MB/s. From other admin's experience, this transfer was quite slow. I am making use of Contabo as my object storage provider, and I suspect that the speed of the transfer was limited on their end. Another admin reported that they used backblaze b2 as the object storage provider and they experienced much faster transfers. All of this should have no influence on how the site performs from the end-user's point of view, I am documenting this for other admins who learn from other's experiences by searching through lemmy.

Object storage is a much cheaper way to save files in the cloud. Before this, I have stored the image files into the same SSD disk where the instance lives (rented from serverspace.io). The cost of this disk space goes up as the disk space needs increase. At the current disk size of 400 GB renting that space was costing $36/month and increased $0.9/mo for every 10 GB.

Object storage is a specialized way of saving and serving files from the cloud. Object storage is much cheaper, at €6 for 500 GB (from Contabo), and so it is a much more scalable way of storing the instance's files. The only reason I did not do this earlier was because I was not sure about how to do it and kept pushing it back. But now, it's done! I would recommend other admins to do this as early as possible, as migrating many files is more of a hassle than migrating a few.

Istill need to do a few more tasks (moving the instance to a new server with a smaller disk, upgrading the postgres database to be compatible with 0.19.4, changing the pict-rs database format from sled to postgres, and then upgrading to 0.19.4). But first I will let the instance run for a few days with object storage to make sure nothing is breaking.

Thank you for your patience :D

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slow federation (mander.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

I was curious if anyone knows anything about the large delay for content coming in from lemmy.world? There's a discussion over there in one of fediverse communities and apparently we're like a week behind in receiving data.

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How does Lemmy (Mander in particular) sort "hot" and "active" posts? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/14134903

Sorry if this seems like a silly question but I have noticed over the last few months my feed(?) has started to act odd.

No matter what I do I don't see any posts from .world. I checked and mander does not seem to block .world (kinda why I liked this instance) and even weirder is how my feed gets filled with mostly .ml posts with almost no activity no matter how I sort.

This did not happen before and got me thinking, I don't even know how this works across federated instances.

Does anyone know:

How does the sorting work on an instance? Is it all the same no matter what instance it is?

Did anything change in the last few months, that would cause all .world (and I assume others) posts to not show?

Other then changing instances what can I do to mitigate the weird slanted results?

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[Meta] Would Mander.xyz be open to hosting a !dataisbeautiful community? (reddthat.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

Hello everyone,

A few people had a conversation in [email protected] about finding a new place to host a !dataisbeautiful community (see the thread here: https://mander.xyz/post/13861536)

We were thinking about mander.xyz as the theme of data seems to fit with the topics of the instance.

Would you be okay with us opening that community here?

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Frequent disconnects from Voyager app (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

Hey, I’m having this issue only with Mander. I can’t reliably reproduce it, sometimes it’ll go days without issue. But then the insurance gets disconnected and I need to add the account again. Does not happen with my account on another instance. Anyone else experiencing the same? Any clues as to what is causing it?

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1

Sorry about the downtime last night! (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

I woke up and noticed that the server was down. I think that there were two different issues happening at once - one related to nginx, and the other related to a memory limit I recently set on a docker container. Issues are fixed now. Sorry!