Hi guys,

So I decided to change the default theme to cyberpunkish.css to make this instance look different from a default lemmy instance.

If a lot of people tell me this is a shitty idea and I should not do this, I will revert it. Just wanted to give this instance a style of its own. The default theme is still there under lemmy_default.css if you prefer it.

Let me know if you have strong feelings about it, one way or the other!

Hi everyone!

There is a new theme called cyberpunkish in the web interface settings now.

I wanted to create a theme for this instance and this is my first stab at it. If you try it out, any feedback is very welcome!

I edited this post to show how it looks now in latest version. I will sticky this post for a day so regular users dont miss info about it.

Frontpage:

Comments:

Communities:

Huge thanks to @Allero@lemmy.today for so much great feedback about the theme.

If many people think its great, perhaps we set it as default for the instance.

Hi guys,

The server just got upgraded to double the memory and cores. We had some peak periods where 8 GB was not enough to run everything, and now we get 8 more cores as well to serve more memes faster. :)

Plenty of room for more users too, if they should decide to join.

Thanks for picking this instance, guys. Enjoy Lemmy!

The attackers found another slow db query to exploit, so had to put some temporary measures in place.

Will post more details later!

This time they actually took down the instance for several hours.

Hi guys,

I wanted to ask you about our local communities here. I feel like a lot of them are not really active, and the most active one (like Conservative) has mostly locked posts, so people cant participate in discussions.

I wanted to get some input from you guys, what do you think? Should we have communities with locked posts so people cant comment? Does it still serve a purpose? Or should communities always allow discussions? My own opinion is that they should.

And should we clean up communities and remove inactive ones, making more room for local discussions?

The reason I started thinking about this is because I noticed that some other instances remove posts that are completely legal to discuss. They are just removed because admins/moderators dont like their content. Which is exactly like on reddit then.

Hi guys,

Another ddos attack so site was slow/unavailable for a while.

I disabled the alternative user interfaces since they are used in the attacks. Will think of some better long term solutions. 🥊 😄

Update 2: Another one at the moment, so site is slow. :)

Update: Another 30000 bots joined the party, so cpu usage is high at the moment. Site is slower than normal.

Appearently about 17500 bots are attempting to slow down our instance and eating bandwidth by grabbing the same files over and over.

They are banned for now but its an ongoing battle against these guys. Just wanted to let you know in case you notice worse performance. :)

Ive been running cosmic for the last couple of weeks and im very happy with it already. I think the future of linux desktops has never looked this bright.

Hi guys,

Server has been quite slow the last couple of days, and it turns out its because the old.lemmy.today user interface was being hammered and scraped by bots. I turned them off now temporarily while i look into this.

In the mean time, enjoy a faster instance, hopefully.. :)

Edit: And the user interfaces are back online.

Now everyone is rate limited on their real ip before hitting any of the alternate user interfaces. This means the web server can protect against bots hammering the site.

Currently it looks like its working. Both the default web site and the alternate user interfaces are fast again. Give the alternate ones a try if you are using a web browser to access the site. :)

On June 27:th, the https certificate for lemmy.today was supposed to renew itself. Its set up to automatically renew every 3 months, and its been working perfectly since the site was started over 2 years ago.

But this time it failed to do so, due to a syntax error in the web server config that was not noticed until this incident took place.

Its been fixed now but took more than a day unfortunantly. Sincere apologies for the long delay - it was because I was on vacation in Madeira and in the process of travelling home that day.

Life finds a way to kick us in the balls sometimes.

We are now on latest version. We had some downtime related to this. Normally its quick to update, but this time a database update was needed that took quite some time.

It was about 4 months since we had some downtime so not too bad. Hopefully we go another 4 months (or more) until the next one. :)

Sometimes I think people forget how much Lemmy users have incommon, and we just focus on the differences.

Lets look at some introduction letters from users lately who joined this instance:

I'm a technoligist based out of the United States. I want to explore the fediverse protocols, so I'm trying Lemmy and ActivityPub. Also, I jumped off Reddit when they began restricting API access heavily and have been looking for a link-aggregator alternative ever since.

I am an astronomer, nature lover in heart. I am tired of using apps and websites from companies spying on us and owning basically everything. I will be happy to switch from reddit to lemmy. I am curious though how do you know that a bot cannot write such a text.

Great interest in knowledge and competency building through balanced use of technology. I am currently in the process of moving away from the tech giants and their madness.

Reddit sucks now, want a decentralized, not profit driven alternative

I am a concerned citizen of a country run by Nazis and I am trying to escape most social media sites that harvest our data, I have been pointed in this direction by a privacy enthusiast who said this is the land of the free, Or something like that.

I am a longtime (15 years) reddit user, and I am looking for alternatives that are not driven by corporate interests.

We all really want the same thing. I also want the same thing, which is why I run this instance.

You are all part of a growing community of people who dont want the typical social media experience from ad-funded big tech companies who only care about profits. I think thats really cool.

Thanks for being part of Lemmy guys. :)