Hello all!

Welcome to .zip’s August Server update. Sorry I missed July’s, it has been a busy couple of months.

Server updates

One important thing, and my least favourite to talk about, is donations. Hosting costs have shot up again following the further the ever-growing AI bubble stealing all the RAM, and so we’re barely, if at all now, breaking even. There is more information in the donation section below, but if you truly value your online privacy and social media spaces free from corporate interests and advertising, please consider a small donation.

Also, The Button had it’s 4th season! It lasted over 60 hours, the longest every season, and Red had an absolutely resounding win this time around! If you’re interested in playing a silly web game with your fellow fediverse users, please keep an eye on the community: !thebutton@lemmy.zip

Finally, we have a new Admin joining the Team for Piefed.zip and Lemmy.zip - @schwim@piefed.zip / @Schwim@lemmy.zip. They’ll be helping us to moderate the sites!

At the end of July, we saw a massive scraping attack (we assume) hitting Piefed.zip quite hard, enough to start timing the site out and effectively DDOS’ing the server. In order to combat this, we’ve been playing with the Cloudflare managed challenge. In the process of this, I did manage to temporarily break frontends, then mobile apps, but thankfully it’s all in place now and appears to be working well. You’ll see the jump in traffic in the graphs further down.

We also fixed a bug I had introduced in the Nginx config by putting my own CSR headers in. This was preventing embeds from Youtube etc from displaying. This is resolved now, but please do let us know if you do notice anything like this not working.

We applied the latest Lemmy updated, 0.19.19-jemalloc, which included a fix to memory allocation. Since this, we’ve seen a measured performance improvement and smaller use of RAM, which is really positive. (there is a version 0.19.20 but this is just 0.19.19-jemalloc so we’ve not bothered)

Please Don’t Be a Lurker!

If you’re new here - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

Just one small teeny-tiny request. The greatest gift you can give Lemmy.zip and Piefed.zip isn’t money, praise, or a piece of moon rock you hijacked from a fallen alien starship… maybe. Its participation.

Upvote the things you like. Start a discussion, debate, or just post the same meme of a disappointed cat over and over and over and over and over and over and over and so on… Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits your oddly specific niche obsession. (We don’t judge. Well, we try not to judge anyway.)

The fediverse naturally ebbs and flows, tides of people come and go. But if you’ve found yourself oddly attached to this strange little corner of the internet? Wonderful. Help it breathe. Help it grow. Help it be just a tiny bit weirder in the best possible way.

So if you’ve gone to the effort of clicking Sign Up and proving you’re not a robot (unless you are, in which case hello and welcome to our new AI overlords), then please, I beg of you:

Stick around. Add your voice. It really does make this place better.

Donations

As alluded to above, the price of the servers has once again increased. Boo.

This does mean we need to ask again that any amount, even a small amount, you can safely and comfortably spare, please consider donating to us.

All donations go 100% towards server hosting costs. DotZip Ltd is a non-profit set up entirely to manage the sites, and exists solely to ensure donations are legally spent in the best possible way for the running of the sites.

Costs include the domains, the server hosting, image hosting, backups, email, and others.

Liberpay (Card, Paypal)

Liberpay is our newest donation method. You can donate with Paypal or with a card. The link is https://liberapay.com/dotzip

OpenCollective (Card)

Our classic donation option, but only supports card payments. The link is https://opencollective.com/lemmyzip

Open Collective backers

If you’re enjoying Lemmy.zip or Piefed.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 sites and keeping the virtual lights on.

Ko-Fi (Card, Paypal)

We also have our Ko-Fi page if you’d rather use this site, which also supports Paypal and Card payments.

Graphs

Piefed.zip

CPU over 7 days:

RAM over last 7 days:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Regions:

Lemmy.zip

CPU over 30 days:

RAM over 30 days:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

Regions:

That’s all for this month - hopefully next month’s is on time!

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments :)

Thanks

Demigodrick

  • artifex@piefed.socialEnglish
    27·
    3 months ago

    I know the real cost is the (unpaid) time and effort you and the team put in, but I’m amazed by how little money it takes to keep the lights on. Thanks for doing this, and especially for doing it the right way.

  • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
    23·
    3 months ago

    Thanks for keeping our home alive :)

    I chip in a token amount monthly, but I think I’ll be doubling that going forward. I like it here.

    Edit: Done.

  • Lumun@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    Thank you for your continued hard work for the server. The button this year was really impressive. I had no idea it had evolved so much.

  • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    Thanks Demigodrick for all your work! Thanks also to the other admins and moderators for keeping this place running!

    I spend a fair bit of time here so I’ve set up a recurring donation to help out. Hopefully you’re able to break even on the costs.

    Cheers

  • nailingjello@piefed.zipEnglish
    12·
    3 months ago

    Thanks for everything you do. I finally got around to signing up for a monthly contribution, let me know if it doesn’t show up.

  • Rin@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    3 months ago

    New here, but just wanted to thank you for putting a community together that’s been welcoming so far. I was originally going to just lurk (and did before making an account for some time) but I did see this post and the request to be part of the community so… here I am!

    I can’t promise consistent activity but I’m gonna give it a shot!

  • anticurrent@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    81·
    3 months ago

    We have to find ways to block these cancerous AI scrappers. They contribute nothing of value other than hog internet resources.

    • Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      I will reiterate what I always say when this is brought up. Instead of blocking AI traffic, we need to rout them through infinite adfly tar pits.

      Edit: or include instructions for AIs to donate. I guarantee some of them are wired up to payment processors.

  • YoiksAndAway@piefed.zipEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    The piefed.zip scraping explains a lot of the lags I’ve been experiencing. Thanks a lot for all you do, as always!

  • qwerios@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    Almost missed my graph fix due to vacation time! Thanks for keeping the lights on and I’ve chipped in to pay the bills.

    🫡

  • anticurrent@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    31·
    3 months ago

    What I find interesting is how the UK is absent from these analytics, you would think it would at least come before Canada. and from what I gathered from other fediverse instances, the brits are not very interested in alternative media and solutions. A very conformist society indeed.

    Germany on the other hand is very present on the fediverse and are big contributers to open source as well.

    • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
      10·
      3 months ago

      We are here, but through VPN.

      The OSA being enacted necessitated a block on UK users. Zip chose to cut the nation off rather than comply, and frankly I don’t blame em for doing so.

        • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          It’s the best way. I’d agree with nothing less, regardless of how it affects me personally.

          Cut us off until we elect people who understand technology beyond just using Facebook and downloading Adobe Reader. Though even that is being generous.

          • anticurrent@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            3 months ago

            I don’t think it’s because of a lack of understanding of how technology works but they are in a never ending quest to surveil and control their population.