An experiment has begun.

There’s a button.

That’s it. Just a button… and a timer counting down.

Anyone can press it. Everyone sees what happens. And every press changes things forever.

• One shared button
• No undo, no reset
• A collective test of curiosity, restraint… or chaos

Some of you will hold the line. Some of you won’t last five seconds.

Either way, once it’s over… it’s over.

The Button

So the only question is:

Do you press it?

The Button is open to anyone on any federated platform, be that Lemmy, Piefed, Mastodon... even Stegodon!

Any user from any instance can sign in and press the button, but you only get one chance.

To add another layer to this, users can choose which faction to join, and the "winner" is the faction that holds the button the longest amount of time before it eventually runs out.

Initially a press of the button resets the timer to 15 minutes - this may reduce if the game carries on for a while. At the time of this post, there is about 60 minutes until the button expires. The first button press will be available when there's 15 minutes left, i.e. in 45 minutes, but you can sign up now to be ready!

There is also a permanent record of the first pusher :)

Hello all,

Just a pre-warning that there will be some maintenance at 10:00 UTC on Lemmy.zip. This will involve taking the server offline, so there absolutely will be downtime. This window is 2 hours to 12:00 UTC.

If you want to keep up with what is happening, you can join on Matrix. If there are any significant issues, i.e. I can't get the server back up for some reason, I will make an update on Mastodon or Piefed.zip.

There will also be downtime on Piefed.zip.

Sup

Sorry for the short(ish) notice, but I'll do a little bit of updating, restarting, and massaging the server tomorrow. This will probably require a restart, so there WILL be downtime. Obviously I'll try to keep this to a minimum but err.. well, we'll see how the server feels tomorrow.

There will be backups.

There will be sweaty palms.

There will be copious amounts of swear words uttered at terminals.

https://status.lemmy.zip/maintenance/704502

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hi all,

A new front end has popped up! Blorp is a desktop and mobile UI you can try out right now!

Blorp even has a Lemmy community - !blorp@lemmy.ml, if you try it out I'm sure the dev would love some feedback :)

You can access it via blorp.lemmy.zip (and, if you're reading this on Piefed.zip, you can access it via blorp.piefed.zip!).

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend! :)

Demigodrick

Just confirming the upgrade to 0.19.12 was successful, if a bit slower than anticipated.

Apols for the downtime, but hey we didn't have to restore a database this time - great success!

Hi all,

Some scheduled Maintenance so we can feed the hamsters that power the server on their little wheel.

While we're doing that, we'll also update to the latest lemmy version, 0.19.12.

Site will be offline for a small period, and may come up and down during this process.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hi All,

As the Fediverse continues to expand, we're looking at other platforms we can run with our ethos - open federation, user choice, and fair moderation.

We've seen lots of talk about Piefed, and the benefits of the platform, such as better moderation, combining multiple communities into topics i.e piefed.zip/topic/cats, and the ability for users to better control their own experience.

To that end, we've decided to run our own Piefed instance, located at piefed.zip (I know, original!)

This is very much still under construction, but we feel is now able to accept new users, should anyone wish to join.

If you're interested please check it out, or feel free to ask any questions!

PS - this doesn't affect our Lemmy instance in any way.

Hi All,

For the past couple of weeks, the site has been struggling with performance issues and some of you will have seen frequent cloudflare 502/504 gateway errors, and images not loading properly.

We've done a lot of work in the background to try and pinpoint what the issue is and have started to narrow down things. Hopefully by this point you're not seeing any of the gateway timeouts anymore, although I would appreciate if you do see one letting me know about it.

I missed May's server update because the little time I have free at the moment has been spent trying to fix the issues, however in the next update I will go over what we've done and whats changed - and we've also got a new admin on the team helping to improve Lemmy.zip in the technical department.

In order to continue with improvements, Images will go offline for a period of time while we shuffle things around in the background.

There will also be a server restart so the site will be inaccessible for a short period of time.

As always you can see the status of the site at status.lemmy.zip

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

Demigodrick

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

Hello all,

Attempt two to update to Lemmy 0.19.11 is now planned in for tomorrow, April 12th at 13:00 BST (that's 12:00 UTC!)

Following feedback from the downtime thread, information can be found on the upgrade in these places:

• Matrix - We have a Matrix space you can join by clicking here. This is likely where I'll be most active during the update.

• Status Page - Following the failure of our old status page to actually detect any downtime, I've swapped to a different status page supplier temporarily while I review the options. Uptime Kuma was great (and free, and self hosted) but let us down. Our status page has now been updated, and I've included the maintenance on there. If there are any unforseen issues, I will add them there.

• Mastodon - I have a mastodon account which you can view by clicking here and I will make a couple of posts here as and when things are happening too. You can get a mastodon.zip account too by clicking here!

There will absolutely be downtime again, but I cannot predict how long this will be. Some sources say 8 to 10 minutes, but during our last attempt the migrations took significantly longer, so it may be a few hours its down for.

Obviously there will be a backup, and if anything does go wrong again then we'll roll back.

Fingers crossed this time :)

Thanks

Demigodrick

Probably a two hour window to give me time to get things done. There may be an upgrade to lemmy 0.19.11 however that requires some modification of ZippyBot due to changes in the new version.

There will be downtime while the server is restarted, however hopefully this is brief.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hi All,

Needing to do some image migration, so for a short while images will be offline. Cloudflare might cache a few for a bit, but new posts won't have them.

Quite rare these days I need to do this level of maintenance but hopefully once complete, the site will be a bit speedier and we'll be in a better position long term.

There's currently about 400gb of images so this work should help alleviate some pressure on the system.

Thanks

Demigodrick

~~Edit: Quick calc says this could take over 8 hours :(~~

Edit 2: 6 hours later it's 41% done, so my maths is way out. There's like 10 more hours to go? Sigh.

I just can't believe it. How is it time to turn everything off and back on again already?

Anyway, at 18:00(ish, give me a break) UTC tomorrow (or today if you're reading this tomorrow) I'll be doing just that.

There will be downtime because everything will be off. I expect no longer than 5 minutes downtime, but then if I get transported to an alternate dimension and have to wage war against an alien invasion to get home, things might take a smidge longer.

There will be backups, there will be docker pulls. There might even be space lasers.

Demigodrick

Hi All,

Latest Lemmy update has been applied.

You can get more info in what has changed in this post.

Let me know if you notice any issues!

Thanks

Demigodrick

Time to press update, cross fingers, and hope for the best.

Will most certainly include me turning everything off and back on (I'll try to remember to turn it back on this time) - expect brief downtime!

Hi All,

Time to turn everything off and back on again.

Maybe some updates too, if the server has been a good little server.

There will likely be interruptions during this time, for up to around 20 minutes. As always, you can check status.lemmy.zip for the info.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Edit - all went smooth

Regular maintenance, during which there will be a server restart for a couple of minutes.

As always, you can check the server status if you can't connect to the site at status.lemmy.zip.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hi All,

Just a heads up that Hetzner (our server host) are performing maintenance that may affect access to the site.

More info is on their notice here: https://status.hetzner.com/incident/29972ed7-abac-4fa1-b4b5-26dd7efb356e

Hopefully downtime will be minimal (and I will be asleep during it!) but once they're done, the site should be accessible again.

As always you can check status.lemmy.zip (which isn't hosted on Hetzner!) to see more information on the site's status.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hi All,

Lemmy.zip has been updated to Lemmy version 0.19.6.

For a reminder of what's new, check out this blog post from the devs: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-11-08_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.19.6

The upgrade was rather smooth thankfully, other than a brief 5 minutes where the site wouldn't come back up and I almost died from stress. Thankfully I had to change one thing and it all worked again.

Please let me know if you encounter any weirdness, unexpected error messages, or if someone crawls out of your screen and tries to eat you.

Some messing with configs will continue to take place over the next few hours to check everything is running smooth, so I apologise in advance if the site accidentally topples over for a second or two.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Hey all,

With the release of Lemmy 0.19.6 (https://join-lemmy.org/news/2024-11-08_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.19.6) there is potentially a maintenance window on Sunday so I can apply the latest update.

I say potentially, as if there are any reports of issues then I'll hold off, otherwise the window will be for 3 hours (until 15:00 UTC) to allow for any unexpected issues. If there are no issues, then I expect the window to last an hour.

There will definitely be downtime of around 30mins as the update is applied.

As always, you can keep an eye on the progress of the update by visiting status.lemmy.zip or joining the matrix chat where I'll post updates.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Update: many instances reporting updates went fine, so I'll go ahead with this.

Time for a quick bit of maintenance, including a server reboot. During the reboot, you may not be able to connect to Lemmy.zip, which shouldn't last for more than a couple of minutes.

If there are any surprises and the maintenance needs to be extended, I'll update status.lemmy.zip and the matrix chat.

Hi all,

Time for a bit of maintenance on the server. Including updating the front-ends to their latest versions.

There will be a reboot or two, but downtime should be minimal. If any issues do crop up that affect the operation of the site, you can see the detail at status.lemmy.zip.

Thanks

Demigodrick

Edit: had to delay a little bit because of unexpected work commitments 🙄