You don’t calculate the price of something by totalling up the cost to produce it and then adding a bit for profit - you calculate it based on what people are willing to pay. That doesn’t really change if it’s digital or physical. Some people might be willing to pay a bit more for a physical copy, but probably not many and you’d turn off more people by having the higher price.
This. And a lot of people (myself included) are willing to pay more for the convenience and immediacy of digital. Sure, there’s always going to be people that consider themselves collectors that will keep physical going, but I think a lot of those people would be surprised at how small of a minority they are among the general populace that just wants to play a game
Because I can use LineageOS or some other ROM. This allows me to live without Google apps and still have a working phone that I can customize to my hearts content.
I’ve been running my own Mastodon instance for several months now, and I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t have to rely on someone else, either, which is nice. I’m in control of everything on that instance.
As for Lemmy, I just started my own instance today, and am currently writing you from it. What made me decide to setup my own instance was some performance issues I was seeing with Lemmy.world, although that might have been an UI problem. Anyway, I enjoy doing this stuff, so I’m running my own instance for the sake of doing it.
On the flip side, it’s more expensive and time consuming, and I’m the one who has to worry about backing up data, etc. Like I said, though, I enjoy doing it, so it’s no big deal.
I run my own Mastodon instance, but for Lemmy it seemed more logical to join an existing instance that aligned with my interests. I wouldn’t be adverse to abandoning my self-hosted Mastodon for a shared instance, but I would prefer a small instance run by and for people I know, rather than one of the huge ones.
What might make you want to ditch your self-hosted Mastodon instance?
With Lemmy, I didn’t feel a need to pick any specific instance because I can follow communities from anywhere, and it seems to work pretty well.
One downside I’ve encountered with my own Lemmy instance is that post and comment history in the communities I follow begins when I started following them on my new instance. New posts and comments are federated my way, going forward, but I don’t have the ability to go back and view as much history as one would on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml, for example.
As someone who likes having control over their data and especially backups, and someone who normally enjoys self-hosting things, I honestly might do it. I’m not sure if I’d want to host a lemmy instance or kbin instance though, since I know they all federate together anyway. I may also end up waiting until the software is more mature too before looking into it.
That’s awesome! Running my own social media instances has become a hobby for me.
Having my own Lemmy instance has felt fairly seamless versus using Lemmy.world, but there have been some kinks. For example, when attempting to subscribe to a new community, the server has to pull a bunch of data first. This takes several seconds, but the UI simply says “not found” – and then after several seconds, the UI updates with the community you want to follow. I figured this out by tailing the logs.
Also, the installation was pretty damn easy, especially when compared to Mastodon.
I’d maybe be interested in trying out self-hosting Mastodon at some point too, good to hear that Lemmy was easy to install though. I’m not too worried since I have quite a bit of Linux experience, I figure it probably won’t be too bad to setup whatever social media instances I’m interested in checking out.
Yeah, if you’ve got a decent amount of Linux experience, I don’t think you’ll have any issues. Mastodon’s installation is well-documented and works. My only criticism is that it’s a bit long and you have to be careful not to miss anything.
On the other hand, I recall installing Pixelfed back several months ago and having a difficult time. The documentation was lacking, and it required me to use Arch Linux, which I had never used. I was able to get it working, but eventually terminated the instance after a while because I was never using it.
I provisioned an Ubuntu 22.02 server at Linode. I chose their 2 GB Shared CPU instance type. Once I configured the server to my liking, I ran through the Lemmy-Ansible instructions. (They have other methods, so check the documentation.)
Essentially, you install Ansible on your workstation. I’m on macOS and installed it via Homebrew. You then download their git repository, create the necessary configuration files, and then have Ansible configure the server. It was fairly simple.
I have a lab at home and do host some stuff for myself from there in a small DMZ (ie: Miniflux RSS readers, Plex through Reverse proxy etc).
But I used a linode for my lemmy/kbin stuff. Reason being is that the code is fairly new and there may be exploits bugs and
I dont want to deal with my ISP made an instance is exploited and becomes some type of C2 box or spews out spam. Kbin specifically already has PRs to fix XSS and Sql injection stuff, the former of which is usually avoidable if you just follow some pretty basic principles. So its a concern.
Linode has better bandwidth than my non-symmetrical ISP uplink and is on its own quota.
It sounds like linode is the way to go then and their prices seem reasonable. The funny thing is I’ve heard of linode before because Computer Clan uses it as a sponsor, but ever since I started using sponsor block I haven’t really heard about it. I didn’t actually know what they did.
I’ve run linodes for years. My blog runs on them. I still host a variety of other services on them. They are good for everything from gaming servers to a blog etc.
They did get bought out by akamai a while back. And have raised their prices but they are still solid.
I am currently the only user. Im considering opening it up to limited users but not really having communities once i get a lot of the instances cached and indexable.
Others like @leopardboy are running on a 2GB shared just fine. I will likely move to that if i choose to keep it solo for sure, or under 100 users and no communities.
I dont have the time to really moderate others or content on the instance. So i dont think I plan to host any communities at all. I do wish you could federate/sync specific communities to your instance to make searching/subscribing easier.
That’s exactly what I’m wanting to do. Just have myself and maybe a few others with limited communities. Would you recommend using ansible to setup a Lemmy on Linode?
Yes the ansible config worked fine for me. I worked for days to get an kbin instance up. Ansible worked first go.
I have yet to get email working but otherwise its solid. Linode will block email btw if you account is new (and frankly may be blocking mine now). You just have to put in a case and justify and it should be fine. My account should be old enough to be exempt but I will likely do it anyhow. Their support is pretty good.
Getting federation crawled and communities added is a bit slow. Mostly because the other instances are a bit slow.
A few pointers if you havent done admin yet.
Put nothing in the federation allow list unless you want to go whitelist only. Over time as other instances hit yours and you search others, the linked list of instances will grow. Just use the blocklist if you want to block certain instances. I havent found a good way to block the growing number of instances in case they have some illegal content like CSAM. So…i may just go whitelist anyhow
Searching for instances seems to be CPU heavy on mine. Its not a problem though. You just cant simply plug in a URL of a community in another instance if you havent linked. You will get a 404 if you do. So you have to go to search, looking for that community by hitting search a few times until it shows up, then you can join and it will start crawling
I have no idea what “Private instance” does other than i believe it will keep your instance form starting in the future if you have it checked AND federation turned on. I saw some logs in dockers startup when i did it but nothing in the UI.,
Thank you for the information. I’ve signed up for a 2GB shared linode and it’s running Debian 11. I assume I need to ssh into it, then run the ansible stuff. I have very basic knowledge of Linux and command line. I am not entirely sure how to fill out the config but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
yes, that’s definitely very mildly infuriating - but wait, your const is a function???
Reddit’s CEO just infuriated his striking moderators by saying ‘this one will pass,’ the way ‘all blowups’ do. They want to keep the site dark indefinitely.
The Reddit blackout was supposed to be a two-day event. But comments made by CEO Steve Huffman in an internal memo that leaked have strengthened the resolve of protesting moderators, who are vowing to keep the popular channels offline indefinitely.
Huffman, in a memo to Reddit staff Monday, reportedly downplayed the blackout. The Verge, which posted the email, quotes Huffman as saying the company has “not seen any significant revenue impact so far” and “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well”.
As of 11:00 a.m. ET Wednesday, more than 6,000 subreddits were still dark, with a large number set to restricted access, meaning Reddit users could see old posts, but are unable to make new ones.
Among the subreddits that remain dark are r/funny (with over 40 million subscribers), r/Music and r/science (with over 30 million subscribers each) and r/DIY, which has more than 20 million subscribers.
Shhhhh… I think I was very high when I set my username. My instance won’t let me change my username right now, so we’ll all have to cope with my blunder for now lol
I’ve got 3 “servers” at the moment running lots of fun services.
Dell Optiplex Tower
Sevarr Suite
Audiobookshelf
Calibre/Calibre-Web
Nextcloud
FreshRSS
Paperless
Linkding
Dillinger
HomeAssistant
Mealie
WikiJS
Gitea
PiHole
Homepage
Old Laptop
Project Zomboid Server
Minecraft Server
copyparty
Tinfoil/NUT
Raspi4
Klipper/Mainsail
Obico
VanDam
I also run Plex off of my Desktop, but I plan to build a new server soon to replace the Optiplex that I can migrate it to. I’m also going to be integrating Authentik. Everything is managed using Yacht and running on Ubuntu, then proxied through Cloudflare or tunnelled through Tailscale.
I won a small victory in Sainsbury’s today. There were no checkouts open and a gaggle of shop assistants just standing around chatting. I dislike using the self service so I stood by a checkout and glared meaningfully at the assistants until one backed down and opened the checkout.
kbin.life
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