Wander ΘΔ :verified_paw: @packmates.org :therian: Grey Wolf Therian, he/him, 30ish y.o. Running packmates.org and yiffit.net fediverse instances.
:vlpn\_happy\_heart: Interests: Tech, therianthropy, furry/feral art, animal books, shamanism & animal-influenced spirituality, SFW & NSFW petplay
I sometimes post or boost NSFW content.
@Xirup please see this thread: https://packmates.org/@noxypaws/112174302652073039
It's actually up.
@Omniraptor in theory Mastodon will show a "read more" button for longer comments. Top level posts sent from Lemmy often require clicking the link to view them in full and content isn't ordered by votes because they don't exist.
So, it's a bit messy to read Lemmy from Mastodon, but posting something and then replying to comments on that thread is really easy.
@Omniraptor ah yes! Probably that's why.
Actually the whole original post was sent via Mastodon.
I tend to write posts that I share to my Mastodon followers and then at the end I mention a Lemmy community if I believe the community would also find it interesting.
@MigratingtoLemmy use a hammer to break the screen, control via adb :vlpn_happy_blep:
@benjohn @selfhosted 6-8 GB of RAM with powerful CPU and GPU that was designed to run games and can in some cases run small AI models is nothing to scoff at imho.
@leggylav @selfhosted OMG, yes, thank you <3
I finally feel understood now :vlpn_cry:
@selfhosted Update:
- Just to clarify, the the whole point is that Android makes it easy for less tech oriented people to host small single user / family services.
It does not need to be perfect, have massive throughput or allow for massive amounts of read/write cycles.
If people can host their own media server like Jellyfin or note taking apps like Joplin instead of using commercial services by simply installing an APK on an old phone they can leave connected at home, that's already a big win.
- Regarding device longevity, Android 13 apparently supports / will support full KVM emulation. Windows can be run if you have root while android based VMs are expected to be possible without the need for root. Since this type of virtualization allows VMs to run their own kernel, keeping the "server app" updated should allow the user to be protected even if the host OS is outdated as long as these server-app-VMs are trustworthy themselves.
@RegalPotoo Maybe I should have been more specific in the wording of my title.
No one planning on hosting public multi-user service that would see some serious traffic would probably benefit from hosting on a phone.
Someone who wants to simply run a single-user instance or their personal nextcloud? I think that's a real possibility.
@TCB13 I'm not an expert in the matter but I wonder how large the attack surface actually is for a web service that has a single port exposed via a tunnel which can even contribute to doing some security filtering.
The application / server component can actually be updated since it's just an APK. And someone else in this thread actually linked to whole linux distros that can be installed and run without root. In theory even if the underlying OS is insecure, more secure OSes can be installed on top, or risk can be severely limited by only exposing a single port.
Basically, while flashing a new ROM would be ideal, I think there's likely a way in which a sandboxed and possibly even updated environment with updated TLS cyphers, CA stores, etc... can be run in a secure manner on top of a stock Android ROM.
Furthermore, developers packaging their apps into APKs could run security checks and by the time it says "your OS is insecure" you're already on your third phone and can host stuff on your second. I mean... Android phones are in their prime for two/three years at most in my experience :P
@ahoyboyhoy @selfhosted How old is the phone and what version of the OS are you using? I was under the impression that modern phones bypass the battery when connected to the charger and having full charge.
Regarding limiting the charge, I believe there's some software calibration you can do which would allow you to set it to 50%. I'm no expert in battery or repairs at all, so someone else might have a better idea.
@AMS @selfhosted yes, hopefully we'll see an explosion in self-hostable alternatives that can be installed as easily as syncthing.
@ahoyboyhoy @selfhosted Nice. I remember trying it out once. Actually I might use that to follow my own advice and self-host at home once I retire my current phone.
True, I haven't had the need because I know how to run stuff on a server, but for personal files it's probably better to host things at home.
@southsamurai Oh that's definitely a huge concern, but not just for self-hosting but for privacy in general.
But still, if the average joe wants to self-host something using an old phone is probably the easiest way to get them to try self-hosted alternatives and drop corporate / commercial services.
Maybe not the 'average average joe' such as my parents, but anyone who is minimally curious enough to do stuff such as registering a domain, setting up a game server for friends and maybe has opened the CMD windows console once or twice in the past following a tutorial. That kind of demographic (IDK if it has a name) might be much more inclined to self-host if it was as easy as installing an APK and letting your phone one somewhere at home.
Overall as long as Android doesn't become straight out malicious spyware itself, the benefit of dropping commercial alternatives might very well be a net positive. In a worst-case scenario, any tunnel / vpn configuration necessary to expose a service to the internet could also add an automated step to blackhole requests to google's tracking servers.
The future of selfhosted services is going to be... Android?
The future of selfhosted services is going to be... Android?
Wait, what?
Think about it. At some point everyone has had an old phone lying around. They are designed to be constantly connected, constantly on... and even have a battery and potentially still a SIM card to survive power outages.
We just need to make it easy to create APK packaged servers that can avoid battery-optimization kills and automatically configure an outbound tunnel like ngrok, zerotrust, etc...
The goal: hosting services like #nextcloud, #syncthing, #mastodon!? should be as easy as installing an APK and leaving an old phone connected to a spare charger / outlet.
It would be tempting to have an optimized ROM, but if self-hosting is meant to become more commonplace, installing an APK should be all that's needed. #Android can do SSH, VPN and other tunnels without the need for root, so there should be no problem in using tunnels to publicly expose a phone/server in a secure manner.
In regards to the suitability of home-grade broadband, I believe that it should not be a huge problem at least in Europe where home connections are most often unmetered: "At the end of June 2021, 70.2% of EU homes were passed by either FTTP or cable DOCSIS 3.1 networks, i.e. those technologies currently capable of supporting gigabit speeds."
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/broadband-coverage-europe-2021
PS. syncthing actually already has an APK and is easy to use. Although I had to sort out some battery optimization stuff, it's a good example of what should become much more commonplace.
@LittleFox I am officially your fan now, then. Because I would like to do overkill stuff as a hobby as well.
@KayOhtie @[email protected] It wasn't working for the longest time. And I believe it still only works for SFW posts, not NSFW posts. But basically the reason I'm surprised is because either lemmy or mastodon weren't talking to each other before and now due to some change it works (albeit not always).
@[email protected] HOLY SHIT I CAN SEE A #LEMMY IMAGE PREVIEW ON MASTODON.
Announcing status.packmates.org and status.yiffit.net
Announcing status.packmates.org and status.yiffit.net
Heya everyone! I've been mostly silent for some time, but it's all with good reason (I promise!)
Over the last few days I've spent a lot of time on server maintenance. Many of these changes will be invisible to you as users (such as getting a /48 ipv6 range, setting up SLAAC/DHCPv6, reviewing security and firewall rules, etc...)
But today I set up something that I can share: status pages!
Head over to: \- https://status.packmates.org \- https://status.yiffit.net
(they're the same page actually, but the different domain is to make it easier to remember if you're a user of one site and not the other).
There's a slight caveat in that the status page is hosted on the hypervisor itself, so if that goes down, everything goes down but you'll at least know by not being able to load the status page itself!
Ideally I would host this somewhere external but we're not there yet. One day I hope to even have a server cluster for redundancy, but we'd have to host many more services to be able to justify this.
cc: @meta
Quick question about DNS and DoH that I thought about after reading this post:
Quick question about DNS and DoH that I thought about after reading this post:
https://packmates.org/@[email protected]/111176886781705659
Wouldn't it make sense for Firefox or another third party to bundle and transparently forward all DoH requests to cloudflare so that:
A) Cloudflare doesn't know who made what request due to not knowing the origin
B) Firefox doesn't know who made what request due to TLS
@fediverse I've read that this is called an overlay network. Unfortunately many of the ones I've seen documented focus on keeping things in their own private networks which is okay but not fun.
ULA addresses require no permission and were designed precisely to knit together private networks. We can just use domain names and convert them via checksum into a static ULA /48 prefix. DNS can be used to announce routes, or eventually something more BGP-like given that ownership of a domain can be verified and thus authorization to announce routes.
If domains ever become a bottleneck one could use private TLDs with some consensus mechanism and even create multi-layer networks this way where packmates.layer.1 and packmates.layer.2 are two different networks even though they might have the same address range.
Anyways, I'll go out and touch some grass now.
@nysepho @fediverse there would be routing without being peered directly by delegating your endpoint to another peer you trust (this can create an infinitely long routing chain depending on where you latch on so to speak, but you would be in control)
@breadsmasher I have no idea how Tor works. In this case I would say most peers would have no problem disclosing a public IP, but it could have benefits in making resources in a private network accessible and as long as the endpoint can be reached those resources would be hosting provider agnostic.
I would say this is less about hiding user activity than it is about logical networks, abstracting away the hosting provider and allowing to knit together self hosted services, regardless of where they are hosted.
Federated wireguard network idea
Federated wireguard network idea Any feedback welcome.
Let's keep things stupidly simple and simply hash the domain name to get a unique IPv6 ULA prefix.
Then we would need a stupidly simple backend application to automatically fetch pubkeys and endpoints from DNS and make a request to add each others as peers.
Et voilà, you got a worldwide federated wireguard network resolving private ULA addresses. Sort of an internet on top of the internet .
The DNS entries with the public IPv4 / IPv6 addresses could even be delegated to other domains / endpoints which would act as reverse proxy (either routing or nesting tunnels) for further privacy.
Maybe my approach is too naïve and there are flaws I haven't considered, so don't be afraid to comment.
Exact use cases? Idk, but it sounds nifty.
\#privacy #networking #VPN #wireguard #infosec
cc: @fediverse
We now have hourly snapshots / backups!
We now have hourly snapshots / backups!
I'm happy to inform both packmates.org and yiffit.net users that both sites now benefit from the ZFS filesystem that the new server has been set up with.
I have implemented automated hourly snapshots for 24 hours + daily snapshots for 31 days. In theory they will only grow in size if there's actual changes to the disk of both VMs and I should be able to have enough space.
Furthermore, local snapshots are complemented by the daily offsite backups which allow us to recover even if the full server were to suddenly explode. Full backups are first created on the server itself and then copied offsite so that for a full week we have two independent copies of each day.
Depending on space usage I'll make sure to replicate the offsite repository so that there's two offsite copies for the last 31 days + 7 local copies. That would be 69 individual full backup files + snapshots.
I hope I'll have enough space with deduplication.
cc: @meta
What I've been busy with lately
What I've been busy with lately
About three weeks ago I started renting a new dedicated server which is going to host both packmates and yiffit very soon.
Because the server isn't hosting anything yet, I've taken the opportunity to play around and try out different configurations, including ZFS, LXC containers for small services, VLANs for better isolation ( which I did manage to get working ), wireguard tunnels, improved firewall rules, security groups, iGPU passthrough, etc...
Tomorrow I'll wipe the disks, install #proxmox from scratch and make it production ready.
Then it should be as easy as loading a full backup from both yiffit and packmates to complete the migration ( but I'll announce this last step in due time).
Am excited \wags\ :dogcited:
cc: @chat
Algorithm-based social media "recommendations" has normalized us putting up with blatant SPAM
Algorithm-based social media "recommendations" has normalized us putting up with blatant SPAM
Imagine if gmail or outlook were to place emails by 'creators and brands you might like' in your inbox!?
Following the process of enshittification, the algorithm on many social media platforms is becoming an excuse to push blatant amounts of SPAM to users. It starts as a feature that is genuinely useful, but becomes a tool to show you ads, content from paying users or to keep you hooked with rage-bait content as social media platforms seek to extract more value out of its users.
Algorithm-based social media has its benefits, but looking forward it is becoming increasingly necessary that such an algorithm runs client-side and is owned by the user.
cc: @showerthoughts
Fuck yeah: Be gay, save rights - Be trans, fight fascism
Fuck yeah: Be gay, save rights - Be trans, fight fascism
cc: @memes
If you're a user at Packmates or Yiffit, you should know that my current stance regarding (https://packmates.org/tags/threads) is a precautionary defederation.
If you're a user at Packmates or Yiffit, you should know that my current stance regarding #threads is a precautionary defederation.
They'll probably launch with federation whitelist and I doubt they wouldn't defederate from us, but there's too many risks and unknowns right now.
I don't think as an admin I should limit everyone's ability to interact with threads just because they're a for-profit company, but there's some huge red flags in regards to data management and potential spam.
So, if anyone was wondering my stance, I'll place a precautionary domain block for now.
Once we have more info and/or they have started federating, I will start thinking about objective conditions that need to be fulfilled to remove the block. It won't be based on my hatred of corporations but actual criteria in regards to guaranteeing user security and health of the fediverse.
cc: @meta
Testing post from Mastodon to see if federation keeps working correctly.
Testing post from Mastodon to see if federation keeps working correctly.
Do you know if it's possible to create link-posts to Lemmy from Mastodon?
Do you know if it's possible to create link-posts to Lemmy from Mastodon? @test
I love this fox-ear-hoodie! (art by Chunie)
I love this fox-ear-hoodie! (art by Chunie)
Source: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52590267/ cc: @furry
What's a current or past furry crush you have from an animated movie, show, book, game, etc. ?
What's a current or past furry crush you have from an animated movie, show, book, game, etc. ?
I'll go first. I first discovered Klonoa in a demo disc for the PS2. I was way younger back then, of course and even though I wasn't able to afford the game I fell for the character.
Fan art of Klonoa was probably one of the reasons I discovered the furry fandom.
cc: @chat (art by Souno: https://twitter.com/DF\_img/status/1491739205751681025)
I got a MASSIVE headache. How's your day going so far?
I got a MASSIVE headache. How's your day going so far?
cc: @chat
It's FediFriday! Share your favorite lemmy/kbin communities or your favorite fediverse content creators!
It's FediFriday! Share your favorite lemmy/kbin communities or your favorite fediverse content creators!
You can check out https://lemmyverse.net to find new communities.
Anyways, what are your favorites? Or what sort of community are you looking for? Maybe others have suggestions for you.
test post. Testing replies and endless spinning animations
test post. Testing replies and endless spinning animations
Talking topic: How is today's furry fandom different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago?
Talking topic: How is today's furry fandom different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago?
What things do you like better now and what do you miss from older times?
\#FurryFandom #Furry cc: @chat
Me: if I could be a furry I'd be a feral! The reality of my choice: (by Wereshiba)
Me: if I could be a furry I'd be a feral! The reality of my choice: (by Wereshiba)
Oh, but I would still choose it regardless. I'd just have to get people to do things for me :P
Artist: https://twitter.com/wereshiba cc: @memes
I haven't been to a furry convention in a lot of time... which ones do you recommend?
I haven't been to a furry convention in a lot of time... which ones do you recommend?
Doesn't matter if it's far away. I do want to eventually be able to travel, but since I haven't been keeping track of conventions, I wouldn't know which ones people recommend nowadays.
I often hear that there's many smaller conventions that trump the larger ones in regards to experience, and that's what I'm most curious about.
Thank you \<3
\#FurryFandom #Furry cc: @chat
You know Reddit is screwing up when the amount of Lemmy instances spikes up like this
You know Reddit is screwing up when the amount of Lemmy instances spikes up like this
And it's only been a week... How do you think it's going to end?
Reddit will probably still be massive but I can see a lot of quality content moving to the fediverse. What do you think? cc:/ @chat