Crossposted from https://fedia.io/m/updates@kbin.melroy.org/t/4475005

As you all might know it, Mbin is a rather small project with a small team. In fact the current size of the team is 1.5 developers (0.5 for the ones which only have partially time). While our active devs do what they can in their free time, this leads to slow feature and security updates, sometimes slow support and increasing stress for the remaining devs.

That's why I ask everyone who likes this project, has time of their own to donate and knows how to program with PHP (or is willing to learn it) to consider helping this project move forward.
You can start with simpler features and submit them as PRs or even just help review existing PRs if full commitment to maintaining the codebase is currently too much. We are aware that parts of our codebase contains more spagett than some Italian restaurants, but we will help every newcomer to find their way through the sources.
Every bit of support helps, as it also shows that we have a passionate userbase which does not want Mbin to wither away.

Well ... as I'm not very good at writing motivational texts, just comment anything which comes to mind for this issue :D If you have ideas how to improve the chances that this post reach the right people, I would also love to hear it.

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At the same time I want to bring up another topic, as transparency is important for any public project.

Some of our devs use AI assistants for generating code for PRs and also to assist with PR reviews. Simply because without it, they would not have time to continue contributing to Mbin (which would bring our devs down to 1, making it impossible to merge new PRs). On thing here is important to know: I will not call it slop nor vibe-coding, as they are a competent developer capable of understanding and managing the outputs of the agents. Still, I am very aware of the issues of AI and the general opinion on it in the Fediverse. That is why I would like to know your constructive opinions on this matter.
Also, I guarantee you that every PR is reviewed by at least one human pair of eyes.

User facing changes include:

Show who boosted content in the feed (Combined view + subscribed + newest) Add ability to block instances. Content from blocked instances will not show up in the feed and search anymore. Fix emoji autocomplete inserts 'null' Show a placeholder when an image embed could not be loaded Improve design of posts and comments in some areas of the site Fix endless loop when compressing uploaded images Fix layout when a comment contains a very wide table Bugfixes for some federation issues (handling of Mastodon posts with multiple images, embedded video formats, buggy mentions, etc.) Change layout of list of cross posts Fix the issue of browsers wanting to download a file when unsupported media files are used in an embed Add translation for Swedish

You can see the rest of the changes in the v1.11.0 release notes.

As I'm sure y'all have noticed, the server has been having stability issues the past week. Every once in a while, the server seems to "crash"; it will time out on all network requests for about 5 minutes, happening several times within an hour. Additionally, there have been several times over the past week when the server queues got backed up, resulting in incoming and outgoing federation traffic being delayed.

At first, I assumed the server hardware had simply become insufficient to handle all of the network and federation traffic we have been receiving, potentially due to a DDOS attack. I was honestly starting to think I would need to upgrade the server hardware, which is ridiculous, as the VPS is already quite powerful and is certainly expensive enough.

Luckily, @green_copper helped with debugging and noticed the server timeouts only occur when the microblog section is viewed (and sometimes when the combined section is viewed). So rather than a lack of hardware being the issue, I believe it actually has to do with the recent Mbin upgrade. My guess is that an SQL query was changed in one of the commits between Mbin v1.9.1 and v1.10.0, which resulted in a widely inefficient query, causing the server to freeze up and time out on requests.

I have and will be investigating the issue this week. I will start by analyzing which database queries are causing the timeouts, but if needed, roll back to Mbin v1.9.1 and try to figure out which specific Mbin commit introduced the bug. Additionally, I may have access restricted only to signed-in users while I'm working on this.

In the meantime, if you guys can refrain from viewing microblogs (or combined view), that would keep the server accessible for everyone and help me work on it faster, as I can't do anything while the server is frozen. If you want any realtime updates on the server issue (or anything else related to kbin.earth), feel free to join the Matrix room.

Thanks for sticking around and for your patience!

I have just completed the upgrade of kbin.earth to Mbin v1.10.0. Please let me know if you run into any issues.

Here are the changes listed for end users:

• Add support for lists of keyword filters of content; they can be scoped to content, comments and profile-overviews and can have an expiration-date
• Show the custom title of users and add the option to set one for yourself
• Add the option to also show content which was boosted by people you follow in the Combined view
• Pagination is now done by "anchors" (like that date of the last thread on the page) instead of page-numbers, to improve performance
• Add an indicator when a user has their "cake day"
• Fix search not returning most of Lemmy users and magazines
• Fix the search when searching content, users or magazines by their URL
• The date field of the search form now has a preset value
• Small UI improvements to make the elements of posts and threads more consistent (the layout for posts in Combined view can be toggled in the UI settings)
• Prevent opening a thread or post when touching interactive elements (buttons, spoilers, ...) on mobile
• Suppress notification for added content if it is more than two days old (for example after delayed federation)
• Fix infinite scrolling of comments
• Fix reply button for comments on locked threads and posts not being disabled

Full release post: https://fedia.io/m/mbinReleases@gehirneimer.de/t/4015612

Hetzner is one of the go-to server providers for Fediverse instances, in part due to its cheap offerings while still providing high quality service. However, Hetzner has announced a price adjustment, which has increased the prices of some servers as much as 3-4 times the original. This kind of ruins the point in using Hetzner, as the main appeal was Hetzner's cheap server prices.

Some of their servers haven't increased an insane amount, for example, the CAX41 offering has gone from €31.49 monthly to €40.99 (30% increase). Others are much higher though; CPX41 has gone from €38.99 monthly to €120.49 (209% increase)!

To any Fediverse admins using Hetzner, how would you see this affecting your instance? Will you be migrating to a different service or sticking with Hetzner even with the price hike?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe existing servers will be grandfathered in to the old price point, so that will certainly buy some time to find a potential alternative.

I personally am using Hetzner for my Mbin instance, but the price increase doesn't seem completely unreasonable for the specific server I am currently using. I do not see myself needing to rescale the server any time soon, so I should be able to keep the old price anyway.

Hacker news discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48540844

Hetzner price adjustment table: https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availability/price-adjustment/

Fixes

Improve inline reply UI on narrow screens; by @olorin99 Fix password length condition for Lemmy/PieFed login UI; by @olorin99.

Other

Remove dead instances from recommended servers list; by @jwr1. Translations update from Hosted Weblate.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/interstellar-app/interstellar/compare/v0.11.3...v0.11.4

Features

Add option in debug screen to manually clear OAuth identifiers; by @olorin99. Add option to set default action for links; by @olorin99. Add support for locking posts and comments; by @olorin99. Support UnifiedPush on Linux; by @jwr1. Add extra compact setting; by @olorin99. Additional PieFed feed support; by @olorin99. Add support for the modlog on PieFed; by @olorin99. Add support for PieFed events; by @olorin99. Allow back navigation to Feed tab from other tabs; by @olorin99. Add filter for PieFed feeds to allow switching between all and personal feeds; by @olorin99. Show snackbar to notify on successful image download; by @olorin99. Enable using domains in feeds on mbin; by @olorin99. Support moderation on Lemmy; by @olorin99.

Fixes

Use webview for Mbin auth on Android to fix login issues; by @olorin99. Fix download/share file and image upload for web target; by @olorin99. Fix community picker for Piefed/Lemmy; by @olorin99. Fix alignment in markdown editor preview; by @olorin99. Fix null error and multiple routes of same type on stack error; by @olorin99. Truncate entered password to match Lemmy/PieFed limits; by @olorin99. Fix missing menu button on collapsed comments; by @olorin99. Fix null error caused by unhandled Mbin notifications; by @jwr1.

Other

Optimize build runner by using narrowing builder analysis scope; by @jwr1. Remove Archive.today from alternate links; by @jwr1. Migrate away from deprecated mbin api creating entries; by @olorin99. Updates to navigation routes; by @olorin99. Refactor ServerClient to handle MultipartRequests; by @jwr1. Switch to using auto_route tabs router for bottom navigation; by @olorin99. Enable legacy packaging for Android to reduce APK size; by @jwr1. Translations update from Hosted Weblate.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/interstellar-app/interstellar/compare/v0.11.2...v0.11.3

The next generations of Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, and Bubbles are available now.

For those that don't know, these are Go libraries used to easily create terminal user interfaces.

Features

Add Modlog screen at the user, community, and instance-wide (on About screen) level; by @olorin99.

Add button to clear search on explore screen; by @olorin99. Create an emoji picker for PieFed reactions and markdown editor; by @jwr1. Note, you are currently not able to select custom PieFed emojis from the emoji picker.

Add error page for login restricted instances; by @olorin99.

Fixes

Fix totp code not being passed to login on Lemmy; by @olorin99. Fix UI elements overflowing on mobile Linux; by @olorin99. Fix Linux gtk header bar always being used on Wayland; by @jwr1. Fix error on empty body for microblog; by @olorin99. Remove incorrect check for empty accounts; by @olorin99. Fix create microblog community picker helper text being truncated; by @jwr1.

Other

Huge navigation backend overhaul (moved to auto_route package), with web support coming soon!; by @olorin99. Note, due to specific changes in the way oauth authorization is handled (specifically, the callback URL has been changed), Mbin accounts will need to re-login. Adopt very_good_analysis and add PR dart checks; by @jwr1. Translations update from Hosted Weblate.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/interstellar-app/interstellar/compare/v0.11.1...v0.11.2

Crossposted from https://kbin.earth/m/kbinEarth/t/2381924

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say thank you for supporting kbin.earth and Interstellar!

Thanks to all our generous sponsors, all expenses from the year 2025 (including server rental, object storage, domains, Apple Developer License, and Apple hardware) have been covered; almost no out-of-pocket needed from me. That's a huge deal!

To the Mbin team: none of this would be possible without you! You've forked /kbin and have kept supporting it ever since, adding new features, diagnosing and fixing bugs, recommending server setup improvements, and much more. You guys are quick to respond and are nothing but reliable! Special shout out to @BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de and @melroy@kbin.melroy.org!

To Interstellar's co-developer: thank you @olorin99 for literally being around since the beginning. Interstellar's very first commit was on Dec 11, 2023, and yours was just a few weeks after, on Dec 28, 2023, adding initial support for microblogs. Thanks for contributing to and developing Interstellar all this time!

To kbin.earth's mods/admins: thanks for keeping this place clean and manageable! Especially checking for sign up requests every day :) @green_copper @kindenough @aasatru

Lastly, thanks to all the 1-off contributors, translators, anonymous sponsors, and anyone else I haven't mentioned. And of course, all you users who stick around here :)

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say thank you for supporting kbin.earth and Interstellar!

Thanks to all our generous sponsors, all expenses from the year 2025 (including server rental, object storage, domains, Apple Developer License, and Apple hardware) have been covered; almost no out-of-pocket needed from me. That's a huge deal!

To the Mbin team: none of this would be possible without you! You've forked /kbin and have kept supporting it ever since, adding new features, diagnosing and fixing bugs, recommending server setup improvements, and much more. You guys are quick to respond and are nothing but reliable! Special shout out to @BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de and @melroy@kbin.melroy.org!

To Interstellar's co-developer: thank you @olorin99 for literally being around since the beginning. Interstellar's very first commit was on Dec 11, 2023, and yours was just a few weeks after, on Dec 28, 2023, adding initial support for microblogs. Thanks for contributing to and developing Interstellar all this time!

To kbin.earth's mods/admins: thanks for keeping this place clean and manageable! Especially checking for sign up requests every day :) @green_copper @kindenough @aasatru

Lastly, thanks to all the 1-off contributors, translators, anonymous sponsors, and anyone else I haven't mentioned. And of course, all you users who stick around here :)