Instance Update #6 2024-08-10

Hi folks!

these were some rough couple months since the last update, I gotta tell you. In the meantime, I went active with self employment again and am working on quite a couple projects. One of them is a new Gameserver!

Minetest

We have recently opened a new Gameserver for the Open Source Voxel Game Minetest. Those who have followed our instances updates will already know that freedom and fairness is what we strive for for everyone. Free and open source Software is pretty high up there in terms of this. Since Minecraft has gotten a couple features that we dont agree with (mandatory telemetry, microtransactions, chat control), we have decided it is time to try this new game. Since this is a whitelisted server, you need to apply to gain access. You can do this by writing a dm to the instance admin @haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com or join our matrix space.

Moving Hosts

In the meantime, we have also moved hosts. The old host has had technical issues which have eroded our trust in seamless availability of the service for you so we decided to move the instance over to hetzner. The server now has one additional backup procedure in place and sits on dedicated threads.

Thoughts about Discord and the Minecraft Server

Since many years, we are also running a discord and a minecraft server, which both have served us well but which represent old, proprietary systems which we are no longer really comfortable with. Therefore we will likely start phasing them out at some point. Since we havent yet found a solution for successfully porting our world to minetest, we will likely keep the server on for a bit but the end is already in sight.

Rising costs

As time progresses, costs of living for our admin as well as hosting our server are increasing. The fediverse is not selling your data and isnt a corporation so the text you are reading here is brought to you by hardware, acquired or rented by individuals, ran with electricity paid by such individuals. If you value your freedom and the content brought to you, you may want to consider giving back in the form of a small donation.

New community

Since today we have an „addons 4 kodi“ community on our instance. The community is for help and support as well as exchanging ideas around kodi and it‘s addons.

There are other similar communities but they‘re on the huge instances. For some time, centralization has been a problem for the fediverse so we‘re determined to do our part. Feel free to join !addons4kodi@lemmy.giftedmc.com.

Kodi is a free and open source media center app which helps you play your favourite music, movies and shows, either from your own library or multiple streaming services.

Thank you for reading and have a great day! :)

Edit: testing stuff 2024-09-01

Instance Update #7 - 2024-09-01

Hi folks, there have been some new developments on our instance and I‘d like to share them with you as I think they are pretty awesome.

News

Added !addons4kodi@lemmy.giftedmc.com

Since we are seeing quite the amount of centralization among the fediverse and especially lemmy, we have decided to add addons4kodi as a community. As the name suggests, you can discuss addons for kodi mediacenter there, as well as help or seek help, discuss ups and downs of kodi and its addons as well as request new addons for kodi being written by people. No guarantee it will happen but one can ask, right? We are in no way affiliated with kodi. This is an unpfficial fan sub.

Added #deutsch:matrix.giftedmc.com

Since we historically have quite a few german speakers among our members, we have decided to add a new german language room to our matrix server. It is bridged to our discord for now. If you absolutely dont want to join the matrix server, you can join the discord.

Acquired new domain

Since Minecraft has become a little less prevalent in our community, we are on the way of changing the „brand“ over time. It will still be solely pointed at neurodivergent folks but be game agnostic

FAQ

What is GiftedMC?

We are a community of neurodivergent people and friends. Gifted stands both for the intellectually gifted as the otherwise gifted people in the neurodiverse space. MC historically stands for minecraft as this community was built around a Minecraft server which still is online and publicly accessible. It is however quite challenging to get going so bring all your patience before joining. The IP (java) is server.gifted-minecraft.com. Have fun.

Do you have a website?

We actually have a couple. Our main Website is https://gifted-minecraft.com but we also run a variety of fediverse services for our members:

• https://matrix.giftedmc.com
• https://mastodon.giftedmc.com
• https://lemmy.giftedmc.com
• https://peertube.giftedmc.com

We also have a VoxeLibre (minetest) server running which you can join on vps.giftedmc.com with the standard minetest port.

Who pays for all these services?

A couple dedicated members of our community.

Can I join ${service}

Yes, you can. Matrix, Discord and VoxeLibre are free. Peertube, Mastodon and Lemmy accounts are for our supporters.

How can I become a supporter?

You can join our supporters on one of many services:

• LiberaPay
• Patreon
• BuyMeACoffee

If you have any other questions, please send us an email on haui@gifted-minecraft.com

GiftedMC Instance Update #5

Today I made good on my promise that I wont be able to make a regular weekly schedule for instance updates. Yay! Just kidding.

1. meta/threads.net

We‘ve had an interesting couple of days. There were renewed pushes from meta shills for recognition of meta as a legitimate part of the fediverse (aaaahahahahhahaha). I have of course called them out in the comments and in some cases reported and also blocked some.

This instance is firmly standing behind it‘s course to stay defederated from meta and will not change this for the foreseeable future. Other big players like bluesky and (whatever the name was) we havent decided on yet but so far, no reason to preemtively defederate.

2. inter-instance-fighting

Probably no one noticed that there was some fighting between two admins recently. This will have no consequences in terms of our federation with other instances. The conflict has been resolved by personal block.

3. Problems with picture upload

For some reason, we‘re experiencing issues with pictrs which is responsible for our picture upload. Therefore we dont have any way to upload pictures atm. That means that memes is dead for now until we can resolve this. Its possible this has to do with the instance icon bug which has been an issue for a long time and lemmy and we‘re looking to resolve it.

General information

What is GiftedMC?

We‘re a private, invite-only instance for the GiftedMC community, a place for neurodivergent folks and friends.

Neurodivergent can mean a lot of things but a large portion of the community is autistic, gifted, adhd or a mix of these. We dont discriminate against people with personality disorders but certain, high prevalence behaviors are outlawed in our community.

How can I join?

You can join the discord and matrix spaces for free and post with your fediverse accounts to our communities. Only the privilege of getting an account is reserved for members.

How do I get an account?

You have to ask to be invited. Members are also asked to help fund the multitude of services this community operates for its members. You can help with any amount you like, starting at 1$/€ per month.

What services do you offer?

Here‘s a list of the services we currently operate:

• lemmy instance
• mastodon instance
• peertube instance
• matrix instance
• forum
• wiki
• uptime kuma (see services‘ health)
• 2 minecraft servers
• discord server

How do I ask to be invited?

You either write an email to haui@gifted-minecraft.com or you can ask any member of the giftedmc.com instances on any service and they will help you.

Do I need to play minecraft?

No. In fact, the majority of the community doesnt play minecraft regularly. The Minecraft theme is a remnant of our past. We started as a community based around a minecraft server and evolved from there.

How many members do you have?

All over the comminity, around 100. Only a handful of them are supporting members so we‘re not making any money from this by a long shot.

Thanks for reading. Have a good one.

I cant believe I managed to make another update exactly one week later. Please forget that this is the case since I will definitely not be able to hold any tight schedule with these updates.

This week I have seen a lot of traffic on world concerning meta. Some of it nuanced, some of it highly critical and some outright propaganda which is omitting the truth and trying to influence people to "look the other way" while they take over our fediverse.

It is also the reason why I decided to update the description of our instance today so we are somewhat up to date on links and support options.

I havent put this in the description but I will likely do so after finishing this post but we have signed the fedipact back when it was clear that federation with meta was going to happen. Our instance will never federate with meta and we will not change this, no matter what happens.

If something else majorly happens I might post another update soon. Lets see.

Remember that you can join GiftedMC, even if you dont like minecraft, as a supporter. Check our instance sidebar for support options.

Thanks for reading and have a good one!

Hi folks,

as some of you know, I‘m very busy and always on the hunt for new and interesting projects which makes regular efforts to keep regular schedules a bit hard.

Thats why this is pretty much the first real update since the inception of this instance.

So far I have learned that maintaining a lemmy instance isnt too hard but updating it is quite a lot of effort.

We are currently on 0.19.3 so we should be good in terms of federation bugs of the previous 0.19 versions. We have defederated threads.net and this is non negotiable. I made this instance to get away from megacorps and I‘m not going back. The amount of content will be insane and I have neither the time nor the money to receive it.

The instance is backed up daily so our posts should be fine, no guarantees though as lemmy is nowhere near release (the version number 0.19.3 should tell you that). Its the same in every instance but I choose to be transparent about it.

If you want to join the instance or support my work, check out my patreon on https://patreon.com/haui111. The server this runs on costs money every month and I‘m regularly donating to the lemmy devs myself so by supporting me, you support lemmy as well. If you want alternative paying solutions like liberapay, lmk.

I will try to make some more update posts in the future. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

Hey folks! We have some news for you. A couple weeks ago we began to move from our old accounts on reddit, twitter and facebook to the #fediverse!

We now have fediverse instances for the 4 major protocols:

• lemmy.giftedmc.com
• mastodon.giftedmc.com
• matrix.giftedmc.com
• peertube.giftedmc.com

We're also working on a classic forum and a wiki but they're gonna take a long time to populate. A lot more so than the fediverse stuff.

Please note that all of this is expensive, both in money as in time. If you can, help us out on https://patreon.com/haui111 or https://buymeacoffee.com/haui111.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments!

Have a good one!

This is the first post on this lemmy instance!