I just triggered the lemmy community seeder. The hope is that this will make sure we don't miss out on popular content from other instances just because no one from our instance is subscribed to the right community.

It will run on a schedule so if new communities are made and start getting popular it should also pick those up and start putting posts in our All feed.

If the All feed gets terrible, and especially if you see stuff that shouldn't be there, let me know. I can unsubscribe the account from that community, though of course anyone can subscribe to communities themselves so remember you also have the ability to block a community.

If your account isn't on lemmy.nz, ignore this message 🙂

[–] absGeekNZ 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for your continued good work on this.

[–] d3Xt3r 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for this, I normally browse by all/new and have noticed there's a big difference in what I see here v/s my account on lemmy.world.

I'm curious though how much of an increase in storage/bandwidth this would cause.

[–] Dave 3 points 1 year ago

I'm curious too!

I was having a chat with one of the devs yesterday (on lemmy, so I guess you could find it in my post history). They realised that thumbnails are not resized at all. Thumbnails are generated when content is federated, and stored in full resolution. So even if no one looks at it, it's stored. And the thumbnail cache never expires.

Currently the image cache in total is 137GB (based on last night's backup), and has images from June when the instance started.

The image storing component pictrs has no ability to resize images, so looks like resizing isn't coming any time soon (it would be good to have to help thumbnails load faster). However, the next major update, lemmy 0.19 and pictrs 0.5, will have the ability to set a time limit on the cache (or even disable it completely).

If we aren't even resizing the thumbnails then perhaps having the cache disabled would be appropriate, though I had planned to set it to a few days or a week. In either case, there should be a dramatic drop in the size of the cache once that update is out.

A smart person may have waited until that was available before triggering the seeder, but I just saw the tab that's been open for weeks and decided to just get it done while I had the chance.

[–] NoRamyunForYou 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems to have made a big difference!

Thank you for that :)

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Glad to hear it!

[–] Kirca@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After sampling a fairly large selection, I have decided to make it my mission to find the best cheese and garlic naan in Christchurch. So far, the leading contestant is "Everest" in Woolston, which I bought on a whim one day.

If anyone wants to make any suggestions for contestants, please do!!

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Naan are fairly simple to make, and home made come out more crispy and less "soggy" for lack of a better word. Depends if that's how you like them though.

I've never had a naan in NZ better than I can make at home, though if you can get to countries where naan is common you can get really nice ones!

But I guess heading to another country isn't as easy as takeaways. Sorry, got no suggestions for Christchurch 🙁

[–] absGeekNZ 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Thought for the day

How much do you pay attention to global news vs NZ news?

I tend to keep an eye on the global stuff to around the same extent as the local news; I am however not an avid news watcher. I listen to the BBC podcast every couple of days and read some of the local stuff every day or so.

[–] Dave 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I read news a lot less than I used to. Lemmy is now my main source of news.

I used to read the news every day, but find I gained nothing from it. Anything major I still know about because of Lemmy.

[–] absGeekNZ 5 points 1 year ago

Lemmy (used to be reddit) helps with what to pay attention to.

[–] Ozymati 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Need to replace the "news" with info from sources that impact you. Lemmy has no idea what stupidity or genius your local council or the various ministries might be getting up to.

[–] Dave 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The main trigger for moving away from news was the realisation that mainstream media is no less susceptible to propoganda and misinformation that anyone else when it comes to unfolding events.

So I read a lot more about events after the fact, once sources and facts have been sorted out.

In terms of stupid councils and ministries, I'm sure anything major I'll find out about from others. When it comes to voting for council, the only real control I have over what they do, I've taken to researching candidates to make a decision (in the past I'd just read the blurbs in the voting papers).

I also read and participate in council long term planning, when asked for opinions on where to spend money.

[–] luthis 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its a quick break from work to read the chaos. I think I'm relatively up to date. But the recent Israel Gaza thing has left me thinking I should distance myself. I follow a leftist / te pati Instagram channel that has since proven to be completely biased and dishonest. It enrages me when I'm seeing blatent disregard for evidence and the Palestinian people in favour of pushing their anti Israel narrative, and everyone getting on the emotional high for the ride.

Its not even worth fighting for truth, because I'm just one rational person arguing with people filled with irrational hate. I think its bad for my mental and emotional health.

I think I'm going to pay less attention and just focus on things I enjoy instead.

[–] thevoyagekayaking 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone involved in that conflict seems to be utterly terrible, it seems.

[–] luthis 5 points 1 year ago

Exactly, it's two evil sides fighting each other with the civilians (mostly Palestinian) getting fucked over by both sides. But people have to choose a side to cheer for.

[–] evanuggetpi 3 points 1 year ago

I used to check the news multiple times per day. Eventually I gave up when I realised it wasn't great for my mental health. Now I allow myself to look through the Guardian every Sunday, and get NZ news from Lemmy and Google stories on my Android phone.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago

Probably about 50-50.

I'm making it my mission this year to focus more on actual global news, not just news from the usual English-speaking west and their pet interest topics. So far it's confusing.

[–] Fizz 2 points 1 year ago

I follow global news 10x more than local news. By the nature of the content I watch I end up learning a lot about issues in the us and Europe and not much about nz.

[–] thevoyagekayaking 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Heading off into Queen Charlotte sound until Monday, the conditions are ideal as well.

https://files.catbox.moe/f7a6zu.jpg

[–] NoRamyunForYou 3 points 1 year ago

First I'd heard of it and so had to google it just now. Wow! Looks amazing. Stat safe, have fun :)

[–] Kirca@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I might show my ignorance here but do you have 2 oars? Wouldn't you only need one? Are they for different use cases or is one a backup?

I don't think I could ever will myself to kayak in open water, but I'm very jealous of the adventure you're about to have, the area and weather look stunning!

[–] thevoyagekayaking 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's two halves of one paddle, they come apart for easy transport.

[–] Kirca@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry I mean you have two halves across the boat and another halves on the back

[–] thevoyagekayaking 1 points 1 year ago

That is a spare, yes.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It looks like there's another attached to the back of the kayak?

[–] thevoyagekayaking 2 points 1 year ago

That one is a spare, yes.

[–] Ozymati 5 points 1 year ago

Slept like a rock, to the point where my arm was hurting from lying on it all night. Guess I needed sleep.

[–] Dave 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've also just added https://p.lemmy.nz for the Photon front end.

So now we have:

Proton - https://p.lemmy.nz
Alexandrite - https://a.lemmy.nz
Old Reddit style - https://old.lemmy.nz
Voyager (mobile Apollo style) - https://voyager.lemmy.nz

In case you're wondering, yes, I had had a rare few hours today with no kids bothering me.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah I missed old.reddit. I guess I'll be using that from now. I had a constant problem on the default frontend when hitting 'back' it would show All instead of local or subscribed.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I have that issue too. It shows whatever was set when the page was loaded. If you choose say Local then refresh, then when you go to something and go back it will be on the Local tab.

It's pretty annoying, and I think only a new bug introduced in the last couple of updates. Maybe it will be fixed in 0.19, which should be not too far away (though I haven't heard any specific timeline).

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see, annoying work around though, I'd always forget to do it. Works OK on the old reddit frontend from what I can tell, which is nice.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

It's not really a work around, it doesn't help. If you go to the next page, then when you open something and go back it will be on the first page you were on, etc. I guess the best option at the moment is just to open things in a new tab.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Finally got around to setting up network wide ad block, got tired of seeing ads on mobile/ipad at home. Decided to try Adguard Home instead of Pihole, seems that they're both equally effective. Happy so far!

[–] absGeekNZ 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have PiHole....it is great

[–] eagleeyedtiger 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did a bunch of searching of comparisons and most people seem to be happy with either. I'm not really sure why I chose Adguard, but if it underperforms it should be easy enough to switch

[–] bruzie 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is this just a case of swapping the router's upstream DNS to Adguard's? (IIRC I have google and Orcon set on mine).

[–] eagleeyedtiger 4 points 1 year ago

You can do that, however I found it doesn't show breakdown by client that way, it just shows the router's address as the only client.

I just have DHCP server on the Fritzbox setting the Adguard address for DNS server. I had to turn off DNSv6 server in the Fritzbox because I couldn't set a IPv6 DNS server address for Adguard as the box it's installed on doesn't have IPv6 enabled.

You can set as many upstream DNS providers up in Adguard as you want. I'm currently only using google and cloudflare.

[–] absGeekNZ 3 points 1 year ago

That works; but it is limited. I haven't bothered to set my PiHole as my DHCP srever, but if you do you get much better control over who is seeing what.

[–] evanuggetpi 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ran a pihole for years but switched to NextDNS and am very happy with that. It's so easy to set up I've got the whole extended family using it now. I browse using Librewolf and have SmartTube on the TV. I never see ads.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks interesting, are you using the free version of NextDNS? I haven't run it long enough to know if I would go over the free limit yet.

Although I do prefer self hosting over cloud based.

[–] evanuggetpi 2 points 1 year ago

I pay something like $30 per year for NextDNS. I work from home and generate a massive amount of DNS requests. I have an RPI4 that now spends its days as a headless puppeteer instance instead.

[–] liv 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great news, there has been this jumping spider I see in the car and he seems really thin (even for a male), plus I worry he will get hurt. Anyway today I finally managed to catch him and relocate him somewhere much nicer outside. He's going to have access to all the whitefly he can eat!

[–] absGeekNZ 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Excellent work. I love spiders, they are so cool.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks, me too!

and jumping ones have always had a special place in my heart because they're extra cute and when you're sunbathing after a swim as a kid you see lots of them walk past.