Hey all! I can confirm that update was performed yesterday to 0.19.0 yesterday / today. Unfortunately we hit some issues during the upgrade, but these have now been resolved and CompuVerse is now running 0.19.0. I have also put provisions in place to allow for better longevity in terms of disk usage. Meaning we should now be able to operate off of the current amount of storage for much longer! As part of this upgrade, I have also now setup a Matrix instance. We now have a Matrix homeserver running on https://conduit.compuverse.uk (powered by Conduit) We also have our own hosted instance of Cinny for a ready-to-go Matrix client if you don't already have one you like to use! You can access this on https://chat.compuverse.uk As per the suggestions from [@ButtonMcLemming@compuverse.uk](https://compuverse.uk/u/ButtonMcLemming) , I plan to use this space to keep everyone up to date in case of any downtime! The Matrix server is hosted on a completely different server, and thus should be resilient to failing at the same time as the Lemmy instance. Thanks, Cameron

Hi, There's recently been some downtime on Compuverse and I apologise for this. The host machine was down for a while, and I was unable to bring it back online, no data was lost, it was just shut down and unable to be started. I'm aiming to create a fail-over solution to allow for an easy transition to a secondary server should the primary fail but currently lack the time and resources required to implement such a thing. The downtime was excessive and inexcusable so I hope to get things in a much better state as soon as I can. Thanks & regards, Cameron

Hi all! Another new interface is here. If you're interested, we now host Alexandrite on https://a.compuverse.uk! Feel free to use this interface if you like :)

Hi, I run the Lemmy instance over at https://compuverse.uk I seem to be getting spammed with literally *thousands* of incoming activity requests (primarily coming in from `lemmy.world` and `lemmy.ml`). (I measured about 1 new request ever 0.01 -> 0.02 seconds) The error message in the Lemmy logs is very unhelpful, giving 0 detail about the actual error itself. The UUIDs in the activities seem to be all unique, rather than duplicates. Does anybody have any idea what's going on and why there is such a large torrent of requests coming in? This was so bad it essentially caused a DoS attack on my instance, and brought it down. I have had to move the PostgreSQL server onto a more powerful machine in order to keep up with the request rate! Any help or advice is greatly appreciated :) Thanks, Cameron

Hi all, as a result of the recent disk space issue, I have moved the PostgreSQL database onto a secondary server. This does now mean that database calls are being made "over the wire" so to speak, so performance *may* be slightly lower than previously. But the server which is running the PSQL database is a rather beefy dedicated server, with much more storage space available. Hopefully performance isn't impacted too badly. But if you do notice any particularly bad performance, please do let me know and I'll see what I can do. This new server should last us for MUCH longer (with about 6 times the storage space available).

Firstly, I really do apologise! CompuVerse has been down for a number of hours now, and I'm really sorry. I'll be 100% transparent on this, the server ran out of disk space! This sent it into a sort of "safe mode", which unfortunately took down CompuVerse. I have migrated all image storage over to an external server with a large amount more storage. However, even with this, just the text content and metadata for CompuVerse is still rather large. I'm going to investigate solutions but am averse to running a DB server over mounted storage as this is very susceptible to latency and speeds. ~~By my approximations we have around 2 months' worth of disk space remaining now that Pictrs is removed. I'm looking for solutions in the meantime that will balance performance and cost effectively.~~ ### Edit: The PostgreSQL database has been moved. Please read https://compuverse.uk/post/277751 for more info.

Would you look at that! If you're the kind of person that enjoys the Old Reddit interface, you can now use a very similar interface to access compuverse! Accessible from https://old.compuverse.uk/ Feel free to use the new interface, I'll try to keep it up to date also, but it's likely not going to be the primary focus. If you're a user of Reddit Enhancement Suite, you can also get a lot of the same functionality with the following GreaseMonkey script: https://github.com/rystaf/mlmym/issues/5 I hope you enjoy!

That's a bit of a shame. I quite liked NUCs! Hopefully something else comes about with a similar premise!

# TLDR; ## CompuVerse was unaffected by this issue, as we did not have any custom emoji. ## Your accounts are safe, and no information has been leaked from this instance. # Long-Form It's recently been brought to my attention that Lemmy had a bug in regarding the handling of custom emoji. More information can be found at [this link](https://lemm.ee/post/942359), however the key takeaways are that the exploit relied on *custom emoji*. CompuVerse does not have (and has not had) any custom emoji. So thankfully our instance has been unaffected. Out of an abundance of caution, I have rotated the JWT secret, so if you needed to login again, this is why, and I apologise for the inconvenience! Custom emoji which were federated over from other servers apparently do *not* cause the same issue, so we are safe on this front also. I have also updated the instance to the latest available version of Lemmy to patch the bug properly. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of breaking our custom CSS theme, so I have reset to the default theme for the time being. I am working on updating the theme to suit as we speak. So, as a quick recap: - CompuVerse was unaffected by this issue - We have rotated JWT secrets as a precaution - We have updated the instance to a version with this security flaw removed - The update has broken the custom CSS theme. I am working on updating this as quickly as I can!

www.youtube.com

An intriguing video discussing Falcon 40B, another LLM that seems to perform really quite well, especially given its much smaller size than models like GPT 4.

Seems Meta is having a modicum of success with their Twitter replacement which they've called "Threads". 10,000,000 users from the first day. Would be very odd for the main social media networks to be... Facebook, Facebook 2 (Instagram) Facebook 3 (Threads) All social media ruled by Zuckerberg 🤔 Not sure I like the way the Internet is heading.

uk.etail.market

eTail.market currently have both of the recent Spider-Man games currently on offer, according to IsThereAnyDeal, these are the lowest prices currently available for the games. Could be a good time to grab them if you haven't already :)

In a fantastic example of yet further self-implosion by Twitter, Elon Musk has announced a "temporary" limit on the number of posts users can view per day. Unpaid users can now only view 600 posts per day, before being hit by rate limits. New unpaid users can now only view 300 posts per day. Paid users are able to view 6000 views per day. Ah well, at least he's sorted out doom scrolling 👍!

So, it's official. Reddit has now blocked apps such as Apollo, Boost etc. from using their APIs without copious expense. Thankfully it seems some of these apps are moving over to Lemmy! Including my personal favourite third-party Reddit app, Boost! You can now pre-register for Boost for Lemmy, which should hopefully bring the awesome Boost interface to Lemmy (including this instance). I highly recommend you check it out and pre-register if interested.

So, I've recently been hit with a problem. My previous keyboard at the office (a cheap Dell membrane keyboard) has given up the ghost, and I was trying to find a nicer replacement. I have numerous mechanical keyboard (which are generally my preferred type of keyboard), however these are a little too noisy for the office environment! During my research, I discovered the MX Keys / MX Keys S by Logitech. I have recently acquired one of these and I *highly* recommend it. It has a very satisfying feel when pressing the keys, but is not loud enough to blow out the eardrums of your co-workers. One of my favourite features of the keyboard is that each key has a small circular indent on the key, this almost, automatically realigns your fingers as you push them, which I've found has increased my typing accuracy quite considerably! The MX Keys S is a new version of the MX Keys, which only has very minor changes. The main change is switching from the older Logitech Unified Receiver, to a newer Logitech Bolt Receiver, but honestly, the keyboard connects and works perfectly over Bluetooth anyway, so I wouldn't even bother with either unless absolutely necessary. The other main change is the new inclusion of ambient light sensing, to automatically change the brightness of the backlight. But this is easily managed manually with keys on the keyboard anyway, so again, isn't really necessary. The MX Keys and Keys S both share the same core design, and same keys, so either is a great choice. If you want to purchase the keyboard, you can find it on numerous retailers. Including the [Logitech site](https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/products/keyboards/mx-keys-s-wireless-keyboard.html) itself (which this post also links to). However, if you fancy supporting me (and thus CompuVerse), at no extra cost to yourself, please consider using the following Amazon affiliate link, which will automatically provide monetary compensation to myself: [MX Keys S on Amazon (Affiliated)](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Programmable-Backlighting-Bluetooth-Rechargeable/dp/B07W4DG9WN?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=cameronredmor-21&linkCode=ur2&linkId=5ffe0bb3004de290a657af8733ca04c5&camp=1634&creative=6738) If you don't want to use the affiliated link, no worries! The same link without the affiliation is here: [MX Keys S on Amazon (Unaffiliated)](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Programmable-Backlighting-Bluetooth-Rechargeable/dp/B07W4DG9WN?&_encoding=UTF8)

web.archive.org

Looks like Meta are trying to introduce a subscription for their VR headsets. Wonder if that'll go anywhere or not...

A nice win for repairing your own devices. The lack of repairability of Surface devices has always been one of their weakest points. Good to see MS making at least *some* steps to rectify this.

Hi all! In order to give people automated access to loads of game deals, I've created the CompuVerse Deals Bot! This bot will automatically post new deals as they come in from https://isthereanydeal.com! To try to keep the quality of the bot's posts at least moderately good, there are a few limits in place. The bot will only post deals which follow these rules: - Offer title is at least 30% off - Offer title has at least 75% positive reviews on Steam - Offer title is not a DLC The bot will automatically post the highest cut it has found in the title of the post, along with Steam review scores for the game. The main body of each post will consist of basic review information on the game, and then a table listing current best known prices in GBP, USD and EUR (other currencies can be added in future if this is something people are interested in!) I hope you find the bot useful. Please let me know any suggestions or improvements you may have regarding this bot :) Thanks, Cameron

A fascinating (and humorous) watch on a major outage at GitHub, caused by some replication oddities!

uk.etail.market

If you're interested in grabbing R&C Rift Apart on PC (fantastic game BTW, of potentially a little on the short side for my personal preferences) it's currently going for 13% off on eTail.market! For other regions I recommend visiting https://isthereanydeal.com/game/ratchetandclankriftapart/info/