I decided since I don't understand how all of this works, I will just simply ask Jerry personally about all of this data and technical details, so that people will no longer be confused about all of this. Includes an exclusive interview with Jerry.
  • julian@community.nodebb.org
    6·
    4 months ago

    Very interesting article! I have immense respect for jerry@infosec.exchange, he was one of the first people I found on the fediverse, and it’s no wonder why, he’s revered quite highly by others as being a generous and kind admin.

    I do want to point out one thing, and that is that Mastodon has some design decisions that make it rather resource and storage intensive.

    There are oodles of lighter software out there, some with even more features than Mastodon, and some with less. For example, snac.bsd.cafe (https://snac.bsd.cafe/) runs on Snac, which is fast as hell.

    I am going to guess that a not insignificant portion of Jerry’s bill is caching assets. Mastodon likes to save everything it encounters, videos, images, avatars, everything… forever (though I imagine this is customisable). Most likely the assets are viewed a handful of times in one day and never seen again… but you’ll pay to store it forever!

    • andypiper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      One of the ways that this could improve in the future is that we’re working on a notional caching service as a future Fediverse Auxiliary Service Provider, so that this kind of content could be shared between small groups of instances that chose to use it.

    • Paige@piefed.caEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      It doesn’t store media forever that is routinely cleaned and configurable in the administration settings for the instance. The content cache, which is database storage used for the text and meta-data of posts is more typically an issue over time because this requires commands to be run on the server to free up space, which many people do not do. https://fedihost.co/blog/slug/managing-mastodon-storage

    • Blender Dumbass@lm.madiator.cloudOPEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Most likely the assets are viewed a handful of times in one day and never seen again… but you’ll pay to store it forever!

      This is exactly the thing that should optimized immediately. Store relevant content. Delete after it is not relevant. Fetch it back if it is relevant again.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      21·
      4 months ago

      They have a really good racket going on and want to make sure people keep giving them way more money than is necessary. It’s simply not true that Infosec.Exchange requires $5000/month to operate unless they’re doing something very wrong or just straight up lying.

      Yes, internet rando. I totally believe your solid calculations based on … vibe?

    • Blender Dumbass@lm.madiator.cloudOPEnglish
      12·
      4 months ago

      We failed the instance operators if they need to lie about money. What we need to insure is that those people can both run the instance and live a live worth of envy from the money provided by the supporters. Meaning any money above the costs is good money. Any money below the margin of live worthy of envy is not enough money. The line is not at being able to pay for hosting. The line is at live worthy of envy.

  • Diurnambule@jlai.luEnglish
    11·
    4 months ago

    Just to add thing, I personnaly don’t donate regurlarly because I am hosting services from my pocket. Not of his scale for sure but still cost me an average of 30-50€ a month. May be it is a marginal so that why they didn’t think about this answer about not donating.