An update:

  • fmhy.ml is gone, due to the ongoing fiasco with mali government taking all their .ml domains back
  • As such, lemmy.fmhy.ml is also gone, we are currently exploring ways to refederate (or somehow restart federation entirely) without breaking anything substantial
  • We have backups, so don’t worry about data loss (you can view them on other instances anyway)

Currently, we have fmhy.net and are exploring options to somehow migrate, thank you for your patience.

162 points

Man this is all so interesting to see so many unique situations testing the Fediverse to see how it holds up.

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46 points

let’s hope they’re interesting because it’s novel and the problems were there with other solutions just solved ages ago rather than the alternative: “so many unique situations” because there are a litany of “oops didn’t think of that” moments that will continue to crop up

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5 points

IMO the real takeaway is that a big instance disappeared overnight and yet here we all are on the fediverse talking about it.

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75 points
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WIll this also affect all other .ml domains? Or is this some anti-piracy thing? (I don’t know fmhy, but from the name I guess it’s about piracy.)

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74 points

It seems to be Mali just wanting their domains back, in which case it’s uncertain times for all .ml domains.

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57 points
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75 points

Good thing join-lemmy is safely tucked away in a .org domain.

This is extremely bad timing for Lemmy (if it ends up happening), but also a good example of how federation makes the entire social media landscape more robust. Had this happened to a centralized service it would be devastating.

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9 points

lemmy.ml is still up as of right now. Possibly they contracted a subscription to the domain name to keep it up. They had to do something to retain it otherwise the site would be unreachable. If lemmy.ml does have to change names it will be a hassle since I’ve got a good number of community subscriptions there.

This wouldn’t happen to an instance with a regularly subscribed domain name. Problem is the .ml domains were free and the associated country decided to claim them back. The risk of using a free top level domain is something that should have been considered. I don’t think it’s worth the risk versus the cost savings considering how difficult it is to migrate a Lemmy instance.

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-9 points

It’s just the domain, though. That’s not a big deal to change.

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12 points

Shall I make an account in another instance?

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20 points
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Never hurts. Could be a good opportunity to look around the threadiverse and see if you find anything interesting.

However, as it only affects the domain, I expect the Lemmy developers will manage to migrate user data to the new domain should lemmy.ml go down. So your account won’t just disappear, but it might go down for a while. It might also affect communities hosted on .ml domains, as followers from other instances will not have the correct path any more.

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4 points

I’ve migrated from fmhy to feddit.uk, luckily my subscriptions were on a cached web page soon was able to manually re-subscribe.

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0 points

Nope. Domains don’t store data. They can change domain and keep all the data.

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27 points
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I understand it as the Mali government is taking back all the domains after a subletting contract ran out. A lot of sensitive emails that should go to .mil (US military) has been typo-sent to .ml-addresses instead. Here’s some more reading.

(I am very tired here and might have misunderstood everything, please correct me if I am wrong)

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15 points

Perhaps the military should have a system in place to not allow emails to be sent outside of very specific TLDs if it’s that sensitive? And perhaps have an automated contact book, instead of relying on someone typing out the to: address manually to be able to make that mistake in the first place?

Seems like some very basic security measures for something so serious.

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4 points
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This says that they block outgoing mail to .ml domains from its network.

https://domainincite.com/28897-freenom-is-losing-another-cctld-after-collecting-military-emails

Edit: wrong link

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4 points

Internally they do block that but the problem are people outside the network sending something to a .mil address and mistyping.

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3 points

For most situations, there is a global address list that members can use. There are instances where emails need to be sent outside of the .mil domain though, such as to other government agencies that use a .gov, or to contractors on commercial domains, as well as to partner nations that will be on their own countries’ domains.

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1 point

Yeah that’s super easy to integrate. I used to work in cyber security for a bank and even I was only allowed to send to internal domains initially. I had to file for exceptions for contractors and vendors and stuff.

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64 points

Lemmy has had such a crazy month and a half. Insane growth, XSS injections, DDOS attacks, admin takeover, domain name seizures. What a wild ride

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26 points

My boy Lemmy is growing up!

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10 points
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and still better than using official Reddit app (and still better than Reddit overall) lol

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10 points

Welcome to the real world

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8 points

And we’re still here, going strong. Long live the Fediverse.

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7 points

What’s this about an admin takeover?

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4 points

I think they are referring to this

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8 points

oh, the XSS injection? I thought it would be some admins fighting over who owned the instance or something like that lol

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5 points
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That’s how every service starts. Let’s keep going

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3 points

Facts. And such drama does make Lemmy more appealing in a way

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41 points

Posting here for visibility as I guess most people on Lemmy are not on Firefish/Mastodon

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32 points

glad to see them not go down the vlemmy path

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19 points

What happened to vlemmy?

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27 points
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Nobody really knows for sure. It just sort of disappeared one day with no warning.

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5 points

Is this going to be an unsolved mystery of the Internet? A spooky Fediverse legend?

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18 points

Yes, that’s reassuring. Also, nice to see their main website, I never actually noticed it existed

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8 points

Damn, lemmy.zip, eh? If that instance is public, I don’t see that being a good thing.

Tons of businesses, people, etc, are all banning .zip and .mov TLDs for security purposes. I’ve personally banned all those domains from my network as well.

Bold move.

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2 points

What’s the issue with those TLDs?

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17 points

See https://youtu.be/GCVJsz7EODA and https://youtu.be/V82lHNsSPww

There are a few problems, but I believe the biggest issue is that .zip and .mov are valid and common file extensions, and it’s common for people to write something like ‘example dot zip’ or ‘attachment dot mov’ in emails, tweets, etc. Things like email clients have features where they automatically convert text that looks like a web address into clickable links. So now, retroactively, all those emails etc suddenly have a link, where they used to just have text, and the domains that are equivalent to those previously benign file names are being purchased by nefarious actors to exploit people unaware of the issue.

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4 points

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/23/e/future-exploitation-vector-file-extensions-as-top-level-domains.html

Actually really huge security threats. It’s a very good idea to block them. I especially did because my girlfriend works for the government and does some secret stuff that can’t really get out, and she deals with a ton of real .zip files. I think everyone regardless of who they are should make sure to block them.

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1 point

i don’t doubt there have been a lot of cases of those tlds used for scams but i haven’t been negatively effected by this instances domain name.

feel free to read the discussion about it here though

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2 points

I can’t open that link because I block .zip domains lol

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