To be clear, $3k is an accurate, but unacceptable amount.

As in that's what it's actually costing us, but it's not what it should be costing. I'd imagine more like $250 is what we should be paying if I wasn't using AWS in the silly way I am.

I'm admitting up front that I've been more focused on developing rather than optimising operating costs because I could afford to be a little frivolous with the cost in exchange for not having to worry about doing server stuff.

Even when the Reddit thing happened I was wilfully ignoring it, trying to solve the scaling issues instead of focusing on the increased costs.

And so I didn't notice when Lemmy was pushing a terabyte of data out of the ELB a day. And that's what got me.

About half that $3k is just data transfer costs.

Anyhow the notice was just to let our users know what is going on and that there'll be some maintenance windows in their future so it doesn't surprise anyone.

We have a plan and it will all work out.

Don't panic or have any kneejerk reactions, it's just an FYI.

Just want to say, I don't blame anyone else but myself.

I certainly don't blame anyone at 196.

I hope I'm really clear about that. It's one of the reasons I specifically didn't name 196 in my announcement.

We've got a solution planned, we've already started to implement it and have the image transfer issue solved already.

We can afford to cover this ridiculous AWS bill, I just need to do some maintenance work so this doesn't continue because I can't continue to line Jeff Bezos' pockets like this indefinitely.

So, one thing I'd mention is the systems and admin work involved in running an instance.

This is on top of the community moderation, and involves networking with other instance admins, maintaining good relations, deciding who to defeferate from, dealing with unhappy users, etc.

Then there's the setup and maintenance of the servers, security, hacks, DDoSing, backups, redundancy, monitoring, downtime, diagnosis, fixing performance issues, patching, coding, upgrades etc.

I wouldn't be here doing this without @ada. We make a formidable team, and without any self effacement, we are both at the top of our respective roles with decades of experience.

Big communities also magnify the amount of work involved. We're almost at the point where we are starting to consider getting additional people involved.

Moreover we're both here for the long haul, with the willingness and ability to personally cover the shortfall in hosting costs.

I'm not trying to convince you to stay here. But in addition to free hardware, you're going to need a small staff to do these things for you, so my advice is to work out if you have reliable AND trustworthy people (because these people will have access to confidential user data) who are committed to do this work long term with you. Where will you be in 3 years, 5, 10?

I think it's because a lot of her fans were like "hang on, she's just misunderstood, she's not really transphobic, just doesn't want those fake transes going into women's spaces", and Rowling kept it pretty vague, open for misinterpretation, not really ever able to be pinned down as actually being provably transphobic in the minds of many.

But something happened recently and it tipped her over the edge, from keeping her donations low key and her transphobia aimed at the theoretical "not really a woman 'trans-identified-male' boogeyman-woman" (who doesn't really exist), to outright making open donations to anti-trans groups and attacking real trans women.

All the sudden her supporters are like... Wait, this is not who we thought you meant… Where are these scary men? The ones invading women's spaces that you were talking about?

I also agree.

While I couldn't care less (it's their body and bodily autonomy is super important to me), I'd be a little hurt if they didn't tell me about it.

In that case I'd be more interested in talking to my partner to try and understand why they felt that they couldn't talk to me about it and needed to keep it a secret.

Oh goodness, why is this so funny? lol.

We have already begun moving, and this announcement was to warn our users about future downtime as we migrate more critical services like databases etc.

You are actually a little bit correct.

Most uses of the misnomer "transphobia" are actually incorrect, because the people involved aren't actually suffering from an irrational medical or psychological fear of transgender people.

What they actually are doing is more accurately called "transmisia", because they are transmisic. This means they are heavily prejudiced against transgender women and believe that they shouldn't be involved in the competitions.

Their reason for this are not because the transgender women don't meet the beauty standards, or aren't passing the judging categories, but because they just don't want them there purely due to their trans-mysogynistic preconceptions.

I used to be on patches (until they became hard to get), not pills, so I can't really compare, but I have observed that since I started injectable E, the effectiveness has increased noticeably.

That said, at least here in Queensland, the availability of prescriptions for injectable esters other than valerate here is next to impossible, and even then convincing your doctor to prescribe valerate is really hard.

I would point out that piracy is against our ToS, so we wouldn't tolerate hosting piracy subs ourselves.

I had emergency cosmetic surgery after my accident and remember up to the anaesthesia counting down from ten to about four, and then waking up afterwards.

We aren't defeferated from them. That's different from hosting that content ourselves though.

I'm not personally against piracy, however hosting that kind of content here ourselves would put our primary reason for creating this space (that of providing a safe social space for trans and LGBTQIA+ people) at risk.

I just wanted to point that out before we get a whole bunch of piracy subs created on our instance that we'd have to remove.

I asked my AI and that was its thought also.

I would like to acknowledge here that Ada and I, while being part of a marginalized community are both still very privileged.

I also want to make clear that I'm not saying that you need to have decades of experience, or the means to cover the costs by yourself, but rather wanted to point out it's a hard job and you need to have (multiple, qualified) people to do the job for a larger instance. There may also be times when the donations don't 100% cover the costs, and you'll need to have a plan when this happens.

Unfortunately multiply intersectional marginalized people have a lot harder time getting that experience and to have a means to fund such instances. It can additonally be a lot harder for them to find opportunities to gain this experience.

If you do find yourself in a similar situation, and would like an opportunity to gain some experience/training in a LGBTQIA+ / neuro-diverse / marginalized people-friendly community project, please message myself or @ada and we may be able to help.

Done!