With this release we fixed a lot of user concerns and federation issues. We also got rid of a big blocker in improving our federation features which can and will be actively worked on in the near future.
Due to the vacation time we took a bit longer for this release, but it is pretty packed as well.

For Users

• Replies to comments are now sorted and filtered correctly. Replies by users blocked by you should not appear anymore via API (they were hidden in the web interface)

• Added options for the new rich content: you can now enable and disable rich renderings of user-mentions, magazine-mentions and AP-content for posts and threads (separately)

• if content you previously bookmarked gets deleted you can now remove the bookmark from it

• The search now uses a ranked search (taking into account how often the search term appears) and also shows magazines and users. Since mbin now only sorts by the creation dates after the rank there is a new option to limit the results by their creation date

• When setting up 2FA the secret string is now displayed additionally to the QR-code for those of you not using a phone for setting it up

• if you post a URL like https://www.some.content/site#scrollTo it will no longer get the hashtag scrollTo assigned to it

• Our create form now has an emoji picker

• Fixed a lot of problems when editing an entry:

  • errors with URL field are now displayed
  • removing and re-adding an image with alt-text is now working

• The number of characters in a post should now be correctly displayed in the UI

• We now show a warning when you're viewing a magazine or user from a defederated instance and prevent you from creating content in such magazines

• On mobile you will see the header crumb now, so it is easy to see on which page you are or which magazine you are looking at

• Edits of the URL or image of a thread now correctly federates

---

For Admins

• Fixed some messenger problems with specific activities
• The db calls made when calling the login page were reduced
• The user list is now sortable and also contains the attitude of a user (percentage of up-votes of all their votes)
• a bit of log cleanup

---

For App and Fediverse Developers

• the EntryRetrieveAPI and the PostRetrieveAPI now have a federation parameter
• the BookmarkListApi now correctly take a list name instead of an id that does not exist
• We added public endpoints to retrieve the admins and global moderators of an instance via /api/users/admins and /api/users/moderators for the API representation of a user or /api/info for the ActivityPub representation of a user
• when authorizing for an app SSO logins should now be working when not already logged in (previously they were not correctly redirected)
• [AP] The ids of activities by mbin users can now actually be fetched and stays the same. On announced activities the id of the announced activity is now also the correct one and not a generated one by mbin. This should have been this way in the first place and took a long while to fix, but we finally did it
• [AP] The url field is no longer used by mbin. Previously we used it like an attached link, but our code never used it and it kind of violated the AP-spec, so we removed it

Then we'll try some microblogs :)

#Test

I recently switched to an AMD GPU and VA-API is the only option for hardware acceleration on linux that is viable. But Handbrake does not support it and it doesn't seem like it will in the foreseeable future, so I am looking for an alternative. Ideally it is just an ffmpeg GUI, but I did not find any that are:

• actually compatible with linux
• updated in the last 5 years
• have an option vor h264_vaapi or hevc_vaapi video codecs

Another workflow I thought about that is not working is transcoding the video, but copy all audio and subtitles and let handbrake handle that, however Handbrake has no option to just copy the video stream...

So far I have tried:

• ffmpeg_batch: wouldn't use my local version of ffmpeg, because of some path error, only works through wine
• qwinff: got it building, but no VA-API codec, and no mkv output support (over 10 years old)
• Shutter Encoder: only works through wine, font problems, no va-api support
• Avidemux: takes forever to open a video clip, more of a video editor, no va-api support
• Hybrid: know it from my windows days, clunky UI, no va-api support, but best candidate for me right now as I could use it to just copy video and handle audio and subtitles in here
• StaxRip: the .7z file could not be extracted, I just got an error

Any ideas or suggestions?

I have reservations of the effect of the scanner cyber gear from the sci fi compendium:

Scanner: This implant senses the composition of known matter or energy up to 50 yards distant. The target does not have to be visible, though certain types of matter or energy may interfere (GM’s call)

If I as a GM rule that it is tied to the notice skill it is not really that powerful and it would have been noted in the ability if that was the intention, but if I take it for what it says, it will be very very strong for "just" 1000$

What do you guys think? How would you interpret the text and do you think it is too powerful?

This release is a bit earlier than usual. The reason for it is our major rewrite of the docker setup. Other than that we have a few bug fixes and translation updates.

For Users

nothing new

For Admins

Docker setup rework

If you are running Mbin via Docker, please read our migration guide (in the PR description) very carefully. The new setup uses base templates from Symfony and frankenphp in conjunction with Caddy. For more changes please have a look at PR 1542

Bug fixes

• the handler for sending application answer mails did not work , fixed now
• a few warnings have been fixed

The v1.8.1 release of mbin brings a lot of bug fixes, UI and documentaion improvements

For Users

Improve light themes

We improved the contrast our light themes have a lot -> they just look better

We fixed a lot with our new inline previews

• We do not just remove a link when we cannot find an activity for it
• if a link contained a title we do not render the preview, but the title instead
• Community links from lemmy sometimes use this syntax: [!community@instance.tld](https://instance.tld/c/community) which our preview parser couldn't handle -> now it can
• All previews are now inlined, so they can be put in brackets for example (they do not take up a whole line anymore):

Always put thumbnails in a lightbox

When you click a thumbnail in a list view, the default behavior is to open that image in a lightbox now. You can disable that new behavior via the appearance settings. If you have this option disabled then clicking on the link will open up the post like it did before

Fix tooltips not working for the appearance settings

Most of the appearance settings have a helptext, which is now displayed again when hovering over the setting.

Blocked or Deleted Users cannot send you private messages anymore

Deleting User Images

When you deleted your avatar or cover it did not properly federate to remote mbin servers, we fixed that

Modlog avatars

The modlog now properly respects the setting for displaying user avatars. You can also disable the "new user" icon in the modlog.

---

For Admins

Nginx documentation updates

New command for removing DMs and ban sending users

As we all have witnessed multiple nicoles in our DMs at this point, we added a command that can search through DMs with a query. Afterwards it will delete the found messages and band the sending user. Have a look at the documentation for more details.

We officially support PHP 8.4

Updated bare metal installation docs

We updated the docs to use the correct way of installing php on debian 12. We also mention installing php 8.4 there.

---

For App Developers

Add Id to push notifications

The push notification payload will now contain the corresponding notification id if there is one

Fix NotificationSettingApi

Previously you would always get a unauthorized response, this is now fixed

Add some endpoints to public access

These endpoints are now publicly accessible:

• /api/info
• /api/instance
• /api/federated
• /api/defederated
• /api/dead

\U+00BD => ½

Union und SPD haben sich mit den Grünen auf ein Milliardenpaket geeinigt. Die Summe für Klimaschutz wird verdoppelt. CDU/CSU stimmt dem Kompromiss zu.

Critics said the new terms implied Mozilla was asking users for the rights to whatever data they input or upload through Firefox.

You can find all of these videos as written articles, plus some extra content, at https://thelibre.news/ You can the channel grow by donating to the following platforms: Paypal: https://paypal.me/ni...

The v1.8.0 release of mbin brings a lot of new features, some of them quite big, so with these release notes I will dive a bit deeper into the bigger features.

For Users

Big new features

Bookmarks

You can now bookmark threads, microblogs and comments. But not just that, you can organize them in different lists.
When looking at a post you have this new bookmark icon next to the boost button:

The bookmark icon can be clicked to add it to your default list. If you don't have a default list, yet, a new one with the name "default" will be created (that can be changed later).
If you have multiple lists you can choose the list to add the bookmark to via the "more" button:
.
If a thread is bookmarked in any list, the icon will be colored orange. Clicking the button will remove the thread from all bookmark lists. In the more menu you can see which list(s) the thread is bookmarked to and remove it from specific lists.

To view the lists and create new ones you click on your user and click the "Bookmark Lists" link.

If you open a list you will see all content from this list combined: threads, microblogs and comments.
A list could look like this:

Notification Settings per User/Magazine/Thread/Microblog

Underneath a user, magazine, thread and microblog you will notice a new widget to set the notification setting:

The settings are (from left to right): muted, default and loud.

Default respects your global notification settings, while the other two modify it. They are processed hierarchically, meaning a muted user commenting on a loud thread which belongs to a muted magazine will not trigger a notification, while a loud or default user would. Another example: a muted thread in a loud magazine will not trigger a notification for new comments unless the commenting user is set to loud.

Inline Previews of linked posts

We added rich rendering of activity pub entities. That may sound very technical, but the gist of it is: if you mention a user or a magazine we will now render a component for it, with the avatar, the name, the hover preview, etc.
We did the same for threads, microblogs and comments. So when you put the "original URL" (ActivityPub id) in your post we will now render an inline preview of that post.

This also allowed us to implement a new appearance setting to always display the domain of users and magazines (two separate settings).

We will change it a bit in v1.8.1 again so the inline previews do only trigger if the link text is the same as the URL, see GitHub Issue 1434.

Smaller features

Improved smartphone / touch experience

You do not have to click on the header of a thread anymore to open the thread, if you're on a touch device. Additionally you can now click on comments to open the page for it.

Related panels now respect the block settings

exactly that.

improved search experience

You can now filter the search results by the magazine it was posted to, the user authoring it and whether it is a thread or a microblog.

Default Sort Option

You can now set a default sort option for the front page and comment pages in your user settings.

---

For App Developers

Bookmark API

This API is tested and finished. The documentation can be found here and here.

Search API

The API gets the new search parameters as well: authorId, magazineId and type (docs).

Notification Settings

This API is not yet tested and will probably get a small revamp in v1.8.1

Nodeinfo endpoints are now available even if federation is disabled

The mbin nodeinfo endpoints (/.well-known/nodeinfo and /nodeinfo/2.1) were not accessible when federation is disabled, removing the only way to tell the mbin version of an instance. This is now fixed.

---

For Admins

Big new features

Signup Requests

You can now activate the new admin setting "New users have to be approved by an admin before they can log in.". After that users will be asked to supply an application text upon registration:

If you have the new signup notifications enabled you will get a link to jump to the new users signup request. Otherwise you can go there from the admin menu.

Smaller features

Signup Notifications

You can now enable/disable signup notifications in your user settings. They are enabled by default.

Image Delete Command

We now have a command to delete older federated images, see docs.

Nginx Config Fine Tuning

We have updated the Nginx config in our docs with an improved regex filter.