Have you not registered yet? Fool! Don’t miss out!

Click here to sign up to The Button!

The Button returns for Season 5 on Friday 25th September, with chat opening at 12:00 UTC and the game kicking off at 19:00 UTC.

You can pre-register now for a small bonus when the game goes live, plus start sharing your referral code now to start building up additional bonuses when the game starts.

Hope to see you there :)

Sign up now! Click here!

Stop right there, criminal scum!

Welcome to Lemmy.zip’s September update. Nobody breaks the law on my watch! I’m confiscating your stolen goods. Now read this update post, or it’s off to jail.

-> RESIST ARREST <-

THEN PAY WITH YOUR BLOOD

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Server updates

I just want to say thank you to everyone who responded to last month’s call for donations. It was a great response, and helps to keep this social media free for everyone.

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This month, INeedMana has been busy keeping the server updated and making improvements to the infrastructure, tidying up processes and un-breaking my changes. It all helps to keep the services able to run long-term and efficiently. We even fixed a bug that prevented embeds from working properly!

---

Throughout August, Lemmy.zip was going swimmingly well up until Sunday 30th, when it decided to fall over in the most obscure way.

Following a slow-down in the UI, a restart of services triggered a latent docker bug. This in turn killed the Lemmy services off, which all started returning 504 errors, or loading the pages very, very slowly (upwards of 60 seconds if it didn’t time out). The API was also down now, so mobile apps stopped working.

After around two hours of debugging, I tried the ultimate fix, one that has never failed me and has always had a 100% success rate. I turned it off and back on again.

Good news, when it restarted we were no longer getting 504 errors! Sadly, we were now getting 502 errors instead. Excusemewhatisgoingon.jpeg

I had solved the pesky 504 error by instead making the UI impossible to access. Thankfully, the API was inexplicably back up (if verrrrrrrry sloOoOoOooOooOOOOw) which was both helpful and also completely baffling as to what the issue could be. I had no idea why the error we were seeing before the reboot had completely changed, and suddenly the API that wasn’t working was now working fine.

This ruled out DNS (it’s always DNS), nginx (despite me spending two hours debugging our nginx configs), the postgres database, the pict-rs service, heck I even tried the email service just to be sure.

Somehow, Lemmy was answering API requests, the database was nearly idle, the UI container was actually still serving pages to anyone who could figure out how to get there. Every part of the service was in perfect working order. Except it wasn’t working.

By this point I had eliminated so many possibilities I was drifting towards the only reasonable explanation left: I had personally offended the god(s) of networking.

Suddenly, I noticed something that didn’t quite look right - docker.

More specifically, on the version of docker we were on, it gives each container a MAC address derived from the container’s IP address. At some point, somehow, while trying to work out why the UI wasn’t quite playing nicely, I had triggered a bug that gave two containers in the docker network the same MAC address. Before rebooting, I have no idea which two containers this was, but the error persisted over a reboot. When the server rebooted, every container came back in a different order and got shuffled a new IP, while keeping the MAC address from its old one.

Eventually I narrowed it down to the UI container and the internal proxy. So when the proxy yelled “WHO HAS 172.20.0.6?” into the void, the answer that came back was its own MAC address. It had spent the entire afternoon posting every single page request to itself, then waiting 60 seconds for a reply from a container that was, tragically, also itself.

For once, it wasn’t DNS. It was ARP. You remember ARP exists, right? Because I didn’t.

The fix in the end was to force the lemmy UI off the docker network, and reconnect it with a different fixed IP, which forced docker to derive a fresh MAC (and then restarting the nginx proxy so it picked up the change).

And then everything came back up like nothing had ever been wrong. Fab.

And that’s how I spent a Sunday afternoon.

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Please Don’t Be a Lurker!

If you’re new here - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

Just one small teeny-tiny request. The greatest gift you can give Lemmy.zip and Piefed.zip isn’t money, praise, or a gif of you pronouncing gif wrong by saying gif instead of gif… maybe. Its participation.

Upvote the things you like. Start a discussion, debate, or just post the same meme of a disappointed cat over and over and over and over and over and over and over and so on… Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits your oddly specific niche obsession. (We don’t judge. Well, we try not to judge anyway.)

The fediverse naturally ebbs and flows, tides of people come and go. But if you’ve found yourself oddly attached to this strange little corner of the internet? Wonderful. Help it breathe. Help it grow. Help it be just a tiny bit weirder in the best possible way.

So if you’ve gone to the effort of clicking Sign Up and proving you’re not a robot (unless you are, in which case hello and welcome to our new AI overlords), then please, I beg of you:

Stick around. Add your voice. It really does make this place better.

---

Donations

Want to support us? We have a range of donation options to suit you!

Liberpay (Card, Paypal)

Liberpay is our newest donation method. You can donate with Paypal or with a card. The link is https://liberapay.com/dotzip

OpenCollective (Card)

Our classic donation option, but only supports card payments. The link is https://opencollective.com/lemmyzip

If you’re enjoying Lemmy.zip or Piefed.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the sites and keeping the virtual lights on.

Ko-Fi (Card, Paypal)

We also have our Ko-Fi page if you’d rather use this site, which also supports Paypal and Card payments.

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Le Graph

Piefed.zip

CPU:

RAM:

Usage right now:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

Traffic:

Lemmy.zip

CPU:

RAM:

Here’s a random graph i thought looked cool:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

Traffic:

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Anyway that’s all for this month. I have slightly lost the plot today, so I am now off to bed.

As always, let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see in these updates, always happy to build it in.

Speak soon.

Demigodrick

Hello all!

Welcome to .zip’s August Server update. Sorry I missed July’s, it has been a busy couple of months.

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Server updates

One important thing, and my least favourite to talk about, is donations. Hosting costs have shot up again following the further the ever-growing AI bubble stealing all the RAM, and so we’re barely, if at all now, breaking even. There is more information in the donation section below, but if you truly value your online privacy and social media spaces free from corporate interests and advertising, please consider a small donation.

Also, The Button had it’s 4th season! It lasted over 60 hours, the longest every season, and Red had an absolutely resounding win this time around! If you’re interested in playing a silly web game with your fellow fediverse users, please keep an eye on the community: [email protected]

Finally, we have a new Admin joining the Team for Piefed.zip and Lemmy.zip - @[email protected] / @[email protected]. They’ll be helping us to moderate the sites!

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At the end of July, we saw a massive scraping attack (we assume) hitting Piefed.zip quite hard, enough to start timing the site out and effectively DDOS’ing the server. In order to combat this, we’ve been playing with the Cloudflare managed challenge. In the process of this, I did manage to temporarily break frontends, then mobile apps, but thankfully it’s all in place now and appears to be working well. You’ll see the jump in traffic in the graphs further down.

We also fixed a bug I had introduced in the Nginx config by putting my own CSR headers in. This was preventing embeds from Youtube etc from displaying. This is resolved now, but please do let us know if you do notice anything like this not working.

---

We applied the latest Lemmy updated, 0.19.19-jemalloc, which included a fix to memory allocation. Since this, we’ve seen a measured performance improvement and smaller use of RAM, which is really positive. (there is a version 0.19.20 but this is just 0.19.19-jemalloc so we’ve not bothered)

---

Please Don’t Be a Lurker!

If you’re new here - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

Just one small teeny-tiny request. The greatest gift you can give Lemmy.zip and Piefed.zip isn’t money, praise, or a piece of moon rock you hijacked from a fallen alien starship… maybe. Its participation.

Upvote the things you like. Start a discussion, debate, or just post the same meme of a disappointed cat over and over and over and over and over and over and over and so on… Make new communities if you don’t see one that fits your oddly specific niche obsession. (We don’t judge. Well, we try not to judge anyway.)

The fediverse naturally ebbs and flows, tides of people come and go. But if you’ve found yourself oddly attached to this strange little corner of the internet? Wonderful. Help it breathe. Help it grow. Help it be just a tiny bit weirder in the best possible way.

So if you’ve gone to the effort of clicking Sign Up and proving you’re not a robot (unless you are, in which case hello and welcome to our new AI overlords), then please, I beg of you:

Stick around. Add your voice. It really does make this place better.

---

Donations

As alluded to above, the price of the servers has once again increased. Boo.

This does mean we need to ask again that any amount, even a small amount, you can safely and comfortably spare, please consider donating to us.

All donations go 100% towards server hosting costs. DotZip Ltd is a non-profit set up entirely to manage the sites, and exists solely to ensure donations are legally spent in the best possible way for the running of the sites.

Costs include the domains, the server hosting, image hosting, backups, email, and others.

Liberpay (Card, Paypal)

Liberpay is our newest donation method. You can donate with Paypal or with a card. The link is https://liberapay.com/dotzip

OpenCollective (Card)

Our classic donation option, but only supports card payments. The link is https://opencollective.com/lemmyzip

If you’re enjoying Lemmy.zip or Piefed.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the sites and keeping the virtual lights on.

Ko-Fi (Card, Paypal)

We also have our Ko-Fi page if you’d rather use this site, which also supports Paypal and Card payments.

---

Graphs

Piefed.zip

CPU over 7 days:

RAM over last 7 days:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Regions:

Lemmy.zip

CPU over 30 days:

RAM over 30 days:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Visitors:

Regions:

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That’s all for this month - hopefully next month’s is on time!

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments :)

Thanks

Demigodrick

The Button: Season 4 Full Recap

Before we jump in, I just want to say thank you to every single person who came along and played a very silly button clicking game.

Special thanks to @[email protected] for helping me with early testing too!

If there’s any other stats you want to see, please let me know in the comments!

---

• Theme: Fishing / The Harbour
• Button went live: 24 July 2026, 19:00 UTC
• Season ended: 27 July 2026, 07:42:09 UTC
• Button-game length: 60 hours, 42 minutes
• Registered players: 158 across 42 instances
• Winner: 🦀 Crab Crew (Red) with 49.7% of all timer control

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How Season 4 actually ended

Not on a quiet timer. Season 4 was killed on purpose, in 81 seconds.

At 07:40:47 a Leviathan slipped back into the deep, the fourth escape in a row, and battered the button for another 100 health. That was the last of it. One second later the fifth Corrupted Heart of the season fired: two hours on the doom clock, a cleansing price of 600 health worth of fish, and the rule everyone had learned the hard way, that every press of the button steals 30 seconds off the clock and drags the port closer to the end.

Seven players took that as an invitation.

Between 07:40:48 and 07:42:10, they threw 242 presses into the dark. 241 of them were banked bonus presses, hoarded over days of faction press drops and monster kills and finally spent all at once. Two hours of doom clock burned away in a minute and twenty-one seconds.

Player	Faction	Presses in the last 81 seconds
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	133
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	33
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	27
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	23
@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	22
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	3
@[email protected]	Squid Squad	1

suborange, mid-execution, in #main: “All of the sudden I decided to go vegan.” And then: “No more fishing for me!”

The last press belonged to @[email protected]. The clock hit zero at 07:42:10.

---

Faction standings

Control is measured by how long each crew held the timer - Red pressed the most and held the most.

Rank	Crew	Control	Time held	Presses	Members
🥇	🦀 Crab Crew (Red)	49.7%	30h 10m	4,409	34
🥈	🦑 Squid Squad (Blue)	17.4%	10h 34m	1,556	39
🥉	🐟 Guppy Gang (Green)	17.2%	10h 26m	2,062	30
4th	🐡 Puffer Pals (Purple)	15.7%	9h 32m	722	35

Presses per active presser: Red 147.0, Green 85.9, Blue 48.6, Purple 24.9.

Blue had the biggest roster and the second-most control with the third-fewest presses per head, which is the most efficient conversion of the season. Red simply out-pressed everyone by a factor of three.

Unspent presses at the buzzer, by crew: Red 4,957, Green 2,632, Blue 1,695, Purple 1,461. Across the whole port, 12,589 banked bonus presses were still sitting unused when the season ended, spread across 157 players. Red’s stockpile alone could have held the timer for another ten hours.

Crew contributions elsewhere

Crew	Catches	Weight	Legendaries	Harpoon strikes	Damage dealt	Tide healed
Crab Crew	25,937	135.9 t	3,595	27,915	2,006,874	5,526
Guppy Gang	17,819	106.0 t	2,611	17,893	1,335,043	4,114
Puffer Pals	16,987	97.4 t	2,369	15,650	916,540	2,767
Squid Squad	12,411	63.0 t	976	13,624	757,700	2,849

Red won the Tide as well: the most button health restored of any crew.

---

The Button

Top 15 pressers

#	Player	Crew	Presses
1	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	419
2	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	379
3	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	354
4	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	317
5	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	316
6	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	310
7	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	286
8	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	277
9	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	253
10	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	249
11	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	235
12	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	218
13	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	210
14	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	194
15	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	187

Button records

• First press of the season: @[email protected], at 19:00:06 on 24 July. Six seconds after the button went live.
• Fastest reaction: @[email protected], 5 milliseconds after a reset.
• Closest save: @[email protected] at 06:49:43 on 27 July, with 1.095 seconds left on the clock. Runner-up: @[email protected] with 1.692 seconds, and again with 3.381 seconds. @[email protected] pulled two saves under 2.4 seconds inside 41 minutes on the 26th.
• Last press: @[email protected], timer at zero.
• Median press: with 886.9 seconds still on the clock, meaning the typical press was a comfortable one and the drama lived in the tails.

When the port pressed

Busiest hours (UTC): 21:00 (946 presses), 20:00 (844), 19:00 (780). Quietest: 09:00 (74). European evening was prime time, and the 04:00 and 06:00 spikes are the overnight rescue crew keeping the lights on.

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Fishing

73,154 catches. 402.3 tonnes of fish. 115 anglers.

Rarity	Catches	Share	Total weight
Rare	23,259	31.8%	96.4 t
Uncommon	21,454	29.3%	22.1 t
Junk	14,580	19.9%	21.9 t
Legendary	9,551	13.1%	260.8 t
Common	4,310	5.9%	1.1 t

70,905 fish were sold. 2,249 were still in someone’s bucket at the end.

Top 15 anglers

#	Player	Crew	Catches	Weight	Legendaries
1	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	3,900	29.5 t	778
2	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	3,346	18.2 t	639
3	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	3,194	23.0 t	681
4	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	3,065	17.4 t	530
5	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,766	14.3 t	560
6	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,178	12.0 t	328
7	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	2,149	10.7 t	328
8	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,096	12.0 t	478
9	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	2,088	14.6 t	232
10	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	2,051	14.0 t	322
11	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	1,960	15.3 t	396
12	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	1,944	8.4 t	224
13	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	1,806	8.6 t	308
14	@[email protected]	Squid Squad	1,756	8.8 t	79
15	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	1,635	10.4 t	299

The big one

🦣 The Behemoth, 272.398 kg, landed by @[email protected] at 06:55 on the final morning. It stood as the season record for 47 minutes before the world ended.

The top ten heaviest catches of the season were all Behemoths, running from 272.4 kg down to 249.3 kg. alfredolin and terrance both appear twice.

Species records

Every species record holder, by weight:

Species	Rarity	Record weight	Holder
🦣 The Behemoth	Legendary	272.40 kg	@[email protected]
🐳 The Whale	Legendary	169.47 kg	@[email protected]
🧜 Wasteland Mermaid	Legendary	66.24 kg	@[email protected]
🐊 Vault Croc	Legendary	60.30 kg	@[email protected]
🚢 Ghost Galleon	Legendary	32.01 kg	@[email protected]
🐬 Phantom Dolphin	Rare	23.82 kg	@[email protected]
🦈 Rad-Shark	Rare	19.28 kg	@[email protected]
🦭 Rust Seal	Rare	16.84 kg	@[email protected]
🐙 Kraken Hatchling	Legendary	14.89 kg	@[email protected]
🐢 Wasteland Turtle	Rare	12.14 kg	@[email protected]
🐟 Trench Anglerfish	Legendary	10.95 kg	@[email protected]
🦦 Atomic Otter	Rare	10.21 kg	@[email protected]
🐟 Irradiated Ray	Rare	9.48 kg	@[email protected]
🐦‍⬛ The Corvid	Legendary	9.00 kg	@[email protected]
🐙 Sewer Octopus	Rare	8.40 kg	@[email protected]
🦑 Glowing Squid	Rare	6.20 kg	@[email protected]
🐟 Beacon Tuna	Rare	5.99 kg	@[email protected]
🦞 Junk Lobster	Uncommon	3.86 kg	@[email protected]
🪸 Moonshade Manta	Rare	3.46 kg	@[email protected]
🐠 Bog Carp	Uncommon	3.08 kg	@[email protected]
🐟 Sewer Salmon	Uncommon	2.74 kg	@[email protected]
🦀 Storm Crab	Rare	2.74 kg	@[email protected]
🐠 Sunfin	Uncommon	2.32 kg	@[email protected]
🐍 Mutant Eel	Uncommon	2.01 kg	@[email protected]
🐍 Lighthouse Eel	Uncommon	1.99 kg	@[email protected]
🐡 Reef Pirate	Rare	1.97 kg	@[email protected]
🐠 Driftwood Pike	Uncommon	1.74 kg	@[email protected]

The Dex

@[email protected] was the first player in the harbour’s history to complete the Fishing Dex, at 04:09 on 25 July, roughly nine hours into the button game. 34 players eventually filled all 40 species. Another 9 finished on 39, one species short.

The rarest thing in the game was not a fish. It was patience.

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Gold and the shop

476,701 gold passed through the shop. 79,591 gold was still in pockets at the end.

Item	Purchases	Gold spent	Buyers
Harpoon upgrade	697	281,154	85
Council tithe	1,285	71,945	52
Faction press drop	548	61,565	53
Spinach	439	17,648	61
Quick reel	278	15,306	48
Bountiful tide	162	10,942	41
Summon sea monster	40	11,740	17
Banner message	143	4,567	23
Reveal next monster	41	1,134	24
Celebration	141	700	36

The single most expensive purchase of the season was a harpoon upgrade at 3,200 gold.

Faction press drops by crew: Red 269, Green 141, Blue 77, Purple 61. This is the direct explanation for Red’s press dominance and for the 12,589 presses left unspent: Red bought so many drops that its quiet members ended the season sitting on 245 presses each without ever clicking anything.

Richest at the buzzer

#	Player	Crew	Gold
1	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	12,063
2	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	10,029
3	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	6,344
4	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	4,422
5	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	4,274
6	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	2,845
7	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,299
8	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,268
9	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	1,613
10	@[email protected]	Squid Squad	1,594

Biggest spenders

macallan (26,347), yetanotheruser (25,320), almost1337 (23,339), alfredolin (22,857), sebas (22,313), deebster (19,499), tikiporch (19,027), w3dd1e (18,892).

Highest harpoon level reached: 20, by @[email protected] and @[email protected]. 65 players never upgraded past level 1.

---

Sea monsters

63 encounters. 29 slain. 33 escaped. 1 bought off. 75,082 harpoon strikes. 5,016,157 total damage.

Most damage dealt

#	Player	Crew	Strikes	Damage
1	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	5,758	637,448
2	@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	4,087	437,260
3	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	3,395	304,841
4	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	2,992	268,625
5	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,551	260,473
6	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	2,585	242,821
7	@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	2,137	239,377
8	@[email protected]	Squid Squad	3,025	225,807
9	@[email protected]	Crab Crew	3,684	207,621
10	@[email protected]	Squid Squad	2,529	171,519

Killing blows

Four players tied on 3 kills each: @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] and @[email protected]. alfredolin and pokeman took 2 apiece. Thirteen more players landed one.

Hardest kill: the Avenging Armada, 3,000,000 HP, finished by @[email protected]. Biggest single strike: 165 damage by @[email protected]. Critical strikes: only 32 in the entire season, for 1,958 damage. Crits unlocked with the Grand Bazaar’s second milestone, and every last one of them landed between 07:30:52 and 07:40:24 on the final morning, on a Leviathan that escaped anyway, four minutes before the world ended.

Monster HP scaled with the kill streak, and the port’s success ate it alive. The first megalodon of the game had 700 HP. The last had 96,159. By the 26th the harbour was losing more monsters than it landed, and each escape smashed the button’s health, which is exactly how the Corrupted Heart kept coming back.

---

The Blockade trilogy

Part 1: The Pirate Flagship (25 July, 19:51 UTC)

1,000,000 HP, and a ransom option at 20,000 gold. The port took one look at the hull and reached for its wallet.

The Town Council emptied its coffers eight times over, 2,500 gold a motion, and the bay reopened at 20:25, thirty-four minutes after the sails appeared. Total paid: 20,870 gold, of which 20,000 came from the council war chest and 870 from individual pockets. @[email protected] gave the most and drove the whole operation.

Part 2: The Flagship Returns (26 July, 11:35 UTC)

“The captain counted your last ransom and liked the weight of it.” Same 1,000,000 HP, ransom raised to 50,000 gold. Not one coin was paid.

The council went to war instead: powder kegs for 5,000 instant damage, boarding parties dropping harpoon cooldown to one second, grapeshot for +50% damage, privateer’s bounty paying 2 gold a strike. 40 minutes and 43 seconds later the flagship was on the seabed. @[email protected] struck the killing blow. 27 hunters split the pot.

Part 3: The Avenging Armada (26 July, 21:43 UTC)

“You killed their captain, and the whole fleet has come to collect.”

3,000,000 HP. A four-hour clock. A ransom priced at 200,000 gold, which was never a real offer. And a new mechanic: every minute the armada lived, it stole presses from the port’s biggest hoarders. Failure meant losing every bonus press, every coin of gold and every scrap in the harbour.

The port paid 570 gold in gestures at a 200,000 gold ransom, laughed, and then killed it in 1 hour 43 minutes, well inside the clock. @[email protected] landed the final harpoon. The armada dragged 515 presses to the bottom with it on the way down.

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The Corrupted Heart

Five times the button’s health hit zero. Five times the heart turned black and started a two-hour countdown, with every press stealing another 30 seconds and only fish able to break the curse. The price went up each time.

#	Corrupted at (UTC)	Cleanse price	Cleansed at	Time taken
1	26 July 10:38:58	200 health	10:41:12	2m 14s
2	26 July 16:40:33	300 health	16:41:34	1m 01s
3	26 July 18:40:42	400 health	18:42:09	1m 27s
4	26 July 20:05:35	500 health	20:08:51	3m 16s
5	27 July 07:40:48	600 health

The second cleanse is the single most impressive thing the port did all season: 300 health worth of fish poured into the dark in sixty-one seconds. Across the season the harbour healed 211 hearts’ worth of corruption.

The button’s health chart tells the story of the last two days: comfortable in the 180s and 190s on the 24th, sagging through the 25th, and from the 26th onward a sawtooth between 0 and 80 as the monsters escaped faster than the fish could come in.

Peak concurrent players: 45, hit twice: on the afternoon of 25 July and again on the evening of the 26th.

---

Mega-projects

Three harbour-wide builds, all three completed, each one faster than the last.

Project	Goal	Donors	Started	Completed	Build time
🗼 The Grand Lighthouse	150,000	43	26 Jul 07:22	26 Jul 16:06	8h 44m
⚓ The Deepwater Drydock	200,000	38	26 Jul 17:34	27 Jul 02:41	9h 07m
🏺 The Grand Bazaar	400,000	8	27 Jul 05:54	27 Jul 06:44	49 minutes

The Lighthouse and Drydock were community efforts: 43 and 38 donors, 89,123 gold and 26,092 scrap between them.

The Grand Bazaar was something else entirely. Eight donors. Two of them, @[email protected] (198 presses) and @[email protected] (150 presses), dumped 348 banked presses into it for 348,000 of the 400,000 points needed. A project designed to take a day was finished before breakfast.

Top donors

Lighthouse: yetanotheruser (13,940), tarball (13,437), alfredolin (12,736), sebas (12,535), bobtimus_prime (7,600), deebster (7,600), lnxtx (7,170), dunstabzugshaubitze (5,948).

Drydock: yetanotheruser (30,000), svc (20,470), macallan (19,649), sebas (16,540), rajtinka (16,477), cooperredarmydog (15,121), alfredolin (9,705), m_f (9,123).

Bazaar: simpliston (198,399), patrickyaa (152,362), fleece (16,477), bobtimus_prime (12,854), freeman (9,525), svc (6,650), demigodrick (2,813), deebster (1,000).

@[email protected] topped both of the projects that were open to everyone. The season’s most consistent public servant.

---

The Town Council

21 terms. 94 seats filled. 461 motions. 407 passed. An 88% pass rate, which is either admirable consensus or a rubber stamp, depending on which crew you asked.

Most seats served

Player	Crew	Terms
@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	10
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	4
@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	4
@[email protected]	Squid Squad	4
@[email protected]	Squid Squad	4
@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	4

sebas held a seat for ten of the season’s twenty-one councils, and nobody else broke five.

Most motions proposed

Player	Motions	Passed
@[email protected]	105	96
@[email protected]	60	59
@[email protected]	53	49
@[email protected]	44	39
@[email protected]	24	24
@[email protected]	24	23

almost1337 went 24 for 24. Not a single failed motion all season.

Most-used powers

High Tide passed 167 times (and failed 15). Brown Envelope 87. Fishmonger’s Sale 48. Lucky Tides 34. Scrap Rain 17. The war powers only came out when pirates were in the bay: Boarding Party 14, Grapeshot 14, War Chest 8, Privateer’s Bounty 6, Powder Kegs 2.

14,515 faction points were spent on passed motions. 1,285 council tithes were paid, at a cost of 71,945 gold.

---

Voyages and the Galleon

1,537 voyages launched. 34,743 fish landed at sea. 131,026 gold hauled home. 33 ships were still out on the water when the season ended, and they are still out there.

Tier	Voyages	Gold
Coastal	624	30,784
Open Sea	484	44,828
Deep Trench	429	55,414

Voyage-only species dominated the catch log. The Beacon Tuna (4,491), Pearl Diver (4,462) and Lighthouse Eel (3,686) were the three most-caught fish of the entire season, and none of them can be caught from the dock.

1,551 voyage events fired at sea. 1,374 were answered by a captain; 177 were left to resolve themselves while nobody was looking. The port’s instinct, when the sea offered a choice, was overwhelmingly to take the cautious option. The two exceptions were Kraken Shallows (83 chose to sneak past versus 46 who fought) and Rogue Wave (68 chose to ride it out versus 35 who turned into it).

Shipwrights

68 players built a full boat in the workshop. 25 went further and assembled all five Masterwork Parts found at sea to earn the ⚓ Master Ship Builder badge.

First five to launch a Masterwork Galleon:

1. @[email protected], 25 July 06:54
2. @[email protected], 25 July 14:54
3. @[email protected], 25 July 17:18
4. @[email protected], 25 July 17:34
5. @[email protected], 25 July 18:25

Only 179 Masterwork Parts were ever pulled out of the sea, across 1,537 voyages.

Most voyages: deebster (79), sebas (77), yetanotheruser (71), alfredolin (64), macallan (51).

---

The Bounty Board

238 bounties taken, 197 completed, 54,980 gold paid out. An 83% completion rate.

Player	Taken	Completed	Gold
@[email protected]	15	14	3,960
@[email protected]	12	12	3,690
@[email protected]	13	12	3,780
@[email protected]	11	11	3,600
@[email protected]	13	10	2,750
@[email protected]	13	10	2,540
@[email protected]	10	10	3,180

The board’s most-taken contract was Sell Gold (68 picks). The best-paying was Monster Damage: 35 picks, 14,080 gold. Every single Rares, Legendaries and RPS Wins bounty taken was completed.

---

The Atlas Chain

The season’s twelve-step puzzle, running from a morse-code message to a moral choice at a lighthouse.

20 players finished it. 54 more started and stopped at step 1.

@[email protected] won the Lantern’s Hour, relighting the Forgotten Tide beacon at 22:17:02 on 24 July, three hours and seventeen minutes after the season began.

First three finishers, all within six minutes of each other:

1. @[email protected], 22:19:16
2. @[email protected], 22:21:00
3. @[email protected], 22:25:37

The final choice

At the end, each solver chose whether to keep the lantern or relight the beacon for whoever came next.

Keep it: 12. alfredolin, almost1337, egrets, gerudo, lnxtx, m_f, owenfromcanada, rumba, simpliston, terrance, treasure, yetanotheruser.

Relight it: 8. bevsdad, deebster, dunstabzugshaubitze, freeman, patrickyaa, pokeman, snoopy, w3dd1e.

The first player to finish the chain gave the light away. Make of that what you will.

---

Chat and the social side

8,613 messages from players, across 12 channels. The harbour feed carried another 17,000 system shouts on top.

Most talkative

Player	Crew	Messages
@[email protected]	Puffer Pals	845
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	634
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	551
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	455
@[email protected]	Guppy Gang	435
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	394
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	377
@[email protected]	Crab Crew	375

Most-used reaction

🐦‍⬛ with 844 uses, beating 🎉 (816) and 👍 (452). The Corvid got more love than actual celebration did.

Season 4: Rock Paper Scissors

221 games. 636 rounds. 38 players with at least one win. First game 24 July 13:28 UTC, last 27 July 06:42 UTC.

Only the deciding round of each game is recorded, so the 442 throws below come from the 221 decisive rounds. The other 415 rounds were draws, and drawn hands leave no trace.

---

Which hand actually won

Hand	Thrown	Won	Lost	Win rate
✋ Paper	151 (34.2%)	80	71	53.0%
✌️ Scissors	141 (31.9%)	71	70	50.4%
✊ Rock	150 (33.9%)	70	80	46.7%

The three hands were thrown almost exactly equally, and it still was not a fair fight. Rock lost more games than it won. Paper picked up the difference. The oldest advice in the game turns out to be correct: people reach for rock, so throw paper.

---

Player records

Everyone with five or more games.

Player	W	L	Win %	Favourite hand
dunstabzugshaubitze	23	15	61%	rock (21 of 38)
yetanotheruser	21	9	70%	paper (13 of 30)
demigodrick	17	16	52%	paper (14 of 33)
deebster	16	8	67%	scissors (14 of 24)
its_prolly_fine	11	13	46%	scissors (16 of 24)
sebas	10	6	62%	paper (14 of 16)
patrickyaa	9	2	82%	paper (6 of 11)
tikiporch	9	4	69%	scissors (11 of 13)
skankhunt42	9	9	50%	rock (17 of 18)
m_f	9	17	35%	scissors (10 of 26)
dmmacniel	7	8	47%	rock (7 of 15)
zedstrian	6	3	67%	rock (4 of 9)
freeman	6	5	55%	rock (6 of 11)
pika	5	2	71%	paper (4 of 7)
almost1337	5	3	62%	paper (6 of 8)
cooperredarmydog	5	5	50%	paper (8 of 10)
livligkinkajou	5	9	36%	rock (7 of 14)
simpliston	4	1	80%	rock (2 of 5)
baschi29	4	8	33%	rock (12 of 12)
egrets	3	4	43%	rock (3 of 7)
bevsdad	3	4	43%	scissors (7 of 7)
comradepupivy	3	5	38%	rock (4 of 8)
bobtimus_prime	3	5	38%	rock (5 of 8)
rajtinka	3	5	38%	paper (4 of 8)
w3dd1e	3	10	23%	rock (6 of 13)
mschae	2	3	40%	scissors (3 of 5)
alfredolin	2	5	29%	scissors (3 of 7)
lnxtx	2	5	29%	paper (6 of 7)
treasure	2	6	25%	rock (4 of 8)
snoopy	0	9	0%	paper (5 of 9)

snoopy went nine games without a single win, the only completely blank record of the season. They favoured paper, the best hand in the game, and it never once landed.

Best record with real volume: yetanotheruser, 21-9 at 70%. Best record overall: patrickyaa, 9-2 at 82%.

---

The Standoff

yetanotheruser vs its_prolly_fine, 26 July at 02:49 UTC: 255 consecutive draws.

Two hundred and fifty six rounds. Two players throwing the same hand, over and over, neither willing to be the one who changed. It ended when scissors finally cut paper.

The next longest standoff of the entire season was 29 draws.

Draws	Games
0	152
1	44
2	15
3	3
4	1
6	2
15	1
17	1
29	1
255	1

---

The predictable

Two players never varied. Not once.

Player	Every single throw	Record
baschi29	✊ rock, 12 of 12	4-8
bevsdad	✌️ scissors, 7 of 7	3-4

And the nearly as readable:

Player	Tell	Record
skankhunt42	rock 17 of 18 (94%)	9-9
sebas	paper 14 of 16 (88%)	10-6
tikiporch	scissors 11 of 13 (85%)	9-4
cooperredarmydog	paper 8 of 10 (80%)	5-5

sebas is the exception that proves the rule. Being 88% predictable did not matter, because the hand he kept throwing was the one that beats all the rock-throwers. He finished 10-6.

---

Rivalries

Matchup	Games	Score
treasure vs yetanotheruser	8	2-6
demigodrick vs dunstabzugshaubitze	6	3-3
dmmacniel vs dunstabzugshaubitze	6	2-4
demigodrick vs m_f	5	3-2
its_prolly_fine vs skankhunt42	5	3-2
deebster vs snoopy	4	4-0

Busiest players

Player	Games
dunstabzugshaubitze	38
demigodrick	33
yetanotheruser	30
m_f	26
its_prolly_fine	24
deebster	24
skankhunt42	18
sebas	16

Banner buyers

143 harbour banners were bought. @[email protected] alone paid for 35 of them, a quarter of everything that scrolled across the top of the screen all season.

Recruiters

@[email protected] brought 6 new players to the port, the most of anyone. dunstabzugshaubitze, snoopy and freeman brought 3 each. 23 players joined through a referral link.

---

Achievements - The full list

Symbol	Name	How you earn it
🥇	First Presser	Make press number 1 of the season
🏁	Latest Presser	Hold the most recent press
🛡️	Last-Second Save	Press with under 10 seconds left
⚡	Fastest Reaction	Beat the season’s fastest reaction
🏮	Lantern’s Hour	Win the Atlas Chain lantern race
🕯️	Lantern Keeper	Finish the Atlas Chain and keep the lantern
🎣	Dex Complete	Be first to catch all 40 species
⚓	Master Ship Builder	Assemble all 5 Masterwork Parts
🏛️	Council Member	Take a seat on the Town Council

Only 🏁 and ⚡ move between players. Everything else, once earned, is yours.

---

Who holds what after Season 4

Solo honours

Badge	Holder	For
🥇 First Presser	[email protected]	Pressed 6 seconds after the button went live
🏁 Latest Presser	[email protected]	Made the press that ended the season
🎣 Dex Complete	[email protected]	First to complete the Dex, 25 July 04:09
🏮 Lantern’s Hour	[email protected]	Relit the Forgotten Tide beacon, 24 July 22:17

🛡️ Last-Second Save (7)

Player
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

🕯️ Lantern Keeper (12)

Player
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

⚓ Master Ship Builder (25)

Player	Player
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]	[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

---

Most decorated

Player	Badges	Count
[email protected]	🏮 🕯️ ⚓	3
[email protected]	🕯️ ⚓ 🛡️	3
[email protected]	🕯️ ⚓	2
[email protected]	⚓ 🛡️	2
[email protected]	🕯️ ⚓	2
[email protected]	🕯️ ⚓	2
[email protected]	🛡️ 🏁	2
[email protected]	🥇 ⚓	2
[email protected]	🕯️ 🛡️	2
[email protected]	🎣 ⚓	2
[email protected]	🛡️ ⚓	2
[email protected]	🕯️ ⚓	2

alfredolin and terrance finished the season with three each. alfredolin is the only player to hold 🏮, which cannot be shared.

---

Odds, ends and honourable mentions

• @[email protected] finished the Dex first, built the first Masterwork Galleon, and tied for the most monster kills. A quietly outrageous season.
• @[email protected] finished top of catches, top of legendaries, top of chat, top of council motions, top donor on two of three mega-projects, second in RPS and second in total damage, and finished fourth in the faction standings for their trouble.
• @[email protected] ended the season richest at 12,063 gold. Then spent his last minute on Earth throwing 23 presses into the doom clock.
• 73,154 fish, and the largest was a 154 kg Behemoth caught by terrance at 07:38 on the last morning, during the two-minute window where nothing could save anyone.
• 12,589 banked presses went to the grave unspent. Half of them were Red’s.

---

See you in Season 5. 🎣

In case anyone wants to talk about The Button or Season 4 outside of the game. Plus, will take any new ideas here too please :)

Please keep a record of any bugs in this post, especially if I’m asleep when they’re found!

Season 4 of The Button starts on 24th July (19:00 UTC). Chat opens a few hours earlier.

This has been a massive change and upgrade to previous versions, including a host of new features and architectural changes.

It took a little longer than planned as I hit a bit of general burnout but I’ve finished most of the changes and it’s all ready to go!

You can sign up now at thebutton.social if you want to get notifications :)

Hi All,

The Button will return for Season 4, likely a week or so after Canvas ends.

I will post a bit more info in the near future, but just wanted to assure people that it isn’t dead :)

Hello all!

To celebrate Lemmy.zip turning 3 years old, we are once again hosting a small giveaway to say thank you for being here ❤️

We’re giving away 3 prizes to 3 lucky winners. This will be 1 x £25 Steam gifts, and 2 x £10 Steam gifts.

The giveaway will be open for 48 hours from 18:00 UTC on the 10th June 2026, to 18:00 UTC on the 12th June 2026. This thread will unlock at 18:00 UTC :)

You can enter by making a comment in this very thread! Your comment can say or be absolutely anything you want (within reason!)

Once you’ve made a comment, you should get a message back from ZippyBot confirming you’ve entered and a ticket number. For transparency, at the end of this we’ll publish the entry list and ticket numbers.

You must be a Lemmy.zip OR a Piefed.zip user to enter (comments from anyone else will be ignored!) and you will need a Steam account and be happy to send me your username so I can gift you the value via Steam. Your Lemmy.zip/Piefed.zip account must have been created before the 9th June 2026.

At the end of the giveaway, I’ll lock the thread and Zippy will pull three random entries. The first username pulled will win the first prize (£25), and the other two users will win the other prizes (£10).

(EDIT: Thanks to @[email protected] there is now a 4th place prize of £10!)

I’ve put a few FAQs in this spoiler tag if you want to know more:

---

FAQs - PLEASE READ!

FAQs

• Q) Can anyone enter?
• A) You must be a lemmy.zip user or a Piefed.zip user, have a steam account, and your account must have been created before 9th June 2026

---

• Q) Can I have a giftcard for a different platform, i.e. xbox or playstation?
• A) Unfortunately not. Those platforms (to my knowledge) don’t allow me to purchase a giftcard in the UK and you activate it anywhere in the world. Steam allows currency conversion on gifts.

---

• Q) How quickly will I get my prize?
• A) Steam requires that someone must be on a user’s friend list for 3 days before giftcards can be sent, therefore I will share my Steam profile with the winners (or vice versa) and after 3 days of being friends on Steam, I will send the gift over. (Unless you live in the UK, in which case I can send you a code within 24 hours)

---

• Q) I think my entry was valid, but I didn’t get a reply from Zippybot with my ticket number. What do I do?
• A) Send me a message asap! You can try commenting again too.

---

• Q) Are user donations funding this?
• A) No, just making it clear here that the donations to Lemmy.zip and PIefed.zip only ever go towards the server and Lemmy.zip infrastructure. The funds for this are coming from my wallet :)

---

• Q) How does Zippy select the winners?
• A) Zippy randomly shuffles the list of entrants in the DB. It then randomly shuffles the list again in Python. Then it randomly selects 3 winners from that double shuffled list.

---

• Q) What if something goes wrong?
• A) If for any reason something goes wrong during the giveaway, it will be paused until it can be resumed. If too much time lapses, the giveaway will be restarted.

Hi all, ive been messing around today and have bluesky users now able to sign in and play.

Is this something we want? I know its not strictly “fediverse” but it could open it up to more players?

Here is a thread to celebrate those who support Lemmy.zip to keep the (virtual) lights on and the data flowing!

If you’d like to donate and get your name on this list, head over to OpenCollective and select one of the options.

There is absolutely no pressure to donate though. Anything you can give is spent on keeping Lemmy.zip going.

Lemmy.zip Donators (Past or Present)

• EchoCranium
• Cranjis McBasketball
• Thoxy
• Anonymous Donor
• YumYum_the_Great
• Stratoscaster
• EzTerry
• Bobicus
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• Lumun
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• RadDevon
• Nomadin
• Devorlon
• root
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• Zamotic
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• Sidebro

Lemmy.zip Supporters

• David Love
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Lemmy.zip Friends

• Anonpony1
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• SB

Lemmy.zip Heroes

• Locuester
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Thank you again to everyone who is (or has been) supporting Lemmy.zip.

Perks!

Donators get some special perks - including the ability to choose custom emojis for everyone to use, and to get their own me.lemmy.zip profile - just like this one.

In the future, we’re looking at other ways to reward those who donate. If there is something you’d like to see as a reward, let the admin team know.

If you’d like to stay anonymous please email me at [email protected] or send me a message on here :)