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hexbear @hexbear.net

CARCOSA [mirror/your pronouns] @hexbear.net

2w ago

we fucked up

Hello users of hexbear, or shall i say chapo.chat, we fucked up, and i fucked up like three times making this post.

Yes, hexbear.net has expired. Yes, we were aware of this possibility. We have gradually lost contact with the access owner (prior admin) for the domain registration. We attempted to make a migration plan, but we were disarmed by the reappearance of the party in question in September 2024 and repeated assurances that they would a) transfer credentials and b) continue payments until they were able to do the former.

We accept full responsibility for this. We should have been more aggressive about this and continued our alternative despite these reassurances. This is our fuck up, and we can't offer anything besides our continued apologies and our plan of action going forward and an explanation of what happened:

Over the time of chapo.chat and hexbear.net the admins that purchased the domain, established the donation accounts, and the server accounts have left. One of the primary admins has gone inactive and returned many times, over a year ago some of the newer admins began asking the older admins to give full access to the domain, servers, and donations. These requests were not met, despite warnings of this exact event.

At the moment we do not have access to hexbear.net and there is a strong chance we will not get it back without participating in the auction, which is already over $300. Choosing to abandon the hexbear.net domain will cause federation problems and considerable technical issues which would lead to potential extended downtime.

During this downtime we would be reestablishing access to the new domain (or hexbear.net if we win the auction), access to server ownership, and donation accounts. This would be distributed among a number of admins so that we can prevent this from happening again.

Chapo.chat has the same access problem that led to the current state of hexbear.net so it is to be considered temporary.

I will do my best to answer questions

307 comments

Pinning @piggy@hexbear.net comment:
True Hexbear Fedayeen have hexbear hard coded in their hosts file and are currently enjoying their

On OSX/Linux just add 37.187.73.130 hexbear.net to the bottom of /etc/hosts and you'll get your
back.
On Windows its at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
On Phones it's much harder so all your
are lost.
- I'd like to reignite the
  struggle session to cover for CARCOSA on this one
  
  THERE IS TOO MUCH BEANISPOSTING ON THIS SITE
- IP address is wrong: it should be "37.187.73.130" according to Cloudflare DNS
- I'm fuckin back baby
  Why don't some emoji work?
- Adding a static DNS entry on your router also works.

Call me silly, tell me to touch grass, but hexbear has been a big part of my life for a few years now.
I don't want to see anyone go away, and i have faith we'll be back up in whatever form before long. Yall have given me so much over the years, and been by my side as I grow, through all my ups and downs.
Idk, feels like i had more to say, but lost my train of thought. Outside hangin with the corgi rn.
I love you all, and can't wait until we're back in whatever form.
- O7
- I couldn't agree more. This site has such a palpable culture of solidarity permeating even the silliest bits and struggle sessions. It's a safe space on an internet that largely lacks them, and a social site without the corporate overlords breathing down our necks. I love this place and hope it makes it <3

USAID funding gets slashed
Hexbear mysteriously loses access to the site owner
hmmm
- The news megathread actually started getting predictions right for the first time in it's existence, the feds had to shut us down lol. Not worth funding anymore.
  
  I called it.
- oh my god it was a honeypot all along
  (idk i seem to remember some drama about the original site owner getting booted due to some allegations about his DMs and he surrendered the domain to the modocracy... I always wondered if the transfer of ownership happened and I guess the answer is a resounding no)

I don't think it's really a big deal beyond the work it'll take to fix things, honestly don't let yourselves get dragged into a bidding war with some lib or something that wants to fuck with us.
- that is my personal stance, and i want to see what the community wants to be named
  
  I propose hasan.lib
  
  here are some domains that are unregistered:
  
  hexbear.xyz hexbear.chat hexbear.red hexbear.space hexbear.club hexbear.love hexbear.lol hexbear.earth hexbear.farm hexbear.fun hexbear.gg hexbear.land hexbear.life hexbear.quest hex.horse
  
  A potential side effect of a new domain would be being unbanned in China, right? Because we're only banned there because they thought hexbear.net was related to some crypto scam by the same name?
  
  are most or all the participants in the auction outsiders?
  
  Personally the name hardly matters to me at all, we just need to move on quickly
  
  can dirt.owl be a domain?
  
  Well, here's a few of my suggestions :)
  zheleznogorsk.net
  https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/351941ba-c4cd-42d9-9ec7-12802d1d9d4f.png
  honeybear.space
  honeybear.site
  hexbean.net
  With honeybear, honey.tube could be bought for around $100 but the yearly cost will be $22.
- I mean, perhaps if the domain is cheap enough, just wait until the last minute to snipe it.
  
  If you have a look at the How Auctions Work page on there, you'll discover that the rat bastards have set it up so that the auction only ends 5 mins after the final bid is placed, meaning it's impossible to truly snipe it if someone else is watching at the end.

Doesn't seem worth it to buy the domain again and it sounds like we're looking at downtime no matter what.
On the bright side we have the opportunity to absolutely lose our fucking minds over renaming the site again.
- Personally fond of onesixone (numeric abbreviation for anti-fascist action in case yall didn’t know) as a name. Just goes hard imo
- On the bright side we have the opportunity to absolutely lose our fucking minds over renaming the site again.
  I still remember making my account intended as a bit campaigning for the site name to stay chapo and then just never making another account

Please reply to this comment with name suggestions in the event we have to change from hexbear.net
- Hexbear.chat
  
  Actually not bad
  
  dialectics
- FINALLY! Finally it is time for hereshowberniecanstill.win
  
  Do we not have the other half of the meme? Something we should rectify on the new raebxeh.net
- i'm with the folks wanting different variations of hexbear (.zone/.space/.chat/.red)
  
  Would make it a lot easier for people, who are currently in the dark about current events, finding this place again.
- Whitehouse.gov
- Obvious option would be hexbear with an alternative to .net, like .su or something. Although sometimes .su gets auto flagged as malicious since there isn't a Soviet Union anymore, idk
- I have a friend who is willing to help us get hexbear.su. I don't have a Russian passport, so the stability will be an issue, but we could get it for the bit. Should I pursue this?
  Never mind, I didn't realize that an Amerikkkan passport works for .su
- I think the best option is some variation of hexbear as opposed to a whole new name. The only problem I could see from that is if whoever ends up buying the original domain redirects it to something horrible. Probably wouldn't want a similar domain name in that instance.
- donothing.win
- Anything in the .cn, .vn, or .la namespaces would be funny, for obvious reasons. .cn is quite expensive, about $32/year, and requires you to either prove your identity or use a registrar (like 101domains) who will register it under their contact information for you. .vn and .la are much cheaper and are available to anyone.
  Pick your path, we're either Chinese, Vietnamese, or Laos bots.
  
  —So are you Chinese or Vietnamese?
  —We're Laotian.
  —The ocean? What ocean?
  
  No Cuba? Idk what the rules are
  E: someone get kama.la for this website I beg you
  
  Is .su available?
- Honeypot. [whatever] would be fun since we van keep the bear motif
  
  some domains available:
  
  honeypot.capital honeypot.cafe honeypot.party honeypot.zone
- hexbear.red
- beanis.chat
- Would it be possible to contact the toots.matapacos.dog people and agree to share a second-level domain with them? So Hextube would become live.matapacos.dog, Hexbear could become... I'm not sure. It could take over matapacos.dog — which is currently just a static image of Matapacos that redirects to readsettlers.org after a few seconds — or Hexbear could take on any number of subdomains under matapacos.dog.
  Put simply, with this approach we'd sort of pull a blahaj.zone vs lemmy.blahaj.zone and have two distinct fediverse instances sharing a "brand" without actually being the same site per se. When these two instances already have such close ties, I don't see why we shouldn't try to pool more resources, up to and including sharing a second-level domain, right?
  ...Or maybe this is a terrible idea and I'm just talking out my ass.
- Chapo.chat
  
  this domain name has the same issue that caused the hexbear.net outage
- communismwill.win
- littleredbook.shop
  littleredbook.exchange
  littleredbook.study
- hexbear dot
  
  link to punchline since some users can't see emojis
- hexbear.zone
- Beanis.net
  
  Redirects to bluebear.ltd, is this some hexbearian's site?
  
  bean.is
- stacking.rocks
- chapo dot chat
- Tankie.HK
  Hexbear2.net
- Hexbear dot Chat
- exbear.net is available and you could make it h.exbear.net
- Hexbear.lgbt
- Hexbear dot io is a bitcoin website btw.
  
  For this reason, we probably need to avoid anything Hexbear related
- shrekland.net
- tankie.cn or tankie.su
- pigpoop.beanis.net
- hexbear.social
- exbear.net septbear.chat hexchap.chat
  
  We should steal hexbear.ntt from NTT
- Are we able to use .SU?
- Hear me out... icosahedronbear.net
- reposting my comment here
  I genuinely think Hexbear is pretty shit of a name (and always have sorry) especially since we share it with a shitcoin. But tbh if the name is so important to federation, surely we could crowdfund the $300 or whatever the registar's trying to squeeze out of us for the domain. MutualAid has led me to believe this could work. edit: nevermind I see the auction is now up to $505.00 which is insane but who knows maybe this is one of our comrades doing their part to secure the domain for us!
  Chapo.chat will probably be cheaper when it expires so honestly my vote is to reclaim chapo.chat using crowdfunding
  BernieCanStillWin.org is my backup vote.
- sickobear dot net
- zheleznogorsk.net
  honeybear.space
  honeybear.site
  hexbean.net
  With honeybear, honey.tube could be bought for around $100 but the yearly cost will be around $22.
  
  Are you a bee?
- ursusfront
- i don't have a specific name in mind, but what about something to do with orcas?
  
  there is already a lemmy instance orcas.enjoying.yachts
- itsall.fed
- netbear.hex
- X.com
- it's a shame the .baseball domain hasn't launched yet that would have been kinda funny
- Chapo.chat
- very much hoping we go off hexbear, if we do im changing the deal i made tjo whatever the new logo is and tbh i really would like it to have some sort of communist imagery in it instead of it being a cartoon hexagon bear lol.
  i like redbear the most out of anything that i've seen proposed, and the .lgbt or .su for the extension
- RentFr.ee
- Hexowl.fart
- hexbear.chat
- hexbear.gay
  hexbear.lgbt
  hexbear.trans
  hexbear.su
  hexbear.zone

At least we outlived kissinger
- lmao
- Genocide Joe's presidency and Kopmala's kampaign too

This is the dumbest shit
- The intersection of capitalist exploitation and leftist infighting; a microcosm
  
  I've seen this happen to actual companies. In various different ways Domains / SSL Certs / Hosting Bills. Happens at least once in a startup's lifetime.

There’s one thing I’m sure of, when this is all over, “visit hexbear.net” is going to be added as an emote
- We finally know what mystery-emote is supposed to look like:

I got 20 dollars that says some lib wins the bid and links the domain to the Tiananmen square massacre Wikipedia page to try and dunk on us lmao
- a stormfront anarchist is trying to do basically that.
  
  Doesn't seem to be going well for them in the comments lol
  Also, they've posted this in three different subs, and their account history is the most embarrassing shit I've ever seen lmao
  
  That person is getting absolutely clowned on that’s hilarious
  
  lol well if the actual owners can’t get it back then i guess this would be an alright outcome. i much prefer this than some fascist getting the domain and using it maliciously
- That's exactly what they're trying to do lmao
  https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1in748c/hexbearnet_the_tankiest_lemmy_instance_let_their/mc9864a/
  
  Holy shit lmao

Omg this is so embarrassing.
- Seriously

pouring one out for all of the hexbears who don't know how to reconnect with the site

hope they find their way back to us some day

lmao, I guess it's time for bean dot is
- Biggest struggle session ever incoming.

Letting the hexbear domain ownership expire as a joke is not OK

😔

Can someone email me when the new URL is up? My email is KnilAdlez@fbi.gov
- Might be easier to just sign up on lemmygrad, a lot of us already have accounts over there and will be updating info as things unfold

when the site gets back up and running, please make the "visit hexbear.net" textbox that's replacing all the emojis rn into an actual emoji. maybe called like ":we-fucked-up:" or something

if socialism was a website

A brand new type of completely unforced error. Exactly what I expect here

Just glad no one got arrested probably.

this is unfortunate

beanis.org is available

🚨 Comment found elsewhere:
So this is a man-in-the-middle attack waiting to happen isn’t it? Buy the domain, setup a reverse proxy that points to the original hexbear server IP and start logging all requests.
- incredible what people will do in order to own .0000001% of the world’s population
- Ok so there are real opsec implications here that’s a little unnerving
- I mean, isn't basically everything publicly accessible due to ActivityPub anyway? I guess you could maybe alter messages in transit
  
  No, not everything is publicly available. This would steal passwords and “private” messages and more. It would link IP addresses to user accounts, for instance, which provides geolocations of varying precision.
  I haven’t thought through the TLS certificate aspect of this though. Perhaps there’s some mitigation to be had there? The current cert expires soon, on 2025-03-24, and covers several domains, including chapochat. In any case, I don’t think there’s anything to stop the new domain owner from spinning up new valid certificates for themselves 😓

this is very funny. what are we going to change our name to this time?
anyway unfortunate that it happened, but it sounds like the admins aren't that much to blame.
- I don't think this really matters and am not peeved at them, but this is really the only thing that a site admin does lol

this is what happens under socialism
everyone shares the same website and then it gets killed by the CIA
- The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's websites

Letting the domain name expire and get auctioned off as a bit is not okay. 😔

Domain names are bourgeois decadence, return to IP

Breaking: Elon Musk places leading bid for HexBear.net at 97 billion dollars.
- Big Balls is gonna buy it and redirect to a site that sells dogecoin

Eh, we had a good run (allegedly)

This is why I have trust issues.

Make sure to invalidate all the jwt tokens. Whoever buys the domain might be able to grab them from people still visiting the old site

Is there a chance the owner can still renew if we're back in touch with them?
- yes and we have tried 4 different methods to establish communication since the outage started
  
  "whoops, my phone was off"
- annoyed how all the links are broken

Well I guess this is one way to get the feds to never notice us.
But seriously, is there a lifeboat active in case this kind of thing happens again? Thankfully I'm friends with some users online but not every poster is. I remember for the old subreddit we did a discord life boat weeks in advance.

If we switch to a different domain, will all the posts on here be lost?
I have a lot of books recs saved

Stavros Halkias Laughing for 2 Hours

I made an alt on lemmygrad

unrelated but i love the sicko seele logo
- you’re welcome :3
  
  reduced to analog emotes D:

damn owned, this is just like how everyone in the USSR had to share the same toothbrush

chachabros.... we're so back

we fucked up
Story of Hexbear's life

really glad I didn't namedrop the site and just referred to it obliquely at the party this weekend lmao.
- really glad I didn't namedrop the site
  You can say this under any circumstance
- That's so funny there is exactly one person on Earth I have ever told that I visit this site and I have no plans to expand that lol

Just in case this is the end for Hexbear.net and for this account of mine, I want to finish by saying it was an honor and a pleasure to be counted among you. :stalin-heart: :fidel-salute:
Death to capitalism. Long live the dope ass bear.

True Hexbear Fedayeen have hexbear hard coded in their hosts file and are currently enjoying their

On OSX/Linux just add 37.187.73.130 hexbear.net to the bottom of /etc/hosts and you'll get your
back.
On Windows its at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
On Phones it's much harder to describe than a single line so all your
are lost.
- Could the instances we're federated with use this as a quick fix to get around the federation issues caused by the domain expiration?
  
  Depends on how they're hosted. If they have access to the underlying OS yes, if they don't then no.
  However this all relies on the IP address not changing. In reality a less fragile fix is pointing to a custom DNS server that has a CNAME record for hexbear.net -> chapo.chat.
  But that's even more configuration.

How long was the admin team aware of this imminently happening?
- A while apparently. Domain leases are usually 1-2 years.

bro what the fuck did i log into
- How did you get images working?

CHAPO.CHAT IS ETERNAL.
- Anyways genuinely think Hexbear is pretty shit of a name (and always have sorry) especially since we share it with a shitcoin. But tbh if the name is so important to federation, surely we could crowdfund the $300 or whatever the registar's trying to squeeze out of us for the domain. MutualAid has led me to believe this could work.
  Chapo.chat will probably be cheaper when it expires so honestly my vote is to reclaim chapo.chat using crowdfunding
  BernieCanStillWin.org is my backup vote.
  
  It’s already at $500 and there’s still 9.5 days to go. There’s no way that migrating to a new domain isn’t the most practical option right now.

The agreement that any money spent on the bidding war for the domain would be better spent on mutual aid is why I love this site :visit-hexbear.net-heart:
- We can just get a new domain for cheaper
- The issue is how do we communicate to those who rely on us for mutual aid about the new domain? So now we have a classical philosophical conundrum: do we waste/spend a ton of money to keep the old domain, ensuring that everyone remains online and can access mutual aid, or do we use that money for mutual aid instead and lose the old domain/switch to a new domain, running the risk that someone who relies on us for mutual aid can't access the website anymore as they don't know about the new domain.
  Or there's the win win third option in which we can effectively communicate the new domain to everyone on the mutual aid community, and can give all the money set aside for a domain bidding war to them.
  Or I guess we eat humble pie and beg whoever buys the domain to put out a notice that we are moving to a new domain.
- I agree and not just because I need money (but because other people also need money)

Letting the url expire for a bit wasn’t okay

refederate with a new domain so everyone that has you blocked can see you were right about everything all along.

If we end up with a new domain, does that mean we can federate with the lib instances again and go back to dunking and general joy?

It's even a worse bit than when you banned Bureaucrat

today's megathread looks funny

If anyone here has access to a well-positioned BGP router you could do something really funny rn

Hexbear.lgbt let's gooo

Thank you for contacting Sav support and using our services.
I understand the urgency and concern regarding the domain hexbear.net, especially given its importance to your site's users and the potential security risks involved. It's clear that the situation is challenging, and I empathize with the difficulties you're facing due to the previous domain holder's absence. Upon checking, the domain you mentioned is currently in an expiring auction, as it has exceeded the grace renewal period. But don't worry! You have a chance to get the domain by participating in the auction on the following link: https://www.sav.com/auctions/details/7073489/hexbear.net. If you win, the domain will be renewed for one year and transferred directly to your account. Please note that it's not possible to intervene or cancel the active auction. We encourage you to participate in the auction to secure the domain before it ends. I hope this information helps you in securing the domain and ensuring the continued safety and accessibility of your site.
Best Regards,
Scott
Seems like the auction can't be stopped
- Mao 2 will include registrars among the landlords.

If Hexbear were a beer

307 comments