sfmlab

SFMLab turns 5

SFMLab was created in late January of 2014. Has it really been that long? I'm frankly astounded that the site has lasted this long. It wouldn't have been possible without your support. Thank you so much.

It's unfortunate that Valve has not pushed substantial updates to Source Filmmaker in almost as many years. I have questioned the future of SFM and SFMLab in the past, and I'm still not sure if there is much growth beyond what we have now. I'm happy to see that people are branching out ...

TOR Hidden Service

Hi, and a happy 2019 to all of you!

Even thought the new year has only just started, it's already looking to be the most difficult year for the internet to date. Government and corporate censorship are around every corner, and we must fight for our right to an open and free internet.

So in these trying times, I've decided to make SFMLab and Smutba.se available as a TOR Hidden service. If SFMLab or Smutbase is blocked on your network, you can try to use the 2019-01-14 21:46:27 +0000 UTC View Post

Service disruption - 2018-12-07

SFMLab and Smutbase will suffer from reduced availability in the next 48 hours due to changes to the loadbalancing setup.

Summary of the changes:

- New web nodes will be configured

- DNS will change to a different loadbalancer (can take 24-48 hours to propagate to your provider)

- SSL Certificates will become active on the new loadbalancers. (since we use Let's encrypt in combination with a non-standard loadbalancing solution, this depends on DNS propagating as fast as possib...

Maintenance 8 November 2018

Both Smutbase and SFMLab will be down for maintenance for a short time, starting now. Should not take more than an hour to complete.

Update: Maintenance has been completed.

Maintenance

SFMLab/Smutbase database server will be undergoing some quick maintenance, which may result in reduced connectivity or downtime. Should only last a few minutes but you never know! *knocks on wood*

User pruning

I've begun the process of pruning user accounts that were registered with disposable email addresses such as mailinator, among others. If you are using such email accounts, you should consider signing up with a non-disposable address instead.

Site updates

Time for another site update. This month, several updates have been pushed to the site. Most of them have to do with data collection and privacy. So what's been happening? There's one thing that's been on SFMLab for a long time. It is a Google Analytics script, that's been silently gathering your data while you browse the site. The reasons for using Google Analytics are fairly simple: - It was a tool I was familiar with - It was free - It showed me the data I wanted to see (mainly page views a...

Experimental changes and a reminder

Hey guys, I'm gonna be pushing some experimental changes to SFMLab and Smutbase tonight. If the site is less responsive or unreachable, just let me know through the #bugs-and-features channel on the Discord server. 

Also, if any of you missed the last post regarding the SFMLab Gold April fools thing, here's a little reminder. If you feel misled and feel that you are entitled to a refund, send me a message.

April Fools!

Hello to all the new patrons! Welcome to SFMLab Gold! This is where you get to find out that you got pranked!

Last year, on April fools, I took down the entire site to make a point about operating costs of SFMLab. This year I took it a step further by introducing a fake premium subscription service for SFMLab. SFMLab Gold does not exist, and if you pledged to the SFMLab patreon in the hopes of restoring SFMLab's functionality: you got pranked. The site was intentionally made inoperable for eve...

Blender 2.8 Code Quest

Hey everyone, here's a cool project I'd like to highlight. It's not directly related to SFM, but it might be relevant to some of you.

A lot of model makers use Blender to port models to the Source Engine. Blender is a free and open source 3D creation tool that is developed by a group of volunteers from all over the world. Everyone can contribute to it, and everyone can use the software for free. While not entirely equal in functionality, it is the only tool of its kind that can hold its own to...

Downtime

SFMLab will be down for urgent kernel upgrades. Estimated downtime should not exceed 60 minutes and will most likely be completed sooner.

Update: maintenance has been completed

Overhauling

SFMLab has just received the greatest revamp in at least two years. Please report any issues you may encounter.

I hope you'll all enjoy the new look. Hopefully, it will have been worth the wait!

https://sfmlab.com/ 

Furry/Fandom content policy change

Hi everyone,

Today I added a feature to SFMLab that many people have asked for since the site has launched. Basically, all furry/anthro content is now hidden by default, similarly to how the NSFW filter works. This also includes content that falls into certain fandoms that are not necessarily considered furry by some, mainly My Little Pony and Five Nights at Freddy's.

If you haven't kept up, this basically covers most of the "controversial" content on S...

EMAIL

As a result of Microsoft's rate limiting policies and the high number of signups we get from hotmail/live/outlook addresses, SFMLab's Password reset/activation mail system is less reliable than usual. Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about this on our end. Microsoft's policies are what they are and we can't really work around them.

1. Please remember your password so you don't have to clog the email system by requesting a password reset.

2. If you cannot remember your password, p...

Both US download servers now operational

Please report any issues!

SF server and other musings

The new SF server is setup and almost done retrieving all the files. It's still syncing some of the larger packs and it will take a few hours before those will be done syncing. The SF server will be switched over to the new setup pretty soon.

On an unrelated note, I'm hoping to cleanup the SFMLab codebase before the end of the month as well. The idea is that the dependencies will be cleaned up, some of the underlying software will be updated, and some dead code will be removed. The idea is to ...

SFMLab NYC server back in production

Now with HTTPS! https://zero.sfmlab.com/

SF server will follow soon.

US downloads unavailable

The US download servers are unavailable for new downloads at this time. And unlike two days ago, there's a legitimate reason!

The US servers have maxed out their disk space. This obviously results in new uploads not syncing to the servers, meaning that only the EU downloads work.

I will be fixing this ASAP. It probably means sizing up server packages I have for the NYC and SF servers.

👌🏻

Hey everyone,

As you probably already figured out: SFMLab is fine. The site was never really gone, I'm doing fine financially, am not wanted by the authorities and SFMLab was never in danger of getting shut down. If you were even a slight bit observant, you will have noticed the hidden link (omega.sfmlab.com) where you could find a (mostly) functional SFMLab. And even then, the helpful folks in the SFMLab/Smutbase Discord channel were redirecting people to the link when they got lost. Thanks t...

April Fools

SITE WAS NEVER DOWN HAHAHAHAHHA

Servers are OFF

You're probably wondering where SFMLab is. Truth is, I spent all the ad money on weed so I couldn't pay for bandwidth this month. Unfortunately I had to shut off the servers in the mean time.

In the mean time, I'm hiding from my dealer, the authorities and several loan sharks. If you have any money to spare, and wish to support my drug habit, and want to see the site back sooner, please visit the SFMLab Patreon and support the ...

July 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Japanese Server retired & Other updates

Hey everyone, here's an update on the Japanese server. Unfortunately I've decided to retire the Japanese/Asian server after only about two months of use. While I still feel there is a need to serve Asia as a continent, the main drawback is that there's simply no affordable hosting provider in the region that fits SFMLab's needs (yet). The limited storage space on the server that we had meant there was only enough space to store about two/three months of files on there. That, together with some o...

June 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

NYC Server up and running!

Thank you guys for your support!

May 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Japanese Server is up and running

Hello everyone, thanks for your support this month! Thanks to your generous contributions, the Japanese server is now up and running. Unfortunately disc space is limited among hosting providers in the Asia region, so initially I've set it to sync files that were posted  the last two months. I will increase this is if I find this leaves ample space to sync more files.

April 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

March 2016 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

February 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!