I agree with the sea change. The reason we started an instance as opposed to just joining another is that we wanted to help that change along by providing a familiar community to a group of people statistically more likely to be both nerdy and optimistic about the future.
Thank you for pitching in! Yes we are very optimistic about the future. It's my hope that startrek.website can serve as a familiar face and bridge for new users discovering the Fediverse for the first time.
You are correct. The server runs Linux, and Lemmy is software running on that server. The URL (startrek.website) points to the server's IP. There's no requirement for the URL to be called "Lemmy", that's just what a lot of people do. Also I don't think .Lemmy is an available option, though that would be cool.
The only perk we had in mind thus far was some user flair (whenever that inevitably gets invented). But you make a great point. Still getting used to this egalitarian perspective.
Your definition of "old pc" is much nicer than mine. No we're not there yet! But likely within the next few months. Lemmy.world recently made this post which you may find educational.
That's a good point I hadn't considered, appreciate the insight. As long as we can pay the bills with what comes in, I suppose for now we'll just stick with what we've got.
That depends! You can run an instance on an old PC for just yourself and some friends for next to nothing, but a bigger instance with lots of traffic can easily climb to hundreds per month or more. No idea where we'll end up when things slow down, but the subreddits this server represent currently have more users than the entire Lemmy-verse 😅
I did not announce it, I am a bad Admin!