Hello! 👋

iximiuz Labs has gotten quite a bit more fun to use since my last update. Here is what I shipped in October:

• Public profiles - show how much effort you've put into hands-on learning and include the link in your resume or LinkedIn.
• New playground constructor - visualize the playground topology and edit its YAML manifest right on the browser page.
• Content feedback form - report issues directly to the content authors, including sharing screenshots and attaching files.
• New region of presence - capacity++ and latency-- for users in the Western Hemisphere with the first two bare-metal servers in the US.

Sounds interesting? Then read on. Ah, and those who make it through the entire issue may find a Halloween treat at the end 🎃

Public Profiles

This feature has been on my TODO list since the very first release of the Labs back in 2023 🙈 But it's always sounded like a massive lift, so I kept postponing it. First, until I had another pair of hands to help me with development. Then, until the models became capable enough. And they finally have!

Here is what has just become possible on iximiuz Labs:

• Set a nickname, first and last name, and upload an avatar using the new profile section of the account page.
• Create a public page with your learning progress and hands-on practice highlights.

The public profile page comes with a handy short URL, which you can include in your resume, LinkedIn, or share on social media. Here is mine, for example: serverlabs.io/u/iximiuz.

Making profile pages look decent when shared on social media was a particularly fun feature to implement. When you paste a link on X or LinkedIn, a good-looking preview image is something you'd definitely want to have.

For profiles, these preview images would need to include personal details and an up-to-date activity heatmap, so I couldn't just put a bunch of static PNG files into an S3/R2 bucket and call it a day - proper dynamic (re)generation of images on user details change was required.

This is how iximiuz Labs got one more microservice, Paparazzi - headless Chrome-as-a-Service that runs in a scale-to-zero Fly app and screenshots site pages when they are accessed for the first time. In case it sounds useful or entertaining, I just published a blog post with more technical details. The best part is probably that it costs me close to $0/mo and works for any site page that doesn't define its own static image override.

Visualizing Playground Topology

Wouldn't it be great to see how many VMs a playground has and how they are interconnected right on the playground page? No tedious searching through the playground description, and no need to start the playground to investigate its setup. You can decide if it's the right match just by glancing at its page.

The information and APIs were always there, but building such a fancy frontend visualization had been beyond my reach. After all, my expertise is backend and infra 🙈

Luckily, Claude Code is a jack-of-all-trades, and paired with browser access (through Chrome DevTools MCP), it can now do UI wonders. So now we can visualize playground topologies, including the fancy ones!

The feature is particularly useful when you want to visualize a setup behind a certain challenge. For instance, the above screenshot corresponds to this canonical NAT gateway problem, and the one below matches this SSH bastion challenge.

My favorite use case is to connect iximiuz Labs through the Labs MCP to ChatGPT or Claude, ask it to set up some advanced network topology, and then explore the setup visually.

Revamped Playground Constructor

Another QoL improvement that playgrounds got this month is the revamped settings page.

I streamlined the navigation (no more confusing mix of a sidebar and an eyebrow bar) and added the topology visualizer and a YAML editor to the right panel so you can now tweak playgrounds in all three ways: by picking a section in the nav bar, clicking on a visual element in the topology widget, or editing the manifest directly.

This short video demos the end result, but you can just give it a shot - it's probably the fastest way to get a taste of the new UX.

​

Content Feedback Form

Another much-needed feature, but I wouldn't have dared build it even a few months ago because it would've taken so much tedious effort.

As a learner, you can now report issues with content (or share your words of encouragement) directly to the author using a built-in feedback form. With more and more materials on the site from community, independent, and vendor authors, a direct communication channel becomes a must.

As an author, you get a consolidated view of all feedback threads for your published materials in the revamped author dashboard. Combined with the analytics dashboard released in August, it allows content authors to get the full picture and stay in touch with their audience.

New North America Region

The US has always been the largest source of traffic for iximiuz Labs, and Canada is in the top 10, so it's rather regrettable that it took me almost 4 years to add playground servers in the Western Hemisphere. But now we have some! 🚀

Finding a bare-metal provider with affordable prices was the hardest part. Server prices are through the roof in all regions - even Hetzner has doubled (and for some profiles, tripled) their prices this year - so it was huge luck to run into OneProvider's North America listing and find two AMD Ryzen 9 7950X / 128 GB DDR5 servers for ~$300/mo each.

I still consider the new region experimental, but so far things have been mostly smooth. We had one network abuse incident, which I quickly mitigated by rolling out strict anti-streaming/passthrough filters. So if everything goes well for a couple more weeks, I'll probably add more capacity to the region.

If you're using the labs from North or South America, I'm curious to hear from you how the new playground servers affect the web terminal and/or labctl latency.

Wrapping up

That's it for October! My primary focus has been on finishing the Docker Roadmap and preparing more Linux 101 Shell Gyms, so the features above came as a bit of a bonus. But that's the thing about builders - it's really hard to stop shipping 🙈

And here comes the promised treat! I don't really have time to put together a proper sale (all my focus is on creating more learning materials), but I figured we could make use of something that already exists. If you'd like to upgrade your iximiuz Labs membership, the link below should give you 50% off:

​https://labs.iximiuz.com/pricing?offer=spooky-labs-2026​

The offer is valid for one week (until November 5) and is limited to the first 50 activations. Happy Halloween!

Ivan