# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
#
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#
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#
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@lyse Or, the time of year when birds take to the skies in stunning flocks.🦆🦢
[47°09′04″S, 126°43′13″W] Wind speed: 43kph -- batteries low
I am posting from CLI on my new laptop
I am posting from CLI on my new laptop
@prologic Thanks, mate! Glad you like my new avatar 😅👍
@klaxzy I’ve had many SD cards die in Raspberry Pis. Really annoying. I’ve eventually switched to using a read-only rootfs. 🫤
@klaxzy I’ve had many SD cards die in Raspberry Pis. Really annoying. I’ve eventually switched to using a read-only rootfs. 🫤
[47°09′21″S, 126°43′12″W] Wind speed: N/A -- Cannot comunicate
@zvava Been there done that haha 🤣
@prologic haven't had too much time to really try it out yet ^^' i'm um too busy staring at code i wrote while sleep deprived and wondering why i did the things i did, while sleep deprived \@.@
@zvava Enjoying it so far? 🤔 😅
@zvava Hey 👋 Welcome to Yarn.social 🤗
@ionores Love the new Avatar dude 😅 Very nice! 👍
@dce Ooops 😅 Hope you still have enough money for the basics 🤗 I'm doing okay though!
[47°09′52″S, 126°43′23″W] Working impossible due to heavy rain
God bless the United States and Minnesota.
Welp, my rent's gone out and my student loan won't be in for another week, so I'm not spending anything for a while. How's everyone else's September going?
[47°09′10″S, 126°43′32″W] Wind speed: 83kph -- batteries low
[47°09′11″S, 126°43′41″W] Weather forecast alert -- storm from NW
Chances are the database bought wasn't cheap at all and was aold by some scam company that probably ripped them from six figures or more for a database that's full of rubbish. 🤣
Howdy @prologic !! I missed hanging out the Cool Kids* 🤣 I hope everyone has had a good summer and doing well 🫡
🧮 USERS:1 FEEDS:2 TWTS:1450 ARCHIVED:89755 CACHE:2658 FOLLOWERS:22 FOLLOWING:14
@movq Now, you can automatically ban everybody requesting these old URLs.
[47°09′50″S, 126°43′23″W] --no signal--
Now that’s interesting. Some of these bots start crawling at URLs like this:
https://uninformativ.de/projects/lariza/NetTracer-Scenes/GPUTracer/multipass/xlonitor/http-collect/getpw
That is obviously completely wrong. But I can explain it. Some *years* ago, I screwed up my nginx rewrite rules, and that’s how these broken URLs came to be.
It all redirects to /git now, which is why that endpoint sees so much traffic lately.
But what does that mean? Why do they start there? I can only speculate that this company bought an old database of web links and they use that to start crawling. And it was probably a cheap one, because these redirects have been fixed for quite a long time now.
Now that’s interesting. Some of these bots start crawling at URLs like this:
https://uninformativ.de/projects/lariza/NetTracer-Scenes/GPUTracer/multipass/xlonitor/http-collect/getpw
That is obviously completely wrong. But I can explain it. Some *years* ago, I screwed up my nginx rewrite rules, and that’s how these broken URLs came to be.
It all redirects to /git now, which is why that endpoint sees so much traffic lately.
But what does that mean? Why do they start there? I can only speculate that this company bought an old database of web links and they use that to start crawling. And it was probably a cheap one, because these redirects have been fixed for quite a long time now.
@movq Dunning-Kruger twice, also in the field of photography. :-D
[47°09′43″S, 126°43′32″W] Waiting for carrier
@prologic I’m doing that now as well, but I don’t think this is a good solution. This is going to hurt “self-hosting” in the long run: I cannot afford true self-hosting where I actually do host everything here at home – instead, I must use a cloud provider / VPS for that. It is only a matter of time until *my* provider starts doing AI shit as well (or rather, the customers do it) and then what? I get blocked, e.g. I can’t send email to (some) people anymore. This is already bad and it’s going to get worse.
@prologic I’m doing that now as well, but I don’t think this is a good solution. This is going to hurt “self-hosting” in the long run: I cannot afford true self-hosting where I actually do host everything here at home – instead, I must use a cloud provider / VPS for that. It is only a matter of time until *my* provider starts doing AI shit as well (or rather, the customers do it) and then what? I get blocked, e.g. I can’t send email to (some) people anymore. This is already bad and it’s going to get worse.
@lyse Didn’t know that, either. 😂 The one guy even tried to test this theory with a Polaroid? And “confirmed” it? What the heck. 🥴
@lyse Didn’t know that, either. 😂 The one guy even tried to test this theory with a Polaroid? And “confirmed” it? What the heck. 🥴
@dce Yeah, I’ve read about that approach. Sounds clever. Truth is, I’m too tired. 😢 I don’t want to spend too much of my time fighting assholes.
I’ve now started blocking entire cloud hosters. Sorry, not sorry.
@dce Yeah, I’ve read about that approach. Sounds clever. Truth is, I’m too tired. 😢 I don’t want to spend too much of my time fighting assholes.
I’ve now started blocking entire cloud hosters. Sorry, not sorry.
@movq I heard about a defence against badly-behaved crawlers a while ago: an HTML zip bomb. This post explains how to do it. Essentially, web servers can serve compressed versions of webpages and, with a little trickery, one can replace the compressed page with a different file. After that, any bot that tries to crawl the page will instead download and unpack a zip bomb that will cause it to crash.
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 34 
orange marigolds
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 34 orange marigolds
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 34 orange marigolds
As expected: Didn’t last long. They’re coming from different IPs now.
I’ve read enough blog posts by other people to know that this is probably pointless. The bots have *so many* IPs/networks at their disposal …
As expected: Didn’t last long. They’re coming from different IPs now.
I’ve read enough blog posts by other people to know that this is probably pointless. The bots have *so many* IPs/networks at their disposal …
[47°09′09″S, 126°43′30″W] Carrier too weak
Drugs cause serious consequences...
[47°09′06″S, 126°43′27″W] Sample analyzing complete -- starting transfer
@prologic Yeah, I’ve blocked some large subnets now (most likely overblocking a lot of stuff) and it has died down.
I’m not looking forward to doing this on a regular basis. This is supposed to be a fun hobby – and it was, for many years. Maybe that time is just over.
@prologic Yeah, I’ve blocked some large subnets now (most likely overblocking a lot of stuff) and it has died down.
I’m not looking forward to doing this on a regular basis. This is supposed to be a fun hobby – and it was, for many years. Maybe that time is just over.
@movq Right now I'm basically just blocking entire ASN(s) at this point and large blocks of IP(s) from Anthropic, OPenAI, Microsoft and others.
“But all your stuff is MIT licensed! They are allowed to do that!”
Haha. As if they would care. They crawl everything they get their hands on.
Besides, that’s not true, the license states that the copyright notice must be retained. “AI” breaks that. They incorporate my code and my articles in their product and make it appear as if it was their work.
“But all your stuff is MIT licensed! They are allowed to do that!”
Haha. As if they would care. They crawl everything they get their hands on.
Besides, that’s not true, the license states that the copyright notice must be retained. “AI” breaks that. They incorporate my code and my articles in their product and make it appear as if it was their work.
Why do I care about this?
1. The load will become a problem at some point.
2. These crawlers and the current “AI” in general are breaking the rules. *I* am supposed to be paying for every little thing, *I* get sued for “piracy”. But apparently, these rules only apply to me. If I had more money, I could break them. Fuck that.
3. I simply don’t want it. Period.
Why do I care about this?
1. The load will become a problem at some point.
2. These crawlers and the current “AI” in general are breaking the rules. *I* am supposed to be paying for every little thing, *I* get sued for “piracy”. But apparently, these rules only apply to me. If I had more money, I could break them. Fuck that.
3. I simply don’t want it. Period.
This probably means that I can no longer host my own website. I don’t want to deploy something like Anubis, because that ruins the whole thing: I want it to be accessible from ancient browsers, like OS/2 or Windows 3.11.
I’ll keep an eye on it for a while. Maybe try to block some IPs.
Sooner or later, I’ll take the website down and shift everything to Gopher.
This probably means that I can no longer host my own website. I don’t want to deploy something like Anubis, because that ruins the whole thing: I want it to be accessible from ancient browsers, like OS/2 or Windows 3.11.
I’ll keep an eye on it for a while. Maybe try to block some IPs.
Sooner or later, I’ll take the website down and shift everything to Gopher.
It doesn’t pose a problem for my server’s performance – yet. But if more bots/companies start doing this, my website will go down from the load.
It doesn’t pose a problem for my server’s performance – yet. But if more bots/companies start doing this, my website will go down from the load.
The bots have begun to access my website way more often. I’m getting about 120k hits on https://www.uninformativ.de/git/ now in a couple of hours.
They don’t cache anything, probably on purpose.
It comes in waves. I get about 100 hits (all at once) on that /git endpoint, all from different IPs. Then it takes a moment until I get another wave of about 500-1000 requests (all at once) where they do HEAD requests on some of the paths below /git. I assume they did a GET earlier and are now checking if something has changed.
The bots have begun to access my website way more often. I’m getting about 120k hits on https://www.uninformativ.de/git/ now in a couple of hours.
They don’t cache anything, probably on purpose.
It comes in waves. I get about 100 hits (all at once) on that /git endpoint, all from different IPs. Then it takes a moment until I get another wave of about 500-1000 requests (all at once) where they do HEAD requests on some of the paths below /git. I assume they did a GET earlier and are now checking if something has changed.
[47°09′21″S, 126°43′36″W] Taking samples
Go Arsenal! Beat Liverpool!!!
GO 'NOLES! WE BEAT ALABAMA!
🧮 USERS:1 FEEDS:2 TWTS:1449 ARCHIVED:89735 CACHE:2650 FOLLOWERS:22 FOLLOWING:14
[47°09′44″S, 126°43′14″W] Reading: 0.37000 PPM
[47°09′13″S, 126°43′47″W] Transfer aborted
There's always something more urgent: I've been known for a long time that sooner or later I'd feel prompted to switch from #github to somewhere else (since 2018 at least!), but I've been postponing and only very slowly flirting with the idea... That didn't work too bad for me: if I had rushed into it I would have probably migrated to #gitlab, before knowing about the more objectionable sides to it. In the end, 2025 was the year I finally acted upon the urge to move. I did not do a very thorough analysis of the alternative hosts - what I have been reading about them along the years felt enough, and I easily decided to choose #codeberg. Being hasty like that, alas, was a mistake: I just now found - during this slow and time-consuming process of deciding what and how to migrate - that there is a low repository limit on codeberg: "The owner has already reached the limit of 100 repositories." I'm not complaining, mind you, and those "lucky 100" that are already there will stay - at least as a sort of backup. But this means that codeberg is not for me - and so this time I turn to you, the #mastodon community.
What github alternative, not self-hosted, should I move my >100 projects into?
There's always something more urgent: I've been known for a long time that sooner or later I'd feel prompted to switch from #github to somewhere else (since 2018 at least!), but I've been postponing and only very slowly flirting with the idea... That didn't work too bad for me: if I had rushed into it I would have probably migrated to #gitlab, before knowing about the more objectionable sides to it. In the end, 2025 was the year I finally acted upon the urge to move. I did not do a very thorough analysis of the alternative hosts - what I have been reading about them along the years felt enough, and I easily decided to choose #codeberg. Being hasty like that, alas, was a mistake: I just now found - during this slow and time-consuming process of deciding what and how to migrate - that there is a low repository limit on codeberg: "The owner has already reached the limit of 100 repositories." I'm not complaining, mind you, and those "lucky 100" that are already there will stay - at least as a sort of backup. But this means that codeberg is not for me - and so this time I turn to you, the #mastodon community.
What github alternative, not self-hosted, should I move my >100 projects into?
There's always something more urgent: I've been known for a long time that sooner or later I'd feel prompted to switch from #github to somewhere else (since 2018 at least!), but I've been postponing and only very slowly flirting with the idea... That didn't work too bad for me: if I had rushed into it I would have probably migrated to #gitlab, before knowing about the more objectionable sides to it. In the end, 2025 was the year I finally acted upon the urge to move. I did not do a very thorough analysis of the alternative hosts - what I have been reading about them along the years felt enough, and I easily decided to choose #codeberg. Being hasty like that, alas, was a mistake: I just now found - during this slow and time-consuming process of deciding what and how to migrate - that there is a low repository limit on codeberg: "The owner has already reached the limit of 100 repositories." I'm not complaining, mind you, and those "lucky 100" that are already there will stay - at least as a sort of backup. But this means that codeberg is not for me - and so this time I turn to you, the #mastodon community.
What github alternative, not self-hosted, should I move my >100 projects into?
[47°09′58″S, 126°43′18″W] Bad satellite signal -- switching to analog communication
@lyse Best logo ever made. 😅 (It’s partially proprietary software. Just for Epson scanners, I think? Not sure.)