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  🆕 blog! “Blunt Banhammer Blocks Basic Bots Ballistically” I cut bot traffic to my site by over 80% with a simple trap. Last month, my hobby website OpenBenches.org transferred more than 2.5TB of data to visitors. As much as I'd like to think the site is enormously popular, it looks like it is just AI bots endlessly crawling the data and… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/11/blunt-banhammer-blocks-basic-bots-ballistically/ ⸻ #AI #bot #CyberSecurity #NaBloPoMo #PHP #WebDev

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  Oh! This is new and cool. #Firefox for Android now automatically offers to search the Wayback Machine if it can't find the original page. Easily the best browser on Android.

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  This is fucking ridiculous. My https://openbenches.org/ website is serving over two TERABYTES of bandwidth per month! That's up from 1.5TB the previous month. While I'd love to believe that's all people fascinated by benches, I think it's more likely to be endless crawlers. I'm lucky to have a very generous host with no hard bandwidth limits, but I'd want to find a way to block bots without having human-facing interstitials. Looks like robots.txt isn't cutting it.

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  One of my favourite Unicode Domain Name hacks from a few years ago. Copy and paste this into your browser's address bar: https://🅂𝖍𝐤ₛᵖ𝒓.ⓜ𝕠𝒃𝓲/🆆🆃🅵/ (Not sure if Mastodon will make it clickable.)

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  Some interesting (to me) stats from #FOSDEM Talks about NFTs: 0. Presentations about the Metaverse: None. Cryptobros inviting me to a party in order to schill their coin: Zip. Really enthusiastic LLM users describing how AI has improved their OSS codebase: Zilch. People complaining about pronouns and codes of conduct: Nada. "Ironic" hats saying "Make xyz Great Again": Conspicuous by their absence. What did *you* think was missing from FOSDEM?

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  A new test! Would you please scan this QR code in to your preferred authenticator app, then answer the poll. You can delete the code afterwards. Thanks gang. Question: Does the code refresh every:

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  Linux friends - I have a networking question. Can I give my server two network connections but only allow Internet access from one of them? All my IoT stuff is on a segregated 2.4GHz WiFi network. My server is on a segregated Ethernet. I want my server to talk to devices on WiFi. My router doesn't let me punch a hole between them. If I stick a WiFi dongle in the server, how would I tell it "talk to the WiFi LAN but don't use WiFi for Internet access"? Ubuntu...

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  🆕 blog! “Book Review: Get Ahead of Being Dead by Evie King” ★★★★☆ After reading Evie King's previous book Ashes To Admin - Tales from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer I was eager to read her not-quite-a-sequel. We know what happens after death; paperwork. Gas bills need to be cancelled, funeral wishes need to be carried out, money needs to be apportioned… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/book-review-get-ahead-of-being-dead-by-evie-king/ ⸻ #BookReview #death

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  So, were any big sites popped by the PHP2Shell vulnerability? Looks like my hosting provider upgraded overnight without issue. Yet I was firmly told that unless patches were made in the first 15 minutes a Botnet army would compromise everything.

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  🆕 blog! “Book Review: Are You *Really* The Doctor? by Matthew Hutchinson” ★★★⯪☆ A few months ago, I went to see Dr Hutchinson record his stand-up comedy special for the BBC - it's about his experiences working in the NHS as a Black doctor. As the title of the book implies, some of the public can be a mite suspicious that anyone with even a hint of… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/book-review-are-you-really-the-doctor-by-matthew-hutchinson/ ⸻ #BookReview #NHS #racism

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  I listen to all my podcasts on 8-track.

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  Hmmm. Looks like #AVIF images aren't support in OGP metadata when shared on Mastodon. This URl: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/book-review-are-you-really-the-doctor-by-matthew-hutchinson/ Shows a blank image on link preview.

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  Standing desk, under desk treadmill, ergonomic keyboard, trackball, air quality monitor, multiple screens. I don't think I could ever go back to an office. I probably need to tidy up my workspace somewhat though! What does your set-up look like?

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  🆕 blog! “Una Watch TOTP - MFA on your wrist!” Let's get this out of the way first - this is a terrible idea! I want my two-factor authentication codes to be easily accessible to me, so I've built a watch app which will display them. That's really convenient for me - but makes for a terrible security posture. Anyone who steals my watch will be able to see my one-time… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/una-watch-totp-mfa-on-your-wrist/ ⸻ #c++ #HowTo #UnaWatch...

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  I get asked to review a lot of weird tech stuff for my blog. Here's the latest gadget being offered to me. On the one hand, I'm fascinated to see how bad a privacy nightmare this could be. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to normalise this sort of thing. So, should I get one of these to review? Please vote in the poll (next message).

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  If you publish any #OpenSource and you want people to use it, may I please implore you to test your README? Can you actually follow the steps you've written down? Does it work if the user doesn't have the same development packages installed as you? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/how-to-actually-test-your-readme/

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  Very long shot. Do I know anyone in or near Phuket who can do me a favour? I left my wallet in a hotel earlier this year. They've just let me know they found it. Anyone over there willing to pick it up & post it back to me? Happy to pay, of course.

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  Well, at least the VCAF License v0.2 is honest 🫠 https://github.com/Darthagnon/azwreader-koreader/blob/master/SLOP.md

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  New toy day! Treated myself to a #UnaWatch - a modular and repairable smart watch. Has GPS, heart rate, notifications, and - most importantly - USB-C charging. Full review once it is charged and I've given it a spin.

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  I have a question about #Mastodon's "Mute Conversation" option. Consider the following: * I write a post. * Alice replies to me. * Bob replies to me. * Chuck replies to Bob. I click "Mute Conversation" on Chuck's reply. Does that mute the *whole* conversation? Does it just mute replies to Chuck's branch of the conversation? Can I see further replies to Alice's reply? (Poll in next post.)

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  Massive Qi chargers for cars! https://electrek.co/2026/09/18/its-finally-here-porsche-puts-wireless-ev-charging-into-production-video/ I can see the utility of using this for slow charging. But is it really that much of a faff to plug in a cable? I wonder how perfectly aligned the car needs to be. Still, interesting to see whether this gets picked up or standardised.

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  RE: https://solar.bots.edent.tel/posts/6a9c618e-1a00-e6c2-9362-e5c45b7b1d34.json This is what the future looks like. Every home in the UK being self sufficient in electricity production and selling the excess back to the grid.

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  RE: https://famichiki.jp/@salyavin/117298519330541433 😟 Might have to accelerate my FourSquare replacement for the Fediverse.

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  I'm going to the @webstandards@mastodon.world free meetup tonight. https://londonwebstandards.org/events/lws-sept-2026/ Anyone fancy joining me for a bite to eat beforehand?

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  Hey, UK folks looking to get #Fedihired - one of my old teammates is recruiting a technical architect. https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?vxsys=4&vxvac=476261 Based outside London, pay up to £95k. (I am not the recruiter. Please do not ask me questions about this role.)

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  I've run into a weird #Unicode Nomalization problem with #WordPress. Thoughts and feedback welcome - https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/66093

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  🆕 blog! “Put an AV test at the start of your slides” For years, I've had a test-card at the start of my slides. Before I start my talk, I can immediately see if the aspect ratio is wrong, colours are off, or any other visual issues with the presentation. A few years ago I was invited to give a talk and was assured that the venue was set up for audio as well as video. I… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/09/put-an-av-test-at-the-start-of-your-slides/ ⸻ #presentations

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  Finally gave in to lifestyle inflation and bought a fizzy water maker. So far I have only carbonated tap water. What things have you successfully bubbled that I should try?

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  Yet another day of patching someone else's WordPress plugin code because they tried to parse HTML with a regex. In this case, I can see what they were going for, but sometimes there is a much simpler way. https://wordpress.org/support/topic/litespeed-dummy-removal-incorrect-regex/

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  🆕 blog! “ActivityBot is the recipient of an NLnet grant!” Back in February, I applied for NLnet's Next Generation Zero grant. They were looking for Fediverse projects to help rewild the social media landscape. Or, as they describe it: Reclaim the public nature of the internet Small and medium-sized R&D grants between 5.000 and 50.000 euro,… 👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/08/activitybot-is-the-recipient-of-an-nlnet-grant/ ⸻ #ActivityBot #ActivityPub #fediverse #NLnet