At least from my end when I/bgp.tools tries to deliver email to there I either get a TCP timeout or something like a:

remote smtp server sent unexpected response status code: got 451, expected 2xx, transient: 451 4.3.2 Temporary server error. Please try again later ATTR2 [xxx.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com 2026-11-13T05:25:11.271Z xxx]

Attachment: A 20 cm long brick of glow-in-the-dark bgp tool stickers in a continuous stretch]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/qHH853dp23Xr5w558f Thu, 12 Nov 2026 15:28:37 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/qHH853dp23Xr5w558f I'm sure there is a German compound word for the complex feeling of getting a pager call literally seconds before the aircraft you are on pushes up the engines on the runway (and there is no inflight wifi for the next few hours)

Attachment: Lots of red/golden leaves in the sunset

Attachment: Lots of red/golden leaves in the sunset]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/VRBg47tL8N53kVp5PB Sun, 08 Nov 2026 13:25:33 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/VRBg47tL8N53kVp5PB Re Alpine bug, I am sure this is one of those bugs where you if are in Maryland and if you listen carefully you can hear the TAO people screaming "fuck!"

Reading around the internet I see a lot of people expressing their extreme displeasure at how everything on the internet now seems to show a "verifying your browser" type page, and while this is extremely annoying I assure you from the web sites point of view this is basically existentially required.

Allow me to go into more detail from the point of view of the company that I run, and I'm sure the story is similar in many different places.

On an average day bgp.tools gets about 500~ users or so actively using the website at any given time, and let's assume this results in a request rate of ~10 RPS of dynamic requests (this is not the actual number but it's easier to just provide round benchmark numbers), so basically this excludes CSS/JS/Images/etc.

At the time of writing bgp.tools is "shooting down" about ~40 bot scraper connections _per second_, and the connection attempts the do get through tend to go on to each try and perform ~5 RPS until stopped. To add on top these things continuously do cache misses, which makes sense given at that point is to try and extract as much information from you, for no cost, and as much/fast as possible.

This is very quickly unsustainable.

The problem is that these scrapers are aware that they are unwelcome, and so they will happily do things like: (listed in the order of most commonly done)

A) Use normal browser user agent strings so it's not obvious from basic access.log files

B) Emulate real browser TLS handshakes to evade JA-3 and similar mitigations

C) Use proxies that have lease lines with popular eyeball ISP providers and rented IP space, so that AS blocks do not work

D) Use entire botnets of smart TVs and other compromised devices, mostly sitting behind "normal" networks

E) Use free mobile phone app/games with a "special" SDK as proxies

F) Run entire browser stacks purely to load pages in the most "authentic" way possible

With C+D+E traits combined, IP/Subnet/ASN blocks no longer work, with A+B you cannot easily identify what is what, so this leaves you in a dilemma:

If you run a website which serves information anonymously for free, you have a choice of three options:

1) Put everything behind a log-in barrier (this might destroy your business)

2) Purchase/rent more infrastructure purely for the purpose of serving bots, and at a significant multiplier of your existing infrastructure (this might destroy your business)

3) Use a "verify your browser" step to cut out 90%+ of this mess at the cost of annoying users a bit

(3) is the only really viable option for a lot of people, the pure scale of the scraping problem for some website is just not survivable at most peoples current scales.

# systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 3min 36.134s (firmware) + 7.077s (loader) + 7.043s (kernel) + 7.608s (userspace) = 3min 57.864s 

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

"How's the software upgrade cycle going for you at the moment?"

Attachment: A discarded and worn out toy rabbit on the dark floor, smashed glass around it, quote says "of you know, it's going"]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/GZbc3C86dcl9774ygh Fri, 30 Oct 2026 11:50:34 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/GZbc3C86dcl9774ygh Walked into a coffee place and "iced ube matcha latte" must be close to the final iteration of coffee shop drink evolution

The demonstrated packet composition creates a splice-backed UDP skb containing bytes from a file opened read-only, queues the packet to NFQUEUE, taps the resulting netlink skb through a netlink tap and nlmon, rewrites only the linear prefix into a valid authenticated ESP packet using traffic-control pedit, and redirects the packet to loopback. The nonlinear file-backed fragment remains attached. ESP then performs authenticated decryption over the retained page-cache-backed bytes.

Like check it out, it's Tony Hawks Pro Packet Mangler 2

Rube Goldberg Machine of a chain, love it, unhinged

right, okay, what's next? Maybe OpenSSH could drop some devastating problem as a treat for the end of the week

https://bgp.tools

The real danger is not your browser (who will upgrade quickly), but your VPN Clients, Servers (if you are using badly configured client certs) and software updates that are entirely depending on TLS

Attachment: A bgp.tools screenshot page with a warning banner "Your browser is dangerously out of date and needs security upgrades immediately Your SSL/TLS stack is accepting certificates from a Certificate Authority that is totally compromised, if you do not address this problem then data on your system might be intercepted without obvious signs, and your software may be maliciously compromised. Please do not ignore this notice and upgrade your software immediately."]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Q93XQ386J7bMnL5RDk Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:37:51 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Q93XQ386J7bMnL5RDk

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@golang/117470816794707999

Update everything that verifies certificates against public roots.

Not that it needed more space, but having a full rack makes compliance, cable management and having tools and spares on site so much easier

Also having PDUs that I trust not to die makes a huge difference as well

I can highly recommenced bringing a friend who believes in cable management, I will forever now feel bad (and avoid it) about making the back of the new rack messy after this

Attachment: A side by side of the same servers, but in two racks, the first one is in a half rack and there is a total waterfall of cables at the back, the 2nd is a structured cable managed full sized rack where cables are channeled by color]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/2r7Yh6W4X9pT4njJc4 Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:37:12 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/2r7Yh6W4X9pT4njJc4 bgp.tools rack migration status

Attachment: A cat looking into a microscope and a caption that says scientists don't know anymore]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/GQ191P12hrhkH23q1f Sat, 10 Oct 2026 23:46:36 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/GQ191P12hrhkH23q1f Oh to be a tuxedo cat sleeping in the autumn sun

Attachment: 7vp31b4n24hg644pC2.jpg]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/7NG3cdlSP9bPcYB7Zt Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:07:41 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/7NG3cdlSP9bPcYB7Zt Happy birthday to benjojo.co.uk, who turned 17 years old today... I'm... old?

Attachment: Auf einem alten umgestürzten Baum steht eine Pilzfamilie.]]> https://pixelshot.it/p/Silvia/1012605416862110946 Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:20:46 UTC https://pixelshot.it/p/Silvia/1012605416862110946 Oh hey, it's October! One of the stories that stays in my head "rent free" is when I worked at a more "serious" company (A bank).

There was this time where the company was launching a new product which is effectively fixed savings account (where you are unable to withdraw your money for a duration, normally in exchange for a better interest rate), and these were called "lockable pots" (of money), and thus the marketing person went ahead and came up with the term "locktober" as the tag line to promote the new feature (given it was October).

This got all the way to a published corporate blog and social media posting, in where it was almost immediately discovered upon using the hashtag for locktober, that locktober was an already occupied term for kink reasons...

Needless to say upon this discovery, a new marketing term was very quickly figured out. Although due to the nature of blog post URL "slugs", bank grade locktober does still live forever in the URL for that particular blog post...

A good day overall, apart from maybe the social guy

"how hard could it possibly be"

https://netldn.uk/2026/09/01/netldn-76-10-09-2026/

Attachment: ]]> https://social.netldn.uk/@netldn/statuses/01M3VMGFEY95SXTBPMQGYFHY6A Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:32:09 UTC https://social.netldn.uk/@netldn/statuses/01M3VMGFEY95SXTBPMQGYFHY6A Cool CSS trick I stumbled upon,

html:has(.blah) :is(img, iframe, video, embed) {                       
  filter: hue-rotate(-120deg);                                                
}  

Need a different instance of something to have a slightly different color scheme so you can easily tell the difference? You can just hue shift _everything_ by 120 degrees!

I use this to tell the difference between my "corporate"/"personal" webmail client

Must be deaf and able to sleep standing up though

Attachment: The view inside of a server rack cabinet with power bars and cabling around them, a laptop is on their lap]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/mjZ3k51F7q218sr1l5 Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:25:11 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/mjZ3k51F7q218sr1l5 Remarkably good Monday, obtained new glasses, connected a new 10G transit, and rolled a upgrade on bgp.tools that saved somewhere between 20k to 40k GBP worth of RAM! (after a cosy Sunday in front of a profiler)

But can you get PCIe to come up via wago connectors?

Attachment: A PCIe NIC card that is connected to a middle board that just has thin dupont wires (like you would test with a breadboard) that then goes to another middle board into a PC, a laptop near by shows the NIC shows up]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/35j4pM7Xp1kCBtYD3t Sat, 26 Sep 2026 20:21:50 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/35j4pM7Xp1kCBtYD3t Well, the job lot box of doom is here and I now have a lot of weird fiber patch cables (Like lots of SM APC SC-SC), including the first actual case I've seen MTRJ with my own eyes, some old 1995 to mid 2000's connector

I guess these are all either future victims of a yet to be imagined art thing or fusion splicer target practice

Attachment: A orange fiber cable with what looks like 2 coax BNC connectors at one end, and the other end has this thin black molded connector with 2 small holes next to it]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Rt45SM33Rf2YNzMZQ6 Sat, 26 Sep 2026 20:00:14 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Rt45SM33Rf2YNzMZQ6 Some coastal forest hike photos when I was in Latvia this week

Attachment: 7kHG42yL4dgGj8Pbg4.jpg

Attachment: y4JywL8tHXq5DNmt78.jpg

Attachment: 8WbsB691blJBCH1277.jpg

Attachment: 458n79kRCXX1l4Xhbx.jpg]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/x3y1Cx99Tx4j6VW2nN Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:55:14 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/x3y1Cx99Tx4j6VW2nN Innovation happening at Riga airport where someone said

"hmm, seating in airports sucks, but what if we instead replaced that with the thing they wheel you around in a asylum"

Attachment: 487HL9SxQ37SBw4Kcj.jpg]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/gTGPF8453rR121c467 Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:23:59 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/gTGPF8453rR121c467 aaaaaaaaaaand properly home at last, Last 3 weeks was a proper series of events, Netherlands to France to (Surprise!) Ireland to Latvia.

Now to sleep and enjoy actually sitting at my desk for a the weeks until RIPE in Sofia

Attachment: CVEs by Pope zero until Paul VI, 15130 for Paul II, 52459 for Benedict XVI and by far the most, 283784 for Francis]]> https://hsnl.social/@eloy/117308390679818819 Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:39:01 UTC https://hsnl.social/@eloy/117308390679818819 I can't tell if the IBM s390x software porting team is the best gig ever or the worst, in that you seemingly get to spend a week or so trying to make every possible bit of open source software compile on the monstrosity computer.

This must be either very fun (in that any horrible task is surely not going to stick around that long), or the worst thing ever (moving from one train-wreck of software build system to the next train-wreck of software build system)

Regardless it always does make me smile seeing some software that is like:

"We are known to support amd64, aarch64, and s390x"

! interesting telco/science stuff

! architecture (see photos I post sometimes)

! decent parks (also see photos I post sometimes)

Not a massive museum person, but could be convinced if it's super "up my alley"

Friendly hackspaces or similar also work!

(from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1AcfyXf108)

This has a very similar vibe to SunOS's PREPOSTEROUS_YEARS being 2021 and above

Attachment: A windows XP error that says "your computer is set to the year 2514, which will cause windows media player to stop responding, set your computer to the correct date and try again"]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Qq123ttkB33jrJ5VkQ Sun, 13 Sep 2026 18:53:02 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Qq123ttkB33jrJ5VkQ Whenever I use AliExpress I realise that my own website's search engine is not as bad as it could be

package main

import (
	"bytes"
	"compress/gzip"
	"fmt"
)

func main() {
	data := bytes.Repeat([]byte{0x00}, 64<<18+1)
	for lvl := -2; lvl <= 9; lvl++ {
		var b bytes.Buffer
		w, err := gzip.NewWriterLevel(&b, lvl)
		if err != nil {
			continue
		}
		w.Write(data)
		w.Close()
		fmt.Printf("level %2d: %d bytes\n", lvl, b.Len())
	}
}

Results in

level -2: 2097189 bytes
level -1: 32884 bytes
level  0: 16778522 bytes
level  1: 16628 bytes
level  2: 16628 bytes
level  3: 16627 bytes
level  4: 16627 bytes
level  5: 16627 bytes
level  6: 32884 bytes
level  7: 16304 bytes
level  8: 16304 bytes
level  9: 16304 bytes

Magical level 6 compression I guess

But it's so tempting...

Attachment: gmail screenshot of a email title called "All set for your trip to The Hague"]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Bn5ZT53C1hQwQLWFzn Mon, 07 Sep 2026 23:29:20 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/Bn5ZT53C1hQwQLWFzn New found sympathy for the GitHub actions ops people after setting up and running everything via a Forgejo CI runner, like damn this workload sucks it churns [CPU/Disk Wear] like crazy

Attachment: Rejected I want to be sat by ellie in spanish. Rejected on 7 September 2026 i think not being sat by ellie will really impact my gcse spanish grade and detrimental to my health. I would really appreciate a change in seating plan. Why was this petition rejected? It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.]]> https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/8Fgs41p1Vm7v945Bq3 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:09:09 UTC https://benjojo.co.uk/u/benjojo/h/8Fgs41p1Vm7v945Bq3