#getoffmylawn — Public Fediverse posts

I was in a meeting today and someone said, "you're not old unless you saw Return of the Jedi in the theater."

My good man, I not only saw Return of the Jedi in the theater, I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater. There is also a photo of me around the age of two and a half in Piccadilly Circus with my parents in front of a GIGANTIC Star Wars billboard.

I am so old, I remember when movies would COME BACK TO THEATERS (especially on military bases), so I saw Star Wars in the theater AT LEAST twice when it came back around BEFORE the stupid "George Lucas Midlife Crisis" version before the prequels came out.

#GetOffMyLawn #old #greyAndLovingIt #grayAndLovingIt?

Look, I know there's bigger things to criticize in this world, but really? They couldn't come up with a better title than "The Mandalorian and Grogu"? It's not like Grogu is exactly a good name--Sounds like Scooby Doo saying Roku or something. And while we're here, who thought putting an actor like Pedro Pascal in a helmet all the time and rounding out the cast with muppets was a good move,l? the 4 people on this earth who are pining for the holiday special reboot? (the trailer isn't looking too good IMNSHO). #getoffmylawn

People who send unsubscribe requests to the mailing lists they're trying to unsubscribe from piss me off.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list piss me off more.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list and give wrong information about how to unsubscribe piss me off most of all.
Correct answer: look in the headers or footer of a message sent to the list for unsubscribe instructions and follow them.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds #netiquette

People who send unsubscribe requests to the mailing lists they're trying to unsubscribe from piss me off.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list piss me off more.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list and give wrong information about how to unsubscribe piss me off most of all.
Correct answer: look in the headers or footer of a message sent to the list for unsubscribe instructions and follow them.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds #netiquette

People who send unsubscribe requests to the mailing lists they're trying to unsubscribe from piss me off.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list piss me off more.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list and give wrong information about how to unsubscribe piss me off most of all.
Correct answer: look in the headers or footer of a message sent to the list for unsubscribe instructions and follow them.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds #netiquette

People who send unsubscribe requests to the mailing lists they're trying to unsubscribe from piss me off.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list piss me off more.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list and give wrong information about how to unsubscribe piss me off most of all.
Correct answer: look in the headers or footer of a message sent to the list for unsubscribe instructions and follow them.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds #netiquette

People who send unsubscribe requests to the mailing lists they're trying to unsubscribe from piss me off.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list piss me off more.
People who reply to those unsubscribe requests on the list and give wrong information about how to unsubscribe piss me off most of all.
Correct answer: look in the headers or footer of a message sent to the list for unsubscribe instructions and follow them.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds #netiquette

People who do not understand the concept of "right on red after stop" piss me off. That is all.
#PetPeeves #GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtClouds

my first email address ended in otago.ac.nz and i had to carry a 3.5” floppy disk around to a lab to access it 🤷‍♂️ #getOffMyLawn

@User47 I've seen up to 30% in some places. I believe in tipping for good service but I don't believe that tips should form the basis of a server's compensation. I'm pretty sure that in Washington state restaurant servers get minimum wage; to add 30% on top of that is obscene. Restaurants all over should properly pay their employees and roll the cost of that into their prices. Tipping in the US is out of control. #GetOffMyLawn

I also don't like that everything became all about pull requests instead of commits. Nobody reads the commit messages these days. They might as well not be there.

If I wrote all my commit messages at work by rolling my face across the keyboard, not one person would notice.

#OldManYellsAtCloud #GetOffMyLawn

I also don't like that everything became all about pull requests instead of commits. Nobody reads the commit messages these days. They might as well not be there.

If I wrote all my commit messages at work by rolling my face across the keyboard, not one person would notice.

#OldManYellsAtCloud #GetOffMyLawn

I also don't like that everything became all about pull requests instead of commits. Nobody reads the commit messages these days. They might as well not be there.

If I wrote all my commit messages at work by rolling my face across the keyboard, not one person would notice.

#OldManYellsAtCloud #GetOffMyLawn

I also don't like that everything became all about pull requests instead of commits. Nobody reads the commit messages these days. They might as well not be there.

If I wrote all my commit messages at work by rolling my face across the keyboard, not one person would notice.

#OldManYellsAtCloud #GetOffMyLawn

I also don't like that everything became all about pull requests instead of commits. Nobody reads the commit messages these days. They might as well not be there.

If I wrote all my commit messages at work by rolling my face across the keyboard, not one person would notice.

#OldManYellsAtCloud #GetOffMyLawn

This has been irritating me for months. I'm going to sit down with one of my guys and review the number of people whose swipe cards open the door to our office, but regardless, I do not have the vocabulary to properly articulate how fucking irritated I am at having to create a sign to explain door protocol.

I mean, the whole "knock and wait" thing has been a generally accepted point of common courtesy for... as long as there have been doors.

#ShitIShouldntHaveToDo #Doors #GetOffMyLawn

Microsoft Bob
- Initial Release: March 10, 1995
Clippy (Microsoft Office Assistant)
- Debut: 1996 (with Microsoft Office 97)
BonziBuddy
- Debut: Circa 1999
Tamagotchi
* Debut: 1996

#ai #getoffmylawn

When the hell did "could have seen Star Wars in the theater" become a description of someone being old?

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloud #StarWars

When the hell did "could have seen Star Wars in the theater" become a description of someone being old?

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloud #StarWars

When the hell did "could have seen Star Wars in the theater" become a description of someone being old?

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloud #StarWars

When the hell did "could have seen Star Wars in the theater" become a description of someone being old?

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloud #StarWars

When the hell did "could have seen Star Wars in the theater" become a description of someone being old?

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloud #StarWars

Me in the 2000s: Why would anyone want video calling on their phone?

Me in the 2020s: Why would anyone want video calling on their phone?

#GetOffMyLawn

Boooo! Games Workshop slowly ditching brand names and just turning everything into "Warhammer".

I remember when there used to be Marauder Miniatures as well as Citadel Miniatures!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/okgv4njl/citadel-colour-is-becoming-warhammer-colour/

#GamesWorkshop #Warhammer #GetOffMyLawn

@blogdiva

Pretty much gopher here too.

I had to dial into a VAX, and all I could do was telnet to other sites. So I would telnet to a "gopher site" (really a gopher client that was publicly available via telnet) to browse the internet. I didn't have ftp access, and many gopher sites didn't have sz installed, but boombox . micro . umn . edu was one of the few, and through that I was able to download FreeBSD and other stuff.

Shortly after that, I found slirp and a local free net provided free shell and so I used that.

#getOffMyLawn

IN OTHER NEWS

i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29

my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.

which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?

#getOffMyLawn

The correct levels of silver paint are:
* Boltgun Metal
* Chainmail
* Mithril Silver

#Oldhammer #MiniaturePainting #GetOffMyLawn

Army of Bots

For some months now I have a simple detection against "bad" bots in place. Bots that scrape *everything* they find and very likely are vacuuming all the contents they get to feed the data grinders that train the LLMs of the world. Bots that not only ignore the "robots.txt" protocol, but actively see entries in the robots.txt file as an invitation to visit the contents that are listed there as "disallowed".

I always had a hunch that stating addresses in a publicy reachable text file and flagging those as "please stay out of there" wasn't the best idea, but well, it was the only thing we've got back in the days where the only bots out there were the crawlers of the search engines.

(…) There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt:
robots can ignore your /robots.txt. Especially malware robots that scan the web for security vulnerabilities, and email address harvesters used by spammers will pay no attention.
the /robots.txt file is a publicly available file. Anyone can see what sections of your server you don't want robots to use.
robotstxt.org

Now with all the content-sucking and scraping that the "AI" corporations let lose on the web, it is not unusual to haver a massive spike in bot-related visits even in the personal-website-space. And those scrapers are ruthless, they hammer the servers in high frequency and repeatetly, and are killing the web as we know it along the way.

(…) Many of these scrapers are so sophisticated that it is hard, or impossible, to detect them in action. They often ignore the websites’ programmatic pleas not to be scraped, and are known to hit the more fragile parts of a website repeatedly. opendemocracy.net

I created a directory with a random name in the top-level of my website.

I then added this directory in the robots.txt file with a disallow. This directory is not linked anywhere. Its name is so random and cryptical that it is highly unlikely that a "name guessing" bot will find it (like those exploit-searching idiot scripts that hammer on "wp-admin" or "typo3" URLs even on sites that don't use WordPress or TYPO3…). Inside the directory is a index script that

a) sends me an email,
b) logs the visit with user-agent-string and IP address and
c) saves the data in a nosql db.

In front of my website I have a script that will check the current visitor's IP address against the nosql and if the IP matches, a HTTP 403 status is served.

Here's a best-of user agent strings that recently "visited" my hidden dir.
That last one is superb, considering that this one alone is several times in my log, of course with a different IP each time:

PetalBot
Googlebot/2.1
Claude-SearchBot/1.0
Thinkbot/0 +In_the_test_phase,_if_the_Thinkbot_brings_you_trouble,_please_block_its_IP_address._Thank_you.

Plus, there's a load more that pretend to be "normal" web browsers, of course. 🙄

It is a crude, a symbolical fist shaking yelling at clouds kind-of thing, especially compared to the things that Matthias Ott shared in his post, but it is better than nothing.

#Bots #getoffmylawn #LLM #scrapers

https://webrocker.de/?p=29781

Army of Bots

For some months now I have a simple detection against "bad" bots in place. Bots that scrape *everything* they find and very likely are vacuuming all the contents they get to feed the data grinders that train the LLMs of the world. Bots that not only ignore the "robots.txt" protocoll, but actively see entries in the robots.txt file as an invitation to visit the contents that are listed there as "disallowed".

I always had a hunch that stating addresses in a publicy reachable text file and flagging those as "please stay out of there" wasn't the best idea, but well, it was the only thing we've got back in the days where the only bots out there were the crawlers of the search engines. Now with all the content-sucking and scraping that the "AI" corporations let lose on the web, it is not unusual to haver a massive spike in bot-related visits even in the personal-website-space. And those scrapers are ruthless, they hammer the servers in high frequency and repeatetly.

I created a directory with a random name in the top-level of my website.

I then added this directory in the robots.txt file with a disallow. This directory is not linked anywhere. Its name is so random and cryptical that it is highly unlikely that a "name guessing" bot will find it (like those exploit-searching idiot scripts that hammer on "wp-admin" or "typo3" URLs even on sites that don't use WordPress or TYPO3…). Inside the directory is a index script that a) sends me an email, b) logs the visit with user-agent-string and IP address and c) saves the data in a nosql db.

In front of my website I have a script that will check the current visitor's IP address against the nosql and if the IP matches, a HTTP 403 is served.

Here's a best-of user agent strings that recently "visited" my hidden dir. That last one is superb, considering that this one alone is several times in my log, of course with a different IP each time:

PetalBot
Googlebot/2.1
Claude-SearchBot/1.0
Thinkbot/0 +In_the_test_phase,_if_the_Thinkbot_brings_you_trouble,_please_block_its_IP_address._Thank_you.

Plus, there's a load more that pretend to be "normal" web browsers.

It is a crude and a symbolical fist shaking yelling at clouds thing, especially compared to the things that Matthias Ott shared in his post, but it is better than nothing.

#Bots #getoffmylawn #LLM #scrapers

https://webrocker.de/?p=29781

Army of Bots

For some months now I have a simple detection against "bad" bots in place. Bots that scrape *everything* they find and very likely are vacuuming all the contents they get to feed the data grinders that train the LLMs of the world. Bots that not only ignore the "robots.txt" protocoll, but actively see entries in the robots.txt file as an invitation to visit the contents that are listed there as "disallowed".

I always had a hunch that stating addresses in a publicy reachable text file and flagging those as "please stay out of there" wasn't the best idea, but well, it was the only thing we've got back in the days where the only bots out there were the crawlers of the search engines. Now with all the content-sucking and scraping that the "AI" corporations let lose on the web, it is not unusual to haver a massive spike in bot-related visits even in the personal-website-space. And those scrapers are ruthless, they hammer the servers in high frequency and repeatetly.

I created a directory with a random name in the top-level of my website.

I then added this directory in the robots.txt file with a disallow. This directory is not linked anywhere. Its name is so random and cryptical that it is highly unlikely that a "name guessing" bot will find it (like those exploit-searching idiot scripts that hammer on "wp-admin" or "typo3" URLs even on sites that don't use WordPress or TYPO3…). Inside the directory is a index script that a) sends me an email, b) logs the visit with user-agent-string and IP address and c) saves the data in a nosql db.

In front of my website I have a script that will check the current visitor's IP address against the nosql and if the IP matches, a HTTP 403 is served.

Here's a best-of user agent strings that recently "visited" my hidden dir. That last one is superb, considering that this one alone is several times in my log, of course with a different IP each time:

PetalBot
Googlebot/2.1
Claude-SearchBot/1.0
Thinkbot/0 +In_the_test_phase,_if_the_Thinkbot_brings_you_trouble,_please_block_its_IP_address._Thank_you.

Plus, there's a load more that pretend to be "normal" web browsers.

It is a crude and a symbolical fist shaking yelling at clouds thing, especially compared to the things that Matthias Ott shared in his post, but it is better than nothing.

#Bots #getoffmylawn #LLM #scrapers

https://webrocker.de/?p=29781

Army of Bots

For some months now I have a simple detection against "bad" bots in place. Bots that scrape *everything* they find and very likely are vacuuming all the contents they get to feed the data grinders that train the LLMs of the world. Bots that not only ignore the "robots.txt" protocoll, but actively see entries in the robots.txt file as an invitation to visit the contents that are listed there as "disallowed".

I always had a hunch that stating addresses in a publicy reachable text file and flagging those as "please stay out of there" wasn't the best idea, but well, it was the only thing we've got back in the days where the only bots out there were the crawlers of the search engines. Now with all the content-sucking and scraping that the "AI" corporations let lose on the web, it is not unusual to haver a massive spike in bot-related visits even in the personal-website-space. And those scrapers are ruthless, they hammer the servers in high frequency and repeatetly.

I created a directory with a random name in the top-level of my website.

I then added this directory in the robots.txt file with a disallow. This directory is not linked anywhere. Its name is so random and cryptical that it is highly unlikely that a "name guessing" bot will find it (like those exploit-searching idiot scripts that hammer on "wp-admin" or "typo3" URLs even on sites that don't use WordPress or TYPO3…). Inside the directory is a index script that a) sends me an email, b) logs the visit with user-agent-string and IP address and c) saves the data in a nosql db.

In front of my website I have a script that will check the current visitor's IP address against the nosql and if the IP matches, a HTTP 403 is served.

Here's a best-of user agent strings that recently "visited" my hidden dir. That last one is superb, considering that this one alone is several times in my log, of course with a different IP each time:

PetalBot
Googlebot/2.1
Claude-SearchBot/1.0
Thinkbot/0 +In_the_test_phase,_if_the_Thinkbot_brings_you_trouble,_please_block_its_IP_address._Thank_you.

Plus, there's a load more that pretend to be "normal" web browsers.

It is a crude and a symbolical fist shaking yelling at clouds thing, especially compared to the things that Matthias Ott shared in his post, but it is better than nothing.

#Bots #getoffmylawn #LLM #scrapers

https://webrocker.de/?p=29781

Army of Bots

For some months now I have a simple detection against "bad" bots in place. Bots that scrape *everything* they find and very likely are vacuuming all the contents they get to feed the data grinders that train the LLMs of the world. Bots that not only ignore the "robots.txt" protocol, but actively see entries in the robots.txt file as an invitation to visit the contents that are listed there as "disallowed".

I always had a hunch that stating addresses in a publicy reachable text file and flagging those as "please stay out of there" wasn't the best idea, but well, it was the only thing we've got back in the days where the only bots out there were the crawlers of the search engines.

(…) There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt:
robots can ignore your /robots.txt. Especially malware robots that scan the web for security vulnerabilities, and email address harvesters used by spammers will pay no attention.
the /robots.txt file is a publicly available file. Anyone can see what sections of your server you don't want robots to use.
robotstxt.org

Now with all the content-sucking and scraping that the "AI" corporations let lose on the web, it is not unusual to haver a massive spike in bot-related visits even in the personal-website-space. And those scrapers are ruthless, they hammer the servers in high frequency and repeatetly, and are killing the web as we know it along the way.

(…) Many of these scrapers are so sophisticated that it is hard, or impossible, to detect them in action. They often ignore the websites’ programmatic pleas not to be scraped, and are known to hit the more fragile parts of a website repeatedly. opendemocracy.net

I created a directory with a random name in the top-level of my website.

I then added this directory in the robots.txt file with a disallow. This directory is not linked anywhere. Its name is so random and cryptical that it is highly unlikely that a "name guessing" bot will find it (like those exploit-searching idiot scripts that hammer on "wp-admin" or "typo3" URLs even on sites that don't use WordPress or TYPO3…). Inside the directory is a index script that

a) sends me an email,
b) logs the visit with user-agent-string and IP address and
c) saves the data in a nosql db.

In front of my website I have a script that will check the current visitor's IP address against the nosql and if the IP matches, a HTTP 403 status is served.

Here's a best-of user agent strings that recently "visited" my hidden dir.
That last one is superb, considering that this one alone is several times in my log, of course with a different IP each time:

PetalBot
Googlebot/2.1
Claude-SearchBot/1.0
Thinkbot/0 +In_the_test_phase,_if_the_Thinkbot_brings_you_trouble,_please_block_its_IP_address._Thank_you.

Plus, there's a load more that pretend to be "normal" web browsers, of course. 🙄

It is a crude, a symbolical fist shaking yelling at clouds kind-of thing, especially compared to the things that Matthias Ott shared in his post, but it is better than nothing.

#Bots #getoffmylawn #LLM #scrapers

https://webrocker.de/?p=29781

My employer is a major sponsor of Team USA and the Olympics. You'll probably see some commercials for them, or at least some signage during competitions. Today they launched a pop-up shop for co-branded merch celebrating the sponsorship... for purchase.

Call me crazy, or cynical, or old-fashioned, but if you want your employees to rep the company, you GIVE them the shirt to wear.

Not too long ago, that's exactly what would have happened. Times have changed.

#TeamUSA #Olympics #GetOffMyLawn

First it was "dumb terminals".

Then "diskless workstations".

Then "network computers".

Now it's "cloud PCs".

Seems like every 10-15 years the industry tries to push the idea of being utterly dependent on a remote server, and everyone hates the idea and it dies.

#GetOffMyLawn #OldManYellsAtCloudPC

Geez... the amount of time I've had to spend contacting folks to fix their #AI written software that interacts with my site's API is unreal.

Between that and dealing with AI bots, I really think the whole AI craze is one of the worst things that has happened in tech.

#OldMan #GetOffMyLawn

Sometimes I wonder if the youths know that not only did we used to pay for everything with paper checks, but every month the bank would send all of your checks that were cashed in the past month—the actual checks, not copies or digital images of them—back to you in an envelope with your bank statement.
There's a fuck-ton that's wrong with the world nowadays, but at least we don't have to deal with that nonsense anymore.
#GetOffMyLawn

Signs I'm getting too old for this job: Getting mad at people who write "0px" or worse "0px 0px 0px 0px". Zero is zero, numnuts. It doesn't matter zero-whats. You're just wasting bandwidth adding units. #GetOffMyLawn #HTML #CSS

Okay, I know I'm gatekeeping, but, to me, if it doesn't use ascii graphics, then it's not a Roguelike. #GetOffMyLawn

The 10yo (previously known as the 9yo) received a new Switch game for his birthday.

We need to create an account for him to play it.

I remember back in the day when you just had to select "1 PLAYER" or "2 PLAYER" to play a video game. That was it. Nobody was asking for personal information. 😔

#DadThoughts #WeekendThoughts #GetOffMyLawn #enshittification #Gaming #VideoGames #nintendo #NintendoSwitch

The 10yo (previously known as the 9yo) received a new Switch game for his birthday.

We need to create an account for him to play it.

I remember back in the day when you just had to select "1 PLAYER" or "2 PLAYER" to play a video game. That was it. Nobody was asking for personal information. 😔

#DadThoughts #WeekendThoughts #GetOffMyLawn #enshittification #Gaming #VideoGames #nintendo #NintendoSwitch

The 10yo (previously known as the 9yo) received a new Switch game for his birthday.

We need to create an account for him to play it.

I remember back in the day when you just had to select "1 PLAYER" or "2 PLAYER" to play a video game. That was it. Nobody was asking for personal information. 😔

#DadThoughts #WeekendThoughts #GetOffMyLawn #enshittification #Gaming #VideoGames #nintendo #NintendoSwitch

The 10yo (previously known as the 9yo) received a new Switch game for his birthday.

We need to create an account for him to play it.

I remember back in the day when you just had to select "1 PLAYER" or "2 PLAYER" to play a video game. That was it. Nobody was asking for personal information. 😔

#DadThoughts #WeekendThoughts #GetOffMyLawn #enshittification #Gaming #VideoGames #nintendo #NintendoSwitch

The 10yo (previously known as the 9yo) received a new Switch game for his birthday.

We need to create an account for him to play it.

I remember back in the day when you just had to select "1 PLAYER" or "2 PLAYER" to play a video game. That was it. Nobody was asking for personal information. 😔

#DadThoughts #WeekendThoughts #GetOffMyLawn #enshittification #Gaming #VideoGames #nintendo #NintendoSwitch

Ahah! Found it. White Dwarf 184 from April 1995.

Now THAT is a giveaway!

#GamesWorkshop #WhiteDwarf #Warhammer #Warhammer40K #Oldhammer #GiveAway #ThoseWereTheDays #GetOffMyLawn

The fact that there are people who use computers who have never used a floppy disk makes me feel old. [1]

[1] Never mind people who use computers who have never used a keyboard.

#computer #FloppyDisk #diskette #FloppyDiskette #floppy #FloppyDisc #old #GetOffMyLawn

The fact that there are people who use computers who have never used a floppy disk makes me feel old. [1]

[1] Never mind people who use computers who have never used a keyboard.

#computer #FloppyDisk #diskette #FloppyDiskette #floppy #FloppyDisc #old #GetOffMyLawn

The fact that there are people who use computers who have never used a floppy disk makes me feel old. [1]

[1] Never mind people who use computers who have never used a keyboard.

#computer #FloppyDisk #diskette #FloppyDiskette #floppy #FloppyDisc #old #GetOffMyLawn

The fact that there are people who use computers who have never used a floppy disk makes me feel old. [1]

[1] Never mind people who use computers who have never used a keyboard.

#computer #FloppyDisk #diskette #FloppyDiskette #floppy #FloppyDisc #old #GetOffMyLawn