After my last post about fighting bots, I received several questions asking whether my solution would also work for simple web hosting setups. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even though most hosters use Apache and allow the use of mod_rewrite, they typically only permit configuration through .htaccess files. The problem is that the RewriteMap configuration my solution relies on cannot be defined there.

So I started thinking: what if we use PHP instead?

Ideally, we wouldn’t want bots to reach the PHP interpreter at all. But if we have no other choice, we can still make this fairly efficient by blocking bots very early—before the DokuWiki core is even initialized.

This is where the new Bot Check plugin comes in.

The idea is simple: the plugin generates a small, dependency-free PHP script that implements the bot checks. This script is then loaded via DokuWiki’s inc/preload.php mechanism, ensuring it runs as early as possible in the request lifecycle.

For end users, the experience is the same as for my previous solution. A quick button click sets a cookie and let's them access your wiki for 30 days.

his is a somewhat recycled version of a forum post that I have to lookup again and again, because the same similar questions keep popping up:

How can I install DokuWiki on a shared drive?

How to run DokuWiki out of Dropbox and share it with multiple users?

How to sync DokuWiki between different computers?

These questions mostly come from users who made their first steps in DokuWiki using the "DokuWiki on a Stick" version. To novice users, the stick version feels like a traditional desktop application: you double click the run.cmd and DokuWiki starts.

But what is really starting is a local web server and a browser pointing to said web server.

Anubis is a Web AI Firewall Utility that weighs the soul of your connection using one or more challenges in order to protect upstream resources from scraper bots.

This program is designed to help protect the small internet from the endless storm of requests that flood in from AI companies. Anubis is as lightweight as possible to ensure that everyone can afford to protect the communities closest to them.

Anubis is a bit of a nuclear response. This will result in your website being blocked from smaller scrapers and may inhibit "good bots" like the Internet Archive. You can configure bot policy definitions to explicitly allowlist them and we are working on a curated set of "known good" bots to allow for a compromise between discoverability and uptime.

In most cases, you should not need this and can probably get by using Cloudflare to protect a given origin. However, for circumstances where you can't or won't use Cloudflare, Anubis is there for you.

One of my latest projects is the Baochip-1x, a mostly-open, full-custom silicon chip fabricated in TSMC 22nm, targeted at high assurance applications. It’s a security chip, but far more open than any other security chip; it’s also a general purpose microcontroller that fills a gap in between the Raspberry Pi RP2350 (found on the Pi Pico2) and the NXP iMXRT1062 (found on the Teensy 4.1).

It’s the latest step in the Betrusted initiative, spurred by work I did with Ed Snowden 8 years ago trying to answer the question of “can we trust hardware to not betray us?” in the context of mass surveillance by state-level adversaries.

Whenever you end-up with a large number of banned IP's in fail2ban you might want to know if there are multiple IP's banned from the same subnet. This scripts groups all banned IP's into /24 subnets.

By default the script returns all subnets with 10 or more IP's banned by fail2ban. You can change the group size either by adapting this script or using the --groupsize= parameter.

Example:

 sudo ./fail2ban_subnets.sh --groupsize=15

I think I have a setting problem with Fail2ban apache-badbot filter because I unfortunately have attacks of this type, and Fail2ban does not ban any IP. //

failregex = ^<HOST> -[^"]*"(?:GET|POST|HEAD) \/.* HTTP\/\d(?:\.\d+)" \d+ \d+ "[^"]*" "[^"]*(?:%(badbots)s|%(badbotscustom)s)[^"]*"$

Fail2ban has a build-in tool for testing the fail2ban filters, called fail2ban-regex, which you can use via command line. Like:

fail2ban-regex /var/www/vhosts/<your domain>/logs/access_ssl_log /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/apache-badbots.conf

Once you're happy with the matched results, then use the following (replacing the last value with the name of your jail) to commit the changes without having to restart the Fail2Ban service:

 fail2ban-client reload nameofyourjail

But for local audiences here in Aotearoa, no scene comes close to the emotional climax of the film, when a choir of women’s voices starts to ring through outer space with a very familiar melody and lyrics: “Pō atarau / E moea iho nei”.

The song is ‘Pō Atarau’, a te reo Māori wartime anthem penned by composer Emira Maewa Kaihau in 1915. Inspired by Clement Scott’s 1913 ‘Swiss Cradle Song’, Kaihau’s version was used as a farewell to soldiers fighting in the first world war (Kaihau also wrote the lyrics for ‘Now is the Hour,’ which became intertwined with ‘Pō Atarau’ in 1935). Over the 20th century, the song would come to be associated with a range of farewells, including funerals, leaving parties and memorials, and in 2024 it was included in The Aotearoa Songbook, celebrating the legacy of waiata Māori. //

Among this extensive Viking catalogue is the LP Turakina Sings, recorded with the Turakina Māori Girls Choir in 1976. //

While searching for goodbye songs from different cultures, I came across ‘Pō Atarau’ and I knew the song was special because of how it conveyed the sentiment of saying goodbye, even if you didn’t understand the lyrics,” he tells The Spinoff.

Lehman listened to many different recordings of the song, and found that the version sung by the Turakina Māori Girls’ Choir in 1976 “fit perfectly with the tone and pace of the scene” as well as the “vintage quality” of most of the soundtrack. “When I played it for the directors, they got goosebumps and were instantly sold,” he says. “It became a standout moment we kept referring back to throughout the process as the perfect example of what we wanted to achieve with the soundtrack, highlighting the richness of global music and the shared human experience.”

Project Hail Mary is now in theaters, and directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are no strangers to making stylish movies with great music. Whether they're directing, writing, or producing, their films always have music that is essential to both the aesthetic and the story. Project Hail Mary is no exception. It features both an astounding score and a selection of songs that help to accentuate the mood or story beat.

Josh Howerton @howertonjosh
·
OK, here's my thesis: "Project Hail Mary," starring @RyanGosling, is actually a CHRISTIAN movie.

Now, all of this could theoretically be a coincidence, but let me make my case 👇

6:01 PM · Jul 27, 2026
https://x.com/howertonjosh/status/2081877719864762708

The main character, Ryland Grace, is sent into certain death to save everyone else. His alien cohort, named Rocky, is the rock by which Grace builds his entire rescue. His entire adventure is kicked off by a woman named Eva. The long shot of a project is called "Hail Mary," which is something the Catholics will adore.

But once you put it all together, that grace saved a decaying universe after Eve's actions began the whole thing, and that Christ built his church upon the "rock" that was Peter, and what's more, Christ made himself a sacrifice to accomplish that end.

Obviously, the film is not a one-to-one beat of Christ's journey, but if the theories are correct, then the point wasn't to mirror His story, but to borrow heavily from it. //

What was produced is so Christian, not just in name, but in feel, that I honestly think that any creators in the Christian space should take notes.

This is how you do it. Jesus told parables that got His point across. Christians should do the same. You don't need to be on the nose about it. I would even say I would avoid making Christian content that would meet the approval of the front row of the church.

Just tell a human story and put God over it. You don't have to reference Him. Tolkien surely didn't, but you could feel the influence of God in the story. The traits and virtues He wants you to have pushed forward. Clear lines of good and evil. Hope in the face of hopelessness. Action taken, even if the chances are slim. Faith that it'll work out right, even if you can't figure out how. //

The ship "Hail Mary" was full of "grace" (Doctor Grace).

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With Ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, just drag-and-drop files to the USB drive and boot them directly.
You can copy many files to different folders and Ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (screenshot).
You can also browse ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files in local disks and directly boot them.
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
Most types of OS supported

Ventoy is a free and open-source tool that can turn any USB into a multiboot device. Once configured, you can drag and drop ISO files onto the drive, and all of them will be available via a boot menu. More importantly, you can continue to use your USB drive as a regular media storage device.
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

for LMGC install an agent to allow your computer to be remotely controlled by LMGC

A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit after launching earlier this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a planned decade-long mission to open new frontiers in satellite servicing.

The Mission Robotic Vehicle, owned and built by Northrop Grumman, rocketed into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday. Three small propulsion pods, each functioning as standalone spacecraft, accompanied the MRV aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 deployed all four payloads within about an hour of liftoff. It will take about a year for the satellites to maneuver from their initial elliptical drop-off orbit into a circular orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. At this altitude, the MRV and the three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) will travel in lockstep with Earth’s rotation, //

Northrop Grumman’s first three Mission Extension Pods launched on the same rocket as the MRV, but they are flying separately up to geosynchronous orbit using electric propulsion. The pods, each about the size of a dishwasher unit, will loiter there for retrieval by the MRV’s robotic arms. After picking up the first pod, the servicing spacecraft will rendezvous with its first client satellite, lining up precisely with the client to install the pod into its engine compartment. The MEP will latch onto the satellite and take over propulsion for up to eight years, acting as a jetpack, or a smaller version of the MEV, to move the client around geosynchronous orbit as needed. //

This isn’t refueling, but the MRV serves the same end. The Space Force has a separate contract with a company named Astroscale to demonstrate refueling in geosynchronous orbit next year, something no US company has done before. The MRV can also do more than life extension. It can inspect, service, upgrade, or repair satellites that were never designed for it. //

“RSGS has full seven-degree-of-freedom robotic arms, heavily instrumented. The ends of the arms can attach multiple tools as hands, and they also have a good deal of autonomous control,” Shoemaker said. “It’s general-purpose, high-dexterity robotics.”

Ground teams could build and launch more jetpacks to meet up with the MRV in geosynchronous orbit after the spacecraft uses the three pods already in space. Future launches could carry new tools, such as a knife, a cutter, or a robotic screwdriver for more invasive servicing or repairs. And the MRV itself is designed to be refueled in orbit. Northrop Grumman doesn’t plan to immediately build a second MRV, but it will continue upgrading and augmenting the vehicle it just launched. //

These companies and more are taking distinct paths toward satellite servicing, orbital refueling, in-space depots, and what the military likes to call dynamic space operations. But the trend is unmistakable: to fully utilize the domain of space, the throwaway mentality must go.

Introduced Monday as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., the BRRRRT Act (Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt) gets its name from the bone-rattling “BRRRRT!” sound the jet’s 30mm Gatling gun makes when fired. //

The current National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has some provisions for keeping some A-10s flying as well. But that doesn't sound as cool as the BRRRRT Act.

This bill will probably end up going nowhere, sadly. The A-10s will stick around a little while longer, but the Air Force has stopped training Warthog drivers, and depot maintenance operations on the A-10 are wrapping up. That's too bad. There's still a place in the modern battle space for a dedicated, low-and-slow, dedicated close air-support airplane, and the A-10's a very, very good one.

The minimum lethal dose of undiluted ethylene glycol is 1.4 mL/kg in cats, 4.4–6.6 mL/kg in dogs, 7–8 mL/kg in poultry, 2–10 mL/kg in cattle, 1.6 mL/kg in macaques, and 6.61 mL/kg in guinea pigs. Younger animals may be more susceptible. //

Once absorption has occurred, excretion of ethylene glycol is increased by fluid therapy designed to correct dehydration, increase urine production, and compensate for expected future losses. Fluid rates should be reassessed often to accommodate changes in hydration and status of ongoing losses. //

Cats require a higher (and extra-label) dosage 4-MP than dogs: 125 mg/kg initially, followed by 31.3 mg/kg at 12, 24, and 36 hours after the initial dose. Alternatively, ethanol can be administered, using a bolus protocol of 5 mL of 20% ethanol per kg body wt diluted in IV fluids and administered as a drip over 6 hours for five treatments, and then over 8 hours for four more treatments.

Lastly, for both dogs and cats, 30% ethanol can be administered at 1.3 mL/kg, IV bolus, followed by 0.42 mL/kg per hour constant-rate infusion for 48 hours. This approach may increase ease of monitoring and the maintenance of blood glucose levels. CNS signs may be less likely to wax and wane.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

The Odyssey—the original poetry and the modern film—is not really about adventure, although it has an abundance of it. It’s also not primarily about virtues in some abstract way, whether the kill-your-enemies or love-your-enemies type. The Odyssey is about home. Odysseus wants to return to his place but comes to see that his obstacle is not merely geographical. He must become a different kind of person, the kind of man who can receive home as gift rather than as trophy. And at almost every step of the path, those who imaginatively walk with him can feel the ache.

Some of us are pulled toward nostalgia, looking to something better in the past. And some of us are pulled toward discontentment, looking to something better in the future. Regardless of where we turn, we all recognize something is missing. And all kinds of people—politicians, marketers, tech lords—are there to say, “You want to get home, and I can get you there.”

But it never works.

That’s because homesickness points in contradictory directions all at once. //

The ancient problem says “I can’t get home.” The modern problem says “I got home—it isn’t home.” One longs for return, and one longs for escape. These are not two problems but one. No matter which way we turn, we don’t know what home is. That’s why Homer still rings true, even in the era of IMAX and SpaceX.

And that’s what makes the Christian story stranger than the pagan ones. Odysseus spends 20 years trying to get back to Ithaca. Jesus has spent 2,000 years (so far) telling us to stop mistaking Ithaca for Eden.

The Bible is full of odysseys: Abraham leaves Ur. The Israelites leave Egypt. The apostles set out to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:47). When describing examples of faith, the Book of Hebrews says none of them “received the things promised” (11:13, ESV throughout).

These pilgrimages were not about answering the longing for home with a return to something past. We want a place prepared for us, a place to belong, a place to be known, a place to be loved. But our longing for that can sometimes leave us nostalgic for the wrong thing. The Israelites hungered in the wilderness. They responded to that with nostalgia for slavery: “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic” (Num. 11:5).

The longing wasn’t wrong. As a matter of fact, God said the hunger was necessary. The emptiness was in order that “he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). As C. S. Lewis reminded us, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.”

All of that should lead us to ponder: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Identifying the ache is not the end, but it’s a start.

The Odyssey, Homer’s and Nolan’s, assumes the greatest human tragedy is losing the home you once had. The Bible says Abraham was looking for a city he had never seen (Heb. 11:13–14). The Odyssey doesn’t answer the question; it reminds us how to ask it. And that’s not nothing. But once we start asking those questions, we might find a whole Trojan horse full of meanings about which we could never start to ask or even think (Eph. 3:20). Asking those questions just might lead us somewhere else, to a better story than even Homer or Hollywood can tell.

The Genesee Valley Greenway State Park is a 90-mile open space corridor that follows the route of the Genesee Valley Canal (1840-1878) and the Pennsylvania Railroad Rochester Branch (1882-1963) from the Erie Canalway Trail in Rochester's Genesee Valley Park to the Village of Cuba in Allegany County. The Greenway will eventually extend to Hinsdale in Cattaraugus County.

It includes a public, multi-use trail and natural and historic resources. The majority of the trail is an old railway bed that is a straight, level surface consisting of cinders, gravel, and mowed grass. The Greenway passes through woodlands, wetlands, river and stream valleys, rolling farmlands, steep gorges, and historic villages in sixteen towns located in Monroe, Livingston, Wyoming, Allegany, and Cattaraugus counties.

He was offered immortality. He chose home.

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey opens this week. We won’t be talking about who plays Helen. We’ll be talking about what the poem actually says – which is so much more interesting.

1. The Odyssey is 2,800 years old and contains one choice that defines everything: a goddess offers a mortal man immortality, eternal youth, and paradise. He refuses. He wants to go home. This is not a minor plot point. It is the entire argument of the poem – and one of the most radical statements in Western literature.

2. Home is not a place. It is the accumulated particular – his wife, his son, his dog, his kingdom, the bed he built with his own hands around a living olive tree. Specific. Irreplaceable. The thing no paradise can substitute for, because paradise is general and home is yours. Odysseus knows exactly who he is for the entire poem. Every island, every temptation, every god is trying to make him someone else. He refuses all of it.

3. Immortality is the abstraction. The Form. The Idea. Calypso offers "transcendence" – escape from the mortal, the contingent, the particular, into something eternal and "perfect." This is what Plato promised. This is what every utopia promises. He looks at the offer, looks toward Ithaca, and says no. Written five centuries before Plato – and already containing the correct answer.

4. Every temptation in the poem is a variation of the same offer. The Lotus-eaters give you forgetting – and forgetting is always the first step to losing yourself. Circe turns men into pigs: comfortable, fed, no longer quite human. The Sirens offer pure knowledge – but knowledge that requires you to stop, to be detained, to never arrive. Each one is a different version of the same proposition: stay, be comfortable, become something other than what you are.

5. He defeats the Cyclops — pure brute force — not with strength but with a name trick. He tells the monster his name is Nobody. When the Cyclops screams for help, he screams that Nobody is killing him. Intelligence as the only weapon that works against power. The hero of this poem is not the strongest man in the room. He is the most lucid.

6. Penelope is an underrated figure in Western literature. Twenty years alone, surrounded by a parasitic class consuming everything her husband built, with nothing but intelligence and patience. She holds the line. She tests him at the end with the secret of the bed – not with passion but with proof. She too knows exactly who she is and what she is waiting for. The Odyssey has two heroes. One travels. One stays. Both refuse to become someone else.

7. This week, everyone is arguing about the casting. Helen’s complexion. Representation. Nobody is discussing what the poem says. This is — without anyone noticing — the Odyssey happening in real time. The Lotus-eaters don’t use force. They offer something comfortable enough to make you forget what you were heading toward. The debate about the casting is the Lotus flower – the smokescreen. The poem is Ithaca – home. Odysseus would have recognized the mechanism immediately. He encountered it on every island.

Communism and the Herostratos Instinct – They Couldn’t Build It. So They Burned It.

In 356 BC, a man named Herostratos burned the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus — one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world — because he could never build something that magnificent and needed the world to know his name. The Athenians made it a capital offense to speak it. We still know it. The first man to destroy a Wonder of the World. It is the same story as Cain and Abel.

1. Every civilization produces two types in permanent tension. Those who build – who create, who reach, who transmit excellence forward. And those consumed by the fact that others build better than they do. They cannot bear the height. Cannot match it. And eventually decide that if they cannot reach it, nobody should have it. The name for this is envy – the specific, corrosive pain caused not by your own suffering but by another’s excellence. Nietzsche called it ressentiment. Genesis called it Cain. Same wound, every century, different clothes.

2. The lie is the first weapon – not to win the argument but to poison it. Not merely strategic propaganda deployed to seize power, but deployed to corrupt, to stain, to contaminate. To make the great seem like thieves, the builder an exploiter, the cathedral oppression, the excellence privilege. The goal is not to defeat the excellent in open debate. It is to make admiring them shameful and transmitting them suspect – so the child who might have reached toward them never learns they existed. Zakłamanie aimed specifically at height (explained below). Not managing reality – poisoning the wells from which excellence drinks.

3. The targets are never accidental. Always the best – the cathedral, not the barn. The scholar, not the clerk. Colonel Ciepliński, not the collaborator who signed the confession (also below). Excellence is the specific offense. Height is the specific wound. The destruction is always aimed upward – which is how you know it is envy and not justice.

4. Communism is the Herostratos instinct given a five-year plan, a secret police, and a philosophy that makes destruction sound like justice. The most organized mobilization of ressentiment in human history. It gave envy a manifesto, an army, and the moral high ground – the most dangerous combination ever assembled. Previous destroyers burned one temple. Communism burned the concept of the temple.

5. The pattern is unbroken across centuries. The French Revolution scattered the bones of French kings – not military necessity, ideological purification. Mao’s Red Guards burned libraries and killed scholars because five thousand years of Chinese excellence was an implicit rebuke to the revolution’s mediocrity. Today’s version cancels Shakespeare, pulls down Newton, erases Jefferson – not despite their greatness but because of it. Same wound. Same response. Updated vocabulary.

6. The lie does not stop at winning. It keeps working before and after victory – corrupting memory, rewriting history, staining reputations across generations, demoralizing and poisoning the souls. A civilization that cannot point to its greatest achievements and say — this is what we are capable of — is a civilization that has been successfully poisoned. The envy wins not when it tears down the statue. It wins when the children no longer know what the statue was.

7. You cannot build from envy. Which is why every revolution driven by it produces the same result: the heights are not replaced by new heights but by the flat, the administered, the carefully mediocre – the Idiocracy, the Last Man blinking. Not a failure of implementation. The intended output of the Herostratos instinct at civilizational scale. The Temple of Artemis was rebuilt twice before the destroyers finally won. Western civilization has been rebuilt before. The question is whether enough people understand what is being burned — and why — before the last stones are gone.