My goals for this firewall were mostly to provide better robot blocking and perhaps some more powerful DDoS protection than my Raspberry Pi 3 web server is capable of delivering. I still have to do some testing before I will know if my new firewall actually provides either of those, but at least I now have the additional ability to run multiple physical web servers on my LAN. Exploring that should be fun, and fun is a very important component of running a home web server.
Not my article. Just sharing.
- All this effort to block clankers? Absolutely worth it fuck clankers. - I absolutely love the term clankers. It’s the perfect blend of dystopian cyberpunk and the very real threat of AI. - It seems goofy to me — I wish we had collectively picked a term with more oomph. - I’m struggling to come up with an alternative though. - toasters - So say we all. - so say we all- All of this has happened before. - does that mean we get to burn down textile mills? 
 
 
 
 
- I’m still trying to make ‘sloppers’ happen. Perfectly describes the lack of thought that goes into what they produce. - I like ‘sloppers’ as a term for the morons distrubing and consuming the shit that the clankers are excreting. 
- Yeah and the make a mess of network traffic that slows everything down. - Sludgers works too, but I like slop for the LLM output, so it makes sense as the bot term of derision. 
- clankers make the end result that sloppers (meatbags) eat up ;) 
 
- Stealing a slur from Star Wars and engaging in traditional name calling to show we disapprove of uncreative slop. - We can’t even think of an original term. We can’t think of a novel way to shit on AI. We just copy what everyone else is doing to make fun of the plagiarism machine. - Why does everyone think the term came from Star Wars? I know it was used in steampunk before then, and google suggests it goes back to a 1958 article about robots. Sorry, not trying to be pedantic, just feels like a lot of people give Star Wars unjust credit for things they didn’t actually create. 
- No no - it’s not plagiarism; it’s standardization. 
 
 
 
 
- This page isn’t loading for me. - found the bot - I’m getting a 404 error, using Cloudflare DNS, who ironically has the best commercial clanker protection in the world, otherwise half the world’s internet wouldn’t use them - Bot - Not a bot. Both of you can go fuck yourselves with an ENTIRE can of bear mace. - Sounds like something a bot would say 
- Using a VPN that you forgot is on? - Yep. Why do you ask? - Because the VPN might be the reason you’re being blocked from the page. 
 
 
 
 
- Cloudflare is a protection racket. They cover so many websites because it’s easier to pay the mafia. - Im not a cloudflare dick rider, so if you have a suggestion for a better service with commensurate features, im all ears. - I thought there was a self-hosted service that was an alternative to cloudflare tunnels? 
 
 
 
 
 
- Should we just move everything to tor and start the Internet over again? - look if i can’t browse from my fridge i don’t want to know about it - Not sure about Tor but your fridge definitely supports mesh networks whether it wants to or not. 
 
- Wait till you hear about betanet - I was interested until I saw the crypto stakes to vote on changes baked in. 
- Isn’t that the new freenet ? - No that’s alphanet - surely you mean Pipernet 
- Damn it, with their confusing naming ! 
 
 
 
- *i2p 
 
- 403 error. Congrats, you built a broken system of false-positives. 
- deleted by creator - Opnsense > pfsense - The fact that I have to go through a fucking purchase page, even though pfsense is free (for now), is sketch as hell. First step in their inevitable enshittification. - Opnsense is funded by European non-profits, and is has a better UI - Not to mention they tried running a disinformation campaign against OPNsense for a few years, which was resolved in court. - Also they implemented a WireGuard module that after a review upstream on FreeBSD was found to be completely hocus. 
 
 
- Well it cant be that good becauase it thinks im a bot. - Anubis works pretty well for me so far in blocking clankers. - It seems Anubis’github issues shows many false positives with smartphone browsers. Depending on OP’s target audience it’s worth to hunt for FP - I just wish i could read it, it seems to block based on my IP which isn’t really a good way to identify bots. - Here is a mirror https://git.qiuwen.net.cn/Mirror/anubis handle with care - Thanks but i meant the site in the original post https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/debian-netinstall-waf.html - It says - 403 Error Your IP address has been blocked. This MAY be because you have made yourself look like a robot by using an unknown VPN or Tor exit node. - Blocking tor is pretty bold, that network is too slow to use for anything but straight up privacy. 
- How ironic - I guess you will have to resort to online translators or actual web proxies to read these pages 🙄 
 
 
- I just used a bot to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20250901133211/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/debian-netinstall-waf.html 
 
 
- Here you go: https://web.archive.org/web/20250901133211/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/debian-netinstall-waf.html - They seem to block archive.today but not archive.org. - Oh interesting! Thank you. 
 
 
- And then you have to fill a block list with something like https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/nginx-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker 
- Aka “how to harm marginalized folks” and prevent them from accessing your content too 















