Admiral Patrick

I learned to play the guitar growing up as a young rapscallion in Mississippi. But things didn’t really take off until I moved to Memphis. There I met the Colonel and the hits just kept coming. Unfortunately, the fame went to my head, I gained a lot of weight, started wearing a white jumpsuit, and ate tranquilizers like they were trail mix. Then, in 1977, I died on the toilet.

*Or did I?*

I also develop [Tesseract UI](https://codeberg.org/tesseract-ui/tesseract ) for Lemmy/Sublinks

Last Notes

2026-05-03 01:09:08 UTC

[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io7wofnFB_w)

2026-03-01 02:27:39 UTC

- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK_LN3XEcnw)
-[song.link](https://song.link/y/EK_LN3XEcnw)

2026-02-13 19:24:52 UTC

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Maybe I should flesh it out into an actual guide. The Nepenthes docs are "meh" at best and completely gloss over integrating it into your stack.
You'll also need to give it corpus text to generate slop from. I used transcripts from 4 or 5 weird episodes of Voyager (let's be honest: shit got *weird* on Voyager lol), mixed with some Jack Handy quotes and a few transcripts of Married...with Children episodes.
https://content.dubvee.org/ is where that bot traffic lands up if you want to see what I'm feeding them.

2026-02-13 17:25:46 UTC

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Thanks!
Mostly there's three steps involved:
1) Setup Nepenthes to receive the traffic
2) Perform bot detection on inbound requests (I use a regex list and one is provided below)
3) Configure traffic rules in your load balancer / reverse proxy to send the detected bot traffic to Nepenthes instead of the actual backend for the service(s) you run.
Here's a rough guide I commented a while back: https://dubvee.org/comment/5198738
Here's the post link at lemmy.world which should have that comment visible: https://lemmy.world/post/40374746
You'll have to resolve my comment link on your instance since my instance is set to private now, but in case that doesn't work, here's the text of it:
So, I set this up recently and agree with all of your points about the actual integration being glossed over.
I already had bot detection setup in my Nginx config, so adding Nepenthes was just changing the behavior of that. Previously, I had just returned either 404 or 444 to those requests but now it redirects them to Nepenthes.
Rather than trying to do rewrites and pretend the Nepenthes content is under my app's URL namespace, I just do a redirect which the bot crawlers tend to follow just fine.
There's several parts to this to keep my config sane. Each of those are in include files.
- An include file that looks at the user agent, compares it to a list of bot UA regexes, and sets a variable to either 0 or 1. By itself, that include file doesn't do anything more than set that variable. This allows me to have it as a global config without having it apply to every virtual host.
- An include file that performs the action if a variable is set to true. This has to be included in the `server` portion of each virtual host where I want the bot traffic to go to Nepenthes. If this isn't included in a virtual host's `server` block, then bot traffic is allowed.
- A virtual host where the Nepenthes content is presented. I run a subdomain (`content.mydomain.xyz`). You could also do this as a path off of your protected domain, but this works for me and keeps my already complex config from getting any worse. Plus, it was easier to integrate into my existing bot config. Had I not already had that, I would have run it off of a path (and may go back and do that when I have time to mess with it again).
The `map-bot-user-agents.conf` is included in the `http` section of Nginx and applies to all virtual hosts. You can either include this in the main `nginx.conf` or at the top (above the `server` section) in your individual virtual host config file(s).
The `deny-disallowed.conf` is included individually in each virtual hosts's `server` section. Even though the bot detection is global, if the virtual host's `server` section does not include the action file, then nothing is done.
#### Files
:::spoiler map-bot-user-agents.conf
Note that I'm treating Google's crawler the same as an AI bot because....well, it is. They're abusing their search position by double-dipping on the crawler so you can't opt out of being crawled for AI training without also preventing it from crawling you for search engine indexing. Depending on your needs, you may need to comment that out. I've also commented out the Python requests user agent. And forgive the mess at the bottom of the file. I inherited the seed list of user agents and haven't cleaned up that massive regex one-liner.
```nginx
# Map bot user agents
## Sets the $ua_disallowed variable to 0 or 1 depending on the user agent. Non-bot UAs are 0, bots are 1
map $http_user_agent $ua_disallowed {
default 0;
"~PerplexityBot" 1;
"~PetalBot" 1;
"~applebot" 1;
"~compatible; zot" 1;
"~Meta" 1;
"~SurdotlyBot" 1;
"~zgrab" 1;
"~OAI-SearchBot" 1;
"~Protopage" 1;
"~Google-Test" 1;
"~BacklinksExtendedBot" 1;
"~microsoft-for-startups" 1;
"~CCBot" 1;
"~ClaudeBot" 1;
"~VelenPublicWebCrawler" 1;
"~WellKnownBot" 1;
#"~python-requests" 1;
"~bitdiscovery" 1;
"~bingbot" 1;
"~SemrushBot" 1;
"~Bytespider" 1;
"~AhrefsBot" 1;
"~AwarioBot" 1;
# "~Poduptime" 1;
"~GPTBot" 1;
"~DotBot" 1;
"~ImagesiftBot" 1;
"~Amazonbot" 1;
"~GuzzleHttp" 1;
"~DataForSeoBot" 1;
"~StractBot" 1;
"~Googlebot" 1;
"~Barkrowler" 1;
"~SeznamBot" 1;
"~FriendlyCrawler" 1;
"~facebookexternalhit" 1;
"~*(?i)(80legs|360Spider|Aboundex|Abonti|Acunetix|^AIBOT|^Alexibot|Alligator|AllSubmitter|Apexoo|^asterias|^attach|^BackDoorBot|^BackStreet|^BackWeb|Badass|Bandit|Baid|Baiduspider|^BatchFTP|^Bigfoot|^Black.Hole|^BlackWidow|BlackWidow|^BlowFish|Blow|^BotALot|Buddy|^BuiltBotTough|
^Bullseye|^BunnySlippers|BBBike|^Cegbfeieh|^CheeseBot|^CherryPicker|^ChinaClaw|^Cogentbot|CPython|Collector|cognitiveseo|Copier|^CopyRightCheck|^cosmos|^Crescent|CSHttp|^Custo|^Demon|^Devil|^DISCo|^DIIbot|discobot|^DittoSpyder|Download.Demon|Download.Devil|Download.Wonder|^dragonfl
y|^Drip|^eCatch|^EasyDL|^ebingbong|^EirGrabber|^EmailCollector|^EmailSiphon|^EmailWolf|^EroCrawler|^Exabot|^Express|Extractor|^EyeNetIE|FHscan|^FHscan|^flunky|^Foobot|^FrontPage|GalaxyBot|^gotit|Grabber|^GrabNet|^Grafula|^Harvest|^HEADMasterSEO|^hloader|^HMView|^HTTrack|httrack|HTT
rack|htmlparser|^humanlinks|^IlseBot|Image.Stripper|Image.Sucker|imagefetch|^InfoNaviRobot|^InfoTekies|^Intelliseek|^InterGET|^Iria|^Jakarta|^JennyBot|^JetCar|JikeSpider|^JOC|^JustView|^Jyxobot|^Kenjin.Spider|^Keyword.Density|libwww|^larbin|LeechFTP|LeechGet|^LexiBot|^lftp|^libWeb|
^likse|^LinkextractorPro|^LinkScan|^LNSpiderguy|^LinkWalker|msnbot|MSIECrawler|MJ12bot|MegaIndex|^Magnet|^Mag-Net|^MarkWatch|Mass.Downloader|masscan|^Mata.Hari|^Memo|^MIIxpc|^NAMEPROTECT|^Navroad|^NearSite|^NetAnts|^Netcraft|^NetMechanic|^NetSpider|^NetZIP|^NextGenSearchBot|^NICErs
PRO|^niki-bot|^NimbleCrawler|^Nimbostratus-Bot|^Ninja|^Nmap|nmap|^NPbot|Offline.Explorer|Offline.Navigator|OpenLinkProfiler|^Octopus|^Openfind|^OutfoxBot|Pixray|probethenet|proximic|^PageGrabber|^pavuk|^pcBrowser|^Pockey|^ProPowerBot|^ProWebWalker|^psbot|^Pump|python-requests\/|^Qu
eryN.Metasearch|^RealDownload|Reaper|^Reaper|^Ripper|Ripper|Recorder|^ReGet|^RepoMonkey|^RMA|scanbot|SEOkicks-Robot|seoscanners|^Stripper|^Sucker|Siphon|Siteimprove|^SiteSnagger|SiteSucker|^SlySearch|^SmartDownload|^Snake|^Snapbot|^Snoopy|Sosospider|^sogou|spbot|^SpaceBison|^spanne
r|^SpankBot|Spinn4r|^Sqworm|Sqworm|Stripper|Sucker|^SuperBot|SuperHTTP|^SuperHTTP|^Surfbot|^suzuran|^Szukacz|^tAkeOut|^Teleport|^Telesoft|^TurnitinBot|^The.Intraformant|^TheNomad|^TightTwatBot|^Titan|^True_Robot|^turingos|^TurnitinBot|^URLy.Warning|^Vacuum|^VCI|VidibleScraper|^Void
EYE|^WebAuto|^WebBandit|^WebCopier|^WebEnhancer|^WebFetch|^Web.Image.Collector|^WebLeacher|^WebmasterWorldForumBot|WebPix|^WebReaper|^WebSauger|Website.eXtractor|^Webster|WebShag|^WebStripper|WebSucker|^WebWhacker|^WebZIP|Whack|Whacker|^Widow|Widow|WinHTTrack|^WISENutbot|WWWOFFLE|^
WWWOFFLE|^WWW-Collector-E|^Xaldon|^Xenu|^Zade|^Zeus|ZmEu|^Zyborg|SemrushBot|^WebFuck|^MJ12bot|^majestic12|^WallpapersHD)" 1;
}
```
:::
:::spoiler deny-disallowed.conf
```nginx
# Deny disallowed user agents
if ($ua_disallowed) {
# This redirects them to the Nepenthes domain. So far, pretty much all the bot crawlers have been happy to accept the redirect and crawl the tarpit continuously
return 301 https://content.mydomain.xyz/;
}
```
:::

2026-02-13 16:35:01 UTC

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I was blocking them but decided to shunt their traffic to Nepenthes instead. There's usually 3-4 different bots thrashing around in there at any given time.
If you have the resources, I highly recommend it.

2025-07-07 02:08:24 UTC

**California residents who lit illegal fireworks over the July 4 holiday may be in for a nasty surprise in the mail thanks to covert fire department operations.**
A number of California cities, including Sacramento, have begun using drones to locate people shooting off illegal fireworks. From Wednesday to Saturday night, the Sacramento Fire Department’s special fireworks task force patrolled the streets with unmarked cars and drones, focusing on neighborhoods where they’ve had prior complaints. Task force officers and the drones took photos of the illegal activity, and within 30 days the property owner where the fireworks were used could receive a fine in the mail.

2025-07-06 02:08:40 UTC

Waited *weeks* for this and was so excited it finally arrived today. Unboxed it, put it on charge, and....nothing. Won't boot up, no signs of life. He's dead, Jim.
Now I have to send it back and wait who knows how long if I want a replacement. Probably just going to ask for a refund; I can't wait another 4-6 weeks or wait for one to ship from the September batch. Ugh!
Mildly infuriating, highly disappointing.

2025-07-05 19:36:21 UTC

TNG 6x24: Second Chances
Ok, she said "Night Bird" but same energy.
It also helps to imagine that scene, but with this voice:
![](https://dubvee.org/pictrs/image/78205552-fc49-49a1-9e4f-9c24ceb77bdb.webp)

2025-06-25 17:30:32 UTC

Dog-piling is when someone expresses an opinion and people swarm in the comments telling the OC how wrong they are and how right *they* are. Typically the person getting dogpiled is downvoted into oblivion in the process. Note that I'm not talking about anything controversial in their opinion or the comment being trolling in any way; just any general disagreement with the groupthink.
**Brief example**:
```
User 1: There are lots of factors at play here, not just money. There's X, Y, Z, and those are all independent from money.
|____> User 2: No, it's money. It's always money
|______> User 4: Right? How can anyone think it's anything *but* money? Some people!
|____> User 3: Yes, well, X, Y, and Z wouldn't be a problem if not for capitalism, so it's definitely money, and you're wrong.
|____> User 5: It all boils down to money; always does.
|____> User 6: Of course it's money. Only a capitalist bootlicker would think otherwise.
|____> User 7: Go back to Reddit, troll.
|____> User 8: You're so close, but it's money.
...
|____> User 999: (Same as the last 998 comments; contributes nothing except attacking the opinion for being different)
```
None of that adds anything to the discussion; they're not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.
That behavior does not seem healthy to me and seems like it's almost designed to discourage anyone from expressing any opinion that's not part of the established group think. Again, I am not talking about trolls here, just any kind of differing opinions.
Should that kind of behavior be discouraged? If so, as a mod, what would be the best way to address it? After the 2nd or 3rd dogpile comment, start removing subsequent ones that are just piling on?
It's definitely a people problem, so I'm curious what would be a gentle but firm way to deal with it.

2025-04-07 20:47:14 UTC

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Fake bans aren't a thing, but banning from an instance doesn't necessarily ban them from all communities (just the ones they've interact with up to the time of the ban).
This means someone on instance B, who is banned from instance A, can still interact with communities on instance A via instance B if instance B was not informed the person was banned from the community.
However, a user from instance B, banned from instance A, interacting with a community on instance A via instance B will not have their content federated via instance A (the home instance of the community). Thus, only other users on instance B should be able to see that user's submissions.
Clear as mud?

2025-03-16 18:27:54 UTC

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Ugh. I've already decided I'm not going to 1.0, so if it's not in 0.19.10 maybe I'll patch it in myself until I figure out a way to move my instance to Piefed.

2025-03-16 18:07:49 UTC

Upgraded my instance from 0.19.3 to 0.19.9 today, and fetching metadata for Youtube videos no longer works. Worked perfectly on 0.19.3 as of 3 hours ago (pre-upgrade).
This is how it's supposed to look:
![](https://dubvee.org/pictrs/image/3e44b031-bd9b-4fdc-aa91-1b5a59708d88.webp)
Good job, lemmy devs! 👍

2025-02-19 00:04:41 UTC

Developers: I will never *ever* do that, *no one* should *ever* do that, and you should be ashamed for guiding people to. I get that you want to make things easy for end users, but at least exercise some bare minimum common sense.
The worst part is that `bun` is just a single binary, so the install script is bloody pointless.
Bonus mildly infuriating is the mere existence of the `.sh` TLD.
**Edit b/c I'm not going to answer the same goddamned questions 100 times from people who blindly copy/paste the *question* from StackOverflow into their code/terminal:**
> WhY iS ThaT woRSe thAn jUst DoWnlOADing a BinAary???
1) Downloading the compiled binary from the release page (if you don't want to build yourself) has been a way to acquire software since shortly after the dawn of time. You already know what you're getting yourself into
1) There are SHA256 checksums of each binary file available in each release on Github. You can confirm the binary was not tampered with by comparing a locally computed checksum to the value in the release's checksums file.
1) Binaries can also be signed (not that signing keys have never leaked, but it's still one step in the chain of trust)
1) The install script they're telling you to pipe is not hosted on Github. A misconfigured / compromised server can allow a bad actor to tamper with the install script that gets piped directly into your shell. The domain could also lapse and be re-registered by a bad actor to point to a malicious script. Really, there's lots of things that can go wrong with that.
The point is that it is bad practice to just pipe a script to be directly executed in your shell. Developers should not normalize that bad practice.

2025-02-09 01:52:22 UTC

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I'm....speechless and all out of snark on this one. This is fucking horrifying.
Single-issue voters who threw their vote away or sat out and did not help stop this, well, hope you're happy with your choices.

2024-12-12 23:20:05 UTC

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I'm unfamiliar with Clubsall. Is it pulling them via federation or fetching via API? Would defederating work? I appear to have already defederated, likely in response to your earlier post, but not sure if that does anything. And that only stops them from pulling content from my instance, not what I posted to any other.

2024-12-05 02:59:03 UTC

**Context**: [30 Rock: Homonym](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZLkcFns8Ks) - A fake game show where the host says a homonym (stare/stair, meet/meat, etc), and the contestant has to guess the right word. It's *always* the other one.
Inspired from [this post](https://feddit.org/post/5379286)

2024-08-27 18:12:51 UTC

> People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. **The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home.** The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.
> By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.
> The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but **law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities.**
> Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.
- [MBFC](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bloomberg/)
- [Archive](https://archive.ph/YGmmf)