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  • Crowdsec

    Crowdsec is a cool cyber security solution. You can install it on your Linux server and it will run as a daemon. Upon starting it will have a look which services you have running and start to read those logs and flag up shady behaviour.

    You can install a remediation component and it will … remediate those issues. In this case an ip tables remediation component will block the abusing IP, so it becomes similar to fail2ban in this regard.

    In addition you can enrol in their cloud service for free. This gives you monitoring from the cloud dashboard and the ability to implement blocklists that will block IPs that have been flagged by others.

    So yeah it’s pretty easy to set up. Feel free to set up your applications first because when crowdsec is set up it will detect the alerts coming from those services, in my case nginx.

    Official docs:

    https://doc.crowdsec.net/u/getting_started/installation/linux/

    In my case I have been using Rocky Linux 9.7

    Manual repo installation is best because piping a random script of the internet to sudo bash is never a good idea 🫠 what could be in the script!? (then again we are installing their software and just trusting that, the paranoid among us can comb the source code, build that and repeat every time the repo is updated)

    dnf install crowdsec -y

    This package is just to scan the logs and detect the issues

    setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

    In my instance since selinux was switched on I had to allow this bool. In addition the crowdsec service would not start because I was already running something at port 8080. So I had to edit these files

    vim /etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml

    Edit this line to not be 8080

    url: http://127.0.0.1:8081

    Also edit listen uri in this file vim /etc/crowdsec/config.yaml


    api:
    client:
    insecure_skip_verify: false
    credentials_path: /etc/crowdsec/local_api_credentials.yaml
    server:
    log_level: info
    listen_uri: 127.0.0.1:8081

    I started writing this a while ago and life just happens to you I guess! 🤣 All in all it’s a great security solution especially if you’ve only got a couple of VPSs and they’re european so have solud data protection rules. Peace!

  • Should social media be banned for under 16s?

    I got this survey from the British Computing Society and felt myself writing an essay so felt the need to publish it as well 😂

    I am undecided on a social media ban for under 16s

    Teenagers need a safe place to communicate privately to each other and within their circle of friends. They need a space where they feel like it is their own and where there is someone to help them if a situation becomes dangerous. Ideally it should be moderated by people with safeguarding training and that have passed DBS checks. Users outside their age range shouldn’t be able to enrol.

    It seems the focus for large social media companies is surveillance for advertising purposes and increasingly steering political opinion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/09/meta-whistleblower-sarah-wynn-williams-says-company-targeted-ads-at-teens-based-on-their-emotional-state/

    A whistleblower has stated that meta (facebook / instagram / whatsapp ) will detect when a girl aged 13 to 17 is feeling depressed, such as when they have deleted a selfie ,and use this as an opportunity to advertise them beauty products.

    If this is the case then they are not fit to moderate our childrens’ communication platform as this is very manipulative, intrusive and exploitative behaviour. There are maby other examples of similar behaviour, this is just scratching the surface.

    So while I think there is a purpose for children to use social media I don’t think any of the current offerings are appropriate.

    I also think that social media companies will use the legislation as an opportunity to acquire facial recognition scans and legal documents for age verification of adults. The digital ID plan has the potential to be a convenient, private and secure way to verify a user’s age with information the government has anyway. I think clumsy and aggressive messaging about using it to crack down on immigrants has soured expectations.

    https://identityweek.net/denmarks-specialised-altid-wallet-for-age-proofing-and-id-verification-in-one-place/

    Denmark appears to have implemented this quite well. It should be possible for the government to create an API that with your permission will verify whether your over 18 (or 16) or not. This should be made available to use for free in order to not give further advantage to large comapnies over small communities.

    I am not at all confident in the government’s ability to effectively enforce this in terms of technology.

    Laws are around for a long time. Technology is ever changing and ambiguous. Conversations about the banning of VPNs have demonstrated a lack of understanding. VPNs are used for multiple purposes but mainly 1) to securely connect to a private network over the internet 2) to tunnel your traffic through a separate connection

    There are a lot of ways to achieve both 1 and 2 and they have different strengths and weaknesses depending on usage. There will always be a way around the law if it is too prescriptive. If it is too vague then a lot of useful desired behaviour is senselessy criminalised.

    To use an analogy, in an establishment where they serve alcohol, this can be varied as a large concert venue holding 50000 people or a small country pub. In both instances there is behaviour that we want to prevent. In the large venue it’s appropriate to have metal detectors, to search people’s bags on entry and to have a lot of security in the venue, in a country pub you don’t even really need a bouncer (and they may not be able to afford one)

    The point is this, the onus is 100% on the platform to prevent these problems and a one size fits all approach does not work. In the event of an incident, it should be considered afterwards whether appropriate preventative measures have been taken and if not the community should be fined or shut down depending of the severity of their negligence.

  • ibvo: down the hatch

    https://www.downthehatchliv.co.uk

    Down the hatch is a banging vegan restaurant! Amazing burgers here and its down in a little basement hence down the hatch 😉

    Here are some of the vegan zinger wings and the jager glaze wings. You can choose whether you want them to be mushrooms or seitan and they are amazing. The portion size is way bigger than this, these are just a few on my side plate.

    If that prawn toast looks familiar to you then it should! ibvo: wu tang scran

    I have heard that the owners of Down the hatch and woo tan scran (it’s not actually wu tang scran 🤣) are brothers in law or something! So woo tan scran food is available here too!

    Here is the delightful zinger burger, it’s amazing. I was being dozy and didn’t realise I ordered the same flavour for both burger and wings oops

    They also do amazing cocktails, vegan milkshakes and even vegan milkshakes with alcohol. My god.

    Lastly the staff were super ffiendly and helpful helping us with the pram and what not. Totally brilliant!

  • ibvo: bekas cafe

    https://bekascafe.co.uk

    An awesome little Kurdish café on London road in Liverpool. I think this falafel sandwich is the only vegan thing on the menu but it’s an absolute belter and it is a very authentic cafe so certainly worth a visit

  • ibvo: captain tony’s

    https://www.captaintony.co.uk

    If you want a giant vegan pizza captain tonys birkenhead is great. They do cheesy chips, little pizza garlic breads, cheesy baguette garlic breads and hot dogs.

    I’ve been going herr since I was a kid so I love it. Side note only the Birkenhead bramch do vegan options so it’s a little drive if you’re a Wallasey head buuuut it’s worth it lol. Look at the size of the pizza!

  • Androfoco dev diary 31/12/25

    Hello you wonderful people

    As the year is closing to an end I am writing up a quick scheduled dev diary about Androfoco

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/3771980/Androfoco

    The game is coming along nicely and more and more pieces fit together.

    I was going to do a demo for Steam Next fest February 2026 but think I will wait for the next one (as you can only do one!). It looks like that will be June or October but there’s been none announced yet.

    Anyways hope you had a boss evening, I will share more. Happy 2026!

  • RIPE NCC BGP security associate

    If you go to this site there a few free networking courses:

    academy.ripe.net/

    To those who don’t know RIPE are responsible for handing out IP addresses to orgs in Europe and some of the middle east too!

    They have very high quality courses for free. The exams you get for free if your organisation is a member…. however if you look out on mastodon they give out exam vouchers in the summer if you complete one of their courses

    https://mastodon.social/@ripencc

    They are a very friendly bunch!

  • ibvo: Glass Onion

    https://www.happycow.net/reviews/glass-onion-liverpool-180778

    Glass onion is a very cool veggie and vegam restaurant in Mossley Hill, near Penny Lane of Beatles fame lol.

    Even from the outside you know you’re onto something good!

    The buddha bowl with vegan feta is amazing

    They even do vegan milkshakes not had one in ages!

    They also have a million baked goods to have would deffo recommend checking it out

    Nearby is the purple carrot as well

    https://www.purplecarrotliverpool.co.uk/

    This is a vegan supermarket and they have loads of awesome stuff including yorkshire puddings. Absolutely boss 😎

  • ibvo: Stollies

    https://stolliescafedeli.co.uk/

    Stollies is an awesome little café in Wallasey village and also Liscard. They have got their own vegan menu. This is the Jurassic Vegan brekfast. Had to get it because it reminded of jurassic park. Was absolutely lovely and I rate it. Would deffo go again and also they were really nice in there.

  • kosmickop – 5th anniversary

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/1240620/kosmickop

    I released this at the end of 2020, which was an interesting year! I luckily had mostly steady jobs during the development of this game and was trying to branch out from my bad mental health days – reconnecting with people and doing SCI work camps and what not (which I would highly recommend https://www.volunteer.sci.ngo/)

    I guess the inspiration was to take the mick out of libertarians and conspiracy nuts. There was plenty of that nonsense around during those years, if you knew where to look. Now I feel like it is everywhere! Anyways, if you read the collectible lore in this game then you can see the ridiculous turn of events that made the world as chaotic as it is…

    Both of the reviews are from people I gifted a key to it seems, I cannot remember if they were Youtubers or what not but they were nice enough to leave reviews!

    I’m surprised there’s no user reviews for this game. This game is a lot of fun. When I first got this, it was very early in the games life, so I could understand why no reviews then, but I really hope this hasn’t dropped off since.
    Yes, admittedly I haven’t played much lately, but that’s more due to my own personal things I got going on irl.

    Look, just have a go. You will enjoy yourself if you give yourself a chance to work it out. Lots-o-fun!

    Well I’m glad this person enjoyed it and I hope that their personal stuff has calmed down whatever it was.

    This felt like I was having a bad fever dream. I will preface this with after doing some research, the game appears to have been made by 1 person and it shows throughout aspects of the game.

    The gameplay is a top down twin stick shooter with a points system, the first thing you’re shown is an introduction to the story, who you are, what you’re doing and why. You’re then given control of the menus, which at first glance, do not look good, there is no unified art direction on what the menus should look like. They control weirdly and it was difficult to know what tab I was on when going through as the left-most tab was the one that you were on but the entire tab wasn’t centred, I would have expected it to be the one you’re on in the middle, but that could be a fault on myself. They do though get the job done.

    The music, I’m going to be honest and say that the music was not good, to me it got annoying quickly and I turned it off. The graphics when in game don’t look too bad, the grounds can be a bit repetitive and sometimes can appear a bit dark but those were the only issues I had.

    When landing in the first world it can be a bit confusing, but luckily there is an arrow that will point you to your objective. To complete your objective you can make use of multiple different powerups, one issue I had with this was there wasn’t any tutorials that explained what the powerups did, and how they affected your gameplay so resulted in only being able to find out by playing, which in it’s own way isn’t a bad thing doing this encourages the player to experiment. The game is short, with in my experience finding a massive difficult bump in the what I think was the final level (I wasn’t able to complete it).

    Kosmickop’s characters were funny, which it felt like in an intentional way, in no way does the game take itself seriously, character portraits when talking were quite funny, when a new character appeared it did make me question what I was looking at, plot wise it’s quite thin and is easily forgettable.

    Overall, the game would be interesting to you’re looking for a game that you could waste an hour or two on, the controls work as I’d expect for the genre, if you can look past the menus look and don’t care too much for a plot just a fun twin stick shooter then this might be the one for you, I would suggest waiting for a sale however.

    This person gave a very detailed review which I appreciate. Yeah it is tough to make a game by yourself. I think I could have worked the more interesting plot points about the creation of the world into the story instead of just the collectible lore that people might miss. I’m not sure whether they actually fought the last boss, which is pretty tough but not too bad if you do all the side missions and get more of the unlockable powerups. But anyway I’m glad they enjoyed it on the whole! There are a few lessons here that I have hopefully learnt for Androfoco, we shall see!