Rob Thomas [Admin m.au]✓ Add us as a preferred source on Google

Mastodon @xrobau@mastodon.au

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Followers

27.8K

Account age

3 yrs

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Known for

Finally, as a birthday present to myself (it's 4 mins past midnight here), I have upgraded all the storage bits and pieces to the latest firmware versions. I don't think it'll fix anything, and I'm expecting to go crawling through my box of spare parts tomorrow to find replacement bits.
Goodnight #MastodonAU and #MastodonNZ - The silver lining is that if everything falls apart overnight, we do kn

19 views Finally, as a birthday present to myself (it's 4 mins past midnight here), I have upgraded all the storage bits and pieces to the latest firmware versions. I don't think it'll fix anything, and I'm expecting to go crawling through my box of spare parts tomorrow to find replacement bits. Goodnight #MastodonAU and #MastodonNZ - The silver lining is that if everything falls apart overnight, we do kn

It's amazing how fast and responsive a server can be. Admittedly, this server is in a Data Center in Brisbane, with a fibre-optic connection to the internet, and is full of 1TB SSDs.
This is because I am REALLY REALLY trying hard to avoid the next visit of the fuck-up fairy.

12 views It's amazing how fast and responsive a server can be. Admittedly, this server is in a Data Center in Brisbane, with a fibre-optic connection to the internet, and is full of 1TB SSDs. This is because I am REALLY REALLY trying hard to avoid the next visit of the fuck-up fairy.

Good news, everyone! I turned off the blade, and turned it back on, and the bad drive was so bad it vanished! This means it won't be locking up the server every 30 mins or so. #MastodonAU win!
The bad news is that SOMETHING is still causing 503s and it doesn't appear to be the usual AI scrapers going wild.
I also managed to "slightly" break #MastodonNZ when I moved it from the failing blade and..

12 views Good news, everyone! I turned off the blade, and turned it back on, and the bad drive was so bad it vanished! This means it won't be locking up the server every 30 mins or so. #MastodonAU win! The bad news is that SOMETHING is still causing 503s and it doesn't appear to be the usual AI scrapers going wild. I also managed to "slightly" break #MastodonNZ when I moved it from the failing blade and..

Well I was wrong. The 503s ARE caused by AI scrapers going crazy. Or at least one scraper going crazy.
This was triggering the front end proxies to mark the back end as bad for EVERY connection.
Time to do some low level filtering now.

9 views Well I was wrong. The 503s ARE caused by AI scrapers going crazy. Or at least one scraper going crazy. This was triggering the front end proxies to mark the back end as bad for EVERY connection. Time to do some low level filtering now.

📊 Post engagement

📊 Activity & format

Posting cadence

10.8 / week

Toots daily — consistently active for a campaign window.

Content mix

Mostly images

Recent: 3 text · 9 image · 0 video.

Follower / following

386×

Follows 72 back. A strong ratio — an audience that follows them, not a follow-for-follow network.

Recent posts

View on Mastodon ↗

🔥 Top post Finally, as a birthday present to myself (it's 4 mins past midnight here), I have upgraded all the storage bits and pieces to the latest firmware versions. I don't think it'll fix anything, and I'm expecting to go crawling through my box of spare parts tomorrow to find replacem… ★ 19

Today I learned that the "world's oldest profession" is actually Midwife. Kinda obvious in hindsight! Sorry for this not being funny-ha-ha or nerd related, I just found it wildly interesting. Please boost if you think it's interesting, to… ★ 14

It's amazing how fast and responsive a server can be. Admittedly, this server is in a Data Center in Brisbane, with a fibre-optic connection to the internet, and is full of 1TB SSDs. This is because I am REALLY REALLY trying hard to avoid… ★ 12

I've been doing some nerding today, replacing and upgrading routers. Here's some before-and-after CPU utilization graphs (higher is worse). I wasn't at capacity, but it was getting close which is what brought on the upgrade. For the nerds,… ★ 4

For anyone still following along with the #MastodonAU storage server crash, I did find an upgraded version that never made it onto a SPP ISO - Vers 7.2. So now I'm moving everything (mastnz and mastau, to act as a load test) back off tha… ★ 5

Nope, no firmware update for the storage controller. A BIOS upgrade to fix SPECTRE-style vulnerabilities was the only thing it wanted to do, so I let it. The SPP ISO also has expired its self-signed certificate. You can only hope HP will … ★ 3

Well, it said to upgrade the controller firmware. I have the latest G9 SPP, so let's see if it finds anything to upgrade. ★ 2

So for the NEXT pile of funtimes tonight at #MastodonAU and #MastodonNZ, as I was going through tidying things up, more strangeness happened. One of the storage servers (not the one that had the replaced motherboard on Wednesday) decided t… ★ 7 Hopefully that's the end of the blips for tonight. #MastodonAU has been upgraded to 4.6, with some new features that people may want. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/06/mastodon-4.6/ ★ 12 I believe I have found the cause for the 503s, and it's going to be annoying to fix. For the nerds, Caddy is running as the front end proxy, sending requests to 4 back end servers. Caddy checks the responses to make sure the back end serv… ★ 16

Well I was wrong. The 503s ARE caused by AI scrapers going crazy. Or at least one scraper going crazy. This was triggering the front end proxies to mark the back end as bad for EVERY connection. Time to do some low level filtering now. ★ 9

Good news, everyone! I turned off the blade, and turned it back on, and the bad drive was so bad it vanished! This means it won't be locking up the server every 30 mins or so. #MastodonAU win! The bad news is that SOMETHING is still causin… ★ 12

🐘 Community & instance

Home server

mastodon.au

A Australia server — its members and audience skew toward that niche, so expect a community-aligned, engaged following.

✅ Link-verified

Verified link

Proved ownership of a website linked on their profile — Mastodon's green-check verification, a real identity signal rather than a paid badge.

On Mastodon since

Feb 2023

An established account with real history on the platform.

💡 Facts

🗓️Joined Mastodon in 2023 — 3 years ago.

👁️Averages 10 views per post.

📤Posts about 10.8× per week.

🏅Earned the 10K Followers for passing 10K followers.

🕵️ Fake follower check

Estimated

58/100

Fair Credibility score

81%

Real Real audience

Low Fake-follower risk

High Data confidence

Est. 81% real, active audience · Low fake-follower risk.
Low engagement (~0.0% of followers engage each post) — a sign of an inflated or inactive audience.
Organic base — far more followers than accounts it follows.
Verified account.
Established account (3+ years old).

Heuristic estimate from engagement, follower ratios, account age & growth — a screening signal, not a guarantee.

About

I push buttons and break things! I am the guy that runs mastodon.au (and mastodon.nz, and a few other things) I live in Central QLD, and do FOSS stuff. If you feel like donating, feel free to sponsor my open source work on GitHub https://github.com/sponsors/xrobau

📸 Gallery

🔀 Audience overlap

Estimated

Estimated shared audience with similar creators — useful for avoiding overlap (or doubling down) when planning a campaign.

Help (mastodon.au) 14%

Charlie Stross 12%

muesli 12%

The Conversation U.S. 11%

Open Culture (Official) 10%

It's Going Down 10%

More like this

Open Culture (Official) ✓

@openculture@toot.community

28.4K Followers

Mastodon ＋

Charlie Stross ✓

@cstross@wandering.shop

28.5K Followers

Mastodon ＋

It's Going Down

@igd_news@kolektiva.social

27.1K Followers

Mastodon ＋

The Conversation U.S. ✓

@theconversationus@newsie.social

27K Followers

Mastodon ＋

muesli ✓

@fribbledom@mastodon.social

28.7K Followers

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Known for

📊 Post engagement

📊 Activity & format

Recent posts

🐘 Community & instance

💡 Facts

🕵️ Fake follower check

About

📸 Gallery

🔀 Audience overlap

More like this

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