Mythic Beasts

A hosting service for friends that went wrong, now six data centres in three countries with hundreds of gigabits. We're really good at managing Linux servers, be they virtual, real or a Raspberry Pi cloud.

Friday is Floofday where we celebrate the purpose of the internet - sharing cat pictures.

Public Key

npub1gkep8wa07scr2aarkuwa8e9xe979ec8etsje64nxrcenwm5gp9nq679893

NIP-05 Address

beasts@social-mythic--beasts-com.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsytvsnhwhlgvp4w73mw8wnujnvjlzuuru4cfva2enpuvehd6yqjespz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsw066np

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1gkep8wa07scr2aarkuwa8e9xe979ec8etsje64nxrcenwm5gp9nq679893

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Last Notes

2026-10-23 06:20:18 UTC

zlib and roundcube updates this morning. Catching up on our backlog of support tickets, some remaining PHP issues and starting to deploy new managed services. For some reason a significant number of new and old customers have suddenly prioritised migrating services over to us.

2026-10-21 13:57:16 UTC

We are now taking customer websites down for maintenance and applying the PHP patches as quickly as we can. Our entire team is working on this, all other non emergency support queries will be delayed.

2026-10-21 10:41:15 UTC

We are planning for the PHP security update later today and will be applying those updates for managed customers and shared hosts as soon as possible. We may disable PHP on servers where updates are unavailable or if active exploitation looks likely before patches arrive.

2026-10-16 11:03:16 UTC

Today's badly-written residential proxy AI crawler fun: 5.8 million requests from 2.3 million unique IP addresses in 24 hours for a site with 12,000 static pages that hasn't changed since 2003. Most of these requests are from consumer networks and pretending to be real browsers. As many other folks have noted, it's becoming increasingly difficult to mitigate the impact of these attacks.

2026-10-12 08:57:13 UTC

Oops. Looks like Verisign's DNSSEC checker wasn't ready for the root KSK rollover either.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/117/427/101/247/188/873/original/268bccf93438f0fa.png

2026-08-14 08:24:04 UTC

The Nominet DNS fund closes for applications on Monday. If your open source project either does or is in the dependency chain for DNS, grants of up to £100k are available. https://nominet.uk/our-impact/nominet-dns-fund/

2026-07-18 09:03:04 UTC

Around a hundred #EMFcamp attendees did a definitely not a parkrun.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/116/940/164/917/288/286/original/efbfc382340a0a32.png

2026-07-17 09:57:41 UTC

The View from Voyager 1.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."
At #emfcamp there's a scale model of the solar system. Earth is about a millimetre wide, the sun and inner planets are all at the big blue tent. Neptunes orbit stretches to the edge of the camp.
This photo is taken after ascending out of the gravity well to Herefordshire Beacon, about a light day on the same scale and roughly as far as Voyager 1.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/116/934/681/475/475/648/original/e0511e36f036c24c.jpg

2026-07-16 16:49:00 UTC

There are multiple Mythic Beasts at #EMFCamp. We're silver sponsors of the event and have provided quite a few bits of infrastructure to help things work. Expect more updates over the next few days as we discover awesome things.
There are Mythic Beasts stickers at the sticker exchange and they may be found in other locations around the site.
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2026/07/16/electromagnetic-field-2026/

2026-04-17 10:01:54 UTC

Our sponsored team of self-driving robot designers are back with a new and improved robot, competing to collect cubes in this years more difficult arena. How did they do?
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2026/04/17/robocon-2026/

2026-04-13 13:58:15 UTC

bad news: we've updated pricing on lots of domains
good news: downwards
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2026/04/13/domain-price-reductions-2/

2025-12-09 15:52:06 UTC

We have an updated webmail service in test, existing customers who want to try it out should mail sales@mythic-beasts.com

2025-11-18 09:00:41 UTC

Off to the #IPv6 council meeting today. With UK adoption over 50% we're now working on connecting up the minority of internet users who are v4 only.

2025-10-14 17:01:26 UTC

Just wasted a stupid amount of time helping a customer with IMAP issues on the Samsung mail app. Screenshots show Security = TLS, Port = 993. All good, must be something else.
No.
Most of the world uses SSL and TLS interchangeably, but click on that setting and Samsung has options for both. WTF?
Yep, Samsung are using TLS to mean "STARTTLS" and if you tell it to use port 993 (which it lets you, without warning) it just hangs on connection. How is this so bad?
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/115/373/485/044/377/261/original/7131bae3f9a26dfb.png

2025-10-03 12:50:57 UTC

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/10/03/gmail-drop-support-for-checking-other-accounts/ a write up of what's actually changing with Gmail's planned removal of POP3 support

2025-06-20 09:32:54 UTC

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@nprofile…a4q6 @nprofile…uwcx we support .space and .webcam, we don't support premium domains where certain names in the domain have the price is dictated by the name itself (so mythic.online can be priced differently to beasts.online) and the price can be arbitrarily revised by the registrar.

2025-06-18 16:10:12 UTC

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@nprofile…u7d7 if we were really good at company accounts we'd donate EUR4550 and somehow it'd end up as a tax refund of $1bn.

2025-06-18 15:17:22 UTC

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@nprofile…u7d7 @nprofile…klwf we used accountancy to tell us if VMHaus was a going concern, rather than deciding the answer in advance and using accountancy to 'prove' the result.

2025-06-18 15:00:00 UTC

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@nprofile…a56d @nprofile…klwf it changed from US dollars to Euros.

2025-06-18 14:36:32 UTC

VMHaus is now fully closed. The unused customer balances totalled €4550 after we rounded them all up and this has been donated to @nprofile…klwf to support the Open Internet.

2025-06-12 11:33:39 UTC

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@nprofile…29p0 It's on our radar, but at the moment we don't have a timescale.

2025-06-10 12:01:22 UTC

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@nprofile…gjg9
In 2005 you got account numbers starting with a 3, in 2025 you are still getting account numbers starting with a 3 but with two more zeros in them.

2025-05-30 09:17:03 UTC

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@nprofile…su7v if you have to make it hard for customers to cancel, you're doing it wrong. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/10/18/simple-cancellation/

2025-05-17 06:22:56 UTC

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@nprofile…uwcx @nprofile…a4q6 API here, https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/api/dnsv2, we support .io.

2025-05-17 06:22:29 UTC

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@nprofile…29p0 documented here, https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/servers/consoles

2025-05-02 09:48:47 UTC

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@nprofile…2we9 yes, although we refer to these as ANAME records. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/domains/primarydns/aname

2025-05-02 09:46:17 UTC

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@nprofile…2we9 we think we call it ANAME, https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/domains/primarydns/aname

2025-05-01 15:16:09 UTC

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@nprofile…8k23 it's per account rather than per mailbox.

2025-04-23 11:21:11 UTC

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@nprofile…vw3j bizarrely he removed 'take 2a00:1098:::dead:beef:coff:ee, we'll make it I swear' in the radio edit.

2025-04-23 09:08:08 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 @nprofile…fe8t github is a very popular destination for our NAT64 service. Given it supplies legacy connectivity to IPv6 only servers that's not that surprising though!

2025-04-23 08:24:55 UTC

#IPv6 usage in the UK now over 50% according to Google. Still someway behind Germany (75%) and France (84%) but to out of context quote Jon Bon Jovi, "woah oh, we're half way there'.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption

2025-04-17 18:30:32 UTC

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@nprofile…98vr we call them "hosting accounts", but there's no need to actually host anything on them.

2025-04-16 11:35:40 UTC

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@nprofile…mt2c we've had great success with Dell XPS laptops and Framework laptops. Both fully supported with Linux. Dell onsite support even know what Ubuntu is and had no problems with us having done our own install from media to get LUKS encrypted file systems.

2025-04-16 10:27:08 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 @nprofile…dppe @nprofile…4tyn @nprofile…na0w this is an interview question for Private Equity firms. The follow up is 'of the ways you can destroy an acquired company, which one has the highest expected financial return?'. You get bonus marks for discounting future returns according to an inflation/interest model which makes the case for destroying a company faster for less overall money. Quicker return means you can buy and destroy more companies on the same starting capital.

2025-04-15 13:47:47 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 sadly, false positives are a real risk with the level of blocking that we're now compelled to use, but it's unlikely to be an AS level block. First guess would be user agent blocking, but please email support@ and we'll be happy to figure out what's going on.

2025-04-14 11:32:34 UTC

Our secret research program reveals that more than one rubber duck per primary school girl optimises code generation efficiency in robot building challenges. Advances in #ActualIntelligence #AI https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/04/14/self-driving-robot-dragons/
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/336/091/819/656/035/original/fb77d697b92cbd41.png

2025-04-09 18:29:20 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 yeah, that one always amazes me. Coding the error message must be far more effort than .strip()

2025-04-09 17:29:26 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 @nprofile…dppe @nprofile…4tyn @nprofile…na0w we acquired BHost back in 2018 and were explicit things would change - we made things better for customers without increasing prices. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2018/07/01/mythic-beasts-acquires-bhost/

2025-04-09 16:59:41 UTC

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@nprofile…dppe @nprofile…4tyn @nprofile…na0w one of our tricks was stealing a bytemarker.

2025-04-08 10:04:45 UTC

Visiting Nominet today to talk about domains.

2025-04-07 12:36:52 UTC

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@nprofile…k6s0 fair criticism. Those pages are quite high up the list for a proper overhaul, but will see if we can get a quick fix for this. It'd be much better if you could type it in any unambiguous format and have the computer take care of the menial task of getting it into the right format.

2025-04-03 11:22:35 UTC

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@nprofile…6vpj Yes indeed! We regularly suggest that customers use it to check their emails, and send us a link to the results if they need help.

2025-04-02 13:37:28 UTC

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@nprofile…vrjd it's an interesting idea, but not something we could unilaterally deploy in front of customers' websites.

2025-04-02 07:59:09 UTC

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@nprofile…jydu reserving 20% of the available connections for IPv6 is not a bad idea.

2025-04-01 15:55:32 UTC

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@nprofile…l0c2 at this point to keep the electricity bill and environmental damage down we just want to block using as few electrons as possible.

2025-04-01 12:48:15 UTC

We once suggested blocking a million IPs to deal with abusive AI crawlers. In hindsight that was a pretty severe underestimate https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/04/01/abusive-ai-web-crawlers-get-off-my-lawn/

2025-03-31 07:49:36 UTC

Todays special request on the order form.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/255/943/978/532/070/original/32921d93a95b9612.png

2025-03-28 19:38:36 UTC

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@nprofile…pvxt Unfortunately, most of the traffic we see is using faked legitimate UA strings.

2025-03-28 11:30:14 UTC

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@nprofile…atva well, it needs doing, but we'd much rather spend time making our services better rather than fighting to keep the current service up.

2025-03-28 11:23:48 UTC

Another day with multiple staff focused on blocking abusive AI crawlers rather than doing something useful.

2025-03-20 17:52:15 UTC

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@nprofile…emvm @nprofile…x759 @nprofile…sl7c several mobile providers offer full IPv6 which works as a pretty good fallback in hotels.

2025-03-18 11:35:44 UTC

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@nprofile…uhj9 thanks!

2025-03-17 20:04:29 UTC

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@nprofile…jz3r apologies - looks like this message slipped through the net. You can use Exim filters in .forward files, which you can edit either directly or through the control panel. Feel free to drop support@ a mail with details of the sort of rules you're looking to apply for more details.

2025-03-08 18:06:57 UTC

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@nprofile…rs4v you can use any domain you control. It’s a bit smoother if the domain is registered through us but that’s not a requirement.

2025-03-08 16:16:51 UTC

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@nprofile…rs4v no, a hosting account will let you do that. The point is that is not just one email address or mailbox. You can create as many addresses and mailboxes across as many domains as you want. Each mailbox will have a separate login for webmail. You don't need to use SSH. You create and manage mailboxes and email addresses via our control panel.

2025-03-08 16:01:26 UTC

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@nprofile…rs4v £2/month is a hosting account. You can have as many mailboxes on as many domains as you want. Domains registered elsewhere are fine (we call these "3rd party domains" in our control panel). Our webmail is roundcube (https://roundcube.net/)

2025-03-06 12:19:48 UTC

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@nprofile…8pej we're tracking demand but don't have a firm implementation plan or date yet.

2025-03-05 11:59:44 UTC

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@nprofile…a46y @nprofile…jr4q ICANN require contact detail verification and the recommended practice is to email the current details in the email.I think we have to do this at the moment.
For .uk domains, if your contact details can be verified from another source (e.g. electoral roll) I think this check is skipped.
I'd have to check but I'm pretty certain the SMTP connection will use TLS if your mail server supports it so there should be no data transmission in the clear.
for more: support@mythic-beasts.com

2025-03-05 11:32:27 UTC

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@nprofile…jr4q @nprofile…a46y refusing to sell at a loss is the reason we're still here.

2025-02-28 17:27:01 UTC

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@nprofile…5q8k honeypots and fail2ban mostly.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/114/082/682/986/820/003/original/7a3a1187899dcff4.png

2025-02-27 14:53:01 UTC

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@nprofile…gjg9 almost a year ago! https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/03/25/green-hosting/

2025-02-25 15:21:34 UTC

We've been sponsoring the @nprofile…zqfp with donated servers to assist them in campaigning for digital rights, most notably the ability to encrypt your data and keep it secure. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/02/25/supporting-the-open-rights-group/

2025-01-30 09:15:19 UTC

After nearly drowning in an alphabet soup of anti-spam acronyms whilst trying to explain to a customer why email forwarding doesn't work, Kelduum decided to let off steam on our blog. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2025/01/29/the-death-of-email-forwarding/

2025-01-23 17:38:49 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 We'd rather pay for competence than get rich for free. That's why we always pay summer students (and have one remaining space for this year, jobs.mythic-beasts.com).

2024-12-04 16:10:52 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 you may have found the first service we think really shouldn't be dual stack with #IPv6

2024-11-29 07:33:08 UTC

It's our special offer for the last Friday in November. Today you can buy any of our internet services for the same price we charged yesterday, and the same price we will charge tomorrow. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/

2024-09-02 16:38:27 UTC

We've been migrating our managed mailman customers to mailman3 and have open sourced our archive migration tools to help others with the same transition. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/09/02/mailman-list-archive-link-preservation/

2024-07-19 10:17:45 UTC

We're seeing some secondary effects from #CrowdStrike. Internally we have no Microsoft systems and own our cloud platform, but other suppliers we regularly work with (including some payment systems and some trains) are seeing some issues.

2024-07-12 15:56:23 UTC

We helped provide bandwidth to @npub1afx…r76s and had a tour of the NOC, which we wrote up. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/07/12/multi-coloured-bandwidth-in-an-electromagnetic-field/

2024-07-04 16:01:00 UTC

All our managed Mastodon instances upgraded to 4.2.10 to mitigate a security vulnerability. If you want us to update your instance too - sales@mythic-beasts.com.

2024-05-24 10:26:42 UTC

Another large language model scraper blocked. This graph is from a site which runs a tool generating answers for people doing important research work. The AI scraper sent hundreds of thousands of lookup requests evading rate limits by using about a thousand IPs and pinned multiple webservers at 100% CPU (graph from one attached). This is a massive waste of electricity to train a hallucination machine.
https://social.mythic-beasts.com/system/media_attachments/files/112/495/548/782/796/434/original/e8e9761fb6ec02b0.png

2024-04-29 15:14:58 UTC

We're now operational in Telehouse and only a small optical point of presence remaining in Equinix LD8. HEX-it complete. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/04/29/hex-it-complete/

2023-07-31 15:48:59 UTC

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@npub1jk6…8esd I suspect their growth could see AWS customers wanting over 4bn IPv4 addresses between them so they've got to stifle demand somehow.

2023-07-31 15:14:19 UTC

We started charging for #IPv4 addresses back in 2015. Sorry if we gave AWS the idea. We've produced a lot of presentations and slides on how to run #IPv6 only to avoid charges. https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/Breaking-AWS-Begins-Charging-For-Public-IPv4-Addresses/