Bwbach, My Guardian Goblin
A site owner built 'Bwbach', a custom Erlang and Elixir-based edge proxy to tarpit bots after Traefik crashed under heavy load.
skippable The main article is blocked behind a security wall, and the comments focus heavily on CSS font bugs rather than deep technical details.
summary
The linked article is inaccessible due to a security verification wall, though the author and commenters discuss the underlying project. Titled 'Bwbach, My Guardian Goblin', the piece details a custom Erlang and Elixir-based edge proxy built to tarpit bots after Traefik failed under heavy load. Commenters primarily troubleshoot font contrast issues on Linux and discuss alternative edge proxies.
key points
- The article text is blocked behind an automated security verification wall on the author's site.
- Bwbach is an edge proxy built with Erlang, Elixir, and the BEAM VM designed to tarpit bots.
- The author created it because standard proxies like Traefik failed to handle slow concurrent requests.
who should read it
Backend engineers and developers interested in custom edge proxies and bot mitigation.
discussion mixed
consensus
Commenters spend much of the thread troubleshooting dark-mode CSS font contrast and rendering differences between macOS and Linux.
pushback
A few technical participants question why standard solutions like Nginx or existing proxies weren't used instead of a custom build.
How odd! I did some research into why people have been finding it looks odd and it appears to be tied to Mac doing something called font dilation to slightly fatten up thin fonts when displayed as light text on dark backgrounds, whereas Linux/Windows don't tend to have such a feature enabled by default. Shows how long it's been since I made any attempt at good typography, I've never heard of this before!
I've bumped the brightness of the text on Linux/Windows to hopefully make it a bit easier to read/overpower the anti-aliasing thinning it out. I'll have to go fish out an old ThinkPad to …
The author explains an obscure font-dilation quirk in macOS that accidentally broke readability for Linux and Windows users.
Generated by an LLM from the article and thread. Check the sources before relying on it.