Also posted at StopForumSpam (https://www.stopforumspam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9690) as a part of the update!
AI has never really been a favorite of mine. Especially not related to programming, and even less in music (but that is a completely different story). Recently, however, after a long period of avoiding it entirely, it became clear that a lot has changed. Tools that once felt incomplete are now actually capable of doing real work.
Programming has always been about understanding what is happening, staying in control of what is being built, and making sure codebases do not silently break over time. It was not until tools like Copilot agents started handling real-world problems in a predictable way that it became clear that things had actually reached a usable level. And I consider myself old, so things takes a bit time sometimes.
However, back in February, work began...
Content
Also posted at StopForumSpam as a part of the update!
AI has never really been a favorite of mine. Especially not related to programming, and even less in music (but that is a completely different story). Recently, however, after a long period of avoiding it entirely, it became clear that a lot has changed. Tools that once felt incomplete are now actually capable of doing real work.
Programming has always been about understanding what is happening, staying in control of what is being built, and making sure codebases do not silently break over time. It was not until tools like Copilot agents started handling real-world problems in a predictable way that it became clear that things had actually reached a usable level. And I consider myself old, so things takes a bit time sometimes.
However, back in February, work began on restoring a system that had been left in a maintenance-only state for years. The DNS endpoint has always been central, but due to difficult private/family circumstances, only the essentials were kept running - mainly blacklist additions and DNSBL removals. Over time, parts of the web-based tooling broke down as PHP evolved, and more and more had to be handled manually.
That changed earlier this year.
The DNS endpoint is now fully rebuilt, along with a completely new web GUI for handling DNS queries. This also made it possible to finally retire "Tornevall API version 3" (and version 4 that never became "a thing") after many years. The entire API has been rewritten. Penalty handling (rediscovered via an old 2016 thread at this forum actually) has been revisited (A.K.A removed), legacy components have been cleaned out, and the WordPress DNSBL plugin has received a major upgrade.
Work is now moving toward integrating additional moderation layers (for the plugin), including Akismet-style filtering, directly into the DNSBL API. At the same time, fraudbl.org has taken a more central role, with ongoing work around e-commerce fraud detection (eventually, since GDPR and EU has a significant role here in data protection and IP addresses are sometimes considered personal information).
But everything is now in a much better place - stable, modernized, and ready for further development.
Documentation, so far:
https://tools.tornevall.net/docs/dnsbl-api
https://tools.tornevall.net/docs/dns-api
(All old documentation at https://docs.tornevall.net recently migrated over to confluence cloud and are kind of deprecated.)
There's a plan to look into how DMARC reports can be handled more generally too.
Access
To get access to the DNSBL API beyond basic lookups, an account on "Tools" is required.
Tools also has a forum available at https://forum.tornevall.net, which has recently been restored to a working state. It is intended to align more closely with the work being done in the API endpoints, and to serve as a place for more in-depth discussions and technical topics related to that.