How to waste bandwidth, battery power, and annoy sysadmins

Okay, let's talk about something other than feed readers for a moment. How about completely broken web browsers? Yeah, those.

This. This is a thing. Count the broken:

ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:26 -0700] "GET /w/css/main.css HTTP/1.1" 200 1651 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/feed.png HTTP/1.1" 200 689 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed/ HTTP/1.1" 200 8052 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 
ip - - [28/Jun/2024:14:44:27 -0700] "GET /w/2024/05/27/feed//favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404 20 

First up, why in the hell do you need to request the same link 12 times? No, scratch that, 15 times, since it does 3 more after getting the css and feed icon.

Then it goes for the favicon, and what clown decided that the right way to request "/favicon.ico" is to prepend the base path to it? This cursed thing that Microsoft foisted upon us back in the 90s is supposed to be at the top level. It's not part of individual directories. That would be stupid.

And yet, this thing decides to beat the shit out of the web server while trying to get it.

I used to wonder just what could be this stupid. The user-agents on these bad requests aren't particularly helpful. But, then one day, I got lucky and noticed that the first request of the set has one very interesting little detail in it (while the others do not):

FxiOS/127.1

FxiOS. That is, Firefox for iOS. That by itself was enough to get me looking, and oh, look what I found.

Request spamming when visiting a site

Request spam for favicon and apple-touch icons on iOS 16 + Firefox 105

Request Flooding when opening app

favicon.ico is in / , it looks for favicon.ico in every directory except / .

Firefox on iPhone makes a flood of requests for icons

Lovely. So, if you're using this garbage, know that you're probably leaving a trail of badness in your wake.