The Fishbowl is a personal blog that's been online for over two decades, written by a named author with a consistent web presence. There's nothing here that suggests a scam, a safety risk, or a hidden agenda. You can visit and read with confidence — it's just someone's long-running weblog.
Cross-referenced 41 live signals from Google Safe Browsing, VirusTotal, WHOIS and more on Oct 29, 2026.How we score →
Where the score comes from
We look at six areas. Here's how fishbowl.pastiche.org did in each.
85
Security
Strong security posture: modern TLS, HSTS enforced, clickjacking blocked, and no malware or phishing flags from Google or protective DNS services. The legacy TLS fallback is a CDN default that doesn't affect real visitors.
70
Identity
The domain has been registered for nearly 30 years, which is a strong anchor of stability. The owner isn't named in WHOIS, but that's standard for personal sites since GDPR, and the site's operator identifies himself by name and long-running blog content.
85
Reputation
A 24-year web archive history and regular mentions on Hacker News since 2007 show a genuine, long-term web presence. No blacklists or threat feeds flag the domain. This is not a fly-by-night operation.
80
Transparency
The site has a clear about page, author name, email address, and links to a Bluesky profile. For a personal blog, this is more than adequate. The operator is not hiding who he is.
70
Compliance
No privacy policy or terms of service are present. That's completely normal and expected for a personal blog with no commercial activity, no data collection for sale, and no user accounts. There's no legal obligation here to penalize.
75
Infrastructure
Hosted on Cloudflare's reliable network, which provides performance and basic protection. DNSSEC is not enabled, and there are no email servers, but for a static blog these are non-issues. The sitemap with 2,265 pages shows active maintenance.
What we checked
The 41 signals behind this report.
Security & Transport
Certificate Issuer: Neutral
Google Trust Services
Certificate issued by Google Trust Services
Clickjacking Protection: Good
Present
X-Frame-Options: DENY
Google Web Risk: Good
Clean
No threats detected by Google Web Risk
HSTS Header: Good
Present
Site enforces HTTPS via HSTS
Legacy TLS: Neutral
Accepted
Server still accepts TLS 1.0/1.1 from clients that ask for them, which CDNs such as Cloudflare allow by default. Browsers stopped offering these versions in 2020, so visitors connect with TLS 1.2 or later
Protective DNS: Neutral
Not blocked
Cloudflare's malware-blocking resolver (1.1.1.2) answered normally for this domain. These resolvers refuse domains their threat intelligence lists for malware or phishing, and a scam only days old often isn't listed yet. Quad9 gave no usable answer.
SSL Certificate: Good
Valid
Valid certificate, expires in 65 days
Search Cloaking: Neutral
Not detected
Neither a visitor arriving from a Google search nor Google's crawler was sent elsewhere or shown spam that a direct visit wasn't. Cloaking that checks the visitor's network address can't be seen from our server.
Site publishes an About / Team / Company page — a transparency signal that the operator is willing to describe who runs the business.
Branding: Good
Complete
Site has custom branding and social media metadata
Business Disclosure: Neutral
Not found
No dedicated legal-entity disclosure page detected — common and expected outside the EU, but required for commercial sites in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and other EU jurisdictions.
Contact Info: Good
Found
Homepage has an email address on the site's own domain
Domain Age: Good
29 years, 6 months
Domain created 1997-04-26 (29 years, 6 months ago) — registration of the parent domain pastiche.org
Domain Expiry: Neutral
2031-04-27
Expires in 1640 days
Legal Pages: Warning
Missing
No privacy policy or terms of service found — expected for commercial sites, normal for personal blogs and hobby projects
Registrant: Neutral
Not published
The registration record we could read names no owner. Many registrars publish no owner details at all since GDPR (2018), so this hides nothing unusual.
Registrar: Neutral
1API GmbH
Registered through 1API GmbH
Infrastructure & DNS
CDN: Good
Cloudflare
Site is served behind Cloudflare — indicates real operational investment in edge infrastructure
DNS Blacklists: Neutral
Clean
Not listed by SpamCop and Barracuda, the blacklists that answered
DNS Resolution: Good
4 IP(s)
Resolves to: 2a06:98c1:3121::2, 2a06:98c1:3120::2, 188.114.97.2, 188.114.96.2
DNSSEC: Neutral
Not enabled
Domain is not signed with DNSSEC
DNSSEC: Neutral
unsigned
DNSSEC status from WHOIS
Email (MX Records): Neutral
None
No MX records found — domain may not handle email
Hosting Network (ASN): Neutral
AS13335 CLOUDFLARENET
Hosted on: AS13335 CLOUDFLARENET (US)
Page Load Time: Neutral
617ms
Fast page load, timed once from our server in Europe including the DNS lookup, connection setup and any redirects
Reputation & Reach
Hacker News: Good
56 stories since 2007
Hacker News readers upvoted links to this site in 8 different years between 2007 and 2026. The most upvoted, "The Two Things about Computer Programming" (2010), got 138 points.
Open Graph Type: Neutral
website
og:type declared as website
Page Description: Neutral
Charles Miller's weblog, covering software development, online culture, and whatever assorted nerdery happens to cross m...
Charles Miller's weblog, covering software development, online culture, and whatever assorted nerdery happens to cross my path.
Page Heading: Neutral
The Fishbowl
Page Language: Neutral
en
HTML declares lang="en"
Page Title: Neutral
The Fishbowl: Charles Miller’s Weblog
Sitemap: Good
2265 pages
Site maintains a proper sitemap with 2265 indexed pages
Social Media Presence: Good
1 platform
Homepage links to profiles on Bluesky
Structured Data: Neutral
None found
No structured data markup found
Tranco Rank: Neutral
Not ranked
This site is not in the top 1 million most visited websites — this is normal for small or new businesses
Web Archive History: Good
24 years
Earliest archive snapshot from 20021009
Website Status: Good
Online
Website is live and responding
robots.txt: Good
Present
robots.txt has 5 directives and references a sitemap
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If you've stumbled across The Fishbowl at fishbowl.pastiche.org and are wondering whether it's safe or legit, the short answer is yes. This isn't a store or a service that handles payments or personal data. It's a personal blog written by Charles Miller, a software developer who has been posting here since the late 1990s.
A domain history of nearly 30 years is one of the strongest trust signals a site can have. Scam sites simply don't last that long. The site also shows up in the Wayback Machine as far back as 2002, and Hacker News readers have been sharing and upvoting its posts for years. That kind of public history is hard to fake.
Security-wise, the site uses modern encryption, blocks clickjacking, and has no malware flags from Google or other threat monitors. There's no contact form asking for sensitive info, no checkout page, and no reason to share anything beyond a casual browse.
For a personal blog, fishbowl.pastiche.org is about as straightforward as it gets. There's no hidden agenda, no bait-and-switch, and no reason to treat it with suspicion. It's just a well-maintained weblog from a real person with an unusually long internet track record.