This is an example of “how much of a mess the robots.txt landscape is right now,” the anonymous operator of Dark Visitors told 404 Media. Dark Visitors is a website that tracks the constantly-shifting landscape of web crawlers and scrapers—many of them operated by AI companies—and which helps website owners regularly update their robots.txt files to prevent specific types of scraping. The site has seen a huge increase in popularity as more people try to block AI from scraping their work.
We just blocked everyone and everything. We don’t particularly care about it being found, it’s not like the blogosphere is still a viable entity.
The cynical observation is that people pay a lot of money to register as operators for new gTLDs, and who is going to turn down that money? The operators may not make much money (but maybe they do, from some spammers), but the people who approve new gTLDs and get money for them sure do.
An interesting report on newly used domain names and their usage in spam – Chris Siebenmann
We just watched the Fallout TV series and the cynical observer in us can’t help but think it’s Vault-Tec taking a dollar from us humans to pay RobCo, which in turn takes a dollar from us to pay ArmCo, which in turn takes a dollar from us to pay Big Mt, and so on and so on.
gTLD miners know they are basically unbound by law. They’re going to keep digging into the English dictionary and when they run out, start on other languages.
I have some thoughts about the hockey-stick rise of “AI” (more like advanced machine learning) , it’s current iterations are bullshittiers (from On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
His book On Bullshit addresses his concern and makes a distinction between “bullshitters” and liars. He concludes that bullshitters are more insidious: they are more of a threat against the truth than are liars.
Whatever happens with AI— it’s a bullshitter. It doesn’t, it can’t, care about what is true or false. Whomever uses it also does not care, and they will use it to expand their underdeveloped thoughts and ideas to have it talk about nothing at all, in an effort to confuse and control; to influence you to buy some random widget you don’t need.
Combine the output of AI writing tools with software to paraphrase and re-edit and everyone will have a really hard time telling what was written entirely by humans and what was fabricated from nothingness.
In time, media created with the assistance of AI will probably become the apex predator of your time and attention on the internet, where to attract attention is to attract predators:
Is our universe an empty forest or a dark one? If it’s a dark forest, then only Earth is foolish enough to ping the heavens and announce its presence. The rest of the universe already knows the real reason why the forest stays dark. It’s only a matter of time before the Earth learns as well.
This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest.
While it’s markedly safe to hide, it also means you give up your potential for change on the larger Internet, letting those predators bend the environment to their will permanently.
We’d do well to remember that on the Internet nobody cares you’re a dog.
When people decide to go Dumb on the web it really shows. Case in point, this tweet by @CanPanicNow:
I did NOT come to law school to do math
— @CanPanicNow
Is it a dumb take? Maybe, maybe not. We know many lawyers who complain about math. We also know many software developers who complain about math. We’ve heard mathematicians complain about math.
But like Homer Simpson says, it’s funny because it’s true
This started an entire fucken chain of Internet Stupidity™ on the twitter derp corn, but the one that people really took offense with was this reply from @VampWriterGRRL:
@CanPanicNow I went to college and got a degree in Paralegal Technology. Then I was hired by an attorney who specialized in bankruptcies. I recommend setting the attitude aside because, well, it’s immature, and you don’t know where you’ll end up working right out of law school.
— @VampWriterGRRL
My fucken gods you’d have thought she went and personally spit on everyone’s faces. This started an entire weekend of stupidity that just keeps going and going cos some people can’t let it go. It’s a bad take? Dunno, possibly, We’re not able to judge how other people go about their lives, it’s already been hard enough with the pandemic to worry about other people’s lives when your own is already hanging on the balance.
#lawtwitter folk people started dogpiling on her. Whether it’s deserved or not it’s up to the reader to determine. Just go and look at @VampWriterGRRL’s replies to see what people are saying, or not, we’re not the boss of you. Recommend you don’t cos then you’d be reading the comments. We have our own opinions about how she’s bringing work into her own personal life and how her policing of others opinions feels.
In her case, she went on and is still currently defending her position on the matter as of this blargh post. This is where we come in with a few tweets of our own.
@WimminsRea @AKBrews @ResJudiGator @MotiontoLit @AnnaLovesVoting @VampWriterGRRL @subnomnomnom but on that… eh, just let her be. At this point it’s just y’all piling on
— @nullrend
–
The kind of #lawtwitter dogpiling happening right now will probably result in vamp leaving, same as it has happened in the past. I haven’t interacted with @VampWriterGRRL
but I’m sure there will be people who will miss her, just like I miss people driven away over time.
— @nullrend
–
if you don’t like her opinion, that’s fine. Do a tweet or two and leave it at that. Same if you do like her opinion. Y’all in #lawtwitter already devolved into cliques, make your peace with that and let others be.
— @nullrend
There is a missing tweet here, which multiple people advised me to delete, in which we used the word “lynching”, given its racial connotations in the US. Quick reminder of the definition:
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often in the form of hanging) for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in every society.
lynch [/ lɪntʃ /]
verb (used with object)
1. to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority:
– In the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of southern African Americans were lynched by white mobs.
2. to criticize, condemn, etc., in public:
– He’s been unfairly lynched in the media.
We used this word to describe the mobbing around @VampWriterGRRL. Was it the wrong word to use, given the racial history of the audience present? Yes, it was. We apologized for it afterwards. But by that point people wanted blood and when that happens the blood lust will not be denied!
And I thought the worst take I was gonna see all night was a tweet about how lawyers shouldn’t make jokes about math (or at all, I guess) but holy shit has that been topped
— @ncurr
To which multiple people started replying. At this point Nick felt the need to actively start QTing my original tweet to others in an effort to… not sure, actually. Have more people get in line for a li’l spanking? Kinky. But that did start a little mob around the tweet to which people actively responding. At the time we felt it particularly ironic we were being taught we were lacking in American historical knowledge by a white man and a white woman.
@wellywiggles @ncurr @Lex_Discipulus @subnomnomnom mmkay, and now you guys are actively trying to get mobbing on me. I did walk it back cos Nick rightfully pointed out it was the wrong word to use given the current context.
— @ncurr
Can’t use a word that accurately describes the feeling which is why “mobbing” came into play. Ever seen mob justice? Not a fun thing to be around. It’s the kind of thing that curdles your insides and leaves a mental scar that takes a long, long time to heal.
@nullrend @wellywiggles @Lex_Discipulus @subnomnomnom I am simply trying to educate you about why you should not have made that comparison, then when called out, stood by it
— @ncurr
A few people told me in private my tweet was stupid and it should be deleted and that that point their advise was followed. Did they also tell me I was being stupid for tweeting a stupid thing? Damn right they did, and right they were. A few of the people who torched me for that tweet are still actively going after others cos they disapprove of their opinions. In our case we just told them to block us so they wouldn’t have to read our nonsense:
@ncurr @Lex_Discipulus @katmcmemes @subnomnomnom @wellywiggles okay, so now I have walked it back and then apologized multiple times, and yet that is not enough because obviously you’re taking this very, very personally. So… my recommendation then is that you should block me, and people of the same opinion as you should do the same.
— @nullrend
A couple of people from back in the land where we were born looked at this entire fucken thing and started LOL’ing at the sheer stupidity of it. American Exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
Did we say the wrong thing at the wrong time? Yes. Did others also try to actively torch us for it? Yes. Did the chain of dumb continue until maximum dumb was achieved? Also yes. Not even trying to learn something for it except for the reminder to mind my own business come hell or high water. Bunch of people are now taking a Twitter Break because people are still finding something to be Mad Online™ about.
We can’t imagine what’ll happen when they see this blargh post? They’ll probably try to nuke me off the Internet with LOICs like we used to in the olden days.
It’s almost poetic that the debate over .ORG reached a climax just as COVID-19 was becoming a worldwide crisis. Emergencies like this one are when the world most relies on nonprofits and NGOs; therefore, they’re also pressure tests for the sector. The crisis demonstrated that the NGO community doesn’t need fancy “products and services” from a domain registry: it needs simple, reliable, boring service. Those same members of Congress who’d scrutinized the .ORG sale wrote a more pointed letter to ICANN in March (PDF), plainly noting that there was no way that Ethos Capital could make a profit on its investment without making major changes at the expense of .ORG users.
Domain ownership should be a boring enterprise now that the age where you could get rich just by selling domains is past. You can do price speculation but that is another thing entirely.
Social networks are universally more restrictive than web pages but also more fun in significant ways, chief amongst them being that more people can participate. What if the rest of the web have that simplicity and immediacy, but without the centralization? What if we could start over?
Mozilla is knowingly walking away from any of these options because they’re bitter they could not come to dominate the Web after Firefox helped bring about the downfall of Internet Explorer. Big Tech will not support a reimagining of what the web could be since it will mean less profits. Can’t have that in a capitalist society, now can we?
There’s hope now that the Servo engine is cut loose, but the time window to avoid having a technological cycle (about 30 years or so) be dominated by corporations is closing.
I don’t think any explanation is needed here. However, let me add that if you later decide to change a name (to something sensible like you should have chosen in the first place), you are going to be amazed at the amount of pain awaiting you. No matter how easy the manuals suggest it is to change a name, you will find that lots of obscure software has rapidly accumulated which refers to that computer using that now-ugly name. It all has to be found and changed. People mailing to you from other sites have to
I’ve set up DVRs and the UX/UI on most of them is appalling, along with the entire setup and configuration process. Then to find out the moment you connect them to your network they just become another attack vector, one that cannot be easily closed off.
These are pretty pricey devices that I believe can be replaced with a Raspberry Pi to obtain more flexibility and better recording quality. It’s just the software that’s needed.
Having a citizenship means that you have a place in the world, an allegiance to a state. That state is supposed to guarantee you certain rights, like freedom from arrest, imprisonment, torture, or surveillance – depending on which state you belong to. Hannah Arendt famously said that “citizenship is the right to have rights”. To tamper with ones citizenship is to endanger ones most fundamental rights. Without citizenship, we have no rights at all.
Algorithmic Citizenship is a form of citizenship which is not assigned at birth, or through complex legal documents, but through data. Like other computerised processes, it can happen at the speed of light, and it can happen over and over again, constantly revising and recalculating. It can split a single citizenship into an infinite number of sub-citizenships, and count and weight them over time to produce combinations of affiliations to different states.
The ad-driven model sucks. It takes the power away from readers because individually you’re worth so little in the financial sense. It rewards bad behavior on the part of reporters.
Do we step up attempts to archive these services, as the Internet Archive did with the 650GB of data from Geocities? Do we attempt to help distribute content across multiple services or self-hosted websites to try to mitigate the impact of any one of these services disappearing?
I can find just four exit points for Mexico. Is it any wonder why latency goes to hell when you’re connecting from down there?
The government needs to get its head out of its ass and pass a comprehensive set of laws that set free everything the DMCA and its ilk have made prisoner in the US.
Instant riches await the country should that happen.
