Well, technically, we're letting Natalie do it, which is, of course, worse in every way imaginable, since she's immune to the sense of embarrassment that sometimes restrains him from acting on every little whim.
To be honest that was actually my first theory, since the bots didn't seem interested in exploring the rest of the domain. I suppose there's no way to know for certain. I concluded that it must be an imbecile's attempt at harvesting, though, because the queries weren't really exploring the string space in any useful way. Here's a sample:
"GET
/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&re&results_&results_pagenum=2980 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=2&go=Search&group=0&group_restrict=1&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_pagenum=5440&template=41&type HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_pagenum=33500&templat HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_pagenum=32640&templ HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&res&results_page&results_pagenum=39300 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_&results_pa&results_pagenum=12340 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=2&go=Search&group=0&group_restrict=1&id=48&name_r&res&results_pagenum=6100 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=2&go=Search&group=0&group_restrict=1&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_pagenum=2920&te HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&nam&results_&results_pagenum=17940 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results&results_pag&results_pagenu&results_pagenum=37720 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&results_pagenum=9360&template=41&type_r HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_restrict=1&q&r&results_pagenum=28040 HTTP/1.1"
"GET/index?author=15&go=Search&id=48&name_&results_pag&results_pagenum=10400 HTTP/1.1"
The only thing this is fuzzing is the query string parser. It's not testing the limits of string buffers, it's not using interesting characters, it's just brain-damaged. The fact that it's also fetching different page numbers shows it's trying to follow page links and failing badly at doing so.
The site gets plenty of sniffing from garden-variety pests. e.g. this half-hearted attempt to find a framework or two that I don't have:
"POST
/__rsc HTTP/1.1"
"POST/api/auth/session HTTP/1.1"
"POST/api/auth HTTP/1.1"
"POST/__nextjs_action HTTP/1.1"
"POST/.action HTTP/1.1"
"POST/_rsc HTTP/1.1"
"POST/api/auth/callback HTTP/1.1"
"POST/_middleware HTTP/1.1"
"POST / HTTP/1.1"
(of course, none of these URLs exist other than
All this said... I've seen that spammers regularly misconfigure their tools, they'll try to register accounts with names like #[X:\LISTS\NAMES.TXT] and it only makes sense that some other cybercriminals trying to get rich quick have a similar lack of interest in programming shit correctly. Generally people don't turn to script kiddie shit if they have a personality conducive to putting in an honest hard day's work perfecting their craft.
I believe the plan was to give that sobriquet to Lake Michigan, in honour of its decidedly flaccid silhouette.
I had a problem where AI scrapers were absolutely DETERMINED to fish out every possible query string from a search results page. Almost all of the query strings they tried were invalid due to shitty and dysfunctional string substitution. "&page=100" wouldn't be followed by "&page=101", it would be followed by "&pag&pag=1010" or something even more insanely half-baked, until the query strings were like 100+ characters long. It was the technological equivalent of watching HIV mutate in real time.
But the insane thing was that, aside from page number, they were always requesting info about the same other criteria: filtered by the same user, the same page type, and with no text string. So I just took those particular values and started banning logged-out users who requested that combination of criteria.
I figured I'd need to change my tactics in a couple of days once the botnet got bored of that particular page and moved on to requesting bogus entries for another user.
MariaDB> select count(*) from ip_bans;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 671671 |
+----------+
It hasn't.
Freenet is also based on middle-out compression.
No. Trying to push 30TB into Freenet will be interpreted as an attack on the network by other peers and they'll disconnect from your peer.
Freenet is better viewed as a communication medium than a storage medium. Data is prioritized according to demand, somewhat like an LRU cache. You can't upload 30TB and expect the network to preserve it for you.
On liability, running a Freenet peer is more like running network infrastructure that automatically routes and caches other people's traffic than intentionally publishing it. US law explicitly recognizes this distinction in the DMCA's provisions for transitory network communications and system caching. We discuss this in more detail in the FAQ.
You obviously haven't tried Freenet. You can join our room on River and you'll see no spam, no fraud, no hate speech, none of that.
Decentralized doesn't mean unmoderated. Systems built on Freenet can be moderated however their creators and communities want. River is moderated.
The difference is that nobody running one service gets to decide what everyone else is allowed to run.
Back in the teens we found a couple of instances where political actors were encouraging people to install screen savers or cryptocurrency wallets that turned their phones into reverse proxies. This was thought to be specifically for the sake of giving hostile foreign operations (read: Russia) access to U.S. domestic politics.
The fact that smart TVs are facilitating this is just
Oh, wait, TP-Link had well over half the U.S. router market, but they're getting banned over national security concerns?
Maybe there's a market for a router with traffic accounting as a service so one can see what's happening?
This is why the only device in my house with internet is a Roku. I simply will not tolerate the rest of that invasive junk.
The call centers are going to be decimated
I have a number of issues this morning that require calls. First, deal with PG&E about changing the billing for my new house. The I need to talk to my bank about banning Google from ever billing me again. I absolutely HATE changing doctors, but had to do it, because getting to Antioch, then into the city, is just ridiculous from here, so it's time for first appointment.
I would love to be able to just give Claude a list of administrivia like that and let it plow through the work. I see progress on agent related billing, I see Cloudflare doing stuff for an internet dominated by agents
There's an obvious bubble, the circular dealings among the large core players are an enormous red flag.
The frontier labs are in the same position that DEC and Sun Microsystems were in the 1990s, as consumer hardware running Linux began to displace them. There will be ups and downs, but the trend is unavoidable.
The productivity gains are not there, AI is great for coding, some customer service is working, but the "50% of all white collar workers" that the frontier labs thought was good positioning last year 1) ain't gonna work but it did 2) infuriate the managerial class.
The frontier labs got away with it, thus far, in part because of concerns over the arrival of artificial general intelligence, which occupies a similar niche to nuclear weapons in the minds of policy makers. We ARE seeing frontier models escaping and attacking others, there ARE hazards, but it's nothing like what was imagined.
And the open models plus wild talent are as much a danger as wild talent was all on its own.
The frontier labs are like the coyote in that last moment when he's windmilling wildly, but not falling yet.
Someone needs to launch a national campaign educating people on jury nullification.
The property damage laws are not really the sort of thing nullification is meant for, it's supposed to quickly put an end to the effect of bad laws, but if that's the one tool handy, and it's this much of a social issue, it should be put to work.
The duress deletion function was always obviously and transparently going to get treated as obstruction of justice issue the minute it got used in a high profile case. Here we are.
If you don't want to have trouble at the border, wipe your devices before you get anywhere near, and restore them once you are across. The precursors to this event have been in the news for years - the border is a legal gray zone, act accordingly.
I have mixed feeling here - sad for this kid, whomever he may be. Once again annoyed at the activist/NGO world for not training up to the point they can dodge this *easily* avoided problem. And I'm leaning forward in anticipation of being able to point and laugh at any crypto enthusiasts who make comically implausible arguments about these simple facts.
WIPE YOUR DEVICES BEFORE CROSSING THE BORDER.
Is that clear enough?
Starting with the Intel 386 it became possible to run a proper operating system on consumer hardware. I can still recall the excitement with that first Redhat 3.03 book and CD I received, sitting in front of a 16MHz i386sx, craving change. I had owned a Vax 11/730, an LMI Lambda, an SGI 210GTXB, but they were just stupid expensive to run and it took a couple friends to move them.
Anthropic and OpenAI are in the same position the workstation vendors were thirty years ago. What they do is amazing, extremely desirable to those of us who create and use software, but SOOO painful price wise. While I'm writing this on my 16GB M1 Mac the Bonsai 1 bit models are downloading. I mostly use Claude Max and an Ollama cloud subscription, but if I can shift some of the work to the machine on my desk
I let an RTX 5060Ti go cheap a few months ago, 16GB was just not enough. I don't regret this, but I wish my income position would change. The world would be a different place if the HP Z4 in my kitchen had an RTX 6000 Pro in place of its current GTX 1060. The advent of TurboQuant makes me want to try some things on one of the Intel GPUs - maybe that entry level sedan price on the RTX 6000 Pro is no longer the real barrier to entry.
These are strange days we are living, strange days indeed
I changed careers thirty years ago to get Microsoft out of my life and I've never regretted that decision.
Using Microsoft operating systems is like dating a morbidly obese person who is continually in and out of the psych ward, and they've got a cluster B character disorder, one of the really manipulative ones.
I do not understand how that company's products are not limited to historic niches that are too difficult/unprofitable to clear.
Perhaps the advent of AI is going to lower the barrier to entry for decent operating systems. The Unix based ones have always seemed easier to me, but I'm an aspie weirdo so my opinion only counts just a little.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
