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 /, and you definitely can't just POST to it)

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.

As a Californian, I definitely would NOT have voted for this had I been given the opportunity.

And yeah, we LITERALLY have campaign ads running now to the extent of, "Pedophile murderers are being released to the streets ... and Candidate X voted for it THREE TIMES!!!!"

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.

That one was yet another case of Ridley having a script, deciding it was good enough to start building sets and working on effects, and then constantly changing the script all the way up through editing. Whole subplots got dropped, characters who appeared in promo material just never showed up in the movie, character motivations stopped making sense, plot points were retroactively changed, etc. Prometheus suffered from the same problem, if not to an even greater degree. It's like those movies where everybody cries "studio interference!" ... only in Ridley's case, he's the one who interferes constantly with his own movies.

From TFS:

He has. For a long time. The problem is, apparently he doesn't like to pay them, and they're not aware of that before the fact.

"Debian is made by humans" makes as much sense as "holes dug by humans with shovels" when you have an excavator on site. AI is a force amplifier, an insanely fast and good one at that. It can not only write software, it can package it, port it, reverse engineer drivers for your favorite hardware and everything else a human might be able to do with a computer, but can't find the time, knowledge or motivation to do. AI is what basically turns all software into Open Source software, since AI isn't stopped by binaries and raw assembler code, unlike most humans.

Refusing to use AI just makes it look like somebody is more concerned with refusing to change their little hobby than the quality of their software.

> Loss of (human) cognitive function through its overuse.

If the whole anti-AI discussion has shown us anything, it's that most humans weren't very good with the whole "cognitive function" thing in the first place. Tons of parroting of long debunked arguments, complete lack of reflection, complete lack of forward thinking (spoiler: AI isn't stuck at ChatGPT3.5 from 2022) and other nonsense.

About the only valid concern against AI for Debian should be copyright, which is still a bit fishy, but since the rest of the industry doesn't seem to care, they might as well just role with it. Everything else just boils down to QA, you obviously shouldn't accept any AI change blindly, but you shouldn't do that with humans made ones either. If somebody spams your bug tracker with low quality AI slop, feel free to block them. Use AI for what it works for right now, and everything where it still fails at, check again in a year or two.

AI is the most powerful software since the invention of software, it's the stuff that was sci-fi just five years ago. Refusing to make is of it just makes people look inept.

Calculus 1 pretty much is the lowest-level math class at Berkeley. There's a math fundamentals refresher class, which is for people who are pretty much at pre-calculus level. But if they're saying students really don't understand fractions, it's a mystery how they even got into Berkeley. California has an amazing community college system that will teach you all the way down to basic algebra if you need it, and once you spend a couple of years there, there are easy avenues to transfer to the many high-quality California four-year schools. I sense the op-ed author has an axe of some kind to grind, because even without the SAT, it's not like admissions to Berkeley aren't competitive.

Well, technically, per international treaty, nobody can "have the best spots." Legally speaking, there is no real estate that can be owned on the Moon.

MMmmm, I understand the sentiment. But I think you'll find that's not true. The Oracle database, alone, has a long history of engineering behind it that has not truly been replicated by other products. Of course, this is really only relevant for corner cases, but these exist, and they're usually folks who have big budgets (like governments, or large enterprises). And at that level, what they're paying for is not the technology as-shipped, but the support ... which means you have a "throat to choke" in terms of lawsuits, but could also mean building something that's proprietary for your business.

And that is a good phone.

Microsoft has done a pretty thorough job of locking companies in like this, particularly through authentication and authorization systems (Active Directory) and the locked-down IT management infrastructure around them.

Add to this that all of the applications I use on macOS or Windows are either open source or at least cross-platform anyway. As long as the apps don't change, neither does the way I work; not really.