ChatGPT

[Beany]

In more cases than you think.

My general position at the moment - due to looking after multiple higher education libraries which are goldmines for AI crawlers thanks to the higher reading ages of their content - is that the people who enable this wankpuffery should be blown apart by anti-aircraft guns. Ideally in front of their screaming, crying, begging families, to prove the point.

My team have now put hundreds of hours into defeating these bots - who don't identify themselves as bots, but sometimes as implausible browsers because their operators are too fucking stupid to use realistic ones (yes, I'm sure the HTML rendered help system from Windows XP is running on Mac OS 10.2 on PowerPC mate) - so I really don't appreciate AI right now. And no, Cloudflare can't stop it, and why should I be be spending thousands per month on Cloudflare, which is what it costs to drag external domains in, to stop these cunts fucking my clients over?

I'm not even joking, honestly. This is a scourge on the internet as a whole and the sooner that legal frameworks are put in place to limit their legal access to sites, the better.

Of course the 'voluntary access' crap that the Govt are suggesting is pointless. We already have a 'gentlemans agreement' via the Robots.txt system, that everyone in this ecosphere gleefully ignore. See the fake user agents above, they know exactly what they're doing and they're laughing at existing regulatory frameworks.

So fuck 'em, burn this industry to the ground, and salt the earth.

[Simon]

Beany, although I'm between jobs at the mo blocking bots is very much my bag still. Drop me a PM if you want any tips. I've helped A LOT of well known clients defeat them, from sneaker launches to graphics card launches.

And no, cloudflare won't block them. Because CF is actually not that good. There, I said it.

[Beany]

If you don't mind being tapped on professional stuff while between jobs, I might drop you a summarisation of what we're up to.

Worst case, you might find it funny but honestly, only if it's no bother!

Cloudflare is better if you go in an manually add rules that you've worked out yourself but if you want to drag external domains to be under your control.....oof, that's empty not your personal wallet, but your corporate wallet, territory. Our US chums (who are an order of magnitude bigger than us) can justify it, but we can't.

I assume you're aware of Anubis at this stage?

https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

Chibi egyptian gods aside, it's getting a lot of traction lately, wonder why?

[Simon]

I'm going to bed now but drop me a PM with your exact use case and I'll tell you what I think when i get 5 minutes between my kids fighting for my attention tomorrow.

Warning - it may not be pretty but hopefully I can make you think about it a different way.

[Explosive Newt]

One recent anecdote I forgot to mention was interviewing students. We're trying to move back to in person interviews but we still do a lot of interviewing over Teams (student travel being a widening access concern for the most part).

I interviewed someone who, whenever you asked a question, they would be typing off screen, pause, then read an answer.

I'm 90% sure they were feeding our questions into an AI and reading the answers.

Very tricky to prove but fortunately their answers were too shit and our questions too multi layered for them to cope.

[Sundayjumper]

“I am conditioning myself to feel reliant on a product that doesn't work but maybe it will one day. In the meantime I'll be eroding my creativity and ability to identify accurate information. You are the one that's stupid, by the way.”

[DeskJockey]

From the department of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -not-easy/

Who, apart from the ghouls promoting/selling this, will ever benefit? It is frankly awful.

[Beany]

From the department of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... -not-easy/

Who, apart from the ghouls promoting/selling this, will ever benefit? It is frankly awful.

If I died tomorrow and someone tried to resurrect me in AI, it'd end up being the first verified case of a real ghost not only existing, but savagely bumming someone to death.

[unzippy]

In more cases than you think.

My general position at the moment - due to looking after multiple higher education libraries which are goldmines for AI crawlers thanks to the higher reading ages of their content - is that the people who enable this wankpuffery should be blown apart by anti-aircraft guns. Ideally in front of their screaming, crying, begging families, to prove the point.

My team have now put hundreds of hours into defeating these bots - who don't identify themselves as bots, but sometimes as implausible browsers because their operators are too fucking stupid to use realistic ones (yes, I'm sure the HTML rendered help system from Windows XP is running on Mac OS 10.2 on PowerPC mate) - so I really don't appreciate AI right now. And no, Cloudflare can't stop it, and why should I be be spending thousands per month on Cloudflare, which is what it costs to drag external domains in, to stop these cunts fucking my clients over?

I'm not even joking, honestly. This is a scourge on the internet as a whole and the sooner that legal frameworks are put in place to limit their legal access to sites, the better.

Of course the 'voluntary access' crap that the Govt are suggesting is pointless. We already have a 'gentlemans agreement' via the Robots.txt system, that everyone in this ecosphere gleefully ignore. See the fake user agents above, they know exactly what they're doing and they're laughing at existing regulatory frameworks.

So fuck 'em, burn this industry to the ground, and salt the earth.

You what?

Management Beany?!

[Beany]

You knows it!

I'm the fucking Head of IT these days Zips

Got two staff under me, the MD above me, twenty other staff and 250 servers to look after, for everyone from small religious libraries through to a couple of Magic Circle law firms

[nuttinnew]

[unzippy]

You knows it!

I'm the fucking Head of IT these days Zips

Got two staff under me, the MD above me

Beany sandwich

[Beany]

You knows it!

I'm the fucking Head of IT these days Zips

Got two staff under me, the MD above me

Beany sandwich

That's.....god, why would you put that image in anyones head Mr B? You monster

[DeskJockey]

Almost. ALMOST. Tempted to ask ChatGPT to interpret that into an image. Not in an NSFW kind of way, probably end up with two slices of bread and a hat in the middle...

[Beany]

Almost. ALMOST. Tempted to ask ChatGPT to interpret that into an image. Not in an NSFW kind of way, probably end up with two slices of bread and a hat in the middle...

You see that hat?

Why don't you go fuck it, DJ?

[DeskJockey]

Almost. ALMOST. Tempted to ask ChatGPT to interpret that into an image. Not in an NSFW kind of way, probably end up with two slices of bread and a hat in the middle...

You see that hat?

Why don't you go fuck it, DJ?

Eeeew.

[Beany]

I am a respected industry professional.

[DeskJockey]

I am a respected industry professional.

What industry?

[Beany]

I am a respected industry professional.

What industry?

Shitbaggery and swearing.

(comes with being scottish)