Clive Thompson 0 years ago

Via the Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group (@npub1mwgn...zng5) ... ... here's a list of code designed to poison the well for AI web-scrapers

tldr.nettime

ASRG (@asrg@tldr.nettime.org)

Attached: 1 image ## **Sabot in the Age of AI** A list of offensive methods & strategic approaches for facilitating (algorithmic) sabotage, frame...

(thanks to [@peterfr](

Mastodon.ART

peterfr (@peterfr@mastodon.art)

193 Posts, 431 Following, 97 Followers ·

) for pointing this one out!)

Clive Thompson 0 years ago

Fantastic piece at @New Lines Magazine about the Syrian trade in the drug captagon ... ... and how for years the Assad regime masterminded the production and dissemination of the drug to nearby countries ... ... to destabilize them. Those chickens came home to roost in the regime's fall

New Lines Magazine

How Assad’s Trade in Captagon Fueled His Downfall

Right up to its collapse, the regime lied about its role in the drug’s production and distribution

Clive Thompson 0 years ago

A hacker developed an "infinite maze" to trap web-crawlers/scrapers from AI companies basically, if the server code detects that a web crawler from an AI firm is trying to scrape the site ... ... the code begins spinning up an infinite, nesting warren of new sham pages, filled with random text so the crawler gets stuck crawling and scraping endless and meaningless pages fun @Jason Koebler piece at @404 Media

404 Media

Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots

"Nepenthes generates random links that always point back to itself - the crawler downloads those new links. Nepenthes happily just returns more and...

Clive Thompson 0 years ago

Behold Sophie O'Neill's "embroidery journal" each day she stitches an icon representing something she did, felt or experienced by the end of the the year the whole thing is a gorgeous aide memoire Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe here:

Linkfest #30: Greyscale Gelato, the "Ott Derivimeter", and Vangelis' Ambient Music For Surgeries

Hello again! Time once again for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, for which I cruise the endless overpasses of the G...

Clive Thompson 0 years ago

"The most important part of the pardons isn’t specifically who is released from prison, but the meaning of Trump’s gesture: Radical militias are free to act with impunity—as long as they’re loyal to Trump. Should an extremist on the right break the law, he can reasonably hope for Trump to pluck them out of the justice system." This is exactly the intended point of those Jan. 6 pardons Piece:

The Atlantic

Trump’s Pardons Are Sending a Crystal-Clear Message

After the January 6 attacks, right-wing militias went underground. Now they have permission to come out of hiding.

unpaywalled: https://archive.is/lZebr

Clive Thompson 0 years ago

A wonderful essay by @Benj Edwards about the joys of the early phase of personal computer ... ... i.e. when computers were indeed "personal" ... ... which is to say, under our own control, serving us, and not being tweaked/juked on a daily basis by remote megacorps

VC&G | » The PC is Dead: It’s Time to Bring Back Personal Computing

Adventures in vintage computers and retrogaming. Includes articles on classic games and obsolete computers.

Clive Thompson 1 year ago

I'm listening to a friend doing a Zoom table read of King Lear with his theater company one of the actors said "sirrah" ... ... and my Iphone woke up, thinking someone had said "siri" 😂

Clive Thompson 1 year ago

Behold the AI slop that google served up when these folks asked it "does corn get digested" I just checked that query, and it now serves up this story itself, bien sur but overall I agree with the deck to the headline "slopaggedon cometh"

Futurism

Behold the AI Slop Dominating Google Image Results for "Does Corn Get Digested"

Another Google Image results page — this one for the question of "does corn get digested" — is run amuck with AI-generated slop.

Clive Thompson 1 year ago

Back last spring I visited Denver ... ... where the city was two years into a fascinating experiment: Subsidizing residents who wanted to buy an e-bike Turns out the program was exceptionally successful People rode 'em 26 miles a week on average, rode them year-round ... ... removing 6 million miles of car-driving each year. Cleaner air, healthier residents getting exercise And: *way* cheaper than subsidizing electric cars My piece on it for Mother Jones:

The Secret to a Better City Is a Two-Wheeler – Mother Jones