Jonathan Corbet
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@gezza The subscriber link feature is likely to be the droid you are looking for: https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
So let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that you were foolish enough to try to make a living by writing high-quality, well-researched, technical articles about Linux and free-software development. I know that's crazy, but bear with me. In such a scenario, how does one succeed in a world increasingly full of stuff like this?
https://www.webpronews.com/linux-7-0-looms-large-inside-the-landmark-kernel-release-that-could-reshape-open-source-computing/
(I'll post no more links to that site, I promise).
These folks appear to take the stuff we humans write, inject a bunch of errors, then slop it out to the world.
If you were to engage in the silly quest described above, you would find that what you do is increasingly buried in the flood of this kind of material. Does anybody have any bright ideas about how one might survive in such an environment?
https://www.webpronews.com/linux-7-0-looms-large-inside-the-landmark-kernel-release-that-could-reshape-open-source-computing/
(I'll post no more links to that site, I promise).
These folks appear to take the stuff we humans write, inject a bunch of errors, then slop it out to the world.
If you were to engage in the silly quest described above, you would find that what you do is increasingly buried in the flood of this kind of material. Does anybody have any bright ideas about how one might survive in such an environment?
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@krzk @lwn As much as I sympathize with your unhappiness with the large email providers — since we run our own email, we've certainly had our challenges there too — manipulating the news in that way seems like the wrong approach to the problem. Doing such a thing even once would, I think, damage LWN's credibility badly.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
Dan Carpenter is looking for support for his ongoing bug-fixing work:
https://lwn.net/ml/all/caa37f28-a2e8-4e0a-a9ce-a365ce805e4b@stanley.mountain
He says: "The situation isn't great. The zero day bot can't do cross function analsysis and it only looks at checks with a low false positive rate. We're missing out on a bunch of bugs." *Not* missing those bugs sounds like it would be a good thing.
https://lwn.net/ml/all/caa37f28-a2e8-4e0a-a9ce-a365ce805e4b@stanley.mountain
He says: "The situation isn't great. The zero day bot can't do cross function analsysis and it only looks at checks with a low false positive rate. We're missing out on a bunch of bugs." *Not* missing those bugs sounds like it would be a good thing.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
I got a phishy-looking text from LWN's bank asking me to confirm that I really wanted to spend over $2000 in a Minnesota shoe store. It turns out that it really was the bank, though. People who know me know that shoes are not one of my bigger budget items ... so, once again, somebody has leaked my card information.
Thus begins the whole process of disputing the charges, getting a new card, updating the recurring charges before things start bouncing, etc. Just what I was planning to do this day.
Thus begins the whole process of disputing the charges, getting a new card, updating the recurring charges before things start bouncing, etc. Just what I was planning to do this day.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@osm_tech You are definitely not alone: https://lwn.net/Articles/1008897/ The situation is not sustainable but I'm not sure what we do about it beyond waiting for the AI bubble to burst.
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Jonathan Corbet
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K. Ryabitsev-Prime 🍁
monsieuricon
The Open Source Summit North America is in May this year, in the lovely Minneapolis, where nothing is happening. Nosiree, nothing that would want a bunch of people think twice about attending.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@gael @lwn https://lwn.net/Articles/1008897/ was written about a year ago, but still pretty much describes the situation.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@dfs_comedy @lwn Take a look at Bright Data's web site sometime. They advertise "automatically avoid anti-bot measures and CAPTCHAs", and "150M+ diverse IPs from real user devices". But be happy because those IPs are "100% ethically-sourced".
They aren't the only ones, and others are surely less overt about what their business is. But it would be a place to start.
They aren't the only ones, and others are surely less overt about what their business is. But it would be a place to start.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
As of the last count, @lwn has been hit by 1.6 million unique IP addresses since yesterday morning. We have managed to stabilize the site against that level of attack, but it is still annoying.
If only we could get them all to subscribe.
I do find myself wondering if there isn't material for a good class-action lawsuit here. We are far from the only ones having to cope with this crap. I'm not normally much of a fan of the US class-action lawsuit machine, but extracting money from the Bright Datas of the world to make some lawyers richer doesn't sound like an entirely bad proposition.
If only we could get them all to subscribe.
I do find myself wondering if there isn't material for a good class-action lawsuit here. We are far from the only ones having to cope with this crap. I'm not normally much of a fan of the US class-action lawsuit machine, but extracting money from the Bright Datas of the world to make some lawyers richer doesn't sound like an entirely bad proposition.
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@liw @lwn Ah, so you are part of the scraper problem :)
Seriously, though, our content is CC-licensed once it escapes the paywall, so your archive is entirely authorized in truth.
Countermeasures are helping for the moment; I do not expect it to be a long-lasting thing.
Closing in on 1M unique IPs this morning. The net is broken.
Seriously, though, our content is CC-licensed once it escapes the paywall, so your archive is entirely authorized in truth.
Countermeasures are helping for the moment; I do not expect it to be a long-lasting thing.
Closing in on 1M unique IPs this morning. The net is broken.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
For the curious, today's scraperbot attack on @lwn has run to well over 800,000 unique IP addresses in the last few hours.
We've made some tweaks that are holding it off for now, but it is ongoing and could go bad again at any time.
If you are a real user and are being turned away by the site, could you let me know what your user agent is?
We've made some tweaks that are holding it off for now, but it is ongoing and could go bad again at any time.
If you are a real user and are being turned away by the site, could you let me know what your user agent is?
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@trademark CPU primarily when things get really crazy. More CPU is easily arranged, of course, but it is irritating as hell to have to pay for that to feed our hard-written articles to those people.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@trademark Making things worse for real users is something we have gone far out of our way to avoid. I'm not sure that sharding in that way would help much, though; cache isn't really the problem.
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@jani @lwn @suihkulokki Suggestions are much appreciated! It's not as if we've figured all this stuff out...
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Jonathan Corbet
corbet
@jani @lwn @suihkulokki Such things have crossed our minds, certainly. The gotcha there is that we've already had troubles with bots creating accounts; I don't think they would hesitate to do more of that if that would improve their access.
That and, of course, the fact that everybody starts as an unregistered user. As long as we can avoid making the experience worse for them, I think we should.
That and, of course, the fact that everybody starts as an unregistered user. As long as we can avoid making the experience worse for them, I think we should.
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