Notices by Jason Koebler (jasonkoebler@mastodon.social), page 2

Many websites think they're blocking Anthropic's scrapers but are actually blocking two old bots and NOT the real one

New and renamed AI scraper bots are coming out constantly, and keeping track of all of them is very difficult

https://www.404media.co/websites-are-blocking-the-wrong-ai-scrapers-because-ai-companies-keep-making-new-ones/

At a border security conference, DHS tells law enforcement it has a dog robot it has modified to do Denial of Service attacks on smarthome devices to disable internet of things "booby traps" in homes they're raiding

https://www.404media.co/dhs-has-a-ddos-robot-to-disable-internet-of-things-booby-traps-inside-homes/

if you have the c-00000291.sys file itself can you send it to me; signal is 202-505-1702

The copyright office is considering an exemption that would provide legal protection for researchers jailbreaking / circumventing DRM / breaking terms of service to expose how AI tools work. This is really important bc current ToS are v threatening

https://www.404media.co/it-may-soon-be-legal-to-jailbreak-ai-to-expose-how-it-works/

There is a new genre of serious-seeming "scientific" research paper but the paper is like "we asked ChatGPT if AI could do your job and it said yes" and then news outlets cover them uncritically and they go viral

https://www.404media.co/ai-finds-that-ai-is-great-in-new-garbage-research-from-tony-blair-institute/

Beloved Apple blog TUAW was shut down in 2015, sold to private equity, then sold to a company in Hong Kong. It recently relaunched as an AI content farm using the stolen identities and bylines of its former human staff. A nightmare:

https://www.404media.co/a-beloved-tech-blog-tuaw-is-now-publishing-ai-articles-under-the-names-of-its-old-human-staff/

Google's researchers would like you to know that AI is polluting the internet

https://www.404media.co/google-ai-potentially-breaking-reality-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/

A car rental service in Charlotte has replaced their agents with remote workers on video chat. If you need to speak to a manager you go into an office where you talk to another screen sitting at a big executive desk

https://www.404media.co/car-rental-service-replaces-desk-agents-with-people-on-video-chat/

If we want journalism to survive we need to move away from the model where dozens of humans write the same exact blog about an errant Elon Musk tweet in hopes of appeasing an algorithm that is actively changing to kill this exact business model

https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-tweeted-a-thing/

My explainer of exactly what's happening in the Ticketmaster monopoly case and why Live Nation is so powerful in the first place

https://www.404media.co/the-monopoly-case-against-ticketmaster-explained/

Google's own researchers now say AI is a top vector of disinfo, in a paper that severely and obviously undercounts the problem

https://www.404media.co/google-says-ai-now-leading-disinformation-vector-and-is-severely-undercounting-the-problem/

$60 million well spent

https://www.404media.co/google-is-paying-reddit-60-million-for-fucksmith-to-tell-its-users-to-eat-glue/

Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.

It requires:

- "Daily" dumps of customer data
- The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts

https://www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/

An extremely bogus DMCA threat from cops against a shop selling a 'FUCK THE LAPD' shirt has helped the company's entire store sell out of almost everything they make. "Streisand effect in effect."

https://www.404media.co/fuck-the-lapd-shirt-makers-entire-shop-sold-out-after-cops-threaten-him/

This, from a John Deere dealer, is wild. They warn that affected tractors operated during this time will likely have made maps that are wrong, which will be wrong throughout the growing system, and which are wrong in an inconsistent way

One farmer called it a "shitshow." Another: "All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm." Another said their systems that are normally centimeter-accurate were off by 3-6 feet and tractor kept "wandering off" and had to be constantly corrected.

This is a reminder of how much modern tractors rely on satellite and internet connections. Many farmers can't or won't plant right now bc tractors have been highly automated to increase yield. Rows are planted so tightly together that humans can't navigate them w/o killing crops

Scoop: Solar storm is causing farmers' tractor GPS systems to go haywire. Many have shut down planting altogether during a critical period. A Deere dealer said accuracy is "extremely compromised"

https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/

New: OpenAI—a company that has indiscriminately scraped vast amounts of human knowledge to build a company valued at roughly $80 billion—has made a copyright complaint against the ChatGPT subreddit because it used OpenAI’s logo.

https://www.404media.co/openai-files-copyright-claim-against-chatgpt-subreddit/

@eb I mostly agree with you but I do think Reddit is currently more resilient to this than the other platforms because it uses ethically dubious but definitely more effective volunteer content moderators, who have enough power that, in a well-moderated community, the incentives of moderators and Reddit the company aren't aligned, and the moderators actually win out. Their automod tools are also pretty decent