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Robb Knight:

I put up a post about blocking AI bots after the block was in
place, so assuming the user agents are sent, there’s no way
Perplexity should be able to access my site. So I asked:

What is this post about
https://rknight.me/blog/blocking-bots-with-nginx/

I got a perfect summary of the post including various details that
they couldn’t have just guessed. Read the full response
here. So what the fuck are they doing?

I checked a few sites and this is just Google Chrome running on
Windows 10. So they’re using headless browsers to scrape content,
ignoring robots.txt, and not sending their user agent string. I
can’t even block their IP ranges because it appears these headless
browsers are not on their IP ranges.

Terrific, succinct write-up documenting that Perplexity has clearly been reading and indexing web pages that it is forbidden, by site owner policy, from reading and indexing — all contrary to Perplexity’s own documentation and public statements.

 ★ 

Robb Knight:

I put up a post about blocking AI bots after the block was in
place, so assuming the user agents are sent, there’s no way
Perplexity should be able to access my site. So I asked:

What is this post about
https://rknight.me/blog/blocking-bots-with-nginx/

I got a perfect summary of the post including various details that
they couldn’t have just guessed. Read the full response
here. So what the fuck are they doing?

I checked a few sites and this is just Google Chrome running on
Windows 10. So they’re using headless browsers to scrape content,
ignoring robots.txt, and not sending their user agent string. I
can’t even block their IP ranges because it appears these headless
browsers are not on their IP ranges.

Terrific, succinct write-up documenting that Perplexity has clearly been reading and indexing web pages that it is forbidden, by site owner policy, from reading and indexing — all contrary to Perplexity’s own documentation and public statements.

Read More 

Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman, reporting for Wired (News+ link):

A Wired analysis and one carried out by developer Robb Knight
suggest that Perplexity is able to achieve this partly through
apparently ignoring a widely accepted web standard known as the
Robots Exclusion Protocol to surreptitiously scrape areas of
websites that operators do not want accessed by bots, despite
claiming that it won’t. Wired observed a machine tied to
Perplexity — more specifically, one on an Amazon server and
almost certainly operated by Perplexity — doing this on wired.com
and across other Condé Nast publications.

The Wired analysis also demonstrates that despite claims that
Perplexity’s tools provide “instant, reliable answers to any
question with complete sources and citations included,” doing away
with the need to “click on different links,” its chatbot, which is
capable of accurately summarizing journalistic work with
appropriate credit, is also prone to bullshitting, in the
technical sense of the word.

This paints Perplexity as, effectively, an IP theft engine, and its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, as a degenerate liar. None of this is an oversight or just playing fast and loose. It’s a scheme to deliberately circumvent the plain intention of website owners not to have Perplexity index their sites. Liars and thieves. Utterly shameless.

 ★ 

Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman, reporting for Wired (News+ link):

A Wired analysis and one carried out by developer Robb Knight
suggest that Perplexity is able to achieve this partly through
apparently ignoring a widely accepted web standard known as the
Robots Exclusion Protocol to surreptitiously scrape areas of
websites that operators do not want accessed by bots, despite
claiming that it won’t. Wired observed a machine tied to
Perplexity — more specifically, one on an Amazon server and
almost certainly operated by Perplexity — doing this on wired.com
and across other Condé Nast publications.

The Wired analysis also demonstrates that despite claims that
Perplexity’s tools provide “instant, reliable answers to any
question with complete sources and citations included,” doing away
with the need to “click on different links,” its chatbot, which is
capable of accurately summarizing journalistic work with
appropriate credit, is also prone to bullshitting, in the
technical sense of the word.

This paints Perplexity as, effectively, an IP theft engine, and its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, as a degenerate liar. None of this is an oversight or just playing fast and loose. It’s a scheme to deliberately circumvent the plain intention of website owners not to have Perplexity index their sites. Liars and thieves. Utterly shameless.

Read More 

Signal president Meredith Whittaker, responding to a new initiative in the EU to ban end-to-end-encryption (for some reason published as a PDF despite the fact that Signal has a blog):

In November, the EU Parliament lit a beacon for global tech policy
when it voted to exclude end-to-end encryption from mass
surveillance orders in the chat control legislation. This move
responded to longstanding expert consensus, and a global coalition
of hundreds of preeminent computer security experts who patiently
weighed in to explain the serious dangers of the approaches on the
table — approaches that aimed to subject everyone’s private
communications to mass scanning against a government-curated
database or AI model of “acceptable” speech and content.

There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of
end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally
undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in
core infrastructure that would have global implications well
beyond Europe.

Instead of accepting this fundamental mathematical reality, some
European countries continue to play rhetorical games. They’ve come
back to the table with the same idea under a new label. Instead of
using the previous term “client-side scanning,” they’ve rebranded
and are now calling it “upload moderation.” Some are claiming that
“upload moderation” does not undermine encryption because it
happens before your message or video is encrypted. This is untrue.

Yes, but it’s a great idea to let these same EU bureaucrats design how mobile software distribution should work.

 ★ 

Signal president Meredith Whittaker, responding to a new initiative in the EU to ban end-to-end-encryption (for some reason published as a PDF despite the fact that Signal has a blog):

In November, the EU Parliament lit a beacon for global tech policy
when it voted to exclude end-to-end encryption from mass
surveillance orders in the chat control legislation. This move
responded to longstanding expert consensus, and a global coalition
of hundreds of preeminent computer security experts who patiently
weighed in to explain the serious dangers of the approaches on the
table — approaches that aimed to subject everyone’s private
communications to mass scanning against a government-curated
database or AI model of “acceptable” speech and content.

There is no way to implement such proposals in the context of
end-to-end encrypted communications without fundamentally
undermining encryption and creating a dangerous vulnerability in
core infrastructure that would have global implications well
beyond Europe.

Instead of accepting this fundamental mathematical reality, some
European countries continue to play rhetorical games. They’ve come
back to the table with the same idea under a new label. Instead of
using the previous term “client-side scanning,” they’ve rebranded
and are now calling it “upload moderation.” Some are claiming that
“upload moderation” does not undermine encryption because it
happens before your message or video is encrypted. This is untrue.

Yes, but it’s a great idea to let these same EU bureaucrats design how mobile software distribution should work.

Read More 

Paul Thurrott on Threads, after getting his new Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge laptop:

Former Windows head Terry Myerson once told me the goal of
partnering with Qualcomm on Windows on Arm was to “get those
f#$%ing Intel stickers off of PCs.”

Mission accomplished, Terry. There are no Intel stickers on the
new Qualcomm-based Copilot+ PCs.

Still covered with stickers. And as Thurrott’s photo hints at, and this screenshot from Tim Schofield’s unboxing video shows clearly, Samsung can’t even be bother to apply the stickers straight. Looks like they were applied by a little kid. Screams “premium” experience.

Two of these stickers don’t even make sense. The Snapdragon one is obviously paid for by Qualcomm, the same way Intel pays PC makers to apply their stickers. But why would Samsung booger up its own laptops with stickers promoting their own Dynamic AMOLED 2X display technology? And what’s the deal with the Energy Star stickers? Who pays to put those on laptops and why?

 ★ 

Paul Thurrott on Threads, after getting his new Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge laptop:

Former Windows head Terry Myerson once told me the goal of
partnering with Qualcomm on Windows on Arm was to “get those
f#$%ing Intel stickers off of PCs.”

Mission accomplished, Terry. There are no Intel stickers on the
new Qualcomm-based Copilot+ PCs.

Still covered with stickers. And as Thurrott’s photo hints at, and this screenshot from Tim Schofield’s unboxing video shows clearly, Samsung can’t even be bother to apply the stickers straight. Looks like they were applied by a little kid. Screams “premium” experience.

Two of these stickers don’t even make sense. The Snapdragon one is obviously paid for by Qualcomm, the same way Intel pays PC makers to apply their stickers. But why would Samsung booger up its own laptops with stickers promoting their own Dynamic AMOLED 2X display technology? And what’s the deal with the Energy Star stickers? Who pays to put those on laptops and why?

Read More 

Yang Jie and Jiyoung Sohn, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

Samsung’s Galaxy Book 4 Edge [sic], which went on sale Tuesday in the
U.S., South Korea and some other markets, contains Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon processor. It runs a version of Microsoft’s Windows 11
for PCs that uses technology from U.K.-based Arm.

On Wednesday, Samsung put a notice on its Korean-language product
site listing applications that it currently determines are
incompatible with the new laptop or can’t be installed. The list
included some Adobe software as well as popular games including
“League of Legends” and “Fortnite.”

Sounds like maybe Microsoft’s Prism isn’t as good as Apple’s Rosetta 2 after all? Or that Prism isn’t capable of running low-level anti-piracy (Adobe) and anti-cheating (Epic) rootkit-style system extensions?

The issues offer an early hint of the challenges some tech
companies may face as they introduce new AI-powered computers
and smartphones while seeking to maintain compatibility with
existing software.

What an odd paragraph. This has nothing to do with phones, and the only “tech companies” affected are Microsoft, who makes Windows, and PC makers whose machines run Windows and have adopted Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chips. Macs made the transition from Intel’s x86 architecture to Apple’s ARM-based Apple silicon without users noticing anything other than dramatically longer battery life and faster performance, including when running x86 software in emulation.

(I put a sic above because Samsung’s new laptops are named “Galaxy Book4 Edge”, with no space between the “Book” and the “4”. Great product name that rolls right off the tongue, as usual, from Samsung.)

 ★ 

Yang Jie and Jiyoung Sohn, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):

Samsung’s Galaxy Book 4 Edge [sic], which went on sale Tuesday in the
U.S., South Korea and some other markets, contains Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon processor. It runs a version of Microsoft’s Windows 11
for PCs that uses technology from U.K.-based Arm.

On Wednesday, Samsung put a notice on its Korean-language product
site listing applications that it currently determines are
incompatible with the new laptop or can’t be installed. The list
included some Adobe software as well as popular games including
“League of Legends” and “Fortnite.”

Sounds like maybe Microsoft’s Prism isn’t as good as Apple’s Rosetta 2 after all? Or that Prism isn’t capable of running low-level anti-piracy (Adobe) and anti-cheating (Epic) rootkit-style system extensions?

The issues offer an early hint of the challenges some tech
companies may face as they introduce new AI-powered computers
and smartphones while seeking to maintain compatibility with
existing software.

What an odd paragraph. This has nothing to do with phones, and the only “tech companies” affected are Microsoft, who makes Windows, and PC makers whose machines run Windows and have adopted Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon chips. Macs made the transition from Intel’s x86 architecture to Apple’s ARM-based Apple silicon without users noticing anything other than dramatically longer battery life and faster performance, including when running x86 software in emulation.

(I put a sic above because Samsung’s new laptops are named “Galaxy Book4 Edge”, with no space between the “Book” and the “4”. Great product name that rolls right off the tongue, as usual, from Samsung.)

Read More 

Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica:

The government’s heavily redacted complaint laid out Adobe’s
alleged scheme, which starts with “manipulative enrollment
practices.”

To lock subscribers into recurring monthly payments, Adobe would
typically pre-select by default its most popular “annual paid
monthly” plan, the FTC alleged. That subscription option locked
users into an annual plan despite paying month to month. If they
canceled after a two-week period, they’d owe Adobe an early
termination fee (ETF) that costs 50 percent of their remaining
annual subscription. The “material terms” of this fee are hidden
during enrollment, the FTC claimed, only appearing in “disclosures
that are designed to go unnoticed and that most consumers never
see.” […]

Because Adobe allegedly only alerted users to the ETF in fine
print — by hovering over a small icon or clicking a hyperlink in
small text — while the company’s cancellation flows made it hard
to end recurring payments, the FTC is suing and accusing Adobe of
deceptive practices under the FTC Act.

Adobe is too good a company to push dark-pattern subscription schemes like this. They should concede, apologize, and eliminate every subscription that isn’t a simple straightforward annual or monthly plan.

 ★ 

Ashley Belanger, reporting for Ars Technica:

The government’s heavily redacted complaint laid out Adobe’s
alleged scheme, which starts with “manipulative enrollment
practices.”

To lock subscribers into recurring monthly payments, Adobe would
typically pre-select by default its most popular “annual paid
monthly” plan, the FTC alleged. That subscription option locked
users into an annual plan despite paying month to month. If they
canceled after a two-week period, they’d owe Adobe an early
termination fee (ETF) that costs 50 percent of their remaining
annual subscription. The “material terms” of this fee are hidden
during enrollment, the FTC claimed, only appearing in “disclosures
that are designed to go unnoticed and that most consumers never
see.” […]

Because Adobe allegedly only alerted users to the ETF in fine
print — by hovering over a small icon or clicking a hyperlink in
small text — while the company’s cancellation flows made it hard
to end recurring payments, the FTC is suing and accusing Adobe of
deceptive practices under the FTC Act.

Adobe is too good a company to push dark-pattern subscription schemes like this. They should concede, apologize, and eliminate every subscription that isn’t a simple straightforward annual or monthly plan.

Read More 

Mike Masnick, writing for The Daily Beast:

We put health warnings on things that are inherently harmful,
with little redeeming health value. That is, things that are
actually toxins: nicotine, lead, poisons.

The complaints here are with speech. […]

The American Psychological Association released a similar
report, concluding: “Using social media is not inherently
beneficial or harmful to young people.” Instead, it finds that
when young people struggle with mental health, their online lives
are often just a reflection of their offline lives.

Lots of other research has shown the same thing, yet Murthy’s call
for health warnings never mentions all of this research that
suggests social media is actually beneficial for many. Instead, he
cites a few anecdotes of children who were bullied online. But
bullying happened prior to social media, and we did not talk about
putting health warnings on telephones or notepads or other forms
of communication.

Just pure panic-driven ninny-ism. It’s like the whole nonsense with “trigger warnings”. Masnick brings up Reagan-era Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s nonsensical crusade against video games in the 1980s. I’m also reminded of Tipper Gore’s campaign for warning labels on music albums.

 ★ 

Mike Masnick, writing for The Daily Beast:

We put health warnings on things that are inherently harmful,
with little redeeming health value. That is, things that are
actually toxins: nicotine, lead, poisons.

The complaints here are with speech. […]

The American Psychological Association released a similar
report, concluding: “Using social media is not inherently
beneficial or harmful to young people.” Instead, it finds that
when young people struggle with mental health, their online lives
are often just a reflection of their offline lives.

Lots of other research has shown the same thing, yet Murthy’s call
for health warnings never mentions all of this research that
suggests social media is actually beneficial for many. Instead, he
cites a few anecdotes of children who were bullied online. But
bullying happened prior to social media, and we did not talk about
putting health warnings on telephones or notepads or other forms
of communication.

Just pure panic-driven ninny-ism. It’s like the whole nonsense with “trigger warnings”. Masnick brings up Reagan-era Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s nonsensical crusade against video games in the 1980s. I’m also reminded of Tipper Gore’s campaign for warning labels on music albums.

Read More 

Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy:

We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical
problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and
scientific breakthroughs. We plan to advance capabilities as fast
as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead.

This way, we can scale in peace.

Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or
product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and
progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.

We are an American company with offices in Palo Alto and Tel
Aviv, where we have deep roots and the ability to recruit top
technical talent.

Sutskever was the chief scientist and cofounder of OpenAI, who launched a failed coup against Sam Altman earlier this year. I certainly hope they’re more safe than OpenAI is open.

(Via Techmeme.)

 ★ 

Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy:

We approach safety and capabilities in tandem, as technical
problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and
scientific breakthroughs. We plan to advance capabilities as fast
as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead.

This way, we can scale in peace.

Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or
product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and
progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures.

We are an American company with offices in Palo Alto and Tel
Aviv, where we have deep roots and the ability to recruit top
technical talent.

Sutskever was the chief scientist and cofounder of OpenAI, who launched a failed coup against Sam Altman earlier this year. I certainly hope they’re more safe than OpenAI is open.

(Via Techmeme.)

Read More 

Speaking of Louie Mantia, back in 2011 he made a terrific wallpaper of the iconic hallway carpeting from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. He just remade it, with even better color accuracy and texture. And to go along with it, a new wallpaper based on the carpet inside room 237. There ain’t nothing in room 237. But you ain’t got no business going in there anyway. So stay out. You understand? Stay out. But feel free to use the wallpaper.

 ★ 

Speaking of Louie Mantia, back in 2011 he made a terrific wallpaper of the iconic hallway carpeting from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. He just remade it, with even better color accuracy and texture. And to go along with it, a new wallpaper based on the carpet inside room 237. There ain’t nothing in room 237. But you ain’t got no business going in there anyway. So stay out. You understand? Stay out. But feel free to use the wallpaper.

Read More 

Louie Mantia:

Apple’s announcement of “dark mode” icons has me thinking about
how I would approach adapting “light mode” icons for dark mode. I
grabbed 12 icons we made at Parakeet for our clients to
illustrate some ways of going about it. […]

Unfortunately, some icons appear to have lost or gained weight in
dark mode. For example, the Settings gear didn’t change size in
dark mode, but it appears to occupy less space because the dark
circle around it blends with its background. That makes it
appear smaller than the Find My icon, which now looks enormous
next to FaceTime. This is a remnant of some questionable design
choices in iOS 7 that have lingered now for the last decade.

That last sentence is the most diplomatic thing I’ve ever heard from Louie. What a splendid post this is — exemplary work to illustrate his advice.

 ★ 

Louie Mantia:

Apple’s announcement of “dark mode” icons has me thinking about
how I would approach adapting “light mode” icons for dark mode. I
grabbed 12 icons we made at Parakeet for our clients to
illustrate some ways of going about it. […]

Unfortunately, some icons appear to have lost or gained weight in
dark mode. For example, the Settings gear didn’t change size in
dark mode, but it appears to occupy less space because the dark
circle around it blends with its background. That makes it
appear smaller than the Find My icon, which now looks enormous
next to FaceTime. This is a remnant of some questionable design
choices in iOS 7 that have lingered now for the last decade.

That last sentence is the most diplomatic thing I’ve ever heard from Louie. What a splendid post this is — exemplary work to illustrate his advice.

Read More