> Interesting, so the spoofing is only active during attacks? That explains the short duration.
As far as I know, only during.
> I am wondering what changed though, since this hasn't happened before in the previous 4 years. More spoofing installations maybe? Higher radio transmitter power?
No clue about changes. All I can say is I never saw it when I was here last, mid-2022 for about nine months.
> I'm also very curious, do you have any technical mitigations for this to be able to use your GPS devices? Or is it now just a fact of life?
Technical mitigations? read the road signs and figure out where you are :-)
I did read about someone having trouble with scooter apps, where the app was very confused to find the scooter now in Lima.
Same problem on my web-site, where I research Amazon Redshift.
I've put up a username/password firewall - free, but blocks AI bots.
This has led the site to be almost wholly deranked by Google, but this is in effect what happened anyway, since the AI summaries were absorbing so much traffic.
This in turn leads to the next problem, which is that it seems now uneconomic for me to research Amazon Redshift. If I allow the site to be searched, AI bots will copy it. If I do not, Google will make the site disappear from search. At no point do I see a return on my work.
This means there will be no research in the first place, for the AIs or for normal people. The parasite has killed the host.
Over the last month I contacted Support for the first time in many years.
This was for a question about how billing works.
It went like this;
1. Case created.
2. Unassigned for seven days.
3. Open real-time chat, talk for 25 or so minutes where I guide a first-line Indian chap who plainly doesn't know about the subject in hand and who is as we talk reading the AWS docs I've already read. At the end, just as I couldn't find an answer, he couldn't - which is good, he didn't try to give me the wrong answer - he escalates. That's fine - a lot of questions are simple and even silly, and first line support is there to handle them - but they could have done all this without me, if they'd opened the ticket themselves rather than me having to chase.
4. Eleven days later, comes back with exactly the wrong answer. In the meantime, I had figured out the correct answer, and reply, explaining it to him.
5. Next day, I get a wall of plainly AI generated text telling me my answer is correct.
It seems to me a key issue here relating to AI generated text, is a misunderstanding on the part of AWS that I as a consumer will value that answer exactly (or indeed, even remotely) as I would value the answer from a human.
I do not. I almost ignore AI generated text, as I think it as unvalidated response.
To stop this, I a month or two ago put most of my Amazon Redshift research web-site behind a basic auth username/password wall.
It all remains free, but you need to email me for a username and password.
If I put in time and effort to make content and OpenAI et al copy it and sell it through their LLM such that no one comes to me any more, then plainly it makes no sense for me to create that content; and then it would not exist for OpenAI to take, or for anyone else to read. We all lose.
It seems parasitic, and on the face of it, acting to kill the host.
In fact, it essentially seems like abrogation of the concept of private property.
The AI companies can take what I make, without my consent, which they sell for profit, where that profit it seems to be was formerly substantially coming to me, the return on my efforts.
I had a look for ways to indicate to AI companies to remove my content. The methods provide are a fig leaf and put the onus on me, and in any event in a way which can never be known to have removed my content - "if you can show your content from a prompt, we will take steps to try to prevent that content from showing".
As a consequence of putting up a username/password wall, Google has profoundly de-ranked the site, and I believe it is basically not being found on search any more.
To stop this, I today put most of my Amazon Redshift research web-site behind a basic auth username/password wall.
It's all remains free, but you need to email me for a username and password.
If I put in time and effort to make content and OpenAI et al copy it and sell it through their LLM such that no one comes to me any more, then plainly it makes no sense for me to create that content; and then it would not exist for OpenAI to take, or for anyone else. We all lose.
The people who live here, who've been here the whole time, and they can't in practical terms leave, are those who endure.
I'm not a local, and I was lucky in life and work in a profession which pays well enough, so I could go if I wished, and I've only been back here now for about a month.
Your words are right and proper for the locals; let us think of it to them.
Supporting evidence, please. So far you've made claims only - "everyone knows".
Kyiv Independent, who are pretty good at this and are on the spot, do not report large scale or significant military corruption. They have found and report on pretty corruption (individuals selling personal weapons). I note EU and US are very interested in keeping track of where the money is going.
> Not willing to start any discussion on the matter, but you may want to know about massacres ukraine did in it's eastern side.
This is a Russian narrative.
> After all, the russian invasion wasnt that unprovoked at all
This also is a Russian narrative.
It seems to me you have been from some source been absorbing Russian material.
Putin is a dictator. A few years after he came to power in 2000, Russia was once again living in fear; you did not speak out. If you did, fines, prison, penal colonies with death and violence, or now and then being thrown out of windows.
It looks from material being produced by Putin, the State and the military Russia by about 2010 was looking to take Ukraine.
Putin had his man running Ukraine - into corruption and thuggery - until Euromaiden. He fled to Russia. Literally immediately after that, plan B - the small war began. Finally, 2022, the big war.
There is nothing here where we go "it was not that unprovoked".
Ukraine wanted, and wanted, freedom. To be itself, and not to live in a hell-hole dictatorship. Putin wants to possess Ukraine, because that's how he and it seems a good part of Russian State culture sees the world; in terms of power, conquest and territory.
Russia invaded Ukraine, inflicting untold horror, and Russia is a threat to Europe.
In the circumstances of early 2022, I would have expected a way to be found, in the knowledge that such an action - telescope held to blind eye - would be condoned.
Back in early 2022, a little after the war started, TransferWise blocked transfer (i.e. donation) to the account run by the National Bank of Ukraine for support of the Ukrainian military.
The instant I dropped this on HN, gptbot was scanning the site.
(Updated robots.txt, this site https://robotstxt.com/ai to the rescue. I had to update robots.txt on the Amazon Redshift site fairly recently - I had gone from something like 10mb of log file per day to something like 50mb of log file per day, from LLM crawlers.)
As far as I know, only during.
> I am wondering what changed though, since this hasn't happened before in the previous 4 years. More spoofing installations maybe? Higher radio transmitter power?
No clue about changes. All I can say is I never saw it when I was here last, mid-2022 for about nine months.
> I'm also very curious, do you have any technical mitigations for this to be able to use your GPS devices? Or is it now just a fact of life?
Technical mitigations? read the road signs and figure out where you are :-)
I did read about someone having trouble with scooter apps, where the app was very confused to find the scooter now in Lima.
> Sorry for what you are going through.
Thank you.