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

A pseudonymous coder has created and released an open source “tar pit” to indefinitely trap AI training web crawlers in an infinitely, randomly-generating series of pages to waste their time and computing power. The program, called Nepenthes after the genus of carnivorous pitcher plants which trap and consume their prey, can be deployed by webpage owners to protect their own content from being scraped or can be deployed “offensively” as a honeypot trap to waste AI companies’ resources.

“It’s less like flypaper and more an infinite maze holding a minotaur, except the crawler is the minotaur that cannot get out. The typical web crawler doesn’t appear to have a lot of logic. It downloads a URL, and if it sees links to other URLs, it downloads those too. Nepenthes generates random links that always point back to itself - the crawler downloads those new links. Nepenthes happily just returns more and more lists of links pointing back to itself,” Aaron B, the creator of Nepenthes, told 404 Media.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        9·
        2 hours ago

        I’ve always been taught if you say “I adjust” before touching a piece then it’s ok to touch it (specifically so you can move an off-center piece into the center of its square)

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 hours ago

          Not gonna fly if you say “I adjust” and then pick up a piece, move it to a new spot, then bring it back down and set it in the original spot.

          Also ffs, don’t adjust pieces unless it’s your turn.

      • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 minutes ago

        We don’t know what they did above this prompt, maybe it was advised to answer like this in a prior prompt 🤗 we can not really know from the picture

        But 4o is not too old, I think, it is still the highest free unlimited tier.