me-vs-cat

> make a complaint to the FTC, which would have the ability to subpoena the identity of the offending entity and, depending on their history, issue a warning, a fine or file a lawsuit.

Good luck with that plan against residential proxies that make one request to your site per IP and don't track requests with any identifying information.

Any propose solution must address that situation.

I don't disagree with your overall point. You cannot determine intent by looking at an HTTP request.

Criminalizing a fan who really, really wants Taylor Swift tickets so that you also prevent ticket scalpers, who would do the exact same observable actions, is not going anywhere good.

When limits must be decided like this, our definitions cannot be enforced by technology, and we can't afford judges and juries to handle the scale of the current situation. Look at the original post I replied to, which appears to believe we can easily define "automated" in a way that's useful to meet the wishes of site owners against the wishes of site visitors, regardless of visitor intent and regardless of accommodation for disabled visitors.

Are you sure?

"It's sometimes said that glass in very old churches is thicker at the bottom than at the top because glass is a liquid, and so over several centuries it has flowed towards the bottom. This is not true. In mediaeval times, panes of glass were often made by the "Crown glass" process. A lump of molten glass was rolled, blown, expanded, flattened and finally spun into a disc before being cut into panes. The sheets were thicker towards the edge of the disc and were usually installed with the heavier side at the bottom. Other techniques of forming glass panes have been used, but it is only the relatively recent float glass processes that have produced good-quality flat sheets of glass." https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.h...

I'm taking you at your word, and believe you're stating these things in good faith. As I hope you believe me. Yet I hope what you want never comes to pass. If it does, that world would be confusing, and our society will have lost something valuable.

For example, you say "nobody cares if you reload one page", implying there is a limit -- where is that limit? How many kids in a poor country do I need to hire in order to stay under that per-person limit and continue my business as usual?

> This is not about programs, it's about websites being crawled against the wishes of their authors.

This is very much about programs, because that is the only way anyone accesses a web site. Time-shifting is legal for TV, for example, and that's a good thing, even if broadcasters wish it was banned. We need parallels for the web that balance both users and site owners, and other than robots.txt as a frequently ignored handshake agreement, I don't know much that exists in this area.

Thank you for your condolences. I mentioned the relative passing primarily to explain my past tense and to be honest about not staying updated on that situation despite having been recently informed. They passed from age-related health problems after a good, productive life. I have their picture with a former US president on my wall, from the signing of a disability-related law. I believe my only bias in this area is that I have been directly informed through frank discussion, without the normal barriers you might imagine between non-relatives.

Their own time to figure out how to get around the block is the biggest cost to them. (That cost is rapidly dwindling.)

By "figure it out well enough" do you mean a laborious and expensive process fraught with miscarriages of justice despite good faith, best efforts? A process where being acquitted (or a plea deal to a lesser charge) might very well result in financial ruin?

Equating "acceptable browser vs abusive bot" with "manslaughter vs murder" is not useful.

A browser is not heavy machinery. That is not precedent that applies to this situation.

I had a disabled relative (who passed this year), and am quite amazed and offended to hear the viewpoint that those in their situation must suffer an "unfortunate reality" for the sake of everyone else. That's taking the "non-disabled people must accommodate them" (which has problems and is worth a lengthy discussion elsewhere) pendulum and swinging it like a wrecking ball.

If I have a browser extension that reloads a page every 5 minutes, so I can visually see if an update has happened, is that controlled by a human? What about 5 seconds? Does it matter if it the extension opens the page in a new tab every 5 weeks at my direction? Does it matter if the page is on Reddit, and I prefer entertainment through comment trolling? Does it matter if the page is on Ticketmaster and I might be reselling concert tickets?

What changes if I write my own browser? What if I name that Diff Browser (not "Diff Bhot") and it compares against the prior version to email me (erm, better say "display" because of this new law) only if there are differences? What if I'm blind and it does indeed email me after running through an AI to convert to output that's easier for me to read? What changes if the app is primarily intended to be on a "normal" screen, but is "minimized" and not displayed, though could be recalled whenever I want? What changes if it could be recalled but I never decide to do so? What if the screen is a 1x1 black/white pixel that indicates HTTP 200 vs anything else? What changes if I download this program from someone else and use it other than how they intended?

Which of these situations is "crawling" and which aren't?

You may believe you have clear definitions, but you don't.

Much more likely to resemble the latter office environment.

They're not in NK, though their family is.

Sounds very similar to old glass panes being thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. Did the glass flow over the years, or did we lose what was common knowledge at the time, for installers to orient each pane a certain way?

We'll be forgiven for expecting the new overlords will take over in the bang of boiling oceans, as we miss the significant whimper of a cold Texan winter.

In case you thought otherwise, I wasn't trying to alleviate your concerns.

You're imagining a pretty badly written law. Do you think that is what people acting in good faith would want to create and leave in place without amendment?

Consider, there are existing laws against libel which were written before video screens existed. Did those laws encounter insurmountable, analogous circumvention issues when the printed word was no longer "printed" with ink?

You can tell 100 people in a day that you pulled them over specifically. And you'd be technically correct. With training to always act as if you're being recorded, it gets a lot easier to say with a straight, serious face.

It just doesn't necessarily mean anything, instead of hiding a secret reason -- which is what a statement like that is often intended do: make someone feel anxious, nervous, and vulnerable.

That's not the meaning of that phrase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

We already have Malbolge.

Have you seen https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#writing-a-tokenize... ?

Just since 2015? Also, thanks, now I feel old.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Treating birthdays on Feb 29 as if they happened on March 1 in non-leap years is wrong in places like California and New York -- at least probably most of the time, because while I already knew that, I didn't appreciate how deep the rabbit hole actually goes.

* https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

* https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GCN/58

You originally said hostility, then edited to "this kind of attitude". No hostility here. Anything can be called a "kind of attitude", so I am curious how you would describe what you see.

I almost didn't say "bragging rights", but I couldn't find a better phrase to describe your bragging about low memory use in this thread. I'm curious how you would describe that otherwise.

Four networks connected for a week using 584 MB does not earn bragging rights. (Channel number is unspecified, but I'm imagining about 20 channels.)

Shaving off half would not change this.

I strongly reject that I should be required to create an account in order to read updates about local train service.

Landline? I don't understand. If both parties have a LAN line, shouldn't they use that to communicate?

I wonder how much more surveillance they can feasibly justify to prevent remote access to new secure phones from old, insecure, non-compliant devices used by Elucalidavah and other un-American activists.

Think of the children!

Despite your assumptions, you should realize all I said was that government representatives should care about the topic and have something to say.

It is responsive to your question on why the government should have something to say about price negotiations between producers and retailers of frozen pizzas.

Lax RPA enforcement may have significantly contributed to food deserts. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/food-deser...

I hope government representatives have things to say about that.

Cover charge for a shoe store is an interesting idea. I hate shopping, especially with crowds, and probably wouldn't mind, especially if it went towards a purchase, even partially. (This willingness is learned, probably only true for me since my 30s, and not strictly correlated to my income bracket.)

I often buy gas at the BP with a $0.03/gal higher price than the Shell across the street. Guess which one has a longer line more full of gas guzzlers.