Lead story
for Monday,
August 4.
Perplexity
AI has been exposed
secretly
deploying stealth crawlers
to unattention or that intentionally
evade website no crawl directives, rotating IP addresses,
and even masquerading as regular browsers
despite explicit robot dot text blocks and firewall
defenses.
Perplexity's
undisclosed bots aggressively scrape restricted content from millions
of websites daily.
CloudFlare investigation
confirms a shocking breach of trust prompting immediate
countermeasures
against those rogue AI
crawlers.
Welcome to episode 1,838.
I'm your host, Pat Cochran. Welcome to the
show.
And, wow,
this is a big one, ladies and gentlemen.
In that perplexity
is essentially
flipping the bird
to all website
owners that have said no. No. No. No.
I don't want you crawling my site. I
don't want you taking the data.
The stealth crawling is is a very, very,
very bad look.
And with all of the litigation that is
already
in process,
this is just gonna add, fuel to the
fire
in a in a very, very, very big
way.
And the CloudFlare
investigation
is is beyond
extensive.
And,
and one thing that has been true
is robots.
Txt has been a way
to make sure that,
you control who sees
and does what with your website content.
And,
they basically set up,
some domain names
that were unknown to the Internet
and then started asking perplexity
questions
about those specific domains and started getting responses.
And the log data
was very, very evident that they were doing
things that they were not supposed to.
They say our multiple test domains explicitly
prohibited
all automated
access specifying robots
and had a specific rule blocking crawlers from
perplexity's
public crawlers.
We observed
that perplexity uses not only their declared user
agents, but also a generic browser intended to
impersonate
Google Chrome on macOS
when their declared crawler was blocked.
But their declared and undeclared crawlers were attempting
to access the content scraping contrary to the
web crawling norms as outlined in RFC 9,309.
The undeclared caller utilize multiple IPs not listed
in perplexity's official IP range
and road rotate through those IPs in response
to the restrictive robots dot text policy
and block from Cloudflare. In addition to eroding
a IPs, they observe
requests coming from different ASNs
and attempt to further evade website blocks. Activity
is observed across tens of thousands of domains
and millions of requests per day, and they
are able to fingerprint this crawler using combination
machine learning and network signals.
Now
well meaning bots respect website preferences.
They are transparent and they identify themselves.
They act as good net citizens and don't
flood sites with excessive scraping.
They serve a clear purpose, and they follow
the rules.
So this is,
a significant,
naughtiness
by the folks over at
Perplexity, and, of course, they have yet
to respond. This was just posted today. I'm
sure we will see something about this,
but, you know, I have chosen to allow
bots to crawl my websites. I don't have
an issue with
I think it's in my site's best interest
at this point based on some other evidence
I had from other stuff that's been going
on.
So I'm going to assume
that even though you may choose
to not have these sites crawl your site,
they're still doing it.
And,
this is,
it's a very,
very, very, very bad look to be quite
frank with you. Again, I wanna welcome you
to episode, 100 1,838,
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For some reason, here in the apartment, I
have a little
itty bitty
flies.
They're tiny. I don't know if they're fruit
flies. I guess I might have to check
the stack. My fact, we're getting I'm getting
ready to leave here,
soon. So, need to start cleaning out the
refrigerator
and any spare fruit I've got laying around
and so forth. A big achievement,
I am, officially now down 25
pounds.
I've talked a little bit about that on
Facebook today. Kinda you guys have been kind
of aware. Again, hopefully, you can see it,
my face,
of the weight loss.
But this afternoon,
my team at Blueberry launched the guest match,
dot pro. And I don't know if I've
got it. Probably can put it up on
the screen here so you guys can see
what it looks like, but this is our
brand new offering.
It's the hub for interviews and opportunities.
So
this is a we're in an open beta,
free utilization for anyone that wants to come
in and
and try this.
So definitely check it out at guestmatch.pro.
You can sign up today. But, again, brand
new website, brand new service that we're offering
ninety days
at least in in free beta here.
So,
definitely, check it out. If you're looking to
be interviewed on another podcast,
this is a great way to,
to be heard.
What else do I have before we get
into the stack today?
Don't have any donation information. Didn't pull that
before the show. We'll we'll cover it on
the next podcast.
So up in the air on whether I'll
be doing a show on Thursday or not,
because of the travel that's happening. So I'll
I'll keep you advised,
but, thank you again for your ongoing
support of the show here. And
ready to I've got I'm gonna have a
very, very busy couple of months.
When I get back,
it's gonna be very, very full,
for sure for sure for sure.
Hey. I wanna start off with,
article right from our own platform.
Jen wrote this up and it's about OpenAI
says chat GPT now offers gentle reminders to
take breaks during long sessions.
The company's announcement suggested gentle reminders appear as
pop ups in chats that users will have
to click or tap
through to continue using ChatJPT.
Just checking in, opening a sample pop up
reads, you've been chatting for a while. This
is a good time for a break. In
other words, they're probably trying
to get people to,
to slow down a little bit. Now they're
also expecting to launch ChatGPT
five
this week. So
we will see
where that lays but you know part of
this also says that OpenAI says chat GPT
is out and check to reach 700,000,000
weekly users.
I'm not, you know, I'm not in chat
GPT all day. I'm really not.
I'm in and out when when the need
when the time is needed.
And it's usually ten, fifteen minutes. I'm out.
I've got what I need. I pull the
data. I
start my own editing. I I don't know.
I I just really,
don't,
don't pull that much.
Use it as much as you would think.
When I do, it's very very
engaging and saves me time for sure but,
I'm not in there chatting all day.
So far, Elon Musk revival of Vine is
seriously disappointing.
People are complaining this is over at Gizmodo.
For some time now, Elon Musk has been
promising bring back Vine. Of course, back in
the day, the short lived TikTok precursor
allowed users to post dopey six second videos
that looped and could be easily shared. However,
as the Tesla billionaire's plans for short form
video distributors coming to view,
increasingly seems like
you got us all really excited for not
a lot.
So,
however, as Vine's return
has approaches seem increasingly clear that the app
may not be exactly how you remember it,
and one would suspect
that.
On Monday, he must promise that the archive
of old vine videos would return in some
form. However, it's increasingly doubtful
the app will be an active service that
users can use to make new videos and
says this apply that Grok's new AI video
generator
can be used to create not safe for
work material will act as a replacement.
So
Grok imagine is AI vine, Musk wrote in
an ex post on Saturday. A little other
information was shared.
So we will see,
what
is actually,
delivered.
Now
many of you fly.
I, you know, I fly a lot and
I know things I can and cannot bring
on an airplane,
but there's a list of things that you
can bring on an airplane that was put
together by lifehacker. Some of this stuff is
pretty weird. You know, you can bring your
own parachute.
How about human bones,
live fish,
snow globes?
You can even bring a Geiger counter.
You can bring a shock collar.
Really? A shock collar?
I guess
if you're wearing one,
you can bring fresh eggs,
frozen food, antlers.
Of course, you can check alcohol.
You can bring small alcohol vials, but you
cannot
legally drink them there. That's a big big
no no. You get caught drinking alcohol,
on your alcohol on a plane. It it
can end very badly for you. And knitting
needles, really?
You would think with,
with
all the restrictions on knives and so forth
but
even electric blanket if you're cold.
I know a person that used to do
this.
So, yeah, these are some of the things
you can
bring with you on an airplane.
Amazon, though, may bring ads to Alexa plus.
Here's what that really could mean for you.
You could get pitched more,
than just the weather.
Amazon's
second earning second quarter's earning call,
companies considering adding ads to Alexa plus. It's
no surprise that Weaponize
AI is making hackers faster, more aggressive, and
more successful.
New research from CrowdStrike confirms that hackers are
exploiting AI to help them deliver aggressive
attacks in less time. They're using agentic AI
systems,
and, of course, they're honing in on enterprise
AI solutions
as well.
So, you know, this is just gonna continue
to rise and will not
likely change. SpaceX had another launch 28 Starlinks.
This is,
launch number
96 for the year so far. So,
that's, that's pretty impressive,
considering they didn't get a 100
launches in in a year a few years
ago.
Wasp living around a cold where cold
war air and nucleus facility in South Carolina
built at least four re radioactive nest
raising concerns about their source. So this news
broke last week, the Savannah River site
near Aiken, South Carolina.
So, yes,
radioactive
wasp nest. Now not a lot of details
on this,
but,
you know, and where they were found, how
they were found,
all of that. But in what type of
isotopes, none of that was released,
but very, very low levels, but yet 10
times higher than what we should be exposed
to.
Now I just had to giggle,
over on TechRadar.
There's this article is entitled one more reason
to stick with wired earbuds. Kamala Harris warns
Kamala Harris warns. I'm just telling you that's
a little bit more secure than wireless earbuds
after hearing experience intelligence briefings.
Anything wireless, ladies and gentlemen,
anything wireless
is being transmitted over the air
and susceptible
to interception,
not that anyone that wants to listen in
on your earbud situation.
If they wanted to,
not saying that they could,
but possibly
with the right equipment.
But if someone's listening into your earbud conversations,
you're a lot more valuable or important than
I am.
NASA has some new radar data and they
pulled off something impossible on Earth. NASA during
a close
Mars
flyby,
NASA's Europa
Clipper,
tested its radar system.
So they were unable to do this as
it was departing Earth, obviously.
So when they did the Mars flyby to
get the,
the gravity
boost,
They were able to do a test and
fire up their Reason radar
and were able to collect 60 gigawatts of
data, send it back to,
home control and, we're able to,
pull the data in. Tested good.
So the radar is ready to operate
once it gets out
to to Europa
in what is it? Twenty thirty? I think,
forty four or five years before they get
out there.
Also, now there's a such thing as space
hurricanes.
Space hurricanes are real, and I guess they
wreak more havoc than we thought.
And
hurricane season has, again, I guess, a new
contender here.
New study reveals that space hurricanes can mimic
the effects of a geomagnetic
storm,
shaking up Earth's magnetic fields and scrambling GPS
signals even with space weather space weather appears
calm.
The study examined satellite Grodani for the first
known space hurricane which was observed in 02/2014.
So,
very, very interesting here.
Space hurricanes.
Of course, Ukrainian drone attacks are causing blackouts
and shutdowns for Russian mobile Internet. There was
over 2,000,
shutdowns of mobile Internet
in in the month of July,
and that's a
definite increase because what are they doing? They're
using a mobile Internet service to help fire
their drones,
to target
amongst other things.
So
not surprising here,
of the tactics being taken, but imagine you
being on the phone and they just they
just pull the plug.
Another profiting
another earnings report, Palantir is set to report
second quarter earnings
after announcing a $10,000,000,000
US army deal.
So Wall Street analysts tracked Bloomberg expect the
company to report second quarter adjusted earnings of
point 0.14
or 14¢
from 9¢. So we'll see
what the actual report is
when it comes out. But,
if you like investing in defense firms, this
is probably a good one to invest in.
So you have a Apple series one watch.
Apple just made the classic Apple watch obsolete.
So I don't know how many of these
are being,
being still worn
but the it basically,
the Apple Watch Series one was discontinued seven
years ago
in 02/2018.
Having a vintage is great,
but how many people are still wearing a
vintage,
series one?
That battery still lasts and all that stuff.
I'd I'd be curious. Do you still have
a series one?
I I don't know what my watch is.
I don't know if I'm
I have no idea what series am I.
I haven't bought one in a number of
years.
Just keeps on working. So I guess that's
the key, and I haven't chipped it or
broke it.
So if you've ever had the I I
call it a brain fart where you just
kinda have, like, a
your brain just kind of,
goes blank.
Have you ever had that happen to you?
Well,
if you say you haven't, then you're in
the minority because
new brain scans reveal that, yes,
Our brains do a little bit of a
memory lapse at times.
Example, you look up from your phone and
suddenly realize you weren't thinking about anything.
If you've ever been asked what what were
you think? What have you been thinking about?
I think we all get that deer in
the headlights look from time to time. We
kinda check out
and our brain shuts down. Well, it's,
it's a brief waking state
when conscious thoughts
simply stops.
So,
don't know the reason for it,
but, they were doing EEGs
and,
so
they have some clues but it's pretty interesting.
So if you experience this on
a regular basis,
this is an article for you to check
out for sure.
A little bit of science news AI has
just found five powerful materials that could replace
lithium batteries
and is helping scientists crack the code on
next gen batteries
by discovering Nobel
porous materials, researchers may have paved the way
for more powerful sustainable injury storage using abundant
elements like magnesium.
And this research published,
in the sales report physical science at the
NGI team
has done this discovery.
And,
so
it's pretty extensive article here.
A little bit about the science behind it.
And if you think about
where we've come from in batteries,
and, you know, if many of you probably
did a a battery experiment at school when
school still did a true science stuff. I
think I did that in elementary school or
middle school maybe,
where we made our own battery.
You know, they're not that complicated, but
density and storage and all that is very
complicated compared to maybe what you did in
science class.
So, it's good to see that they're continuing
to push the
push the science.
Scientists also just recreate the universe first molecule.
Yes. How do they know it's the first
molecule? It's like the chicken and egg thing
but they feel they've solved a thirteen
billion
year puzzle.
So long before stars lit up the sky,
the universe was a hot, dense place where
simple chemistry
quietly set the stage for everything to come.
Scientists have now created the first molecule ever
to form helium hydride
and discovered it played a much bigger role
in the birth of the stars than we
thought.
Using a special thin ultra cold lab setup,
they mimic conditions from over 13,000,000,000
years ago and found this ancient molecule helped
cool the universe
just enough
for stars to ignite.
Their findings could rewrite part of the story
about how the cosmos
evolved
from darkness
to light.
So,
very, very interesting.
How cold? How cold do did it have
to be?
Did it say?
They say how cold? Oh,
the this occurred. And
they didn't say how cold their lab experiment
was, but I'm assuming
very, very cold.
Senate has confirmed senator Sean,
Cairncross to be the national cyber director for
president Trump.
Cairncross is former Republican National Committee official and
was CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation agency
during the Trump's first term. As national cyber
director, he'll be tasked with overseeing offices stood
up under the Biden administration, which serves as
key White House cyber policy
interlocutor
across federal agencies in Capitol Hill.
So,
there is our cyber
director.
Definitely does not have a cyber
background.
Meanwhile,
DJI announced the Osmo three sixty, its first
three sixty camera with dual one inch
CMOS sensors, has made this official.
Will it compete?
The Osmo supports eight k video recording up
to one hundred minutes, a single charge up
to one hundred and ninety minutes at six
k without overheating.
An important feature for extended shooting session also
includes fast charging 105 gigabits of internal storage,
USB 3.1 and Wi Fi six.
A popular feature among creators is invisible selfie
stick effect and that is
available.
And additionally, DJing includes creative modes like Hitchhock,
Asteroid, Drone View, and Time Lapse.
So, I don't have
a cost here but, is available
for order.
Mozilla is flagging a phishing wave aimed at
hijacking trusted Firefox add ons. Mozilla's warning an
ongoing phishing campaign targeting developers
of Firefox add ons.
Although the phishing emails can take many forms,
they said this campaign usually lures debit into
clicking through to a malicious link to update
their account.
They are reduced or the crims claim would
result in the dev losing access developer features.
So,
they're basically hackers are trying to get access
to
add ons. There's new ways
to to access it.
So did you guys know that the iPad
now is fifteen
years old?
Imagine that. I can't imagine not having my
iPad.
I use it almost every single day
whether it's sitting
on the couch with it beside me and
able to check email or respond to Slack
or or shopping or whatever it may be.
I just can't imagine not having an a
tablet.
And,
the first one, I remember the first gen
iPad in 2010,
but it was such a lovely device. It
really was.
And how things have changed,
over the years. So this article has a
picture of, all of them
if you want to take a walk down
History Lane here, but,
yeah, 15.
You're watching live today. Make sure you say
hello. Check-in on the chat. We definitely appreciate
it.
BMW
is saying their next EV is the most
sustainable car yet.
I guess it's because of recyclability.
They're gonna have a whole bunch of stuff
in the car that is gonna be recyclable.
How about the battery?
They're gonna be using
heavy use of model materials. Basically, making the
center console
out of just one kind of plastic means
it's easy to recycle at the end of
the car's light. BMW is also up the
case of secondary materials in the car. About
1,600
pounds worth
is recycled material, including all of the lithium,
cobalt, nickel in the battery. 70% of aluminum
is alloy wheels,
and 80% aluminum in the car carrier. So,
it's actually been made out of recyclables
as well, which is pretty awesome to be
honest with you.
As we,
and again, I guess that's a whole industry
now
of metal recovery.
United States has announced a $100,000,000
for state, local, and tribal cybersecurity. The funding
consists of two grants, namely fiscal year 2025
state and local,
and it's gonna again gonna be the state,
local, and tribal cybersecurity.
That's down from
a billion in grants over the previous four
years, so just a 100,000,000.
This is probably the one of the most
interesting article of the days. Columbia scientists have
made a gel
from yogurt
that heals tissue,
and it works
by harnessing
extracellular
vesicles
from milk, the team developed a soft material
that mimics living tissue
and promotes natural regeneration.
The gel doesn't just deliver therapeutic molecules. The
EV helps build the structure of the gel
itself.
In mouse models, it boosted blood vessel formation
and tissue repair without
added chemicals.
Research hints at a future where food derived
biotech plays a powerful role in healing
the body. You know, it essentially are what
we eat and drink.
So why would this not be surprising at
all?
Also, The United States has become the ransomware
capital of the world as right as attacks
rise more than about a 150%,
And, we are the country most often targeted,
I think, largely because people have
more money or tech companies have more money.
50% of all ransomware tax happen in The
United States, outpacing Canada at 5% and UK
at 4%,
and then the rest of the world follows
in.
Using Windows 10?
Well, as of October looms, millions still cling
to Windows 10, just two months left.
So enterprises are looking extended security updates as
a state of execution,
but, many visions of Windows 10 are set
to reach the end of free standard support
on October 14,
and they're continuing to push Windows 11
relentlessly.
So this is a big uphill struggle.
If you have a computer that's doing work
that works well
and a lot of work being done in
browsers these days, why do you need Windows
11?
Now consumers can keep a can pick up
a free year
of extended support updates.
Although they'll
although we'll need either redeem some Microsoft report
points or do so
syncing their settings to cloud via Windows backup.
So,
it doesn't come without a price.
Have you seen QR codes
just randomly placed?
Don't
don't click on them.
Don't take a picture of them. The FDA
warns of some scams involving QR codes
and
hacks that are, you know, basically delivering payloads
and so forth.
So don't be clicking on QR codes. Make
sure it's an official QR code. Make sure
there's not a QR code over the top
of a QR code, especially when it comes
to parking meters and that kind of stuff.
That's where you often
see these QR codes.
Make sure that if you have a sign
that has got a QR code for a
parking area that it's high enough or someone
couldn't put a QR code on neatly.
So just, you know, just be aware of
this. Okay?
Tesla has been found partly to blame for
fatal autopilot crash. This was reported a couple
of days ago
and,
$243,000,000
in punitive and common necessary damages. I'm sure
this will be appealed.
That's a that's a big number. It really,
really is.
Tesla's maintained the driver George McBee
was at fault called the verdict wrong in
a statement to the BBC.
They vowed to,
but it was a 2019
crash
and in which a model s sedan using
self driving software killed a pedestrian
and
and severely injured several others.
So again this was,
one person that was struck and killed.
So
And the driver lost sight of the road
when he dropped his phone as he was
pros approaching intersection causing the car to continue
through and smashing.
Oh, this so this is for is this
more than one?
Oh, yeah. They got whacked pretty hard here.
I wonder how much insurance we cover. Over
11,000
Android devices hit by fake login
rat hidden in Meta ads and fake Google
Play Store.
So more than 11,000 Android devices are recently
affected.
This according to cybersecurity, Cliffy, who said there
is an ongoing aggressive campaign distribute malware to
as many devices as possible.
It's a Chinese piece of malware.
Now where is it actually going to? There
are thousands of fake Google
Play Store download pages advertised through
made ads. So make sure you go directly
to the Play Store in order to get
your apps. Don't
rely on the,
taking into a website and then clicking through.
Make sure you do the request directly,
directly
on the Google Play Store.
And a little bit of an interesting article,
this is,
one that's about,
you know, the science of space.
NASA
has achieved a bold breakthrough.
And they've been updating their supersonic
parachutes.
And, they've been doing some high stakes flight
test
and essentially through upgrading
sensors.
And,
their team called Epic has successfully deployed a
sensor equipped parachute using a drone providing crucial
data for future tests.
Vibration between NASA's research center led to the
development of commercial available sensors for the parachutes,
and potential partnerships with the aerospace and auto
racing industries could broaden the technology's
application. So air launch capsule deployed parachutes equipped
with
sensors. Everything else has got a sensor, so
why
shouldn't
this?
So very very cool. Lots of great stuff
going
on in the tech world.
We are definitely attempting to
pare down the number of tech meme
articles that we're covering. We're going to be
covering other sites like Gizmodo and other stuff
that doesn't have massive firewalls every time we
do
coverage on, you know, it's not good enough
now to just link
to a site.
You know, they want us to pay.
And I don't think you as a consumer
of this show
should be
forced to pay to read the articles that
we're referencing in the show.
So we're trying to find alternative
articles that talk about the same exact topic.
That's a big thing here that we're trying
to to implement for all of you so
that the show notes
continue to remain
valuable.
Also, if you are a book writer, if
you're any type of professional,
and you're looking to be interviewed on podcast,
don't forget about our brand new product, guestmatch.pro.
Go definitely check it out.
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Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, it brings me end
of this show, geeknews@gmail.com.
Geeknews@gmail.com
is the email address. Don't forget about our
sponsor GoDaddy. Geek news central dot com forward
slash godaddy.
And if you wanna become an insider, geekinesscentral.com/insider.
That's a place to support the show,
for your $2.05, $10.15, 20, or $25
a month
donation.
No Patreon. It's done strictly through PayPal,
and you can do a one time donation
to the show as well. I definitely appreciate
you being here. Thanks for being part of
the podcast.
We'll see you back on the next episode,
which either will be Thursday or a week
from,
Thursday,
depending upon,
how my flying schedule goes and getting back
in,
to The United States. I definitely appreciate everyone
for being here. Thanks for
for listening or watching the show, however you
may have connected. We'll see you next time.
Bye bye.