Let’s look beyond the specifics for a moment and consider what happened here.A beloved, useful, free website, run carefully by a competent, honest person for nearly thirty years, was crushed between two features of the new AI economy.
Unsustainable machine traffic hammered it from above, and in all likelihood a financially motivated intruder, operating in a world where breaking into websites has never been easier, took it down.
Bruce’s business and livelihood survived only because the website was not the whole business.
Others have not been so fortunate. Just last week, ZEGO, a German textile firm that had been in business for 37 years, filed for insolvency after a single cyberattack in March shut down its production for six weeks. Unlike The Numbers, they had no other business to fall back on.
The web is full of independent archives, hobby databases, local news sites, forums, reference works. Decades of accumulated human effort, running on old code, maintained by small teams or single individuals, quietly holding up far more of our
... Show more...Let’s look beyond the specifics for a moment and consider what happened here.A beloved, useful, free website, run carefully by a competent, honest person for nearly thirty years, was crushed between two features of the new AI economy.
Unsustainable machine traffic hammered it from above, and in all likelihood a financially motivated intruder, operating in a world where breaking into websites has never been easier, took it down.
Bruce’s business and livelihood survived only because the website was not the whole business.
Others have not been so fortunate. Just last week, ZEGO, a German textile firm that had been in business for 37 years, filed for insolvency after a single cyberattack in March shut down its production for six weeks. Unlike The Numbers, they had no other business to fall back on.
The web is full of independent archives, hobby databases, local news sites, forums, reference works. Decades of accumulated human effort, running on old code, maintained by small teams or single individuals, quietly holding up far more of our shared knowledge than anyone acknowledges.
The Numbers is coming back, better built than before. I would encourage you to keep using it, keep supporting it, and, if you are one of the many people who emailed Bruce in fury about a missing page, perhaps send a kinder one now you know why it was missing.
maegul (he/they)
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Jo Miran
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •In this case, we are a little behind schedule, but working to rapidly catch up.
𝙈𝙞𝙖
in reply to Jo Miran • • •CanadaPlus
in reply to 𝙈𝙞𝙖 • • •For the children. You have to think of the children.
/s but also actually what they say.
LuckyDevil
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •like this
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theneverfox
in reply to LuckyDevil • • •OpenStars
in reply to theneverfox • • •theneverfox
in reply to OpenStars • • •OpenStars
in reply to theneverfox • • •Oh.
The Internet itself surely will continue, but yes the "free and open" version is already gone (how to test this: attempt to self-host a website now, like a Lemmy instance, and see how long until AI scrapers bring it to its knees).
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theneverfox
in reply to OpenStars • • •I don't think so. I think it's going to fragment a la cyberpunk... It's beginning already through a mixture of government controls and profiteering. Large enough platforms will still exist everywhere, but I think we're going to end up with more regional networks
I think youll still be able to route a package across the world, but the age where you could access the same Internet from everywhere is ending
Th4tGuyII
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Honestly, this. In their desperate attempt to break even, AI companies are throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks, without any due regard as to its effects on society at large...
Which unfortunately have proven time and time again to be horribly corrosive towards human culture.
like this
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sem
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Context:
Box Office Predictions & Real-Time Odds | Polymarket
Polymarketlike this
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