Neocities.org
heya, i remember you posted something about robots.txt earlier -- that's mostly a convention with no guarantee anyone on the web will follow it. you can request x-bot not to crawl your site but they still can if they want to.
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sorbier
4 months ago
i'm sure you already know! but i just wanted to leave the note! openai seems to be ignoring it for example: https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-anthropic-ai-ignore-rule-scraping-web-contect-robotstxt
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colexdev
4 months ago
Yeah it is very unfortunate that they will not follow it. I know this doesn't apply to neocities, but for people that host their own sites I recently heard cloudflare released a feature to block AI bots.
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mikegrindle
4 months ago
Absolutely, all the robots file does is state that you do not consent - whether companies listen to that (often, they don't) is another matter. I think it's worth doing, but I didn't mean to create a false sense of security.
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I don't know if I've explicitly told you before, so I'll say it now: your writing is damn good Mr V. Enjoyed the new story too
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nohappynonsense
4 months ago
Hey Grindy - thanks for that. It means a lot, especially coming from you.
nohappynonsense
4 months ago
Your writing is more than just good (it is good though, let's be clear,) but it's also useful in a way that I find extremely meaningful. I was thinking how to sum up your mix of tech, creativity, slow lifestyle writing and the best thing I've come up with so far is "Quietly Important."
nohappynonsense
4 months ago
These topics aren't these large scope things that a lot of writers cover off with platitudes and lots of evergreen nonsense about living a more meaningful life; your writing is the antithesis to that. Small and actionable things that make slow but long-lasting change in the way one thinks and acts.
nohappynonsense
4 months ago
Your "can your site fit on a floppy" article made me re-think my entire site design and ultimately made me into a better dev when I pushed myself to lower my site size as radically as possible without losing functionality. So, thank you, Grinds. Your work is quietly important, at least to me.
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mikegrindle
4 months ago
"Quietly important" has to be nicest genuine thing someone has said about my writing. Really appreciate that coming from you.
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ratshack
4 months ago
This sounds great, I’ve always wanted them to make something like a “worst portrait artist of the year” tv series…
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Another day, another post. This time with pictures from a big, ugly mall: https://mikegrindle.com/posts/mall-boat
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nohappynonsense
4 months ago
growing up, all i wanted to do was go to the mall because it felt like a place of limitless possibilities. older now and all i want to do is recapture that same magic while everything rots away.
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mikegrindle
4 months ago
the Trafford Centre welcomes you to recapture that childhood magic (limitless possibilities sold separately). ps, I hope you're doing well, Mr V.
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murid
4 months ago
I love dead/dying malls. There is a eerie emptiness and quietness that makes it pleasant to walk through.
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mikegrindle
4 months ago
@murid same. It's incredible how long some hold on for after everyone has left.
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Death, taxes, and me breaking my RSS feed...
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Here’s a friendly reminder to all you wonderful web masters out there to add/update a robots .txt file to your site if you don’t fancy bots scraping everything you’ve made.
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colexdev
4 months ago
Thanks! I have one that is pretty extensive so far, I will add anything from yours that I do not have as well as the TurnitinBot that @owlroost mentioned! Thanks all
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mikegrindle
4 months ago
Thanks for the recommendation, Owlroost. I’ll be sure to add that. @punk-tart, it should go in your site’ root directory (so, not in a “folder”, but the same place as you homepage - hope that makes sense). Cheers all.
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punk-tart
4 months ago
Thanks for the clarification, added and good to go! Always appreciate dodging AI
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Yesterday I hemmed and hawed inside my local thrift store for nearly 20 minutes deciding if I should buy the Season 1 and Season 2 box sets of The Simpsons on DVD. They were priced at $5 each; if I had UK prices I'd probably have an entire collection of DVDs already.
I haven't seen any Simpsons yet, but I did find a boxset containing two seasons of The Office (the UK version) for effectively 10p. So, it's theoretically possible that you could get the entire golden era of the Simpsons for like a quid if you were super lucky.
Okay but what is a quid, some kind of bird or something?
"I'll also spare you a lecture on why I dislike the current state of streaming." what? noooooooooooo
@nohappynonsense it’s a pound sterling (‘init, bruv?’)
@sorbier maybe another time when I feel like having a good moan
I agree with sorbier. I would love to hear your thoughts on that! I have been doing some thinking about "real things" (physical things) recently too, and the pros and cons. As I am with you, streaming can suck :(
There can be something tactile about physical media, especially things like vinyl. But in an ecosystem where anything could be pulled from a streaming library there is a comfort in being able to hold any physical object that cannot be taken away and potentially even added to a collection of media that can be held in esteem rather than immediately discarded.