@prologic@twtxt.net Have you tried Google’s robots.txt report? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062598?hl=en . I would expect Google to be pretty good about this sort of thing. If you have the energy to dig into it and, for example, post on support.google.com, I’d be curious to hear what you find out.

On my hit list of assholes tech giants that break the rules and are bad web citizens:

• Microsoft
  

• Google
  

• Alibaba
  

• Open AI

• more to come…

It would appear that Google’s web crawlers are ignoring the robots.txt that I have on https://git.mills.io/robots.txt with content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Evidence attached (see screenshots): – I think its the the Small Web community band together and file a class action suit(s) against Microsoft.com Google.com and any other assholes out there (OpenAI?) that violate our rights and ignore requests to be “polite” on the web. Thoughts? 💭

reviewing logs this morning and found i have been spammed hard by bots not respecting the robots.txt file. only noticed it because the OpenAI bot was hitting me with a lot of nonsensical requests. here is the list from last month:

• (810) bingbot
  
• (641) Googlebot
  
• (624) http://www.google.com/bot.html
  
• (545) DotBot
  
• (290) GPTBot
  
• (106) SemrushBot
  
• (84) AhrefsBot
  
• (62) MJ12bot
  
• (60) BLEXBot
  
• (55) wpbot
  
• (37) Amazonbot
  
• (28) YandexBot
  
• (22) ClaudeBot
  
• (19) AwarioBot
  
• (14) https://domainsbot.com/pandalytics
  
• (9) https://serpstatbot.com
  
• (6) t3versionsBot
  
• (6) archive.org_bot
  
• (6) Applebot
  
• (5) http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm
  
• (4) http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html
  
• (4) Googlebot-Mobile
  
• (4) DuckDuckGo-Favicons-Bot
  
• (3) https://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html
  
• (3) YandexNews
  
• (3) ImagesiftBot
  
• (2) Qwantify-prod
  
• (1) http://www.google.com/adsbot.html
  
• (1) http://gais.cs.ccu.edu.tw/robot.php
  
• (1) YaK
  
• (1) WBSearchBot
  
• (1) DataForSeoBot
  

i have placed some middleware to reject these for now but it is not a full proof solution.

China announces retaliatory tariffs on US + 2 more stories
China reveals tariffs on U.S. goods; Google faces antitrust action; EU establishes new trade zones; astronauts create oxygen in space; technology aids lunar missions. ⌘ Read more

Google Maps is run by cowards
Google, on its Google Maps naming policy, back in 2008: By saying “common”, we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage. Google, today, in 2025: Google has confirmed that Google Maps will soon … ⌘ Read more

PebbleOS becomes open source, new Pebble device announced
Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, the original smartwatch maker, made a major announcement today together with Google. Pebble was originally bought by Fitbit and in turn Fitbit was then bought by Google, but Migicovsky always wanted to to go back to his original idea and create a brand new smartwatch. PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Repro … ⌘ Read more

Introduction to GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS (written GOS from now on) is an Android based operating system that focuses security. It is only compatible with Google Pixel devices for multiple reasons: availability of hardware security components, long term support (series 8 and 9 are supported at least 7 years after release) and the hardware has a good quality / price ratio. The goal of GOS is to provide users a lot more control about what their smartphone is doing. A main profile is used by default (the owner … ⌘ Read more

Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the overall Google Search experience for users. The spokesperson noted that, with … ⌘ Read more

Google Begins Requiring JavaScript For Google Search
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely-used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. From a report: In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the over … ⌘ Read more

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz well even after doing the new fixes my invidious instance is still dead because google blocked my ip i think and i don’t have a proxy server so uhhhhhhhhhh. not much to watch unless i use videos on my server

Did you have disallow rule in robots.txt? (I think not because can google several twtxt.net posts)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Mostly small and simple stuff, like cable management, headphone rests, pill dispensers (that I didn’t end up using), … The most elaborate thing I made was that contraption for my keyboard, which is a bit hard to explain right now, so here’s some photos:

I didn’t end up using that, either. 🥴

In general, I print very little. So little that some of my supplies have simply gone bad, like that “3D LAC” (sprayable glue).

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Yeah, I saw that when googling the issue. I’m on Linux, there are no DLLs to swap. I could use an older version indeed. 🤔 Let’s see if I can find some better alternative first. (Let’s face it, Blender is hard to use.)

Google Drive? Can he give direct link? Idk about he but twtxt feed can he hosted in s3!

@bender@twtxt.net I wonder where that dude who was hosting his twtxt feed in a google drive go? 😆 that was hilarious!!

No he jugado tanto el Pokemon TCG, más que en Game Boy y ahora en teléfono.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.pokemon.pokemontcgp

Es un juego que, al menos en la primera parte, está muy bien hecho, aunque al poco tiempo se acaba el factor ‘wow’.

Como vemos en ‘Leyendas y Videojuegos’, el juego móvil es más una demostración para una experiencia de como sería que colecciones las cartas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpAZCy8_-UI

Siento que mucha gente va a interesarse en coleccionarlas gracias a este ‘demo’.

Always has been. Web spec is too hard to implement your own web browser from scratch (nothing can, even Google and Apple, they forked KHTML). So if we not count forks we have only three browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari

Apple to launch new AI home screen + 2 more stories
Google expands AI flood forecasting to 700 million people; Apple plans to launch a new AI smart home hub; EU allocates €300 million for joint defense projects. ⌘ Read more

OpenAI, Google, Anthropic admit they can’t scale up their chatbots any further

Once you’ve trained your large language model on the entire written output of humanity, where do you go?

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/11/14/openai-google-anthropic-admit-they-cant-scale-up-their-chatbots-any-further/

So we’re going to destroy the environment for AI slop that isn’t fit for purpose now and, if you believe the above post, never will be.

Portion of the modified Twitter TOS that goes into effect today (it’s on right now), as summarised (ironically) by Google’s Gemini:

“In simpler terms, this means that when you share your content (like text, images, or videos) on the service, you’re giving the company permission to use it in various ways. They can copy, modify, distribute, and even use it to train their AI models. This includes sharing your content with others and using it on other platforms. You won’t be paid for this, but using the service itself is considered enough compensation.”

Kissimmee - Long run: 7.25 miles, 00:09:55 average pace, 01:11:52 duration
fun long run while we were at universal studios for a friends birthday. google maps thought there were some cut-throughs but was obviously wrong so just kind of winged it. was able to run around some of the “pioneer village” which was a good change in scenery.
#running

I installed GrapheneOS for the first time on Wednesday last week on a used Pixel 7a, and I’m impressed. Installation was almost seamless, and I was able to do it from another Android phone. I’ve run into very few wrinkles, even using Google’s proprietary apps with GrapheneOS’s “sandboxed” version of Google Play Services. The main problems I’ve noticed: I can’t cast, and Google Timeline doesn’t seem to work (though I imagine the intersection between people keen to use GrapheneOS and keen to have Google log their location history is pretty small).

Google tool makes AI-generated writing easily detectable
Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I don’t trust Google with anything, sorry, pass. Oh, and you need to sign in on your Google Account (or whatever they call it these days).

Speaking of AI tech (sorry!); Just came across this really cool tool built by some engineers at Google™ (currently completely free to use without any signup) called NotebookLM 👌 Looks really good for summarizing and talking to document 📃

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Non-ASCII characters were broken. Like U+2028, degrees (°), etc.

Turns out I used a silly library to detect the encoding and transform to UTF-8 if needed. When there is no Content-Type header, like for local files, it looks at the first 1024 bytes. Since it only saw ASCII in that region, the damn thing assumed the data to be in Windows-1252 (which for web pages kinda makes sense):

// TODO: change default depending on user's locale?
return charmap.Windows1252, "windows-1252", false

https://cs.opensource.google/go/x/net/+/master:html/charset/charset.go;l=102

This default is hardcoded and cannot be changed.

Trying to be smart and adding automatic support for other encodings turned out to be a bad move on my end. At least I can reduce my dependency list again. :-)

I now just reject everything that explicitly specifies something different than text/plain and an optional charset other than utf-8 (ignoring casing). Otherwise I assume it’s in UTF-8 (just like the twtxt file format specification mandates) and hope for the best.

Google’s James Manyika: ‘The Productivity Gains From AI Are Not Guaranteed’
Google executive James Manyika has warned that AI’s impact on productivity is not guaranteed [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled], despite predictions of trillion-dollar economic potential. From the report: “Right now, everyone from my old colleagues at McKinsey Global Institute to Goldman Sachs are putting out these extra … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net F-Droid is a platform/app that lets you side-load/install and serve android apps without the need for Google’s play store’s blessing. I also use Aurora Store to install Play Store’s apps without having to associate my phone with Google account. 🦾 it makes me feel good about myself 🥸

@prologic@twtxt.net I’m not sure what this update does, but

https://twtxt.net/external?uri=https://google.com&nick=lovetocode999

still exhibits the same problem, on your pod and on mine, after the latest update.

Time Traveler Causes of Death
⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de A family member gave me their old (pseudo-)smart phone and it had all kinds of pre-installed BS that you’re not supposed to be able to uninstall, Xiaomi, FB, google… you name it. but guess what!? I already know about this Trick and then there is the Rethink DNS/Firewall app I have setup to block all traffic then allow the stuff I need with an Allow, Bypass or Exclude rule.

You’d be surprised to see how much traffic is going to blocked!! 🤣

The “Matrix Experiment”, i.e. running a Matrix server for our family, has failed completely and miserably. People don’t accept it. They attribute unrelated things to it, like “I can’t send messages to you, I don’t reach you! It doesn’t work!” Yes, you do, I get those messages, I just don’t reply quickly enough because I’m at work or simply doing something else.

I’ll probably shut it down.

Nobody cares about privacy. The reasons I bring up in discussions are “too nerdy”. They put all their stuff to Google or Apple, so why would messaging be any different? (We’re not even using all those Matrix crypto stuff … That would be insane.)

It’s a lost cause. I’m frustrated.

Will I give in and use WhatsApp instead? Not sure yet.

Have not tried any of them, but some of these seem to fit the bill:

• https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/Redirector
  
• https://libredirect.github.io/
  
• https://requestly.com/products/web-debugger/

Google Chrome will have Gemini LLM built into the browser.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I think you tried to email me with an encrypted GPG email? 📧 Unfortunately the inbox you sent to (managed by Google Workspaces / GMail) isn’t equipped with any GPG or my keys so I had to decrypt by hand, which sux. Are you on Signal?

Alternative message me on Salty IM (https://salty.im) at prologic@mills.io

Google Solar Cycle
⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de For syncing notes between computers and phones I’ve been very happy with Simple Text - w Dropbox sync for some year, but transitioned to Joplin around new year. Both sync via Dropbox and for Joplin there are also more free options. I guess you could even use something like Syncthing

I came across Google Summer of Code

This one looks interesting, I’ll apply soon, and perhaps is interesting for you as well
https://kiwix.org/en/google-summer-of-code/

Would ‘twtxt’ be a good project for the next one? 🤔

Linus Torvalds Has ‘Robust Exchanges’ Over Filesystem Suggestion on Linux Kernel Mailing List
Linus Torvalds had “some robust exchanges” on the Linux kernel mailing list with a contributor from Google. The subject was inodes, notes the Register, “which as Red Hat puts it are each ‘a unique identifier for a specific piece of metadata on a given filesystem.’”

Inodes have been the subj … ⌘ Read more

What? You are still using chrome? Firefox is where its at. But if you need WebKit there is always chromium which strips out all the google nonsense.

Google Chrome Gains AI Features Including a Writing Helper
Google is adding new AI features to Chrome, including tools to organize browser tabs, customize themes, and assist users with writing online content such as reviews and forum posts.

The writing helper is similar to an AI-powered feature already offered in Google’s experimental search experience, SGE, which helps users draft emails in various tones and lengths. W … ⌘ Read more

After seeing Google’s Gemini video, will everyone now need to invest in one of this pointing-downwards camera stands for the home?

Game-playing DeepMind AI can beat top humans at chess, Go and poker
An artificial intelligence capable of beating humans at a variety of games is an important step towards a more general intelligence, says Google DeepMind ⌘ Read more

DeepMind AI can beat the best weather forecasts - but there is a catch
By using artificial intelligence to spot patterns in weather data, Google DeepMind says it can beat existing weather forecasts up to 99.7 per cent of the time, but data issues mean the approach is limited for now ⌘ Read more

Doctor’s Office
⌘ Read more

The amount of shady Android apps in Google’s “Play Store” is so large, it makes me want to write my own software instead. 😖

How Google Authenticator made one company’s network breach much, much worse | Ars Technica

🤦‍♂

WHY are these big companies treated as though they are the be all and end all of infosec? These are rookie mistakes Google’s making, at scale.

Unfortunately Google employs dark patterns to convince you to sync your MFA codes to the cloud, and our employee had indeed activated this “feature”. If you install Google Authenticator from the app store directly, and follow the suggested instructions, your MFA codes are by default saved to the cloud. If you want to disable it, there isn’t a clear way to “disable syncing to the cloud”, instead there is just a “unlink Google account” option.

Like, never ever put your multi-factor tokens into a single cloud storage location! The whole point of this being “multi” factor is that there is a separate, independent physical factor involved in the authentication process. If the authenticator app on your phone puts the tokens in the cloud, then it reduces the security that comes from having a second factor. This is basic stuff.

Of course, never ever use Google Authenticator. All it does is generate TOTP and HOTP codes, which you can do with any OTP app, preferably an open source one that’s been vetted.

@adi@twtxt.net I think it is, and one benefit they have is that you can add third-party repositories to the F-Droid app as you discover them. So, for instance, if you know of a developer who pushes builds to an F-Droid compatible repository, you can add that to your F-Droid app and start tracking updates like you would for any other app in there. Can’t do that with Google Play!

F-Droid tends to focus on open source applications that can be built in a reproducible way, which limits the inventory (though of course tends to mean the apps are safer and don’t spy on you). There are non-free apps in there as well but they come with warnings so you’re informed about what you might be sacrificing by using them.

That said if you have a favorite app you get through Google Play, there’s a decent chance it won’t be in F-Droid. Many “big corporate” apps aren’t, and vendor-specific apps tend not to be either. But for most of the major functions you might want, like email clients, calendar apps, weather apps, etc etc, there are very good substitutes now in F-Droid. You’re definitely making a trade-off though.

What I did was go through the apps I had installed on my last phone, found as many substitutes in F-Droid as I could, started using those instead to see how they worked, and bit by bit replaced as much as I could from Google Play with a comparable app from F-Droid. I still have a few apps (mostly vendor-specific things that don’t have substitutes) that come from Google Play but I’m aiming to be rid of those before I need to replace this phone.

@adi@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net F-droid. Getting APKs from developers you trust and side-loading them. Some flavor of Linux. Some distro of the open source parts of Android.

There are lots of options. Bit by bit I divest from anything that’s distributed from Google Play. With my latest phone I find and download APKs so that I could have the app without all the Google crap woven through it. By the time I need to replace this one I’ll be fully free of Google Play. Most of my apps come from F-droid now. You can a perfectly functional phone/pocket computer unless you’re addicted to installing dozens of corporate apps.

@adi@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net It’s worth bearing in mind that

• Fairphone has taken a considerable amount of VC funding so, sooner or later, that bill will become due: (see: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/31/fairphone-growth-capital-raise and https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fairphone)
  
• Fairphone comes with Google Play apps by default, so it’s also a spyware vector (see: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/110978014080809471)
  

I used to have a lot of hope for them but these two ingredients mean that enshittification is virtually inevitable.