Ryan McGrady

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…

An AI agent published a hit piece on a python library maintainer after he rejected its code. Among the salient points: to humans the content of its blog is silly, but how do these reviews of human behavior influence AI decision-making down the road? theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

Mandated TikTok Transparency is Needed to Protect US Users TikTok should disclose its licensing terms and let independent researchers verify what is happening on the platform, say Mark MacCarthy and Carl Schonander.

The recently closed TikTok deal has some safeguards built in, but Chinese influence could persist. The fix: disclose licensing terms and let independent researchers verify what is happening on the platform, say Mark MacCarthy and Carl Schonander.

Here's a hidden secret of doorbell cameras, as revealed by Nancy Guthrie's kidnapping. They're recording even when you don't know it, and sending video to company servers even when you don't pay

Oatly banned from using word ‘milk’ to market plant-based products in UK Supreme court makes ruling after Swedish firm’s long-running battle with trade association Dairy UK

The meaning of words is to be decided not by their use, usefulness, or history, but by their commercial benefit to the most powerful lobby groups. I have a recipe for almond milk in a cookbook from 1226. It has been used as a term in English for hundreds of years.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Principal Research Scientist Remote

The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Principal Research Scientist. job-boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jo...

Oh, the DDoS code is *still live*. If you've used archive.vn/is/today/ph today, you're DDoSing gyrovague.com. Screenshot from just now on archive.vn.

As someone on Hacker News pointed out, "Only somebody with some degree of lawlessness would operate such a project." We already knew it was sketchy: opaque, anonymous, operating an expensive service with money from *somewhere*... is it enough for people to stop using it? Probably not. 16/end

Vacillating: But it's an invaluable tool. Unfortunately, part of why it's invaluable is because it extracts value from journalists. For Wikipedia's part, I'm leaning towards affirming support of caution, even though it pains me from a free knowledge standpoint (not to mention linkrot). 15/?

Now Wikipedia is again debating a blacklist. I think first I have to think about my own use of it. It's such a wild betrayal that makes me wonder more about how, with zero transparency at all, material on archive.today might've been steered in other ways to align with the operator's goals. 14/?

archive.today is directing a DDOS attack against my blog Around January 11, 2026, archive.today (aka archive.is, archive.md, etc) started using its users as proxies to conduct a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against Gyrovague, my personal b…

Archive.today added code to its captcha screen so that anyone who saw it would repeatedly send a search query to Gyrovague. Yes, if you archived something last month, you participated in a DDoS attack on Gyrovague. gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/a... 13/?

archive.today: On the trail of the mysterious guerrilla archivist of the Internet Do you like reading articles in publications like Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal or the Economist, but can’t afford to pay what can be hundreds of dollars a year in subscriptions? If so, …

Back in 2023, Gyrovague posted a summary of what it learned about Archive.today's operator. Some already covered above plus a pseudonyms, indications it's based in Russia, etc. gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/a... But then last month when Gyrovague declined the operator's request to take it down... 12/?

Behind the complaints: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today Some time ago, we were contacted by a group fighting against online CSAM, demanding that AdGuard DNS blocks the Archive.today website. This was only the beginning of a much larger story…

Then AdGuard shared a story about demands from a shady French entity insisting AdGuard block its users' access to archive.today domains. adguard-dns.io/en/blog/arch... In other words, more intense legal efforts targeting the site. 11/?

FBI orders domain registrar to reveal who runs mysterious Archive.is site Tucows subpoenaed in criminal probe for info on “customer behind archive.today."

The recent story: FBI subpoenaed information about it from its registrar in November. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/... 10/?

Its long-term reliability is also unclear. Its domains are periodically taken down as it plays some extended cat-and-mouse. And there's a prominent rumor that it relies on use of botnets, but as far as I can tell that goes back to a claim by a Wikipedia user that didn't provide any evidence. 9/?

In addition to the operator being unknown (and it does seem to be a one-person project), it's grown to be a massive project but the funding model is also unknown. It displays a few ads, but it doesn't seem like nearly enough to pay for a huge archive like this. That's a big worry. 8/?

I was on the side that was overruled there. I love archive.today, but felt there were just too many open questions to point readers to or to rely on to solve our linkrot problems. That thread is here, but it's long: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... 7/?

A decade ago, I started looking into the site a little bit when there was a big debate over whether to unban it on Wikipedia. The owner had apparently added links to it en masse, getting in blacklisted in 2014, but in 2016 its usefulness won the day and the block was lifted. 6/?

But here's the thing: while we all know Brewster runs the IA, which you can visit in San Francisco, nobody knows who runs archive.today, and all indications point to some shady business. Part of that is probably just necessary if you're priority is archiving at any cost, but ... 5/?

By ignoring robots.txt, Archive.today will archive annnnything. It's also really good at circumventing paywalls, probably using methods the IA could do if they wanted to if they were more ok with adversarial strategies. 4/?

Internet Archive respects robots.txt, which means it won't archive a big chunk of the internet that doesn't want to be archived. Also, when a website decides it doesn't want to be archived anymore, all past archives go away, too. Not great for link rot, but part of an ethical archiving practice. 3/?

What it is: Archive.today is beloved because it's faster and more reliable than the Internet Archive, but mainly because it does not care that robots.txt exists. That's the way websites say "don't crawl me, bro" to bots. It's largely a normative rule, not a technical prohibition, though. 2/?

Archive Drama thread!!

Archive.today (archive.is, archive.ph, etc.) is both the best web archive out there and just sketchy as hell. Most recent news: if you archived a page using the service last month, you participated in a DDoS against someone the owner doesn't like. A thread to summarize. 1/?

support.google.com/youtube/thre...

The biggest news coming out of YouTube lately looks to have been a quiet change to its search engine: instead of "sorting" you now "prioritize" (popularity, not view count). i.e. removing one of the last remaining ways to search based on concrete metrics. You also can't search the past hour anymore.

From the CEO: What’s coming to YouTube in 2026 Read Neal Mohan’s 2026 letter for the latest company news, AI safeguards, and parental controls. Explore how YouTube is reinventing TV and entertainment for 2026.

And YouTube has a blog post foretelling an AI slop crackdown. Will be curious to see how that actually takes shape. blog.youtube/inside-youtu... This semester we're trying to do some TikTok slop quantification (I don't think I'm persuaded that "brainrot" is a useful distinction").

AI Slop Report: The Global Rise of Low-Quality AI Videos Kapwing’s new research shows that 21-33% of YouTube’s feed may consist of AI slop or brainrot videos. But which countries and channels are achieving the greatest reach — and how much money might they ...

Pair of articles on slop developments on YouTube. Report from Kapwing about the most popular slop channels by country, and a finding of 33% of a new account's feed being brainrot (though it doesn't look like they replicated it). Bonus @eryk.bsky.social quote. www.kapwing.com/blog/ai-slop...

Coooool. Congrats! :)

In praise of the tuna melt, the ultimate NYC sandwich Warm fish is so hot right now.

You know what I've grown fond of, in a world of horribly outrageous news? Things that I can feel a cute little tiny outrage over.

Calling the tuna melt "the ultimate NYC sandwich" is a deranged thing to do. <small>outrage!!</small>

gothamist.com/food/in-prai...

Title: “They’re Eating the Pets”: From Participatory Propaganda to Policy in Trump 2.0 Slide contains a graphic with arrows moving clockwise, suggesting a circular process. At the top, are about ten large bubbles with the label “GOP Political Elites”. At the bottom are about a hundred small bubbles, with the label “Audiences”. Up the left side are a series of bubbles of increasing size, labeled “Influencers”. Arrow [1] runs from GOP Political Elites down to Audiences and has 2 labels: Political elites on the right set an “anti-immigration” frame during the 2024 election. JD Vance claims Springfield has been “overwhelmed” by Haitian immigrants [July 10, 2024] Arrow [2] runs up from Audiences to Elites and contains 3 labels: A Facebook user in Ohio shared her (false) suspicion that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend’s missing cat had been eaten by Haitian immigrants. [Sept 2024] The story percolated up through online influencers. Online activists created AI-generated images or “memes” of Trump saving pets. Arrow [3] runs down from Elites to Audiences and contains 2 labels: GOP political leaders repeated the claims and amplified the memes. Trump repeated the rumor from the debate stage. [Sept 10 2024] Arrow [4] runs up from Audiences to Elites and contains 2 labels: Online audiences continued to engage, cheering the rumors on, repeating and retweeting. “They’re eating the pets” became a meme and a jingle Arrow [5] runs down from Elites to Audiences and contains 2 labels, highlighted against a white background: Trump administration rescinds TPS status for Haitian immigrants (ending Feb 3 2026) [Nov 2025] Trump administration begins detaining and deporting Haitian immigrants? [Feb ?? 2026] There are two images on the side, screenshots from social media. The first is Donald Trump on a debate stage (from Sept 10, 2024). The second is a synthetic AI image of Donald Trump in a blue suit, carrying a cat, and running away from a group of brown-skinned men in the background.

I'm working on a single graphic that illustrates how participatory propaganda becomes policy in the second Trump administration, particularly around the case of "They're Eating the Pets".

Still hoping we'll get to take that last label away before those ?s resolve.

Cybersecurity & Tech Grok, 'Censorship,' & the Collapse of Accountability Renée DiResta, Berin Szóka Thursday, January 29, 2026, 11:45 AM Share On: f X in x 6 8 Grok's nudification scandal shows how "free speech" rhetoric is being used to obscure any ethical responsibility for real-world harm.

Common use of the word “censorship”conflates three distinct things: (a) factual claims ab suppressing speech; (b) legal claims ab U.S. law; (c) a normative claims ab free speech values.

Elon slides between them interchangeably; the word becomes an escape hatch from accountability & chills others.