Dear Mysterious Chinese Bots: Please Stop Slowing Down The Site And Making Me Think I Have Dementia

Mystery bot traffic from China floods websites, puzzling cybersecurity experts
This has been happening to us on and off for months. Like the article says, it doesn’t seem to be malicious. None of our security systems has flagged anything, which I’m fairly certain would have happened by now were there anything to flag. It’s just giant traffic spikes that are almost certainly Chinese and most definitely not human. No human could possibly view the number of pages these things do in as little time as they do it, nor would he be as interested in things like the manage your subscription pages in the comment threads that the bots seem to love. Whatever they are, they’re clearly indexing something.

The worst thing I can say about them is that I’ve got a pretty good feeling that they’re the reason why the site has been getting slow at times. We’re hosted on shared servers. I don’t know how many people hang out here with us, but I’m willing to bet that some or all of them are experiencing the same thing. Enough of this going on simultaneously is bound to drag things down some.

They mess with our stats too, but that isn’t really one of those things we need to care about beyond a surface level. We don’t sell our own ads, and the closest we get to a content strategy around here is I feel like typing right now followed by typing. Any regional targeting we do is a combination of where we’re from being our main frame of reference and the location of whatever we happen to find ourselves interested in at the moment.

Google Analytics showed that these users stayed on the webpage for an average of 0 seconds and did not scroll or click at all. That’s when Quintero realised his website was being visited by an army of bots.

Quintero was not the only one whose website was being flooded by Asian bots.
Wired reported that several websites, such as an Indian lifestyle magazine, a blog about a small island near Canada, a weather-forecast platform, Shopify’s ecommerce shops, and even US government websites, were being similarly flooded by bot traffic.
For example, over the past 90 days, 14.7 per cent of visitors to US government websites were from China’s Lanzhou and 6.6 percent were from Singapore, according to Wired.

And no one has an explanation for what’s going on.

To be sure, no one has alleged any wrongdoing as these bots have not been linked to any cyberattacks or other nefarious activities.
But the mystery surrounding their purpose —and the people behind them— has led to unease among web managers and observers.

Odd little aside: Watching these things hit scads of dusty old webpages has made it into my dreams.

the other night I dreamt that I was looking at stats and came upon a section of the blog that I didn’t remember at all. Carin had gotten a guide dog named James between Tansy and Domino, and had been writing rather extensively about him. He even went missing at one point!

But it wasn’t just these posts I didn’t remember. I had no recollection of James being in our lives, no matter how hard I tried. It didn’t help that the timeline made no sense. He was supposedly here during the pandemic, but a lot of the stories about him involved people and places from our time in Guelph, where we haven’t lived for over 13 years.

I was worried, of course. Why can’t I remember this? What’s going to happen if Carin starts telling a James story? I certainly can’t admit I don’t remember him or she’ll have me on the express train to the memory care wing. But I can’t fake my way through it, either. She’s not that dumb. Who should I ask instead? The person who helped find him that time is sadly no longer here, and anyone else is just going to end up telling Carin and then I’m right back where I started.

Thankfully I eventually came to enough to realize that this wasn’t real, but just in case, I did sack up and ask Carin later on when we were both awake. We had a good laugh, which was a relief. But I am still a bit worried whenever I hear a train whistle…

I Might Be Able To Keep this Down If I Really Concentrate


You ever hear about something and all at once think “I sure am curious how that would taste” and “I do not want that thing in the same city as my mouth”? This is one of those moments for me.

If you assumed the developers would’ve taken inspiration from fruity classics like Trix and Froot Loops, think again. Tropicana Crunch comprises honey-flavored clusters of oats and almond slices. Almond and orange aren’t incompatible flavors: They’re sometimes mixed in cakes, among other things. Nor are honey and orange, which can be found in recipes for everything from beverages to chicken to carrots.
Oats and orange juice, on the other hand, aren’t exactly the most intuitive combo—but the decision was all about durability. As a Tropicana spokesperson told Food & Wine, granola doesn’t get soggy when exposed to OJ’s acidity nearly as rapidly as something like corn flakes would. And for what it’s worth, the company itself is quick to admit that this experiment may not be a smashing success. “The first cereal made for OJ (and maybe the last),” the Tropicana Crunch website proclaims.

According to Kellogg, dumping orange juice on their cereal is something that a not insignificant minority of people were already doing. Twenty percent of respondents to a survey they conducted on the subject of cereal eating habits back in 2015 said they did it, if you can believe that. About half of the 2000 participants were college kids though, so my guess is a lot of those people were either hung over at the time and mixed up the cartons or trying to win a bet.

Oh Jesus! That’s You? I Thought It Was Just The Team Again!

The only Oshawa Generals fan I know I know for sure is Matt, whose Tall Can Audio podcast you should make some time to check out if you haven’t. It’s almost always a solid listen if you like some combination of sports, beer, music, wrestling or media, which I assume you must since you’re here. And yes, I’d say that even if he wasn’t who he is.

It’s been a long time since Matt and I have been in the same room. Time and distance will do that. But we used to see quite a bit of each other, and as best I can remember from those times, he always smelled just fine. A fact which puts him a level above your average Generals spectator, apparently.

This week, the team sent and then promptly apologized for a letter to fans reminding them to acquaint themselves with a touch of soap before heading out on the town.

Earlier this week, the Ontario Hockey League club sent an email to season ticket holders asking them to shower.
“I got a lot of people complaining about the (person) next to them smelling like cat pee, bad breath, this, that and everything else,” Generals director of ticket sales and service Jason Hickman told reporter Tim Kelly at Oshawa This Week.

In response, the Gens sent a generic email that encouraged fans for their co-operation “with a few simple hygiene practices.”
Among them was a push to cheer from home for those feeling ill. Another suggestion was to hop in the shower “if you went to the gym or did something that produced body odour.”

I feel bad for this guy, and I’m not sure what I would have done differently in his position. If you’re getting the odd complaint here and there, you can likely brush that off. But if you’ve reached the point where your best customers are regularly bringing up to you that others in their section have them wanting to bring up regularly, you have to do something. If it isn’t an open letter, what is it? Signs at the building? Selling your naming rights to Irish Spring?

Nobody likes being told they smell. I get it. But nobody likes being subjected to it, either. Sometimes you just need to have the talk, and I think this was the best way to have had it. Unless the thing began “Dear Dave, section B, row O, seat 39,” nobody should be taking anything personally. It’s just a reminder about common courtesy. And at least this way, if you do need to take it personally, you can do that in private rather than being centred out by security in front of a few thousand others.

Relationships, Unlike Valentine’s Day, Are Built On Honesty And Trust

Carin for sure and probably me at some point have described what passes for our Valentine’s Day tradition, so I won’t go over it again. But what I will say is that I feel very lucky whenever jokes like these come around, because sometimes they ain’t jokes, my guys. Pay attention, and good luck.

Speaking of Carin, she suggested I include this song as well. Chances are it’s as close as she’s getting to a present this weekend, so here ya go, little dude.

We should be in for a fun Valentine’s Day this year. We haven’t figured out who’s subsidizing the food yet, but we’ll be seeing Gowan for cheap, so that’ll be nice. We’ve seen him once before, but it was in a club setting rather than a theatre, so I imagine this will be a bit of a different experience.

Yes. Electrical Work. I’ve Turned Me On, You See

Consider this your occasional reminder that even on days when we don’t post anything new, there’s still something you can come here to read.

Every day, a new story from the archives of This is True is posted on this page. It changes every 24 hours, so bookmark it and make it part of whatever daily routine it is that makes you come here in the first place.

I bring it up today because the story, which dates back to 2005, is fantastically stupid. We missed out on it at the time, so this seemed like a good chance to right that wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you car thief, home invader, armed robber, rapist and absolute fool Anthony Roberts.

A rapist who attacked a woman at gunpoint was captured when he forced his victim to write him a check in his own name and then tried to cash it, police said.
Officers said they arrested Anthony R. Roberts, 25, of Hialeah, on Wednesday night, minutes after he left the woman’s apartment as he tried to cash the $1,400 check. He had told the victim to write in the memo line that the check was for electrical work.

The cheque having his name on it helped the investigation along, of course. Also helpful was a clerk at the nearby cheque cashing store who was suspicious enough to call the victim’s phone number to ask questions while the police were on scene.

Roberts was arrested after a brief chase. He confessed to the robbery but denied the rape.

He was convicted and later lost an appeal. As best I can tell, he’s still in prison.

That’s Not Why They Call It A Flyover

Puslinch man accused of bribing officer after suspected impaired driving
I don’t know how much he offered them, but perhaps they should have taken it. The OPP will need all the cash it can get when it inevitably gets sued by everyone impacted by the accidents at the flyover.

The flyover on Highway 7/8 was plowed and salted in the hours between two vehicles launching off snow embankments and on to the road below, says OPP Sgt. Kerry Schmidt.
The OPP were called to two incidents Monday morning — one of them fatal — involving vehicles hitting snow banked onto the side of the flyover by snowplows, plunging over the side, and onto their roofs.
“The lanes themselves had been plowed, had been salted. It’s an elevated platform, and you need drivers to drive through the conditions. They’re preventable crashes. The road conditions and the weather conditions don’t cause crashes. It’s poor driving in those conditions that causes that,” Schmidt said.

The first crash, at about 2 a.m., involved a taxi driver, who went over the embankment near the end of the flyover and flipped onto Highway 8.
The driver was taken to Hamilton General Hospital with minor injuries and was later released from hospital.
Five and a half hours later, a 38-year-old Waterloo woman drove her RAV 4 Hybrid up a snow embankment, before dropping near King Street East below. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

“It comes down to driver error as well, with driving too fast for conditions, losing control,” Schmidt said, adding it’s a tragedy what happened to the woman.
“I don’t want to just blame it on the driver. But the lanes actually were in good shape.”

“The conditions to close a road would be when the roads are impassable, and this was certainly not the case. Traffic was driving on it all night and throughout the weekend until these two people lost control in the snow and ramped off the snowbank,” he said.
Schmidt noted the first crash, involving the taxi driver, can be credited to human error as well.
“If you drive on the shoulder and you lose control, it’s got to be driver error. Unless there’s a mechanical error, unless there’s something else. But the roads were plowed. Everything was looking good,” he said.

I agree that plenty of people have no idea how to drive in the winter. I’ve had the misfortune of being in cars with some of them. And yes, snowbanks on the sides of highways and whatnot aren’t uncommon. But to just come straight out and say that multiple people launching themselves to their doom on the same stretch of road just a few hours apart was absolutely 100% driver error, no question about it before there could be any real investigation? You’d better have your ducks in a row before you make a statement like that, my man.

I don’t always have the best memory, so maybe it doesn’t mean a whole lot that I can’t recall the last time I heard about someone driving off of that thing. And were it just one, maybe we could write it off as human error and move on with our lives. But two? That’s a pretty big coincidence, and one dismissive statement isn’t going to convince me or many others that there couldn’t have been anything else wrong up there.

This Program Is Brought To You By This And This And This And This And This And This And This And Don’t Even Think About Looking Away

We’ll give you a 55 inch smart TV for free sounds like an offer that no one in his right mind would refuse. But this one? Hard pass from this guy.

This is the future of TV, according to Telly, a company that offers a free TV in exchange for the privilege of constantly blaring ads in your face. It puts the ads in a 10-inch-wide “smart” display that sits just below a built-in sound bar and runs the entire length of the TV. The screen stays on at all times — while you watch shows, movies, YouTube videos, and play video games. Even when you turn off the TV with a tap of the remote’s power button, the secondary screen remains illuminated. It will only turn off if you hold the power button for three seconds.

Despite my attempts to tune out the lower display, video ads and moving widgets draw my eyes in. Along with displaying the date, time, and current weather conditions, it shows a constant stream of headlines in a news ticker, plus stock prices and even links to news stories from outlets like Fox News, which you can click into and read on the top screen. You can remove or add widgets, but there’s no way to get rid of the ad on the right side that refreshes every so often. Under Telly’s terms of service, you can’t cover up the display. Even if you tried, it just wouldn’t be practical, since you need the secondary screen to navigate to different apps and control inputs.

Ahh yes, those terms of service. Time to get strangled to death by all the attached strings. Just listen to this horseshit.

To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).

The TV also comes with a built-in camera with a privacy shutter and a microphone. The company’s terms of service state that it “may collect information about the audio and video content you watch, the channels you view, and the duration of your viewing sessions,” as well as detect the “physical presence of you and any other individuals using the TV at any given time.”

I realize that even regular smart TVs are kind of gross and spy happy, but they also won’t set you back anywhere near $1000 and won’t extort you if you aren’t sufficiently obedient to them. You would have to be a fool to allow this predatory garbage into your home.

The More Things Change…


YouTube threw this at me today, and I watched it, because it’s Carlin. I’ve heard all of it before (lots of it more than once), but I still hung on every word because even though he’s been dead for nearly 20 years and these bits are mostly much older than that, it’s astounding how relevant most of it is to our current times. Abortion, religion, business criminals, political criminals, war, eroding rights. The names may change, but the big picture problems never do. There are days when it feels like we’ve come a long way as a society, and then there are days when you watch something like this for 40 minutes and wonder have we really? I’ve seen a lot of progress in my lifetime, but what does it all mean if a band of evil, nakedly corrupt grifters with no regard for any of it can just come and take it away, laws be damned? It’s no fun to think of our rights as privileges, but if we don’t protect them, that’s exactly what they are.

He Doesn’t Sound Much Smarter This Way, Either


This would be so much funnier if the moron wasn’t currently in the midst of egging on world war 3, but listening to Hank Azaria read Donald Trump quotes in the voices of his various Simpsons characters is still awfully, awfully great. Moe, Chief Wiggum, Professor Frink, Superintendent Chalmers, Cletus, Dr. Nick, Disco Stu, Snake, the Sea Captain and Kirk Van Houten all get a crack at making him sound anything like a normal person. Definitely worth the nine minutes.