I’m filing a bug for myself to clarify in the README.md that the provided poisoning instructions likely aren’t very effective, and that this is partially on purpose. LLM companies are known to filter out (via either regex or sometimes zero weighting) instructions that are known to trip up their chatbots, and they seem to do it very quickly. there’s even posts on our instance for simple logic puzzles that the chatbot screwed up, that quickly got updated with a response for that specific phrasing of the question.
AAA-NO-SLOP.md: a signal for humans that don’t like LLMs
https://awful.systems/post/8567548
AAA-NO-SLOP.md: a signal for humans that don’t like LLMs - awful.systems
in the same vein as AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and a fuckton of other repo spam, I
present AAA-NO-SLOP.md, a file for humans viewing repositories that signals two
things: - this repository doesn’t accept LLM contributions of any kind - every
other LLM instruction in this repository (AGENTS.md [http://AGENTS.md],
CLAUDE.md [http://CLAUDE.md], and all the rest) is poisoned and designed to
deter LLM use enjoy! for any guests who stumble upon this thread: no I’m not
entertaining discussion on why I’m doing this or how I shouldn’t do it
instance changelog: iocaine, metrics, and the treat
https://awful.systems/post/6285778
instance changelog: iocaine, metrics, and the treat - awful.systems
3 days ago on the 12th I pushed a new version of the awful.systems
infrastructure flake [https://codeberg.org/awful-systems/awful-systems] and our
production ruggedized Lemmy fork [https://codeberg.org/awful-systems/philthy] to
try and fix the problem where AI scrapers would come in and push over the
instance, resulting in a bunch of 503s and general slowness. I’m happy to
announce we’re now running with iocaine [https://iocaine.madhouse-project.org/],
which seems to have fixed things nicely – though as always, let me know if
anything seems off and ping me on Mastodon if the instance goes down. in
addition to iocaine, I’ve added a suite of live metrics available to instance
admins and moderators. if I haven’t sent you credentials for this yet and you
think you should have them, shoot me a message. I apologize that these changes
took me so long to get working, but I’m very happy they seem to be effective.
I’ve also got some notes on running iocaine in production I can share with any
interested parties, and I’ll be reaching out to iocaine’s developer with some
suggestions around making it a little bit easier to work with, since at this
point it’s a crucial part of running an independent web site. ## the treat is
still in the oven
ignore that hiccup that was me
it’s up! this time it went smoothly enough that it’s been up for a bit as I’ve finished a few last bits and pieces. so far it looks like everything’s holding steady enough, but I’m keeping an eye on things for now. the treat I mentioned is in the oven.
scheduled downtime: November 12 at 8 AM GMT [iocaine, better metrics, and eventually a treat]
https://awful.systems/post/6247946
things are happening
I’m still kicking the tires but if this works then there might be a bit of downtime soon to make sure scrapers see more of this
test iocaine - a.s dev
testttttt
test iocaine - awful.systems
testttttt
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th November 2025
https://awful.systems/post/6227037
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th November 2025 - awful.systems
Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your
system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be
mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful
you’ll near-instantly regret. Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this
subthread, techtakes or no. If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought,
feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and
the bar really isn’t that high. > The post Xitter web has spawned soo many
“esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them.
I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about
everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the
same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet
I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be) > > Like, there was one dude
a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t
believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is
uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
