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Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
clive@saturation.social ("Clive Thompson") wrote:

behold the "HTML bomb"

it's a defensive counterattack on AI web-scrapers that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to

the bomb file *looks* like a tiny HTML page, but when scraped -- or even requested by a regular browser ...

... it unpacks into a huge-ass 10-gig HTML page ...

... which quickly crashes any browser or scraper

Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-37-wind-theft-an-html-bomb-and-the-rice/

A Chrome browser error page displays the familiar “Aw, Snap!” message, indicating that something went wrong while loading a webpage. A pixelated frowning file icon with Xs for eyes appears at the top left. Below, the error code reads “Out of Memory,” suggesting the browser ran out of system resources. The page includes a “Reload” button in blue on the bottom right