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Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

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Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#41

Post by fsckboy »

saurik wrote: post #26
fsckboy wrote: post #22

this is just a thought experiment, but instead of "no obscurity open rules engine" for blocking spam which can be used to help create ever more creative $pAm, how about a "no obscurity open rules engine" that all acceptable posts must meet, a sort of Turing test. Then the stuff that was allowed through would at least be readable. remember that post a month back (and of course all other recently discusseds) for stylom…

> would it work to require posters to expose a unique "voice" in their posts, and where banning of your style would definitely be something you'd want to avoid. "Hey, GPT! Can you please take the following ad for eyeglasses and rewrite it in the style of fsckboy so we can assign any blame in the spam filters to his account?" "Hey, GPT! You helped some spammer get the unique way I talk banned by spam filters; can you…

you're saying AI can never win in a game theoretic or adversarial situation because AI can always nullify AI. but if AI is better than the alternatives to AI, you must use AI because it's the only thing that can break even. but since AI is so good (even if only evenly matched against anti-AI) there is no point in people participating on HN.

I don't think that's going to happen, but if it will, it hasn't yet. But please do me the favor of responding only in my style so I'll know it's really you.

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#42

Post by simondotau »

anigbrowl wrote: post #24
simondotau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Twitter scale, arbitrary hard-coded rules are almost always useless; they make life more difficult for authentic posters while nefarious actors can work around them with varying degrees of triviality.

arbitrary hard-coded rules are almost always useless I disagree; just pointed out how it's not hard to get pure spam by using the filtered stream rules. If I can reliably identify & filter for spam on my creaking desktop with limited compute power and technical/coding skills, I would be happy to operate a silicon backhoe for a modest fee.

I’m talking about specifically about systems the size of Twitter. Arbitrary hard-coded rules are absolutely useful for smaller systems. I run a smaller system and such rules are useful and effective.

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#43

Post by simondotau »

qixxiq wrote: post #21
simondotau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Twitter scale, arbitrary hard-coded rules are almost always useless; they make life more difficult for authentic posters while nefarious actors can work around them with varying degrees of triviality.

Honestly our findings from working at scale (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, ...) were actually the opposite. With hand written (not arbitrary) rules it's easier to understand the intent of the attacker and build a system that they can't work around because we're blocking them at their source of income. Sure they can figure out how to post messages but unless they can include their link/payload/etc it's n…

As someone who has personally battled such adversaries, I call bullshit on that. People with a financial incentive to spam in a user discussion environment are able to change pretty much every letter of their message if necessary.

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#44

Post by ntdll »

mike_d wrote: post #32
wnevets wrote: post #12

Not to be confused with SQRL (Secure Quick Reliable Login) [0] [0] https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm

Please don't use unrelated posts to help peddle snake oil. https://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/steve_gibson/

There's nothing snake oil about SQRL. Can you back up your claims?

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#45

Post by borplk »

mike_d wrote: post #32
wnevets wrote: post #12

Not to be confused with SQRL (Secure Quick Reliable Login) [0] [0] https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm

Please don't use unrelated posts to help peddle snake oil. https://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/steve_gibson/

Disgusting comment. Steve Gibson is a true and independent professional with hundreds upon hundreds of hours of great and accurate video podcast content. Even when he makes a tiny mistake he comes back the next week and thoroughly corrects himself. That post is ancient and largely invalid. On top of that SQRL is in public domain with a published spec/algorithm. Stop punching the old man.

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#46

Post by KyeRussell »

mike_d wrote: post #34
wnevets wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally none of those links mention SQRL.

They don't need to. He has been thoroughly and completely debunked for decades. Legitimate security researchers pay no attention to him, and neither should you.

Would you talk to someone like this in real life? If you jumped into a conversation being this needlessly on the attack against someone who just posted a link to a project with the same name, I can’t imagine wanting to converse with you at all. How wrong or right you are about Steve Gibson is irrelevant. The fact that after a couple Id replies you can’t point to why this snake oil is snake oil is just the icing on the cake.

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#47

Post by anigbrowl »

simondotau wrote: post #42
anigbrowl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arbitrary hard-coded rules are almost always useless I disagree; just pointed out how it's not hard to get pure spam by using the filtered stream rules. If I can reliably identify & filter for spam on my creaking desktop with limited compute power and technical/coding skills, I would be happy to operate a silicon backhoe for a modest fee.

I’m talking about specifically about systems the size of Twitter. Arbitrary hard-coded rules are absolutely useful for smaller systems. I run a smaller system and such rules are useful and effective.

These are Twitter's filtered stream rules. They're accessible via the API to select from the global feed in real time. I don't have access to the firehose, of course, but my understanding is that it's an outgrowth of their internal systems. They have their own query language to filter Tweet and user parameters, semantic entity recognition, URL's etc.

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/tweets/fil...

Re: Show HN: SQRL – Anti-spam rules language Twitter acquired in 2018, open-sourced

#48

Post by kuhlmann »

qixxiq wrote: post #14

I've tried to release this a couple times in the past (you'll notice the git repo has a four year history), and happy it's finally out the door. If anyone is interested in using this, or wants to talk about the strategies I'm happy to help in any way I can. Proud of what we built at Smyte, and hoping it can find another live outside of Twitter [1] https://docs.sumatra.ai/scowl/

Thanks for the Sumatra shout-out, Josh. We definitely got a lot of ideas from SQRL. Congrats on the OS release.
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