LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet • Hacker News Board

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#11

Post by pwdisswordfishy » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #4

blibble wrote: post #3

the perverse incentive is if you ddos the website such that it shuts down, no other "AI" parasites can get the valuable data big tech incentivised to ddos... what a world they've built

This sounds like a conspiracy theory.

If it's a conspiracy, it would be one where the Minimum Viable Conspirator Count is 1 (inclusive of one's own self).

In that case, by that rubric literally anything that you conspire with yourself to accomplish (buying next week's groceries, making a turkey sandwich...) would also be a conspiracy.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#12

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

AI allows companies to resell open source code as if they wrote it themselves doing an end run around all license terms. This is a major problem.

Of course they're not going to stop at just code. They need all the rest of it as well.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#13

Post by blakesterz » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

  "It is a DDOS attack involving tens of thousands of addresses"

It is amazing just how distributed some of these things are. Even on the small sites that I help host we see these types of attacks from very large numbers of diverse IPs. I'd love to know how these are being run.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#14

Post by zipy124 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #12

AI allows companies to resell open source code as if they wrote it themselves doing an end run around all license terms. This is a major problem. Of course they're not going to stop at just code. They need all the rest of it as well.

From the creators of easy money laundering (crypto bros), we now bring you easy money laundering 2: intellectual property laundering, coming to a theatre near you soon!

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#15

Post by tedivm » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:11 PM UTC

I solved this problem for my blog by simply not being interesting.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#16

Post by fabian2k » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

chrisjj wrote: post #7

So which is it? DDOS attack or "AI" scrapers?

Sufficiently aggressive and inconsiderate scraping is indistinguishable from a DDOS attack.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#17

Post by Y-bar » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

chrisjj wrote: post #7

So which is it? DDOS attack or "AI" scrapers?

A sufficiently stupid and egregious AI scraper is indistinguishable from a DDOS attack.

Edit: Fabian2k was ten seconds ahead. Damn!

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#18

Post by homebrewer » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

blibble wrote: post #3

the perverse incentive is if you ddos the website such that it shuts down, no other "AI" parasites can get the valuable data big tech incentivised to ddos... what a world they've built

Umm... what data? That's a very old newsletter-like site. Everything that's public on it has been long scraped and parsed by whoever needed it. There's 0 valuable data there for "parasites" to parasite off of. I also don't get the comments on the linked social site. IIUC the users posting there are somehow involved with kernel work, right? So they should know a thing or two about technical stuff? How / why are they s…

Because it started in 2022 and hasn't subsided since? This is just the latest iteration of "AI" scrapers destroying the site, and the worst one yet.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1008897

Your nonsense about LWN being a "newsletter" and having "zero valuable data" isn't doing you any favors. It is the prime source of information about Linux kernel development, and Linux development in general.

"AI" cancer scraping the same thing over and over and over again is not news for anybody even with a cursory interest in this subject. They've been doing it for years.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#19

Post by smitty1e » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

blakesterz wrote: post #13

"It is a DDOS attack involving tens of thousands of addresses" It is amazing just how distributed some of these things are. Even on the small sites that I help host we see these types of attacks from very large numbers of diverse IPs. I'd love to know how these are being run.

Call it a "Distributed Intelligence Logic Denial Of Service" (DILDOS) attack both to name it distinctly and characterize the source.

Re: LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet

#20

Post by NitpickLawyer » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

homebrewer wrote: post #18

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... what data? That's a very old newsletter-like site. Everything that's public on it has been long scraped and parsed by whoever needed it. There's 0 valuable data there for "parasites" to parasite off of. I also don't get the comments on the linked social site. IIUC the users posting there are somehow involved with kernel work, right? So they should know a thing or two about technical stuff? How / why are they s…

Because it started in 2022 and hasn't subsided since? This is just the latest iteration of "AI" scrapers destroying the site, and the worst one yet. https://lwn.net/Articles/1008897 Your nonsense about LWN being a "newsletter" and having "zero valuable data" isn't doing you any favors. It is the prime source of information about Linux kernel development, and Linux development in general. "AI" cancer scraping the same…

> LWN.net is a reader-supported news site

I mean...

Again, the site is so old that anything worth while is already in cc or any number of crawls. I am not saying they weren't scraped. I'm saying they likely weren't scraped by the bad AI people. And certainly not by AI companies trying to limit others from accessing that data (as the person who I replied to stated).