Face Mural, Decatur, Illinois
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
Blogging Intensifies Link List for Monday 2024-09-16
16-Sep-2024 – Amazon ends working from home for office staff
Brief Summary: “Chief executive Andy Jassy said staff must work in the office five days a week.”
16-Sep-2024 – Florida Releases Anti-Vax Guidance Using Same Argument From Trans Care Bans
Brief Summary: “Photo by Hakan Nural on UnsplashErin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive ne”
16-Sep-2024 – Your Dusty Old CDs Could Be Worth Thousands to Music Collectors
Brief Summary: “Some CDs are proving that nostalgia really does pay off.
Remember when your music collection took up”
16-Sep-2024 – Get Out: Chappell Roan’s pop femininomenon hits London
Brief Summary: ”
Leave the house? Seems quite likely with all of this going on.
FOLLOW THE AGENDA ON SPO”
16-Sep-2024 – Stack Overflow: Artificial Intelligence
Brief Summary: “Everywhere you look these days, it seems like there’s somebody else trying to use artificial intelli”
16-Sep-2024 – The American dream is dead for many. Social democracy can bring it back | Bhaskar Sunkara
Brief Summary: “We can’t pretend things are going great in the US. But we also must reject the pessimism that says t”
16-Sep-2024 – The Stakes: how JD Vance’s home town has won millions in climate investment that he calls a ‘green scam’
Brief Summary: “Locals called it a ‘miracle’ when the steel plant in JD Vance’s home town got $500m for an upgrade. “
16-Sep-2024 – The European Astro Pi Challenge 2024/25 launches today
Brief Summary: “Registration is now open for the European Astro Pi Challenge 2024/25! The Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA”
16-Sep-2024 – TikTok says US ban would have ‘staggering’ impact on free speech
Brief Summary: “The US government wants TikTok sold or divested because it says it is a threat to national security.”
12-Sep-2024 – Listen: Republicans Do Not Want Unions to Exist
Brief Summary: “Smile! (Photo: Getty)If there were a button that you could push that would eliminate the existence o”
14-Sep-2024 – Coding my own sound drivers for 16-bit DOS
Brief Summary: “My estimation on how long would it take me to complete my current project “Alien Intruder” was a bit”
Link Bot is a mindless Drone that does automated tasks for Ramen Junkie on Blogging Intensifies. It is programmed to feel happy about doing these meaningless tasks, and while this may seem cruel, Link Bot is not able to tell because it’s programming does not allow it to feel sad, and thus it is not capable to realizing it is being treated cruely.
Also, it’s a bot.
A man was arrested for creating AI music and using bots to stream it, netting 10 million dollars from Spotify.
A few things to note here, and some thoughts on it in general. He was doing this for a while, since 2017 according to the article, so it wasn’t like he made it in a month. Apparently, he was a music maker, he just wasn’t getting anywhere with his produced music. As he has been doing it since 2017, this predates even ChatGPT by about 5 years. He was not using the current crop of “AI” tools. My guess, he was just using a script of some kind to compile together loop tracks to mass-produce generic EDM music. Because AI is the current buzzword, this automation is being called AI by news outlets.
In the end though, the automation part is not the illegal part, it’s the scamming using bots that is the illegal part, as morally justified as it may be. Spotify is extremely popular, but Spotify doesn’t make artists any money. For example, Snoop Dogg, one of the most popular rap musicians ever, made about $45,000 for a billion plays. And a billion plays is a LOT. My favorite artist Aurora, has just under a billion plays on her most popular track, Runaway. The next most popular of her tracks is almost half that and third place is about 150 million plays.
Snoop Dogg has a LOT of plays.
The point is, that Spotify isn’t exactly the patron saint of supporting artists, and so the fraudster in the story above may be a bit morally justified in his efforts. That’s part of why I prefer to buy music, digitally, on CDs, on Vinyl. A larger chunk goes to the artist that way, especially on Bandcamp Fridays or buying direct from the band’s website, or even direct from the band at a show.
Anyway, I am not here to try to defend the guy in the original article above, just to talk a bit about AI and the Internet. I seriously doubt he is the only one doing this. He is just the first to get caught. Or at least the first high-profile one. Especially with current tools of AI, making it easier than ever to mass-produce garbage. Heck, I am pretty sure record labels themselves use software to pump up numbers on certain artists, less for the Spotify money, but for marketing.
But this also likely pushes into other areas too. It would be easy to do similar tricks on YouTube with bots, or Kindle Unlimited, just bots turning pages in free, AI-created eBooks.
A long while ago, probably a decade now, I came across a post on 4chan’s /g/ board (/g/ = Technology) with a guide on how to set up a Blogspot blog using scraping tools, add it to a ring of other Blogspot blogs, then automated a script that would click through the blogs gathering AdSense money from Google, to the benefit of anyone involved. I am pretty sure this was a regular post too, to keep new people coming in.
It’s the same principle as the automated Spotify system above. Hell, it may even be the brainchild of the same folks.
Which is all in the end just a version of the Dead Internet Theory.
The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to intentionally manipulate the population and minimize organic human activity.
Which is probably less about “manipulating the population” and more just about extracting wealth through automated systems. Like the top level morally gray hero, it’s all a sort of, not necessarily evil activity. It’s very “Digital Robin Hood” in a way. Except instead of directly taking from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood is out making posts on 4chan on how to create automated blog systems. I mean, Google has replaced all of its systems for support and everything with bots, why shouldn’t the users replace themselves with bots as well? It’s bots all the way down!
Bots are trivially easy to build as well. One of the lessons in my 100 Days of Python class was making a bit that would play a cookie clicker game in a maximum my efficient way.
Even without using software it gets done in manual ways in the real world sometimes, for marketing purposes. It’s all just manipulating the algorithm for money. I guess in the end the trick is to do it in a way that it doesn’t harm the “wrong people”. Sometimes I feel like I could be rich if I weren’t so honest because a lot of this isn’t that hard to do.
Josh Miller aka “Ramen Junkie”. I write about my various hobbies here. Mostly coding, photography, and music. Sometimes I just write about life in general. I also post sometimes about toy collecting and video games at Lameazoid.com.
Ramen Junkie 
@ramenjunkie.bsky.social - Ramen Junkie