Funny entries in last.fm's robots.txt

https://www.last.fm/robots.txt

by someone13 • 15 years ago

48 14 15 years ago

last.fm

mattmanser• 15 years ago

Asimov's 3 laws of robotics more like.

ck23• 15 years ago

My favorite robots.txt entry is Disallow: /touch-this-and-die

Where that is a script that instantly bans the IP on the server.

You'd be amazed how many bad bots hit it.

Swizec• 15 years ago

That is a brilliant idea!

I should use that in all my robots.txt

ck23• 15 years ago

If you want to take it to the next level, embed it as a microdot (single pixel) link somewhere on a side page, and use css to make it display:none;visibility:hidden;margin:-9999px; so that no human could possibly click on it.

Because of robots.txt, no bot should touch that link. And because it's off the page and hidden, no human either. But you'll be amazed how much it's hit.

But a warning: the problem with today's browsers is prefetching. You'd have to make sure you disallow it for prefetching too or you'll trap innocent humans using hyperactive browsers.

This technique also will catch mass downloading plugins where they are saving your entire website from a browser plugin - but they can die too in my book.

If you want to be nice, write the banlist to a file you clear out ever hour via cron or with a time check.

_delirium• 15 years ago

But that'd also ban curious non-robot geeks. :(

sjs• 15 years ago

It would be nice to leave a comment for humans in there. I understand why they don't, but yeah.

ck23• 15 years ago

Have the script clear out the list every other hour if you want to be nice and/or leave a text message on what just happened :-)

Those warning signs about touching the third rail are there for a reason...

run4yourlives• 15 years ago

...who can't follow instructions. :-)

quanticle• 15 years ago

I've seen a slightly more sophisticated solution. /phaser/stun bans you for an hour. /phaser/kill bans your for a week.

michaeldhopkins• 15 years ago

Disallow: /harming/humanity/through/inaction

jerf• 15 years ago

Technically, not listing this is correct. The three robot laws are imprinted upon their brains, and through the magic of sci-fi handwavium, robots can not exist at all without these three laws. The "Zeroth" law, however, was derived by the robots themselves and is not imprinted upon their brains. Indeed, one of their big challenges was to work themselves into a position where they could save humanity even if it meant actively killing an individual human, honoring the implicit law over the explicit one. (This conflict ultimately killed Giskard.) It is more correct not to list this law in a robots.txt than to list it.

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

I'm a little sad that they're 404s.

robert-boehnke• 15 years ago

That one got even picked up by wired, this also contains an interview with one of their developers at the time http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/robot-laws/

someone13• 15 years ago

Good catch - didn't even know that. I came across this thanks to a tweet by Mikko Hypponen[1]. It was one of the top three or four.

Fox News's robots.txt[2] is pretty interesting too - they deliberately block at least one article from being indexed[3]

And YouTube[4], as usual, shows some humor in the form of Flight Of The Conchords lyrics.

[1] http://twitter.com/#!/mikkohypponen/status/10344080313274777...

[2] http://www.foxnews.com/robots.txt

[3] http://www.foxnews.com//politics/2011/07/21/wynn-slams-obama...

[4] http://www.youtube.com/robots.txt

Funny entries in last.fm's robots.txt

Related Stories