Tag Archive for: Bots

Twitter follow bots cut off from API, as accounts disabled for spreading misinformation from Iran and elsewhere

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Angry twitter thumb

ManageFlitter, Statusbrew, and Crowdfire have had their access to the Twitter API revoked for allegedly helping users abuse the service, aggressively and repeatedly following and unfollowing large numbers of other accounts – a tactic frequently employed by Twitter spammers.

Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook share details of the accounts they have shut down after finding they were spreading misinformation in the run-up to the US midterm elections.

Graham Cluley

IDG Contributor Network: How blocking bots created new business opportunities for Crunchbase

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Founded in 2007, CrunchBase is a website offering massive amounts of data about startup activity. Want to know who founded a startup, who invested in it, or who they’re competing with? CrunchBase has the answers. And in a marketplace that is somewhat frothy, CrunchBase is an increasingly heavily trafficked web property. The site contains over 650,000 profiles of individuals and companies and is a massive repository of data. As such, CrunchBase has a massive opportunity to monetize that data, and is accordingly concerned about people who seek to use that data for their own commercial aims.

I spent time talking with Kurt Freytag, head of product at CrunchBase, to have a look at the engineering work that goes into the site. As the site grew in size and traffic, Freytag noticed oddly shaped traffic and random spikes that were putting significant strain on its infrastructure. Of course, it could have simply thrown more horsepower at the site, but Freytag was keen to identify real root causes for the issues. He quickly concluded that bot traffic was hitting the site hard and crawling through its data. While this is a primary concern in terms of performance, it also introduces real commercial risk as third parties use the sites data elsewhere. People were literally stealing CrunchBases’s data and monetizing it. Something had to be done.

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Network World Security

Shaken or stirred? Drone bartender battles bots in design challenge

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A squadron of flying bartender droids on their way to deliver your daiquiri.
Electrolux

Don’t you wish that at the end of the day, a drone would meet you at your front door with a fresh margarita? That’s the idea behind Yura the flying bartender—one of 35 conceptual contenders in the 2014 Electrolux Design competition. Won last year by a concept for a swarm of bee-like cleaning drones called Mab, the Design Lab competition has drawn a number of autonomous system concepts this year that roll, fly, swim…or just sit there and maintain a vacuum.

Mab, the winning concept in the 2013 Electrolux Design Lab competition.

Designed by Herman Haydin, a design student at the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Yura can carry up to a liter of juice, cocktails, tea, or coffee while keeping it heated or cooled and then dispense it into foldable cups or another vessel at the preference of the person being served. The intent of the design is to have Yura respond to voice or mobile app control.

Whether Yura is practical as a product remains to be seen. The same is true of some of the other autonomous semi-finalists in the Design Lab competition, which include:

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab