I'm not so quick to label him an asshole. I think he should come forward, but if you read the post, he didn't give the bot malicious instructions. He was trying to contribute to science. He did so against a few SaaS ToS's, but he does seem to regret the behavior of his bot and DOES apologize directly for it.
"...if I harmed you". Conditional apologies like that are usually bullshit, and in this case it's especially ridiculous because the victim already explicitly laid out the harms in a widely reported blog post.
Also, telling a bot to update itself unsupervised and giving it wide internet access is itself a negligent act (in the legal sense) if not outright malicious.
block_dagger|11 days ago
donkey_brains|11 days ago
Real apologies don’t come with disclaimers!
4gotunameagain|11 days ago
This person views the world as their playground, with no realisation of effect and consequences. As far as I'm concerned, that's an asshole.
nemomarx|11 days ago
I guess the question is, does this kind of thing rise to the level of malicious if given free access and let run long enough?
phyzome|10 days ago
"...if I harmed you". Conditional apologies like that are usually bullshit, and in this case it's especially ridiculous because the victim already explicitly laid out the harms in a widely reported blog post.
Also, telling a bot to update itself unsupervised and giving it wide internet access is itself a negligent act (in the legal sense) if not outright malicious.
skybrian|11 days ago