My guess is it was a hasty response to bots that would create a bajillion new sockpuppet accounts. If there's no technical crew behind the scenes, then there's nobody to replace this band-aid with a real process, and maybe nobody to process applications.

"AI will replace our jobs when the customer can clearly and correctly describe their requirements; our jobs are safe."

Twitter's value was diminished so much after Leon took the helm that it was worth a fraction of some tech start-up that hasn't yet reached version 1.0 ?

"Peer reviewed studies showed a caual link between drinking water and thirst." So, naturally, drinking water must cause thirst, right? Kids these days wouldn't be so thirsty if you just stopped drinking water.

"People will never be replaced by robots, because people are cheaper and the factory owner doesn't have to pay when they break."

Though the cynic in me says restaurants will just switch to some other horrible practice.

"Oh, just connect to our free WiFi, the menu will pop up in your browser..."

It's cute how you still think they're your tax dollars, rather than his tax dollars.

Before chatbots: 1 hour writing, 2 hours debugging

After chatbots: 5 minutes writing, 6 hours debugging

"AI-powered search engine Perplexity is developing its own web browser..."

Sounds like "man known for dementia will read your library books to you."

Magic 8-ball, are you conscious?

Signs Point To Yes

"A Computer Can Never Be Held Accountable / Therefore A Computer Must Never Make A Management Decision" -- IBM presentation slide, 1979.

Or maybe you've heard it as: "An AI can't find out, so don't let it fuck about."

"There's also the differences between weekdays and weekends..."

You say that as if weekends are inherently different than other solar days, and not a cultural imposition.

"Triplegangers initially lacked a properly configured robots.txt file, which allowed the bot..."

"Allowed the bot" is the wrong phrase; you meant "politely asked the bot not to". In fact, you correct yourself in the next paragraph, so why did you misspeak at all?

Would love to keep buying from GOG, but the taxes part of their billing is screwed up, insisting I live somewhere i don't, and part of the purchase process is swearing that I will take responsibility for their mistakes. I asked tech support, got a big shrug and "what if you went to a friend's house and bought the game using their account?"

"and any QR code reading tool even remotely worth its salt..."

You're assuming most people are using QR-code reading tools that are up to your standards. Awful lot of people out there using iPhones, whose easiest-to-access camera tool scans for QR codes constantly in the every use, and pops-up a button in front of other buttons that will open a browser before it shows you the entirety of the text it found. And there is only one browser in an iPhone, with all the user's session information pre-loaded for convenience.