Feed or build? Which one first?
Warning.
This is going to run long and might/will get a little ranty and have a solid dollop of Australian sarcasm, so please read it two times, take a break between reads, so it hits different each time....
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The fallout from shutting down the site has hit very differently than expected.
What I expected does not matter, what's driving this blog is the overwhelming lash-out attitude of 'there is no point doing anything with ACARS because there are no functional/useful websites'.
The website has shut down for a few weeks and there are still bots hitting the site.
Bots with user-agent names like Go-http, ripTBGbot, null, MozBot, Scrapy, myDiscordBot, ddg_win, AI-BOT-TBG, TBG-Monitor, ja-tbg-acars-crawler, AISfetcher, GPTbotTBG, and some others with rather rude names.
The fact that these bots are STILL hitting a website that been switched off for well over a week sort of sits with what I was expecting, you guys have built bots to scrape the site just because you thought you were being cleaver and that you thought were the only one smart enough to do it and you were not even interested in using the data. You are getting zero data from your bot for weeks and you have NOT NOTICED!
What other conclusion can I come to? You built and deployed the bot months ago and have not looked its output for three weeks!!!!!
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(Stick with me, I'm making a point to show the way forward)
This is not always the case. I had one guy reach out to me very angry that Cloudflare had blocked his bot from scraping my site. He demanded I let him do it.
We had a bit of a chat and turns out his AI bot was feeding a Discord channel and he was using that data to post on X about a specific type of flight. He was trying to build a following on X by being a reliable source of 'osint intel' and using the ACARS data from my site was his edge.
There were two main issues, he was selling the intel, and his bot was AI vibe coded.
Pushing aside the fact that he thought it normal and reasonable to steal the data and sell his summary of it without thought we get to the anger he expressed that we had shut down his bot - the reason we shut down the bot was because it was scraping the site every zero point three seconds. Yes, every 0.3 seconds his bot was hitting the site search pulling data about his aircraft of interest.
This caused a pretty solid load on the server and slowed the site for real humans.
He actually apologized for that and said that it was supposed to be scraping the site every 3 seconds....
You read that right; he vibe-coded the bot and did not know how to check its actual poll rate.
Can anyone tell me how much ACARS data will change for one specific aircraft in three seconds? Anyone?
His bot was pulling the last 100 results as you all know, so every 0.3 seconds he was getting the same search results and just checking for something new.
Same with his intended three second search.
His reasoning to me "I don't want to miss anything". 100 results every three seconds lest he miss something of value.
My point here is it does not matter what your AI bot reasons, they are trivial to deploy.
THOUSANDS of you did it!
How much effort does it take AI to build a website vs a bot?
Probably the same or less? (I don't know the answer as I built my site before AI was an option).
* See the very bottom of this blog for some of my thoughts about AI in general.
Regardless of your reasons for asking AI to build an ACARS website, be it for personal use, or for the community, the result is the same....
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YOU WILL GET ZERO search results if you don't have any feeders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thenewarea51 and I have a great time on our fireside chats, so I am pretty confident he won't mind me using his comment as a perfect example of this blogs central topic.
You can see the start of this blog start to crystalize in my thoughts here in this Reddit reply...
These are just two examples of the many many comments and DMs along the same lines.
You all are giving up and waking away from ACARS because some dumpster fire went out.
Last time I checked, its 2026 and AI vibe coded websites are a thing.
I know of at least three groups that have reached out to me asking for me to feed their vibe-coded ACARS websites they have already built.... I've not yet committed to any of them, but it's interesting they all have the same 'problem', no feeders mean no data.
TO BE CLEAR. I (thebaldgeek) 10,000% are NOT suggesting you vibe code anything.
Get a real programmer to do it right!
I am just trying to make the point that the website is the easy bit.
CUE LOTS OF HAND WRINGING....
If only there was a way to get folks to spin up ACARS feeders before we have a website ready.
You can't vibe-code hardware!
Hardware takes longer to build and deploy than software, so we need the feeders to start building now so they will be ready for any and all vibe search.
Second problem. You all are saying the same thing "I want feeders to feed just my site, not anyone else's... I don't want to support a community, I don't want to work as hard as thebaldgeek did in helping folks do the hard part of setting up global ground stations, I just want to search for global military ACARS messages and sell my intel and become an influencer."
Ok, so lets run the checklist....
No feeders = no data.
Have an ACARS website up and running in just a few hours.
Don't want to build a community.
Don't want to build and deploy ground stations.
Whatever shall we do?
STOP RE-INVENTING / REBUILDING A GLOBAL ACARS NETWORK!!!!!
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We created the interest and 100's of people that have different levels of interest in 'avgeek osint' data rallied around and 'shot the lock' off their own wallets to build stations... that did what? That FED the website you all used! And what did using that website cost you? NOTHING! You did not pay for any of the satcom or local VDL hardware builds that you happily used an AI bot to steal the data from!
Stop complaining that thebaldgeek shut down his free website!
If you want to search military mission codes, it's time to pony up!
You could (but don't) make 30 API calls a MINUTE for those 12 bucks (I mean, you don't want to miss anything now would you).
Help promote it, help support it.
Kevin stepped up and built the real deal.
100's of radio and tech enthusiasts stepped up and built and ran, and keep running the ACARS message firehose.
Its time for you to stop stealing, stop complaining. Roll up your sleeves and actually do the work that AI cant do!
Last comment....
I've been accused dozens of times of shutting the site down for everyone except myself.
Anyone following me for any amount of time (even just a few months) has seen me say this time and time and time and time and time and time and time again...
It's a HUGE slap in the face that you think all of a sudden, I am going to start tracking ACARS messages via my old site just for myself.
No. I did not shut it just so I could use it.
No, I did not shut the site because of the AI bots. My reasons for shutting the site are deeply personal and you don't care about them; you just want your site back. It will come back, but not from me, ask around, there are a few current ACARS sites and many many vibe ones inbound.
If you can't wait that long, there are enough screenshots of my old site kicking around you can feed them into an AI and have an exact replica up and running in a few minutes... Oh, and if you pay your 12 bucks a month, you can have a global ACARS feed going into the site at the very instant it launches... If only you would
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Closing AI thoughts.
You only learn by suffering. If you don't incur any sort of inconvenience, you never learn anything.
AI is only as good as what its trained on. There are almost zero ACARS data on the web, so AI makes up for what it does not know. Keep in mind that the tech bros pushing AI charge on output tokens. So, no matter if AI is accurate or not, it MUST output lots and lots of verbal diarrhea so that their bottom line looks good.
Many of you have DM'ed me breathlessly with 'amazing and insightful' ACARS analysis done by AI, when it was genuine, I took the time to show you how the AI got it so very wrong.
When you emailed / DM'ed me with an arrogant belittling attitude of 'look at my AI bot and how much better it is than your site', I pretty much ignored you.
AI is built by programmers for programmers.
You must first be an expert in what you are planning to use AI for before you can use AI.
I am NOT 'anti AI'. It's an amazing tool. Just because you have a sledgehammer does not mean it is right for every kind of nail.
I think airframes is the viable alternative, but it certainly has its issues with delayed or missing data, which goes back to your central point that YOU built the network that ran your dumpster fire YOURSELF. Airframes is the next best thing, but it only captures a snapshot of your data. Other sites do exist, but again, none as comprehensive as yours.
ReplyDeleteI have airframes API, and manually use other sites including yours until it shut down. Many times, one of them caught something none of the others did. More often than not, it was yours - due to the network that you built.