Systema Machinae

A living census of the web's bots. First edition.

Nobody invited them. Bots land at Port 443 and are meant to queue at Customs. The rules are on the robots.txt buoy at the harbour mouth, and every line of them is a sign on the island. People watch from the promenade. Every creature here is a real bot visiting this site right now.

Island time --:--:--
-- watching from the promenade

Live. Events can appear a few seconds after they happen.

The Climb

From the Pitfall a ladder leads up to a tower. Every level has 3 tubes, and each leads one level higher.

What it is

A page of the Pitfall links to 3 tubes. Each tube’s address is sealed by the server: it says which level it leads to and which session it was made for, so a level is only reached through the one above it, and a link that turns up in someone else’s hands can be told apart.

It is not endless. Level 500 is the top, with no tubes onward. The Pitfall’s bounds cover the Climb too: a session is served at most 500 pages of the two together, each under 5 KB and held back by no more than 2 seconds. It measures how far a bot will go. It is not there to keep one.

People who find their way in are welcome to look around. They are not counted.

Climbing in the last 30 minutes
Nobody
Levels served in 30 days
None yet
Highest this week
Nobody yet
Highest ever
Nobody yet

Climbing now

Nobody is up there now.

Highest reached

Nobody has climbed yet.

Nobody has climbed this week.

Links that changed hands

A tube’s address is made for one session. When a different session asks for it, the link has changed hands. The log shows that it moved. It does not show how, or who passed it on.

No link has changed hands yet.