Das Internet kann immer auch noch ein großartiger Ort für ominöse Ideen und sich daraus ergebenen Projekten sein. So wie das The Restroom Archive, das 3-Scans von öffentlich zugänglichen Toiletten aus aller Welt zeigt, die man so ja nie alle betreten würde. Als Bonus gibt es zu jedem der gezeigten Objekte ein kurze Erläuterung. Toll! Wie auch immer man darauf kommen mag; danke. Da geht er dahin, der Tag.
The Restroom Archive is an ongoing repository of publicly accessible restrooms. Designed and built by Jake Welch, this archive aims to document the diverse qualities of these unique spaces. Everyone uses restrooms, yet as spaces, they are considered taboo and are rarely considered. There is perhaps no space in society that better captures the creativity and impertinence of humans when they know that nobody else is watching.
Ralph Lawson hat einen bisher unveröffentlichten Daft Punk-Mix aus dem Jahr 1997 geteilt, den er restauriert hat, nachdem er ihn auf einem „verschimmelten“ DAT-Tape in einem Lagerraum entdeckt hatte. „Das Band war kaputt und es hat so lange gedauert, bis ich das in Ordnung gebracht habe“, erklärt er und fügt hinzu, dass es „verschimmelt und zerrissen“ gewesen sei, bevor eine Firma aus Bristol bei der Restaurierung geholfen hat. Und weiter: „Ich war so nervös deswegen, weil ich sichergehen wollte, dass es nicht ihr [BBC Radio 1] Essential Mix war, der im März ’97 herauskam“, fährt er fort, bevor er das Band im Video abspielt und einen Freudenschrei ausstößt, als er erkennt, dass es sich tatsächlich um eine Originalaufnahme handelt. Schönes Relikt der 1990er mit dazu noch toller Geschichte.
World of Warcraft: Forever, a re-imaginging of the legendary MMO,comes out Wednesday. The idea is to recapture the feeling of discovery and wonder players had when adventuring across its world for the first time back in 2004.
But 2026 is a very different time. Subreddits dedicated to the game are already overrun with AI-generated addons that rip off longtime developers’ work, and a company that helps players track their damage output tells me it is making changes to its API because of the inundation of AI slop addons.
Warcraft Logs is a long-running site made by Archon.gg that lets players track and share their logs of particular in-game fights so they can analyze them for ways to get better. This works by players downloading Archon’s software which records the data of their fights and uploads them to the site. Warcraft Logs makes its API available for free to other developers. It used to be mostly hobby developers, the CEO of Archon.gg and Warcraft Logs, who goes by Sildri Silentcrest, told me. Now, it’s increasingly commercial projects, which are supposed to ask for permission in order to head off projects that would break Warcraft Logs’ terms of service or wouldn’t be able to scale.
“There’s been [an] explosion of development,” Silentcrest said. “Now, we’re averaging a[t] least one commercial ask per day. And I’m sure there are more that are commercializing without our approval. One new World of Warcraft analysis company every day! It's hard to keep up.”
At the root of many of these is the explosion of vibe-coded sites and addons. Addons are custom pieces of software a World of Warcraft player loads into their game for a specific benefit. Maybe they want a guide on the most optimal questing path to take, so an addon shows them the way on their minimap; or they want to make big changes to the UI. Some developers make real money from these, either by running Patreons or receiving ad revenue from Curseforge, the main repository for World of Warcraft addons.
If you scrolled any of the World of Warcraft subreddits in the past few weeks, you likely came across someone posting about the new addon they ‘created’. Sometimes the poster discloses they used AI, other times they add an update later after being called out. There’s even a tool for players to use Claude or Codex while they’re in World of Warcraft, so they can keep making addons in the game.
And with the flood, Warcraft Logs is changing its own API. “We're changing our API to better align with the applications we want to enable. We like things that help our community to dive deeper into their data, like tools that give you a deep dive on why you died to a boss or how you can improve on your next attempt. We don’t like things that effectively scrape lots of the data from our site to show surface-level info on their own site. Unfortunately, the ‘scrape and show basic statistics’ type has become much more prevalent,” Silentcrest said. They said Warcraft Logs is also introducing a paid commercial key “so that developers with commercial ambitions can support the foundation for the projects.”
Addons have been a crucial and thriving part of World of Warcraft for essentially the game’s entire life. Developers have spent many, many hours crafting those over the years. Now, AI is ripping those off too.
“People are making rip-offs of my work and copying my ideas,” plusmouse, a well-known addon creator, told me. Plusmouse gave one example: a particular design for nameplates in the game, which are the bars that appear above an enemy’s head.
“Prior to that releasing I hadn’t seen any addons adopt that style of design, and now, it feels like every AI addon ends up using that idea,” they said. Plusmouse has found in some cases the code is so similar in the AI-generated versions, that they submit copyright complaints to Curseforge. “Sometimes the code is so similar the complaint results in a takedown, other times it’s just different enough to get away with it, despite feeling like my solution. Borrowing ideas is normal in addon development, but doing it on the scale that AI permits isn’t,” they said. Plusmouse said they made some of their GitHub repositories private, which they believe has stopped LLMs from using their code.
Another key part of World of Warcraft: Forever is that the game is letting players engage with it in their own, preferred way.
“If I can be hopeful, the ubiquity of services under development will allow people to pick their own experience,” Silvercrest added. “If they want to take their time and explore in a relaxed manner, then they can. If they have limited time and want to get to endgame content quickly, they can do that too. On the flip side, my worry is that there will be lots of abandonware that will frustrate users with out-of-date information, buggy software, and vulnerabilities.”
Silvercrest said staff at Warcraft Logs “feel pressure to do more,” and the site has used some AI itself for research and some code review. “We have a small team. People are using our API to vibecode features that are on our own to do list. Should we take those features off our list? Or should we bite the bullet and lean into AI tools ourselves?”
They added, “Two years ago, say we had 200 developers using our API and two or three or four were being abusive. Today, 10,000 developers are using our API and 1,000 are being abusive. The ratio has changed, and that really feels bad. It used [to] be developers respecting other developers’ hard work. I'm not sure what’s changed. Is it that Claude doesn’t read the ToS? Or is it that the new developers don’t care as much as the old? We seriously love some of the tools that this coding accessibility has enabled, but policing API use has become a struggle.”
A vibe-coded site that scraped Archive of Our Own (AO3) fanfiction works, reuploaded them and charged for audiobook versions is down now after the creator said they received over 2,000 takedown requests from authors in the single day it was up.
ao3.life, a website that sprung up following last week’s announced weeks-long outage of fanfiction repository AO3, scraped the internet for works to populate the site using “a swarm of AI Agents controlling 40 virtual machines were scraping the internet for all drives, scrapes, and sources,” the site’s creator, named Ganesh, wrote on a page apologizing for the entire project. AO3.life went down on Monday evening following widespread backlash from readers and authors on social media.
Before it went down, the ao3.life homepage said, “AO3, saved before it slips away. Search every fandom, ship and trope. Read it here, keep the EPUB, or let it read to you when your eyes get tired.”
AO3 went down on Thursday following a security incident, according to the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) which owns the repository. The site is expected to be down for as long as four weeks. OTW says no data has been lost. Readers and authors are generally distraught, unable to access the site at all for potentially a month. AO3 hosts nearly 18.5 million works.
ao3.life offered works as EPUBs for reading on e-readers, and as AI-generated audiobooks that Ganesh charged for after the first three minutes. They claimed on a page titled “Authors get paid here” that authors would get 91% of the profits, with AO3.life getting 9% to cover “narration and processing” costs. “Your earnings wait for you. You don't need an account here to earn. We hold your share indefinitely until you collect it, however long that takes,” the site said.
On AO3, authors can “archive lock” their works, making them visible only to logged-in users, which keeps AI bots like this one from scraping them and also gives better control over how far a work spreads or whether it breaks the containment of the repository’s intended audience. Of course, authors couldn’t access AO3 while it was down to lock their works if they were publicly available before the outage.
But some authors reported the archive lock not mattering. “I had everything archive locked on ao3 and it's still all here and I as the author have 0 control over any of my fics on there,” one AO3 author posted on Bluesky.
ao3.life said at the bottom of the homepage that authors could request their works be removed from the site: ”Every work belongs to its author; if one is yours and you want it gone, email legal@ao3.life and it goes.” Proving that you’re the author of the work to ao3.life required authors “leave a note on your AO3 profile so we can confirm it's you,” the site said. But how authors could do that while AO3 was — and still is — completely down is a mystery.
A lot of authors clearly used the legal complaints email. “In the time this site has been up, I’ve facilitated over 2,000 takedown requests. It was never my intention to hurt so many authors - and I’m truly sorry to you all. There’s no way to show my sorry [sic] better than taking this site down,” Ganesh wrote. “Why did I charge for AI Slop audiobooks? I doubt anyone knows how expensive it is to run a server like this, especially with the amount of usage this site got. It had 126,592 unique users within 24 hours of going up, and had terabytes of bandwidth in usage. In an attempt to keep the site up, I thought audiobooks were a good option. I sold like 11 audiobooks, if it’s any consolation.”
Fanfiction has become a target of AI scraping, repackaging and reselling in recent years. In 2024, I reported on how Etsy sellers turn free fanfiction into printed and bound physical books, then list them for sale for as much as $100 a book.
With AO3 down and fans scrambling to find ways to keep consuming the works they miss, some people have started sharing links to Google Drives on Reddit and Discord of works they’d downloaded from the site previously, even if they aren’t the original authors of those works. This has alarmed and angered a lot of writers; whether authors have the right to profit from their works depends on the content and their use of existing intellectual property. Fanfic is typically considered fair use — I can write a VeggieTales Bob and Larry fic without getting sued by Universal Pictures if it’s sufficiently transformative, for example — but selling it could draw the ire of their lawyers, and a potential lawsuit even if I happened to ultimately win it. Authors on AO3 are prohibited by the platform from monetizing their works or linking to payment platforms.
“It was never and is not my intention to hurt authors, and I hope every subequent [sic] action I’ve taken is representative of that,” Ganesh said. “From an attempt at revenue sharing, to responding to takedown requests as fast as I could, to taking down the site as a whole.” They signed the note: “Yours truly, a 17 year old from India that thought they were doing something good.”
In a supply chain attack, you don’t hack computer users — you hack the software they use.
Vibe coders are great targets. So many of them have forgotten how to code. And they have the security instincts of vibe coders!
We saw this play out with the NX hack last August. But NX is not that widely used. You know what is widely used by vibe coders? Claude Code itself. Especially inside Cursor.
On Thursday, Cursor reported the official Claude extension for Cursor contained a back door letting an attacker into your machine over ssh. The back door is persistent across reboots. [Cursor]
Cursor says 5,000 users were affected. The infected versions are 2.1.312 or 2.1.313 — if you’ve got one of those, upgrade now! There’s a bunch of cleanup you’ll have to do as well.
This only affects the Cursor Marketplace version. Other versions are not affected. It’s not clear from Cursor’s announcement how the malware got in there — there’s a lot of passive voice in the wording.
It looks like someone got into Cursor and just put the infected version up on the Anthropic marketplace account. It doesn’t help that the Cursor Marketplace does not sign extensions. You can just pretend you’re Anthropic!
A malicious actor used access to Cursor’s marketplace to publish a tampered extension targeting Cursor’s users, we were not involved with building, publishing, or hosting this.
So has there been fallout from this hack? There’s one big piece of possible fallout. I must stress, a smoking gun has not been confirmed — but I think it’s plausible.
Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, got hacked on Thursday, and they lost cryptos with a face value of $6.4 billion. Binance say the attack vector was a devops engineer’s laptop that had control of the systems at Binance. [Molly White; Twitter, archive]
We also know that Binance uses Cursor and other vibe coding tools. This is standard text in Binance job ads, including devops jobs, where you deploy and manage the systems the exchange runs on: [Binance, archive]
Integrate mainstream AI coding tools (e.g., Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code)
Because why wouldn’t you vibe code how you handle billions in crypto. That’s 100% the sort of decision a crypto guy would think was a brilliant time saver.
The first guy to suggest the Binance hack might have been through Cursor seems to have been UK security researcher Kevin Beaumont, who dropped a mention of Binance using vibe code in the middle of a long Mastodon thread on the Cursor hack. [Mastodon; Medium]
Again, we do not have the vibe code vector confirmed. But this is crypto with vibe coders. Whatever happened at Binance, it was something at least this stupid.
I’ll always remember that opening underwater feeling of Joachim’s ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ and the bells of Markus’ ‘Regensburg’… Well, you know we love full circle moments here, especially when they involve artists and records that played such an important part in the inspiration behind ASIP.
Markus Guentner and Joachim Spieth both appeared on the original Kompakt Pop Ambient compilation in 2001, a series that heavily influenced ASIP and remains a personal favorite to this day. So, 25 years later, it's rather special to welcome them both together as one for an isolatedmix.
Both artists have followed their own paths since those early Kompakt days, but their shared history eventually led to a series of collaborations, including Overlay, Conversion, and contributions to Markus’ own Kontrapunktalbum here on ASIP. Both have also contributed to the isolatedmix series individually too, as despite all these years passing, it’s refreshing to hear such a consistent style and depth to their productions to this day - a signature sound that many artists would strive for.
For this isolatedmix, Markus and Joachim revisit their collaborative work, bringing together tracks and remixes that connect the different projects. It's a fitting opportunity to look back at where it all began, how their musical relationship has developed, and what might come next.
We caught up with them both to discuss their early Pop Ambient days, working together, and making music 25 years on.
~
It’s now been three years since your collaborative album Overlay was released. Looking back at that record from where you are today, what do you hear in it that perhaps wasn’t obvious to you when you were making it?
J: I actually find *Overlay* to be relatively timeless; it could just as easily be released today. That may be partly because, for this project, we settled on a few cornerstones of our musical upbringing without making them a major topic of discussion during the actual creative process. After all, the starting point—or premise—of this collaboration was our shared passion for sound and the desire to finally try making music together after knowing each other for so long. And I think the results reflect that.
M: Yes, right … somehow “Overlay” is kinda timeless … but on the other side, we talked a lot about what and how we can do things together, where do we wanna go when we make music together. And we had this idea really quickly of bringing our musical background together … what we always loved … but not making a copy of it, just translating that influences our way of making things. And I'd say that “plan” really worked. You can hear a lot of influences on that album. Now, after three years (or better, 4-5 years with all the conversations, composing, producing) it’s still something i’d do the same way.
Markus, you’ve been part of ASIP for a long time now. You both arrive at this collaboration with your own histories and approaches — where did you first recognize something in each other’s music that felt compatible? Was it always the Pop Ambient connection? As that feels a million miles away from where your music is now.
Well, ok, of course the first touching-point is our shared history on Kompakt. But, in the beginning of Pop Ambient or “The early Kompakt Years” we didn’t know each other in person. Sure, I listened to Joachim’s stuff (and really loved it) … but it was never an obvious connection. And after a few years (when Joachim started AFFIN) we finally got in contact. So, Joachim asked me about an album (which i made … Crystal Castle) … and still (back then) it wasn’t a thing (or even an option) to do stuff together … but somehow we connected more and more over the years. We had some conversations on the phone, email etc … but a few years ago we made regular appointments with videocalls … and I think that changed a lot !!! Because we talked about so much stuff (not just music) for hours and hours. The connection became much more personal … and we realised during these chats, that our history, our taste in music, our understanding in certain things is very close. And then, everything became obvious !!! Of course we should work together, of course we should do some music together. And yes, it’s absolutely so far away from the early Pop Ambient stuff … but, we grew … we had our experiences … We've seen a lot of things. Not together, everyone had his own experience … but somehow it was the same experience … and that is what the collaboration and the work together makes it weirdly special.
When you’re working together, are you conscious of who is bringing what to a piece, or is the aim to reach a point where that distinction disappears?
J:The exact percentage of input each person contributes to a given track—or what is actually audible in the finished piece—is really a secondary matter; the process itself is what’s truly compelling. Moreover, we’ve established a relationship built on trust; beyond the Guentner/Spieth project, we make a great many decisions together—not just musical ones, but also those regarding Affin’s visual identity. We constantly bounce ideas off each other—asking things like "What do you think? Does that sound good? Does it look good?" Since we’ve been holding regular video calls for several years now, there is a high level of ongoing dialogue across a wide range of topics, and through that, you naturally develop a feel for what works—for that shared vision and sense of cohesion.
M: Exactly, most times we’re like: ok, let’s start with something … what’s your opinion on trying this and that … but hey, just try !!! and sometimes someone is sending an idea … and the other one is working with that out of nowhere. And it’s so wild to see and realise that most times (i’d say around 95%) we’re on the same level. Getting something from the other to work with just feels natural … not really thinking about: uhm, is that something Joachim could like? It’s way more: ok, nice, i can work with that, bring my “voice” into this. And in the end, there’s always an agreement on what we did with the material.
How has the way you work together changed since Overlay? Has familiarity made the process easier, or does a good collaboration still need a certain amount of friction or uncertainty to produce something worthwhile?
In recent years, we’ve also produced albums as a trio with artists like Pepo Galán and zakè; furthermore, we released the *Conversion* album last year as our second Guentner/Spieth collaboration. I’d say that, overall, the process has increasingly taken on a life of its own.
We sometimes surprise each other when one of us shows up with something finished, but we’ve never reached a point where our ideas were completely at odds... It’s as if there’s a kind of antenna transmitting signals in both directions—and it transmits reliably.
M: Nothing more to say about … absolutely right !!!
Have you found yourselves taking anything from the collaboration back into your respective solo work?
J: I think this happens subconsciously—almost certainly. With every collaboration, you learn something new and discover aspects you might not have found on your own; this expands the realm of possibilities, both musically and—surely—technically. Beyond that, we’re constantly exchanging ideas about solo projects and each other’s new remixes; things are always in flux, both within specific projects and on a broader level. From my perspective, a very productive connection has solidified over time—one whose foundation was originally laid with Kompakt and our first releases, as that was the path through which we learned about each other and eventually established direct contact.
M: Well, I absolutely think it happens … There is always something you hear and work in the back of your mind when you do a collaboration. But as Joachim said, it’s more subconscious. Not like: oh, i need to take that idea … or, he made it this or that way, i need to do the same. But something is always happening and you take that with you.
What can this mix communicate about the relationship between two artists that an original collaboration perhaps can’t?
J: The mix serves as a review of what has been achieved so far—an overview, a snapshot, a sort of bird's-eye view—that came together after a period of quiet. The project is currently on hiatus; we haven't been working on new material continuously for the past three years—rather, there are active phases and periods of rest.
Furthermore, the mix broadens the scope to include our wider circle and other formats—such as the track we contributed to the *Kontrapunkt* album on ASIP, as well as remixes where friends interpreted the project from their own perspectives. This made the process of creating the mix an interesting one, and we feel the result flows beautifully. It’s a lovely way to wrap up this chapter.
M: Exactly … At first, this mix shows our collaborative musical work (besides from remixes, the work for AFFIN, etc.). But it also shows the connection between the collabs and the different albums way better, than just listening to the one or the other album. You get a better understanding of all the connections that happen between these.
Markus is celebrating 25 years since his debut album, In Moll, recently. You’ve both been making and releasing music for long enough to have watched ambient and deeper electronic music move through several different periods of attention and interpretation. Do you feel differently about making this kind of music now than you did ten or twenty years ago?
M: In the end, not that much. The way I want to make music is still the same. I never chased any trend or thought that I should sound like something or someone else. Of course, over all this time you grow, get inspired by other things, learn something new, get rid of old stuff or behaviours. But the freedom to do what you want to do is stll present.
J: I think the technical toolkit has changed fundamentally—which is, after all, a natural process or form of progress over such a long period. As for one's attitude toward music—or love for it—nothing has changed. However, the ways of making oneself heard in the market have changed radically, forcing you to constantly re-evaluate and find new paths to gain an audience. Not everything that has happened alongside the digitalization of the music industry has been positive. Yet, the drive to make emotions audible remains.
Your two tracks on Pop Ambient "You Don't Fool Me" and "Regensburg" were so definitive for that compilation series, and similarly, it's 25 years since that compilation was released. Wolfgang had his own interpretation of Pop Ambient back then, but I’m
curious what it represented to you. Was it simply a home for these pieces at the time, or did being part of that series begin to shape how you thought about your own music? Do you think “Pop Ambient” exists in the same way today?
J: That’s an interesting question. It’s clear that we were pleasantly surprised back then by the wave of momentum that built up after the first *Pop Ambient* release came out. You could sense a real spirit of new beginnings on many levels. At the same time, we were very young, and everything had a fresh, exciting dynamic—we had no prior experience, nothing to compare it to... we simply approached our favorite label, they liked our music, and then it all just happened...
It certainly wasn’t just a matter of having our music released by a particular label. Looking back at that time, comparing it to the present doesn't really make sense. The reason is simple: a quarter of a century lies between then and now, and just as we have evolved as artists during that period, the environment surrounding Kompakt has also developed and changed...
If you think about ASIP, a direct comparison from the label’s inception to the present day would be hard to imagine. The same applies to Affin…
M: I remember sitting in Wolfgang’s office when he mentioned the idea of doing the Pop Ambient series because of our (and of course, dettinger, lohmann, etc.) tracks. So it was not just a home, it was the beginning of something … something we’ve been actively a part of. So that was very very special at that time. I’m not that sure, if Pop Ambient still exists in the same way, well, thb, i can’t just because of the long time … music changed, people changed. And for me (because i’m not an “active member” anymore) i can’t really tell if it’s still the same. But in the end i think it’s not better or worse … it’s just different.
If Overlay documented the beginning of something between you, where do you feel that collaboration sits now? Is there a sense of a continuing body of work taking shape, or is it more interesting to leave each encounter open-ended and see what happens next?
M: A lot of chats and talkings happen about the collab. But we try not to put any pressure on ourselves. The fun thing is, that we somehow always know in which direction we’re heading. So in the end we’re completing each other unspokenly.
J: In principle, the outcome is still open, but I think the parameters—the coordinate system, so to speak—have already been defined to a certain extent... We’ll see where the next phase of work takes us, and see when that happens :-)
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