• The Cycling News forum is still looking to add volunteer moderators with. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

State of the forum 2024

Page 33 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

Who is the closest to being a horse?

  • Pogacar

    Votes: 11 64.7%
  • Armstrong

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Landis

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ricco

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Vingo

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Roglic

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Remco

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • MVDP

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Ben Johnson

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Vino

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17
Ahem, uh, sorry to interrupt, but I'm wondering if anyone has an idea why Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel still keep in contact.
I mean, they both got what they wanted out of one another, but these two seemingly opposite figures still get together to make podcasts about bike racing without any mention of doping. It's kind of astounding.
Rather than speculate about what might be going on, Lance hypothesizes that Tadej Pogacar will win three more Tours and will then have to be considered the greatest rider of all time. But not really, because we all know that Lance is referring to himself, not Tadej.
Meanwhile, Johan takes the cues and plays along with this little game by nodding yes at pretty much everything Lance says. Maybe I've taken too much THC, but they seem to have a strange dynamic.
 
Your help please, for a moderator who is aware of, but doesn't really get, this AI stuff.

My apologies to them if my suspicions are misplaced, but the posts by josephews and now Noah147 seem somehow too inane and anodyne to seem quite human. {The rest of you can take that as a compliment: you are sufficiently objectionable for me to accept your humanity unquestioningly}

Joseph has posted some links, but none that are obviously spamming, so I'm not sure what to make of them: what is the point of anyone sending bots here? (again: great apologies to Joe and Noah if you are breathing sentient beings). Is the intention that they will return and edit the posts to fill them with spam links (some have been here a while without that happening: there were some links in Joe's posts in the Summer Holiday thread, now deleted, but that has not been typical)?



I have avoided replying directly or quoting them, which might trigger a notification, which is why I haven't @ atted them here, but even then, what would they stand to gain? They would know that whoever replied is active here, but unless they have burrowed into the software, they are not getting any info on us.

I am bemused, and perhaps a little naive: your thoughts please.

(I reject typically about 12 new account requests a day that the forum software throws up as suspect, and I presume that the software intercepts a lot more before it reaches my approval list)
 
But why? I don't get the bot motive.

And is it harmful?
The current meta is to mostly post comments that can be construed as normal, usually generic comments about films, locations etc to fool people into thinking it's a real person in order to then astroturf and put forward their ideas. They will have a database of millions of forums using a bot to create accounts on, mostly it's done to push forward political ideas or advertise a product, this one seems to be a Czechia tourism bot.

It's harmful on a mass-political scale, can theoretically be used to sway tight elections, but becoming less effective as time goes on and people start to recognise the signs. On this kind of forum anything like this will usually be benign, usually something to push cycling/exercise gear.

There are also leaked password databases scanning billions of accounts so they can take over old accounts on every website you can think of, because usernames with lots of posts have more credibility. If you go into your old outlook email and check attempted logins you will see hundreds of attempts at accessing it from every VPN location you can think of.
 
The current meta is to mostly post comments that can be construed as normal, usually generic comments about films, locations etc to fool people into thinking it's a real person in order to then astroturf and put forward their ideas. They will have a database of millions of forums using a bot to create accounts on, mostly it's done to push forward political ideas or advertise a product, this one seems to be a Czechia tourism bot.

It's harmful on a mass-political scale, can theoretically be used to sway tight elections, but becoming less effective as time goes on and people start to recognise the signs. On this kind of forum anything like this will usually be benign, usually something to push cycling/exercise gear.

There are also leaked password databases scanning billions of accounts so they can take over old accounts on every website you can think of, because usernames with lots of posts have more credibility. If you go into your old outlook email and check attempted logins you will see hundreds of attempts at accessing it from every VPN location you can think of.
If there's a link in the post, it can be potential harmful.
 
Ahem, uh, sorry to interrupt, but I'm wondering if anyone has an idea why Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel still keep in contact.
I mean, they both got what they wanted out of one another, but these two seemingly opposite figures still get together to make podcasts about bike racing without any mention of doping. It's kind of astounding.
Rather than speculate about what might be going on, Lance hypothesizes that Tadej Pogacar will win three more Tours and will then have to be considered the greatest rider of all time. But not really, because we all know that Lance is referring to himself, not Tadej.
Meanwhile, Johan takes the cues and plays along with this little game by nodding yes at pretty much everything Lance says. Maybe I've taken too much THC, but they seem to have a strange dynamic.
Lance Armstrong has the Midas touch. He basically exploded his life and legacy, but picked himself up, brushed himself off to become an investment maven. Likely that the Johan Bruyneel has enjoyed 6 degrees of separation along the way doing multiple language versions of the podcast he and Lance do together. I am sure that the few thousand dollars or euros that Johan monetized from social media are helpful. @131,000 subscribers on YouTube and looking to average @60-70,000 views. With Johan- Lance latest getting @65,000 views in less than a week. And both constantly comment about no current inside information other than what they get from riders not owners or team management. And a strange twist, Hindcapie bloodline continues, George doing podcast w Lance,Johan and his son Enzo winning both road and TT national championships for his age group.
One thing that has always puzzled me about Johan ,he is fluent, in any variety of Dutch, English, Spanish, German,French and has depth of all aspects from rider, coach,director and ownership coordination in professional bike racing but is not used by any major networks until this year.
Meanwhile riders w obviously less credentials like Christian Vande Velde, Alberto Contador, Sean Kelly all confirmed dopers are asked for color about the state of races. Unsure where Bob Roll fits in cycling history, but again all are employed doing cycling broadcasts.
We shall see as ten years of being banned expires for Johan..
 
Lance Armstrong has the Midas touch. He basically exploded his life and legacy, but picked himself up, brushed himself off to become an investment maven. Likely that the Johan Bruyneel has enjoyed 6 degrees of separation along the way doing multiple language versions of the podcast he and Lance do together. I am sure that the few thousand dollars or euros that Johan monetized from social media are helpful. @131,000 subscribers on YouTube and looking to average @60-70,000 views. With Johan- Lance latest getting @65,000 views in less than a week. And both constantly comment about no current inside information other than what they get from riders not owners or team management. And a strange twist, Hindcapie bloodline continues, George doing podcast w Lance,Johan and his son Enzo winning both road and TT national championships for his age group.
One thing that has always puzzled me about Johan ,he is fluent, in any variety of Dutch, English, Spanish, German,French and has depth of all aspects from rider, coach,director and ownership coordination in professional bike racing but is not used by any major networks until this year.
Meanwhile riders w obviously less credentials like Christian Vande Velde, Alberto Contador, Sean Kelly all confirmed dopers are asked for color about the state of races. Unsure where Bob Roll fits in cycling history, but again all are employed doing cycling broadcasts.
We shall see as ten years of being banned expires for Johan..
The industry followed along with the example being set against bruyneel’s squads, completely shutting him out as bad for their business.

Isn’t bruyneel’s ban for life?
 
Lance Armstrong has the Midas touch. He basically exploded his life and legacy, but picked himself up, brushed himself off to become an investment maven. Likely that the Johan Bruyneel has enjoyed 6 degrees of separation along the way doing multiple language versions of the podcast he and Lance do together. I am sure that the few thousand dollars or euros that Johan monetized from social media are helpful. @131,000 subscribers on YouTube and looking to average @60-70,000 views. With Johan- Lance latest getting @65,000 views in less than a week. And both constantly comment about no current inside information other than what they get from riders not owners or team management. And a strange twist, Hindcapie bloodline continues, George doing podcast w Lance,Johan and his son Enzo winning both road and TT national championships for his age group.
One thing that has always puzzled me about Johan ,he is fluent, in any variety of Dutch, English, Spanish, German,French and has depth of all aspects from rider, coach,director and ownership coordination in professional bike racing but is not used by any major networks until this year.
Meanwhile riders w obviously less credentials like Christian Vande Velde, Alberto Contador, Sean Kelly all confirmed dopers are asked for color about the state of races. Unsure where Bob Roll fits in cycling history, but again all are employed doing cycling broadcasts.
We shall see as ten years of being banned expires for Johan..
Getting back into the game. I see what you're saying.
Today Johan went on and on about Pogacar's performance at Lombardia and compared him to Merckx. The closest he ever came to talking about doping was when he said "We can't say who is the best of all time because things have changed."
Really? How so?