 Poster: A snowHead
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@All - Welcome to the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the third part of Common Era series of millennia (CE)(R)(TM) ... seriously you are *welcome* to IT 
EDIT #1: By way of clarification, after 35 years working in so-called Information Technology, we are now firmly in the mis-information age, massively enabled by the growth in Large Language Models (OpenAI's CrapGPT being the big gorilla in the room, but being chased by Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, & Musk's Twitter/X/Grok, along with Oracle, Amazon, & assorted other trillion-dollar outfits)
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Thu 1-01-26 18:11; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@admin, oh well. I thought it was way too good to be true. I tried 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@Dylan_T42, no idea what this means
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@thecramps, ah dude it's worth a try isn't it... it might have helped.
The Google AI results seem to be responding to our feedback, if sporadically.
| In AI mode, Google wrote: |
Is snowHeads down?
No, snowHeads is not down.
Despite several AI-generated "slop" articles circulating in late 2025 claiming the forum had shut down due to declining engagement, these reports were debunked by the site's community. As of January 1, 2026, the platform is fully operational and active:
Current Status: The main site and forums are accessible at snowheads.com.
Active Discussions: Users are currently posting real-time snow reports for the 2025/2026 season, with updates from resorts like Val d'Isère and La Plagne within the last hour.
False Closure Rumors: The "news" of its closure was identified by users as a hallucination or automated content from non-existent sources (such as a fake Los Angeles Subaru dealership page).
You can continue to use the snowHeads Ski Forum for independent snow reports and winter sports community advice. |
The search results are still a load of crap though.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Wow that’s shocking. I’m far from an expert on these things but I’m guessing this is deliberate traffic farming rather than AI hallucinations.
www.puentehillssubaru.com
Appears to be a legitimate website but someone has managed to insert a page of AI generated info about snowheads being closed down. Google has read this and being on an otherwise legit site has taken it as gospel. When you link through to the page on www.puentehillssubaru.com you get a page redirect to a casino site - which I think is their end goal.
The Subaru site has about 100 similar pages for Austrian Handball association facing collapse, airlines, etc, etc. With all these pages redirecting to the casino site.
So a case of black hat SEO taking advantage of AI search not actually being very intelligent rather than hallucinations as I said before.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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AI seeding? Have you upset Trumpet or Pootin?
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@admin, I feel like I've been gaslit by the terminator.
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| Dylan_T42 wrote: |
| @All - Welcome to the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the third part of Common Era series of millennia (CE)(R)(TM) ... seriously you are *welcome* to IT |
EDIT #1: 2026-01-01 got off to an ominous start, with a deadly fire in a Swiss ski resort, assorted deadly shİt happening across the world, and the ultimate harbinger of doom: Google incorrectly, albeit no longer, asserting that https://snowHeads.com was offline & the organisation had taken its leave 
EDIT #2: By way of clarification, after 35 years working in so-called Information Technology, we are now firmly in the mis-information age, massively enabled by the growth in Large Language Models (LLMs like OpenAI's CrapGPT being the big gorilla in the room, but being chased by Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, & Musk's Twitter/X/Grok, along with Oracle, Amazon, & assorted other trillion-dollar outfits)
EDIT #3: Suggest @admin amends the thread title to: The Internet/Google is Broken, but snowHeads are up! ...just for the avoidance of doubt ;-?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| admin wrote: |
@thecramps, ah dude it's worth a try isn't it... it might have helped.
The Google AI results seem to be responding to our feedback, if sporadically. |
Currently, the wordage from standard (Classic?) Google.com first links to the sH homepage, & then this
| Google's AI Overview wrote: |
| The status of snowHeads (a ski forum) is active, serving as the UK's largest ski community, offering extensive snow reports, forums for advice (like weather outlooks and resort conditions for late Dec 2025/early Jan 2026), member benefits, and hosting ski event discussions, though some potentially misleading news articles from mid-December 2025claimed it was ceasing operations or benefits, which seems inaccurate given its current active forums and reports. |
Well d'oh!
Last edited by You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net. on Thu 1-01-26 18:59; edited 1 time in total
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@kerb, nice online detective work - wonder who was 'responsible' ?
EDIT #4 (of the trilogy): Following a random result in another search, and whereas DuckDuckGo just points to the sH site, a Google search for:
| Code: |
| site:emec.org.uk snowheads |
- shows that that Californian Subaru site isn't the only one affected - it looks like there's a whole storyline of articles maliciously uploaded to EMEC: Albeit nothing if one searches within the European Marine Energy Services site itself
Last edited by Ski the Net with snowHeads  on Thu 1-01-26 19:01; edited 2 times in total
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Well it's not "hallucination" if it's fed a specific piece of data, which that looks like.
I haven't finished the LLM course, but if you have something with very little data, it may be quite easy to poison it. If one had a reason to do that. I dare say you can buy such things.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@phil_w, I wonder how much of this is pure LLM poisoning and how much it simply LLM/AI-labelled web-crawling being as easily mislead as a first year under-grad in a bar handing out 'free drinks' vouchers?
(cf the not-all-that-recent spate of drink spiking & methanol poisonings )
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| Dylan_T42 wrote: |
@kerb, nice online detective work - wonder who was 'responsible' ?
EDIT #4 (of the trilogy): Following a random result in another search, and whereas DuckDuckGo just points to the sH site, a Google search for:
| Code: |
| site:emec.org.uk snowheads |
- shows that that Californian Subaru site isn't the only one affected - it looks like there's a whole storyline of articles maliciously uploaded to EMEC |
Yes and a search “site:emec.org.uk handball” shows the Austrian Handball Association pages also been uploaded onto the emec site - although possibly now expunged from there. So someone taking advantage of compromised webservers in a new (to me at least) manner.
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You know it makes sense.
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If you do a web search for the phrase cited in the AI conversion with @thecramps, then it does seem that there are a couple of spammy published articles which the AI is referencing although visually the text is hidden -
Search for
| Quote: |
| snowHeads Ski Forum Clauses Down Amid Declining Participation and Financial Difficulties |
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Not flawless, failed to get it to tell me xxxxx sniffs bike seats and fingers dead hamsters.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Seems www.puentehillssubaru.com have in the last hour or so noticed the hack and removed the fake snowheads pages. Along with the hundred or some other innocent entities listed. www.emec.org.uk had already removed them, there are bound to be others remaining.
I suppose AI in this context is both the Google mechanism subverted to direct the traffic, but also the provided the automation to generate and upload the spoof pages. Probably also found the Webservers with a known weakness.
Wouldn’t have been worth the effort to do all this by hand just for a couple of days of clicks through to a dodgy casino site, but if you can use AI to automate then the effort vs payback calculation changes.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@AndAnotherThing.., that 'white-on-white' text hiding mechanism was noted *at work as a fairly easy AI/LLM prompt inject attack to get the models to do naughty things!
@kerb, glad they're doing something about, though securing the website should have been a first step?
('spose, if feeling bored, one could trundle around the search engines snuffling out other instances of Austrian handball & skiing oddball & associated bad-mouthing material with a view to expunging it from t'internet...)
But meanwhile, @Dave of the Marmottes, how did *you* know that XXXXX was my middle name !?
EDIT #5 (in the increasingly unfeasibly named trilogy):
Thanks @admin, tho' perhaps we could consider adding "...yet" or more accurately "...again" !?!
| PS: admin wrote: |
| ... it is written on the ceiling above you though. |
You does know your XKCD (#542 IIRC)
#ThereButForTheGraceOfSysAdmin
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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We have 2 family birthdays on Xmas eve. My brother asked AI (don't know which) to add 2 birthday cakes to a family group photo.
It did that fine. It also added party hats to the 16 people in the photo, added a twin of one of the children and changed the faces of 8 adults and 2 children to strangers, added a twin of one of those and turned his dog into a cartoon version.
My brother used the photo on our WhatsApp group anyway 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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It does today seem like chatGPT has learnt. I did raise an issue with support@openai.com, but whether that did anything I don't know.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Just searching "ALM Media forum shutdown" reveals that there are (unsurprisingly) a whole bunch of different forums - golf, snooker, gaming, badminton, etc. - it is (was) claiming as shutdown. So (again unsurprisingly) this seems like an effort to generate traffic rather than a specific attack on Snowheads.
I wouldn't recommend actually visiting the ALM site...
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Like Chinese Whispers for AIs
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Probably qualify for an Arts Council grant
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Or a Turner Prize.
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FAQ
