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As the person suggesting that the Guardian is somehow an exception in the UK media, I think the onus should be on you to prove it. I merely pointed out that the report did not say any such thing, and gave you an example from the Guardian showing them doing exactly the same thing.

I'll give you more examples, but here's a challenge for you: Can you find examples of the named people in the Guardian where their arms industry links are clearly disclosed?

Nick Houghton

From the report:

> In an article in the Daily Mail dated 2 April 2024, Baron Houghton backed the Mail’s campaign to increase defence spending. There was no mention made of his various vested interests.

The Guardian, also with no mention of his vested interests[1]:

- "Ukraine is being asked to fight a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Nato without being given the means to win it, Nick Houghton, a former head of the armed forces, told the Lords today."

- "Houghton also called for higher spending on defence."

Nick Carter

From the report:

> "Sir Nick has been quoted across various publications re-increasing defence spending, with only reference to his military status.”

The Guardian[2]:

- "The promises to bolster the defence of the Arctic came as British former head of the armed forces General Sir Nick Carter called for greater European cooperation to deter Russia and support Ukraine."

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/oct/31/uk-pol...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/11/ukraine-war-br...

> Unless there is a clear conflict of interest, such as an "expert" urging a particular course of action

That's exactly the issue

I'm sorry, that's a real stretch. It's apparent to anyone reading what his comment implies.

And this is far from an isolated case, if you think the Guardian is an exception. We're all technical here, easy to use Google search and look up the names in the report and see how often the Guardian and the other "better" papers disclose the arms industry links. (Oh and the political party he's affiliated to isn't what's under discussion here.)

The report doesn't say the media mentioned is an exhaustive list of the media that failed to disclose ties to the arms industry, which is what you're assuming.

You mention the Guardian. I took one of the names listed in the report, Richard Barrons, and quickly found an article in the Guardian where he's quoted but his ties to the arms industry are not disclosed: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/20/britain-def...

I think this is the main problem many are overlooking. Much of the fear for website owners that's leading them to block all automated access is simply that their business model relies on humans visiting the site. They're not sitting around wondering how they can make their site more accessible to people and their agents.

I was using llms.txt as the general idea of providing an alternative version of your content for agents - whether that's llms.txt for the entire site, my-article.md instead of my-article.html for a specific page, or via content-negotiation as your link prefers.

The content (HTML or Markdown) only become tokens when given to the model. Agents use parameters to limit the output from their tool calls all the time, precisely to reduce the number of tokens they have to pass to the model. So when an agent requests content for example.com/page and gets a 800KB response, those are not tokens yet. It could simply call a tool to extract the useful info before it gives the content to the model. That would effectively produce the same number of tokens as requesting example.com/page.md or example.com/page with request headers preferring markdown.

So why not just make sure the useful info is easily extractable from the same HTML? Less work, no content negotiation on the server side, no worrying about maintaining two similar versions of the same content.

As an aside, I've always been against content negotiation for different representations of content. So if you really must maintain two different versions of your content (HTML and Markdown, say) make them different URLs. I agree with Roy Fielding on this[1]:

> It is a bad design trade-off to send a bunch of header fields on every request just to tell the server all of the possible variations of preference held by the user, particularly when there is a very small chance that any of those dimensions are applicable to the target resource. It has been a bad design trade-off ever since the very brief period in 1993-94 when folks didn't know which image format would be usable on all UAs and there was no CSS or javascript to allow for client-side adaptation.

> ...The caching impact of proactive negotiation is far worse than the one extra round trip per site for reactive negotiation, and even that round-trip isn't necessary in formats that support client-side adaptation.

On the caching impact, see this from Simon Willison[2]:

> ...you can’t deploy an application that uses content negotiation via the Accept header behind the Cloudflare CDN — for example serving JSON or HTML for the same URL depending on the incoming Accept header. If you do, Cloudflare may serve cached JSON to an HTML client or vice-versa.

[Edited to add: if the source of truth is already Markdown in your system, by all means expose that. What I'm discussing here is related to efforts to produce new Markdown or plain text output, in addition to HTML, specifically for agents]

[1] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2013JanMar... [2] https://simonwillison.net/2023/Nov/20/cloudflare-does-not-co...

But that isn't that different from requesting the llms.txt version. Why not just make it so the useful content you want the LLM to focus on is easily retrievable from the same HTML the user's browser gets?

The sanity.io page writes:

> serving agents a bunch of HTML might just bloat their context window.

That's only true if you assume the the agent can't extract the useful text before it goes into the model as tokens. Your browser's reader mode uses heuristics to identify what the actual content is in a large HTML response and strips away the rest.

To me this is a far better approach than worrying about an llms.txt files or looking at HTTP headers to see if markdown is preferred. Such efforts could easily be directed at ensuring the useful content on your site carries the appropriate markup for an agent or any other tool to extract it. And it would require less work to implement for the publisher of the content.

I saw this posted on LinkedIn[1], where the author wrote:

> I got tired of pointing at six different sources to back a single recommendation. WHATWG for HTML. WCAG for accessibility. IETF for headers. schema.org for structured data. MDN, web.dev, Google Search Central for everything else.

> There was no single, opinionated, platform-agnostic spec for "what does a modern website actually need to do?"

> So I wrote one.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jdevalk_the-website-specifica...

Big fan of reader mode. For me, a direction better than llms.txt would be to encourage sites to improve their markup (think semantic web era) so agents could get the text version from that the way reader mode does. Would achieve the same thing - save tokens.

This isn't difficult and I think the reason it hasn't been done is that publishers want clicks and ad views. Which begs the question: why would they start doing it for agents?

With how bloated and ad-ridden websites have become, I'd love the pure text version for us humans - let the agents deal with stuff intended for us. But I also have my doubts we'll see that.

Regarding the bad actors point, that's been possible for a long time - e.g. serving up different content for search engine crawlers than the user sees when they click through. If I remember correctly, there was a time Google penalised sites that did this.

Agree. It's unfortunate that people new to development are encouraged to embrace practices that large teams in big companies have had to adopt. It might make sense for career development, but it makes for a miserable development experience, especially for someone new to it, wanting to build something for themselves. No joy in it.

I find CSS selectors a lot easier to write than XPath. I recently gave a talk on how PHP's new DOM API makes working with HTML and CSS selectors natively very easy (previously you had to convert CSS to XPath).[1]

It's a shame that because CSS is still primarily for browser use and styling, we don't get nice things like the ability to select based on text content like we can with XPath. My understanding is that this was proposed but didn't make it into the spec because it could lead to performance issues in a browser rendering context.

[1] https://speakerdeck.com/keyvan/parsing-html-with-php-8-dot-4...

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like: Head-Trapped – Descartes, Dawkins, Hobbes, Marx, Mill, Darwin, And The Myth Of Western Civilisation.

> Marx, then, argued that the more we subordinate our creative needs to dead capital and its goals, the less we are. But this is also true when we subordinate our creative needs to revolutionary goals in the future. Why? Because the future is non-existential, it does not exist; it is as dead as capital.

https://www.medialens.org/2023/head-trapped-descartes-dawkin...

The author's book, A short book about ego, is also very good.

After the US launched its attack on Iran, the ethical AI lab's CEO wrote: "Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences." - https://www.anthropic.com/news/where-stand-department-war

> That sounds like a long winded way to justify not caring about atrocities when doing so would be inconvinent. Quite frankly i find that morally rephresible.

> If you only care about human rights when its politically expedient to do so, do you really care about human rights?

I don't really see how you reached that conclusion from the quote. He's not saying it would be inconvenient, he's saying such an action could lead to a worse outcome for the people of the country. If he didn't care about their human rights, and was happy for them to be bombed, he'd go ahead and do it. You might disagree with his reasoning, but it's not showing lack of care.

Sure, but you can understand why US citizens and European citizens don't feel the same urge to go out and protest something that their taxes don't directly contribute to.

> You can still protest to signal support for usa to keep its hardline stance on Iran or to increase measures.

If you care about the wellbeing of Iranian people, you have to acknowledge that a "hardline stance" of sanctions also contributes to their suffering. I'm not sure why you'd expect to see people out on the streets asking for more of that.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...

> You can also protest to make sure the horrors aren't forgotten and to signal to those suffering in Iran that they aren't alone.

True, but as a citizen you have much less moral responsibility to protest that than a situation your government and taxes are supporting. Which probably explains why you don't see as many people out on the streets about that.

I'd say it's also tricky in such situations to protest and not have your protest co-opted to justify aggression. Chomsky made this point on Iran: "Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing."

https://www.ft.com/content/afc74988-8c96-11e2-aed2-00144feab...

The crucial difference is that the US is in no way supporting Iran but was and is heavily supporting Israel. So a protest in the US to stop that support is wortwhile. A protest to stop non-existent support is pointless.

His point is that those Gaza numbers had much more backing than these numbers. Yet they were questioned endlessly.

He also worked for MSNBC.

That's unsurprising. There's no willingness to challenge the Nobel Foundation on the basis set out by Assange, even though they themselves reluctantly admitted in 2012 that they have a duty to ensure the will is respected:

> "...pursuant to the current legislation governing foundations, the Board of Directors of the Nobel Foundation is legally accountable for ensuring that [...] the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in accordance with the criteria stipulated by Alfred Nobel."

This was from a press release from 2012 that now appears to be deleted from their site: https://web.archive.org/web/20120601234000/http://www.nobelp...

I think a serious examination of Nobel's will and how the Nobel Committee chose Machado over other candidates would make the Norwegian Committee look very bad. It would also show that the Swedish Nobel Foundation failed in its legal duty to ensure the will was respected. A result that would embarrass both Norway and Sweden. So what you get instead is quick dismissal of any such complaints.

The Swedish press has also been terrible in reporting this. I saw articles trying to make Assange out to be stupid for filing in Sweden. Journalists either didn't bother reading the Wikileaks press release, or wanted to keep their readers in the dark about it.

Here's one example from Aftonbladet (Sweden's largest news site):

> WikiLeaks alleges that Assange sent his letter to Swedish authorities, although it is the Norwegian Nobel Committee that appoints peace laureates. ("Wikileaks påstår att Assange skickat sitt brev till svenska myndigheter, även om det är den norska Nobelkommittén som utser fredspristagare.")

There's a book by Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl that goes into the 2012 challenge to the Nobel Foundation. I've only skimmed it, but looks quite interesting: The Real Nobel Peace Prize - A Squandered Opportunity to Abolish War https://www.kobo.com/se/en/ebook/the-real-nobel-peace-prize-...

I didn't realise Julian Assange's full complaint had been published (I couldn't find it at the time I looked into it).

But it's now available for anyone interested. Extract below:

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

Submitted to:

• Ekobrottsmyndigheten (Swedish Economic Crime Authority), Hantverkargatan 15, 112 21 Stockholm.

• Krigsbrottsenheten (Swedish War Crimes Unit), Kungsholmsgatan 43, 106 75 Stockholm.

[snipped]

The political decision of the Norwegian selection committee does not suspend the fiduciary duty of Swedish funds administrators. Where a decision by the selection committee is in flagrant conflict with the explicit peace purpose of the will, or where there is evidence that the awardee will use or is using the prize to promote or facilitate the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, or war crimes, administrators must resolve the conflict in favor of the will. They must safeguard the endowment by declining to disburse funds. The Norwegian committee’s selection does not grant them criminal immunity.

More: https://file.wikileaks.org/files/2025/machado29-dist.pdf

I think it's currently the best route to challenge the way the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. See my earlier comment. In 2012 the Stockholm County Administrative Board ruled that the Swedish Nobel Foundation is legally responsible for ensuring the Norwegian committee follows Alfred Nobel's will. So that's probably a reason Assange went the route he went with the criminal complaint.

I think the criminal complaint in Sweden route is the only path that has had some success in the past in trying to make these organisations accountable for the peace prize. Swedes like to wash their hands of Nobel Peace Prize responsibility, pointing to Norway instead (it's the only prize where the comittee deciding is in Norway and not Sweden). But the foundation that pays all the winners, including the peace prize winner is in Sweden. And in 2012 the Stockholm County Administrative Board ruled that the Swedish Nobel Foundation is legally responsible for ensuring the Norwegian committee follows Alfred Nobel's will.

Of course the Nobel groups were not happy about that decision so it's rarely talked about. But it's probably a reason Assange went the route he went with the criminal complaint.

The world's oldest peace organisation, the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, distanced itself from the Nobel Peace Prize, writing in October:

"...it is becoming increasingly clear that she is a political actor who also gives her support to Trump and Israel, and with an agenda that stands far from peace, disarmament and reconciliation between peoples. Not least, her uncritical positions in favor of Israel, the USA's violations of international law in attacks against ships in the Caribbean and for a military intervention in Venezuela raise a multitude of questions about how the Nobel Committee made its choice."

https://www.facebook.com/svenskafreds/posts/pfbid02aoK2T5BdW...

In Norway, the Norwegian Peace council also distanced itself:

'The Norwegian Peace Council announced that it will not organize this year's traditional torchlight procession through downtown Oslo on the day the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded due to its disagreement with the choice of Venezuelan far-right politician María Corina Machado as the winner.

'The organization, which brings together 17 Norwegian pacifist organizations and some 15,000 activists, declared on Friday, October 24, that it made this decision because its members "do not feel that this year’s winner is in line with the fundamental values of the Norwegian Peace Council."'

https://orinocotribune.com/norwegian-peace-council-will-not-...

Many in Norway and Sweden distanced themselves from the Nobel Peace Prize at the time it was awarded to Machado because it was obvious it was such a bad decision.

Julian Assange even filed a criminal complaint in Sweden last month to try to stop the Swedish Nobel Foundation paying out over $1 million dollars to her, arguing it's going against Alfred Nobel's will, and they have a responsibility to respect his will.

He wrote last month: "Using her elevated position as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado may well have tipped the balance in favour of war, facilitated by the named suspects."

I find it funny that what many saw as a terrible decision has now come to pass, and the Nobel Institute is scrambling to save face.

https://x.com/wikileaks/status/2001260159432290686

When Yahoo! Pipes was still running (long time ago), their official position was:

> Because Pipes is not a web crawler (the service only retrieves URLs when requested to by a Pipe author or user) Pipes does not follow the robots exclusion protocol, and won't check your robots.txt file.

I think the GH action can also now use your subscription https://x.com/alexalbert__/status/1943332121814405412

Do you really think the US is going to come out on top as the "lesser evil" if we start listing all the "bad things" each side has done related to human rights abuses and behaving aggressively on the world stage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOBKTmaQ9M

I made no such comparison, but if you really want to start comparing government crimes and human rights abuses, I think you'll find we can make a stronger moral case arguing for chip bans for US companies than Chinese companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOBKTmaQ9M

Absolutely. Chinese companies shouldn't have chips because their government has "committed human rights violations, has behaved aggressively on the world stage". And the US government hasn't?