sudo

joined 2 years ago
[–] sudo@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

And how do you actually check for working JS in a way that can’t be easily spoofed? Hint: PoW is a good way to do that.

Accessing the browsers API in any way is way harder to spoof than some hashing. I already suggested checking if the browser has graphics acceleration. That would filter out the vast majority of headless browsers too. PoW is just math and is easy to spoof without running any JavaScript. You can even do it faster than real JavaScript users something like Rust or C.

Meta refresh is a downgrade in usability for everyone but a tiny minority that has disabled JS.

What are you talking about? It just refreshes the page without doing any of the extra computation that PoW does. What extra burden does it put on users?

[–] sudo@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (8 children)

You are arguing a strawman. Anubis works because because most AI scrapers (currently) don’t want to spend extra on running headless chromium

WTF, That's what I already said? That was my entire point from the start!? You don't need PoW to force headless usage. Any JavaScript challenge will suffice. I even said the Meta Refresh challenge Anubis provides is sufficient and explicitly recommended it.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago

Well in most cases it would by Python requests not curl. But yes, forcing them to use a browser is the real cost. Not just in CPU time but in programmer labor. PoW is overkill for that though.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 6 points 2 weeks ago

Anubis is that it has a graded tier system of how sketchy a client is and changing the kind of challenge based on a a weighted priority system.

Last I checked that was just User-Agent regexes and IP lists. But that's where Anubis should continue development, and hopefully they've improved since. Discerning real users from bots is how you do proper bot management. Not imposing a flat tax on all connections.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago

Then there was a paper arguing that PoW can still work, as long as you scale the difficulty in such a way that a legit user

Telling a legit user from a fake user is the entire game. If you can do that you just block the fake user. Professional bot blockers like Cloudflare or Akamai have machine learning systems to analyze trends in network traffic and serve JS challenges to suspicious clients. Last I checked, all Anubis uses is User-Agent filters, which is extremely behind the curve. Bots are able to get down to faking TLS fingerprints and matching them with User-Agents.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Its like you didn't understand anything I said. Anubis does work. I said it works. But it works because most AI crawlers don't have a headless browser to solve the PoW. To operate efficiently at the high volume required, they use raw http requests. The vast majority are probably using basic python requests module.

You don't need PoW to throttle general access to your site and that's not the fundamental assumption of PoW. PoW assumes (incorrectly) that bots won't pay the extra flops to scrape the website. But bots are paid to scape the website users aren't. They'll just scale horizontally and open more parallel connections. They have the money.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 42 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

I've repeatedly stated this before: Proof of Work bot-management is only Proof of Javascript bot-management. It is nothing to a headless browser to by-pass. Proof of JavaScript does work and will stop the vast majority of bot traffic. That's how Anubis actually works. You don't need to punish actual users by abusing their CPU. POW is a far higher cost on your actual users than the bots.

Last I checked Anubis has an JavaScript-less strategy called "Meta Refresh". It first serves you a blank HTML page with a <meta> tag instructing the browser to refresh and load the real page. I highly advise using the Meta Refresh strategy. It should be the default.

I'm glad someone is finally making an open source and self hostable bot management solution. And I don't give a shit about the cat-girls, nor should you. But Techaro admitted they had little idea what they were doing when they started and went for the "nuclear option". Fuck Proof of Work. It was a Dead On Arrival idea decades ago. Techaro should strip it from Anubis.

I haven't caught up with what's new with Anubis, but if they want to get stricter bot-management, they should check for actual graphics acceleration.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

I did not mean proper balkanization with interstate wars. Just breaking up the US as OP suggested.

Regardless, the idea that the US's imperialism has brought peace to the world is deeply unserious. As well is your notion that China would be the new global aggressor. At worst it would be the regional hegemon that it has historically been. Israel and the UAE have been far more aggressive than that and with the US's backing.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

lol no. It might be better off for the world if the US was balkanized but absolutely not for the US. Size and diversity are not the sources of the US's problems. In fact, the EU would be better off more unified if it could manage it.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 9 points 3 weeks ago

Made from white cheddar instead of yellow cheddar. Only difference is no annetto.

[–] sudo@programming.dev 23 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
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