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Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

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Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#131

Post by antiloper »

turtletontine wrote: post #114
qualeed wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy ( especially considering anime is more popular now than ever; netflix alone is making billions a year on anime) that people see a completely innocent little anime picture and immediately think "pervent-dwelling imageboard".

Even if the images aren’t the kind of sexualized (or downright pornographic) content this implies… having cutesy anime girls pop up when a user loads your site is, at best, wildly unprofessional. (Dare I say “cringe”?) For something as serious and legit as kernel.org to have this, I do think it’s frankly shocking and unacceptable.

If anime girls prevent LLM scraper sympathizers from interacting with the kernel, that's a good thing and should be encouraged more!

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#132

Post by debugnik »

ranger_danger wrote: post #38
jhanschoo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link explicitly says: > It's a reverse proxy that requires browsers and bots to solve a proof-of-work challenge before they can access your site, just like Hashcash. It's meant to rate-limit accesses by requiring client-side compute light enough for legitimate human users and responsible crawlers in order to access but taxing enough to cost indiscriminate crawlers that request host resources excessively. It inde…

The compute also only seems to happen once, not for every page load, so I'm not sure how this is a huge barrier.

It happens once if the user agent keeps a cookie that can be used for rate limiting. If a crawler hits the limit they need to either wait or throw the cookie away and solve another challenge.

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#133

Post by serf »

I don't care that they use anime catgirls.

What I do care about is being met with something cutesy in the face of a technical failure anywhere on the net.

I hate Amazon's failure pets, I hate google's failure mini-games -- it strikes me as an organizational effort to get really good at failing rather than spending that same effort to avoid failures all together.

It's like everyone collectively thought the standard old Apache 404 not found page was too feature-rich and that customers couldn't handle a 3 digit error, so instead we now get a "Whoops! There appears to be an error! :) :eggplant: :heart: :heart: " and no one knows what the hell is going on even though the user just misplaced a number in the URL.

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#134

Post by nemomarx »

unclad5968 wrote: post #129
bakugo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more likely that the project itself will disappear into irrelevance as soon as AI scrapers bother implementing the PoW (which is trivial for them, as the post explains) or figure out that they can simply remove "Mozilla" from their user-agent to bypass it entirely.

Im not on Firefox or any Firefox derivative and I still get anime cat girls making sure I'm not a bot.

Mozilla is used in the user agent string of all major browsers for historical reasons, but not necessarily headless ones or so on.

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#135

Post by dcminter »

debugnik wrote: post #109
bakugo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more likely that the project itself will disappear into irrelevance as soon as AI scrapers bother implementing the PoW (which is trivial for them, as the post explains) or figure out that they can simply remove "Mozilla" from their user-agent to bypass it entirely.

> as AI scrapers bother implementing the PoW That's what it's for, isn't it? Make crawling slower and more expensive. Shitty crawlers not being able to run the PoW efficiently or at all is just a plus. Although: > which is trivial for them, as the post explains Sadly the site's being hugged to death right now so I can't really tell if I'm missing part of your argument here. > figure out that they can simply remove "M…

> Sadly the site's being hugged to death right now

Luckily someone had already captured an archive snapshot: https://archive.ph/BSh1l

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#136

Post by johnecheck »

Arnavion wrote: post #45

>This dance to get access is just a minor annoyance for me, but I question how it proves I’m not a bot. These steps can be trivially and cheaply automated. >I think the end result is just an internet resource I need is a little harder to access, and we have to waste a small amount of energy. No need to mimic the actual challenge process. Just change your user agent to not have "Mozilla" in it; Anubis only serves you…

Sadly, touching the user-agent header more or less instantly makes you uniquely identifiable.

Browser fingerprinting works best against people with unique headers. There's probably millions of people using an untouched safari on iPhone. Once you touch your user-agent header, you're likely the only person in the world with that fingerprint.

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#138

Post by johnnyanmac »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #124
ranger_danger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal convictions in the US require a standard of proof that is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and I suspect cases like this would not pass the required mens rea test, as, in their minds at least (and probably a judge's), there was no ill intent to cause a denial of service... and trying to argue otherwise based on any technical reasoning (e.g. "most servers cannot handle this load and they somehow knew it") is IMO u…

coming from a different legal system so please forgive my ignorance: Is it necessary in the US to prove ill intent in order to sue for repairs? Just wondering, because when I accidentally punch someones tooth out, I would assume they certainly are entitled to the dentist bill.

>Is it necessary in the US to prove ill intent in order to sue for repairs?

As a general rule of thumb: you can sue anyone for anything in the US. There are even a few cases where someone tried to sue God: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_against_supernatural_...

When we say "do we need" or "can we do" we're talking about the idea of how plausible it is to win case. A lawyer won't take a case with bad odds of winning, even if you want to pay extra because a part of their reputation lies on taking battles they feel they can win.

>because when I accidentally punch someones tooth out, I would assume they certainly are entitled to the dentist bill.

IANAL, so the boring answer is "it depends". reparations aren't guaranteed, but there's 50 different state laws to consider, on top of federal law.

Generally, they are not entitled to pay for damages themselves, but they may possibly be charged with battery. Intent will be a strong factor in winning the case.

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#139

Post by Hamuko »

turtletontine wrote: post #114
qualeed wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy ( especially considering anime is more popular now than ever; netflix alone is making billions a year on anime) that people see a completely innocent little anime picture and immediately think "pervent-dwelling imageboard".

Even if the images aren’t the kind of sexualized (or downright pornographic) content this implies… having cutesy anime girls pop up when a user loads your site is, at best, wildly unprofessional. (Dare I say “cringe”?) For something as serious and legit as kernel.org to have this, I do think it’s frankly shocking and unacceptable.

Isn't the mascot/logo for the Linux kernel a cartoon penguin?

Re: Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

#140

Post by jagged-chisel »

johnecheck wrote: post #136
Arnavion wrote: post #45

>This dance to get access is just a minor annoyance for me, but I question how it proves I’m not a bot. These steps can be trivially and cheaply automated. >I think the end result is just an internet resource I need is a little harder to access, and we have to waste a small amount of energy. No need to mimic the actual challenge process. Just change your user agent to not have "Mozilla" in it; Anubis only serves you…

Sadly, touching the user-agent header more or less instantly makes you uniquely identifiable. Browser fingerprinting works best against people with unique headers. There's probably millions of people using an untouched safari on iPhone. Once you touch your user-agent header, you're likely the only person in the world with that fingerprint.

I wouldn’t think the intention is to s/Mozilla// but to select another well-known UA string.
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