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How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

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Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#161

Post by fc417fc802 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #21
losteric wrote: post #9

> Plain headless Chromium is easy to detect by websites with anti-bot measures. Plain headless Chromium avoided getting blocked by websites only 2% of the time, according to our stealth benchmark. > Our browsers avoid blocks 81% of the time on our stealth benchmark, and 84.8% on Halluminate BrowserBench, the highest of any provider. Seems very unethical, no? Who uses service providers like this? The whole point of an…

> Seems very unethical, no? Who uses service providers like this? The whole point of anti-bot measures is to get rid of bots - you are not wanted there. Unethical just because it does something someone else doesn't want? I guess it depends on why and what the intention is. I don't have time to sit 24/7 in front of a computer to get a ticket to some events, does that mean it's unethical for me to use my own bot so I c…

> But if I did so for scalping purposes? Then yeah, I'd agree it's unethical.

Is scalping actually unethical though? Sure it's unpopular, but I'd argue that's just your average person not properly grasping supply and demand and thinking through the consequences. If you want to sell something below market then you should raffle it off and take extensive measures to prevent transfer of ownership. The current practice is trying to pretend it's an open market while fixing the price, then getting angry when the obvious consequences materialize. Scalpers are merely the agents that correct a market inefficiency introduced by a dysfunctional status quo.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#162

Post by fc417fc802 »

devmor wrote: post #147
baby_souffle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who uses service providers like this? I use change detection to monitor all sorts of websites for changes. Some of my favorite authors don't have RSS. I always set up price monitoring for any big ticket item I'm considering like appliances so I can see how their pricing changes over time. I also use scrapers for websites that don't have an API. I like having all of my purchase history indexed in a database where I…

This attitude, and by proxy this business are the epitome of selfish entitlement. You state that you believe you deserve access to others’ resources, at their cost, despite their clear attempts to stop you from using them, simply because you want it.

I'd counter that your attitude is a techno-authoritarian one. Why should anyone have any say over how I access and use a publicly available resource? At least so long as my actions don't directly cause technical problems for the service operator.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#163

Post by giancarlostoro »

devmor wrote: post #147
baby_souffle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who uses service providers like this? I use change detection to monitor all sorts of websites for changes. Some of my favorite authors don't have RSS. I always set up price monitoring for any big ticket item I'm considering like appliances so I can see how their pricing changes over time. I also use scrapers for websites that don't have an API. I like having all of my purchase history indexed in a database where I…

This attitude, and by proxy this business are the epitome of selfish entitlement. You state that you believe you deserve access to others’ resources, at their cost, despite their clear attempts to stop you from using them, simply because you want it.

I mean, this is how Google was built.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#164

Post by hirsin »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #162
devmor wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude, and by proxy this business are the epitome of selfish entitlement. You state that you believe you deserve access to others’ resources, at their cost, despite their clear attempts to stop you from using them, simply because you want it.

I'd counter that your attitude is a techno-authoritarian one. Why should anyone have any say over how I access and use a publicly available resource? At least so long as my actions don't directly cause technical problems for the service operator.

Look, it wasn't _my_ request that made the server fall over, it must have been one of the other several thousand thoughtless scrapers running on the website that caused it to die.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#165

Post by Banou »

losteric wrote: post #9

> Plain headless Chromium is easy to detect by websites with anti-bot measures. Plain headless Chromium avoided getting blocked by websites only 2% of the time, according to our stealth benchmark. > Our browsers avoid blocks 81% of the time on our stealth benchmark, and 84.8% on Halluminate BrowserBench, the highest of any provider. Seems very unethical, no? Who uses service providers like this? The whole point of an…

Like if cloudflare and other protection services don't make the web more human-hostile blocking un-approved browsers and tools like cURL. Captchas and others already get solved by AIs nowadays, they're just friction done to collect labeling data for free from users...

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#166

Post by saltmate »

baby_souffle wrote: post #79
losteric wrote: post #9

> Plain headless Chromium is easy to detect by websites with anti-bot measures. Plain headless Chromium avoided getting blocked by websites only 2% of the time, according to our stealth benchmark. > Our browsers avoid blocks 81% of the time on our stealth benchmark, and 84.8% on Halluminate BrowserBench, the highest of any provider. Seems very unethical, no? Who uses service providers like this? The whole point of an…

> Who uses service providers like this? I use change detection to monitor all sorts of websites for changes. Some of my favorite authors don't have RSS. I always set up price monitoring for any big ticket item I'm considering like appliances so I can see how their pricing changes over time. I also use scrapers for websites that don't have an API. I like having all of my purchase history indexed in a database where I…

Did you ask them for an RSS feed? Lots of people are pretty reasonable for such requests if you write a nice email.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#167

Post by thundergolfer »

flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #153
thundergolfer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately supply is quite limited. If you want to horizontally scale on these instances you need to have a good relationship with AWS so they'll give you a big allocation before c9i is a thing.

I haven't personally tried, so I can't say for certain, but Lambda has publicly stated they run on bare metal EC2 instances, presumably the supply of whatever instance types they use should be fairly healthy

You're talking about AWS Lambda?

- Their use of bare metal isn't necessarily the latest gen hardware - AWS Lambda is part of AWS, and obviously has privileged access to supply

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#168

Post by saltmate »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #162
devmor wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude, and by proxy this business are the epitome of selfish entitlement. You state that you believe you deserve access to others’ resources, at their cost, despite their clear attempts to stop you from using them, simply because you want it.

I'd counter that your attitude is a techno-authoritarian one. Why should anyone have any say over how I access and use a publicly available resource? At least so long as my actions don't directly cause technical problems for the service operator.

> At least so long as my actions don't directly cause technical problems for the service operator.

That's the point of the criticism. The praise of their anti-anti-bot features reads like it is commonly used to cause technical problems to the service providers, be it intended or accepted for the cause.

Re: How we run Firecracker VMs inside EC2 and start browsers in less than 1s

#169

Post by saltmate »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #161
embedding-shape wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems very unethical, no? Who uses service providers like this? The whole point of anti-bot measures is to get rid of bots - you are not wanted there. Unethical just because it does something someone else doesn't want? I guess it depends on why and what the intention is. I don't have time to sit 24/7 in front of a computer to get a ticket to some events, does that mean it's unethical for me to use my own bot so I c…

> But if I did so for scalping purposes? Then yeah, I'd agree it's unethical. Is scalping actually unethical though? Sure it's unpopular, but I'd argue that's just your average person not properly grasping supply and demand and thinking through the consequences. If you want to sell something below market then you should raffle it off and take extensive measures to prevent transfer of ownership. The current practice i…

Noone thinks concert ticket sales are an open market tho. They have one seller that sets the price, no competition between different sellers.

It only becomes a "market" after scalpers buy all contingent to resell.

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