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Precursor

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Precursor

#71

Post by Catloafdev »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #60
Catloafdev wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're creating optional opt-in protection layers for the services they operate. I genuinely don't understand these generic complaint comments. Are you complaining that they offer too much? Or do you believe nobody is offering similar services?

The complaint is that the offer is a great deal with no downsides for consumers, and this is likely to result in Cloudflare having a lot of power (which they currently don't have) as a market maker. This position as market maker would grant them the power to extract economic rent from the web economy by charging both sides of the web provider and web consumer market to get access to the other.

So the complaint is that one day they have such a strong monopoly that they can freely turn evil?

Just want to make sure I understand the real issue here, because that sounds like a lot of fearmongering to me.

Re: Precursor

#72

Post by swiftcoder »

dubcanada wrote: post #65

There is nothing stopping a bot from moving their cursor like a human. This is basically just putting up a door with zero walls and telling people to stay out of your house. All of these things are completely abusable/bypass-able and just annoying for actual humans who trigger flags.

> There is nothing stopping a bot from moving their cursor like a human.

Sure, we could write a library that slows the bot down and makes it move the cursor in procedurally-generated curves with a certain degree of noise added... but its all extra work, and it all slows the bots down. Presumably they wouldn't reveal that part of the secret sauce if it was all of the secret sauce

Re: Precursor

#73

Post by kingleopold »

akersten wrote: post #22

control+F accessibility no results Yeah so this mouse movement astrology is going to completely lock non-sighted/keyboard only users out of large swaths of the Internet isn't it.

just like how smartphone developers, engineers locked people with no smartphone.Some of the users that can no longer get services are really old people, disabled. In some well developed places on earth, you can't even check in flights without a smartphone, it's not even possible to travel for them.

Yet all people are ok with it

Re: Precursor

#74

Post by Tade0 »

cryo32 wrote: post #32
skybrian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it’s up to their competitors to build competing services.

I think it's up to their customers not to encourage consolidation.

Customers shouldn't have to micromanage every service and product like that.

We have antitrust regulations for such things.

Re: Precursor

#75

Post by dubcanada »

swiftcoder wrote: post #72
dubcanada wrote: post #65

There is nothing stopping a bot from moving their cursor like a human. This is basically just putting up a door with zero walls and telling people to stay out of your house. All of these things are completely abusable/bypass-able and just annoying for actual humans who trigger flags.

> There is nothing stopping a bot from moving their cursor like a human. Sure, we could write a library that slows the bot down and makes it move the cursor in procedurally-generated curves with a certain degree of noise added... but its all extra work, and it all slows the bots down. Presumably they wouldn't reveal that part of the secret sauce if it was all of the secret sauce

Acting like a human is something scapers already do. Using residential proxies, using latest Chrome user agents, not moving/typing as fast, etc. This is just 1 more layer, moving mouse naturally.

Re: Precursor

#76

Post by nojs »

akersten wrote: post #22

control+F accessibility no results Yeah so this mouse movement astrology is going to completely lock non-sighted/keyboard only users out of large swaths of the Internet isn't it.

I mean CF already forces 5 minutes of motorbike identification on anyone not in a whitelisted western country, so a small percentage of blind people is unlikely to worry them.

Re: Precursor

#77

Post by dubcanada »

pllbnk wrote: post #42

I have been noticing a lot of Cloudflare false positives where it keeps spinning on my sessions never actually redirecting me to the underlying page. If they keep just vibe coding and releasing a new solution every day, I am afraid it will be reflected in their services quality.

I get flagged way more often on Starlink then I did on my local ISP fiber.

Re: Precursor

#78

Post by dpoloncsak »

cryo32 wrote: post #56
Catloafdev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you genuinely asking "does anybody even need any of their services"?

Yes. I am asking exactly that objective question. They are advantageous to leverage in certain situations but essential they are not. We're used to, in the technology industry, looking for or creating problems to solve with services we are aware of. Moving back to necessity and need, do we really? Are we being objective? Most of the time, no.

Theres a few alternatives, but at a minimum yes you probably need their or a competitor's Name Servers and their public DNS. Rolling your own isn't very feasible.

Re: Precursor

#80

Post by Catloafdev »

cryo32 wrote: post #56
Catloafdev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you genuinely asking "does anybody even need any of their services"?

Yes. I am asking exactly that objective question. They are advantageous to leverage in certain situations but essential they are not. We're used to, in the technology industry, looking for or creating problems to solve with services we are aware of. Moving back to necessity and need, do we really? Are we being objective? Most of the time, no.

DDoS protection is pretty essential. I highly encourage you to read through what they offer if you're not familiar.
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