Precursor • Hacker News Board

Re: Precursor

#111

Post by mark212 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

nullpoint420 wrote: post #37

pryelluw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to decide what is a good bot?

Cloudflare, apparently.

no, their customers. Why do you assume that people who run websites are clueless and lack agency in this?

Re: Precursor

#112

Post by bogdan » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #99

abirch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's going to lock the non-sighted//keyboard only users out of the anonymous Internet. I'm guessing if you log in and give up your anonymity they'll consider you not a bot.

That's even worse

Why worry? Just send them a photo of your ID and you'll be fine. /s

Re: Precursor

#113

Post by Uzazo » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

randunel wrote: post #98

nojs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't do that, but they do force endless loops of checkbox ticking onto users from unwanted countries https://imgur.com/a/AzNSreV

Are you using Chromium? They block that - retry in Google Chrome.

Re: Precursor

#114

Post by shimman » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #25

Havoc wrote: post #12

It’s a bit alarming how cloudflare is establishing itself as arbiter of all things bots…both on blocking and allowing. Doesn’t seem healthy for the internet as a whole

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

No, it's up to the people to regulate tech companies into submission.

Re: Precursor

#115

Post by seba_dos1 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

eastdakota wrote: post #91

nojs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re confusing us with Google. We don’t have a visual CAPTCHA.

Yeah, you just have spinners that keep refreshing the page and spinning when you're using Firefox or a mobile device that's neither on Android nor iOS.

Potato potato.

Re: Precursor

#116

Post by altairprime » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

I can’t wait for Cloudflare to decide my musical-rhythm enhanced typing and extraordinarily rapid and repeatable-pattern captcha clicking are somehow machine signifiers just like Google does: If I complete Google captchas at full speed it decides I’m a robot and challenges me endlessly, once 29 times in a row in two minutes or something. That’s what I get for having excellent spatial reflexes and mouse-clicker practice from Q3A sniping. So exhausted of the reversion to mediocre tendency of anti-bot systems, sigh.

Re: Precursor

#117

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:26 PM UTC

reluctant_dev wrote: post #8

What prevents bots/agents from just adding "jitter" to their movements that mimics how humans move their cursor? I know there are other signals being used but this one in particular seems like it wouldn't be hard to beat with a small amount of sophistication from the bot.

[deleted]

Re: Precursor

#118

Post by owenthejumper » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

Catloafdev wrote: post #39

cryo32 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What Cloudflare competitors offer a similar range of services?

Akamai, Fastly, HAProxy, F5, many others? Talking about bots specifically, not about "workers" etc.

Re: Precursor

#119

Post by halJordan » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

postalcoder wrote: post #82

Havoc wrote: post #12

It’s a bit alarming how cloudflare is establishing itself as arbiter of all things bots…both on blocking and allowing. Doesn’t seem healthy for the internet as a whole

Gonna zag here. If you take a step back, cloudflare has been paving the path for pay for crawl. I think it's a noble and ambitious goal. While I can understand why you would be alarmed, I can point to almost two decades of lamenting on this forum about how we need better ways of rewarding content creators than ads. Well, this is it. Moreover, these products weren't built in a vacuum. Most threads about Anthropic and…

Is it a better way though? The problem with ads has always been their abusive nature. From unrestrained pop ups and clickjacking in the 90s to today's pervasive surveillance and profiling.

Cloudflare turnstile is a pop up. This product is pervasive surveillance. It having a cf logo doesn't change that or ameliorate the many many abuses that two decades have shown are part and parcel.

Re: Precursor

#120

Post by skybrian » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

mcmcmc wrote: post #109

skybrian wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments based on incentives can prove anything. We could just as easily say they have incentives to provide tools to both sides and let them fight it out. It would be like Gmail automatically whitelisting email from other Gmail accounts or blacklisting email from competitors. Why should Google do that? Their customers are mostly strangers to each other and they want spam filters that work well.

> It would be like Gmail automatically whitelisting email from other Gmail accounts or blacklisting email from competitors. Why should Google do that? Their customers are mostly strangers to each other and they want spam filters that work well. Crazy to post this when Google basically does do that with Gmail addresses. They may shove it into your “other” folder but they do absolutely nothing to stop free Gmail accoun…

Huh, I've never seen that.