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Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

capjs.js.org

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Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#41

Post by jsnell »

wild_pointer wrote: post #7

So each spam message will take an extra second and 2 additional cents for electricity? I'm not sure what's the use case here.

If it actually cost 2 cents, it'd be tremendously useful. There are huge tranches of abuse that would become unviable with that resource cost.

In reality passing the PoW will cost more like 1/10000th of a cent, and you can't make it cost significantly more (let alone 2 cents) without making access totally impractical for real users. Proof of work challenges for abuse are basically snakeoil, it's impossible to make the economics work.

Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#42

Post by woah »

internetter wrote: post #20
aurumque wrote: post #17

Why not make this contribute to something greater, like scientific grid computing, or a charitable bitcoin donation? Instead we're just burning a few watts to slow down crawlers.

I like the citizen science idea, the bitcoin one is so shitty. There was an epedemic of websites covertly mining in browsers a while back and this is a dangerous road to go down.

The entire purpose of this library is to covertly mine in browsers

Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#44

Post by internetter »

woah wrote: post #42
internetter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the citizen science idea, the bitcoin one is so shitty. There was an epedemic of websites covertly mining in browsers a while back and this is a dangerous road to go down.

The entire purpose of this library is to covertly mine in browsers

Only for the protection of the service. With a financial incentive all of the sudden it’s deployed unnecessarily to every static site in existence, just like ads all those years ago. And the enshittificstion continues.

Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#47

Post by aiiotnoodle »

internetter wrote: post #23

> @cap.js/solver is a standalone library that can be used to solve Cap challenges from the server. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of Cap? Not really. Server-side solving is a core use case of proof-of-work CAPTCHAs like Cap or altcha. It's about proving effort, not necessarily involving a human. I like this. Allows for reasonable bots like IA without the mindless wasteful AI scrappers.

Sorry what is IA?

Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#49

Post by underyx »

aiiotnoodle wrote: post #47
internetter wrote: post #23

> @cap.js/solver is a standalone library that can be used to solve Cap challenges from the server. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of Cap? Not really. Server-side solving is a core use case of proof-of-work CAPTCHAs like Cap or altcha. It's about proving effort, not necessarily involving a human. I like this. Allows for reasonable bots like IA without the mindless wasteful AI scrappers.

Sorry what is IA?

Internet Archive

Re: Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work

#50

Post by hombre_fatal »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #40
hombre_fatal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I rather see something like anubis than some unsolveable captcha. So would bad actors. Which is why everyone uses normal captchas and not mere PoW. PoW is the easiest captcha to beat.

[citation needed]

For which part?

Every time a new submission is created on HN, you have a curl script that posts a comment on it shilling your product. (According to the /newest tab there seems to be one submission every few minutes.)

What's harder for you to automate: the comment always posts successfully after 500ms, or you get a Cloudflare Turnstile captcha every time?

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