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

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751–760 of 968 posts

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

#751
post #389
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was obviously dumb when it launched: 1) scrapers just run a full browser and wait for the page to stabilize. They did this before this thing launched, so it probably never worked. 2) The AI reading the page needs something like 5 seconds * 1600W to process it. Assuming my phone can even perform that much compute as efficiently as a server class machine, it’d take a large multiple of five seconds to do it, and ge…

> This was obviously dumb when it launched: Yes. Obviously dumb but also nearly 100% successful at the current point in time. And likely going to stay successful as the non-protected internet still provides enough information to dumb crawlers that it’s not financially worth it to even vibe-code a workaround. Or in other words: Anubis may be dumb, but the average crawler that completely exhausting some sites resources…

the workaround is literally just running a headless browser, and that's pretty much the default nowadays.

if you want to save some $$$ you can spend like 30 minutes making a cracker like in the article. just make it multi threaded, add a queue and boom, your scraper nodes can go back to their cheap configuration. or since these are AI orgs we're talking about, write a gpu cracker and laugh as it solves challenges far faster than any user could.

custom solutions aren't worth it for individual sites, but with how widespread anubis is it's become worth it.

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

#752
post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are equally terrible - one doesn't require explanations to my boss though

If your boss doesn't want you to browse the web, where some technical content is accompanied by an avatar that the author likes, they may not be suitable as boss, or at least not for positions where it's their job to look over your shoulder and make sure you're not watching series during work time. Seems like a weird employment place if they need to check that anyway

we have customers in our offices pretty much every day, I think "no anime girls on screens" is a fair request

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

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really should be recognised just how many people are watching Cloudflare interstitials on nearly every site these days (and I totally get why this happens) yet making a huge amount of noise about Anubis on a very small amount of sites.

Both are equally terrible - one doesn't require explanations to my boss though

If Anubis didn't ship with a weird looking anime girl I think people would treat it akin to Cloudflares block pages.

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

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a configurable setting.

There’s no possible setting that would make it expensive enough to deter AI scrapers while preserving an acceptable user experience. The more zeros you add the more real users suffer, despite not creating much of a challenge to datacenter-hosted scrapers.

Real users suffer much more if the site is entirely down due to being DDoSed by aggressive AI scrapers.

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

#756
post #641
post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradoxically, the problem with an "alternative net" (which could be tunneled over the regular one) is keeping it alternative. It has to be kept small and un-influential in order to stay under the radar. If you end up with an "alternative" which is used by journalists and politicians, you've just reinvented the mainstream, and you're no longer safe from being hit by a policy response. Think private trackers. The oppo…

Not necessarily, Yggdrasil flies under the radar because it's inherently hard to block. Tor even more so, the power of Tor is that the more people use it: the stronger it becomes to centralised adversaries. The main issue with Tor is the performance of it though.

The truth is the internet was never designed or intended to host private information. It was created for scientists by scientists to share research papers. Capitalists perverted it.

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

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to talk seriously about art, representation, and culture. What's wrong with that? It's at least as interesting as discussing databases or web frameworks. In case you feel it needs linking to the purpose of this forum, the art in question here is being forcefully shown to people in a situation that makes them do a massive context switch. I want to look at the linux or ffmpeg source code but my browser failed a…

Hey there! The design of the mascot serves a dual-purpose, and was done very intentionally. Your workflow getting interrupted, especially with a full-screen challenge page, is a very high-stress event. The mascot serves a purpose in being particularly distinct and recognizable, but also disarming for first-time users. This emotional response was calibrated particularly for more non-technical users who would be quick…

(wow another Only on HN moment, the designer of the topic's catgirl shows up with topical work)

Thanks for sharing your design notes on the mascot!

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

#758
post #15

This is neither here nor there but the character isn't a cat. It's in the name, Anubis, who is an Egyptian deity typically depicted as a jackal or generic canine, and the gatekeeper of the afterlife who weighs the souls of the dead (hence the tagline). So more of a dog-girl, or jackal-girl if you want to be technical.

Every representation I've ever seen of Anubis - including remarkably well preserved statues from antiquity - are either a male human body with a canine head, or fully canine. This anime girl is not Anubis. It's a modern cartoon characters that simply borrows the name because it sounds cool, without caring anything about the history or meaning behind it. Anime culture does this all the time, drawing on inspiration fro…

> they share a name and some other very superficial characteristics.

I wasn't implying anything more than that, although now I see the confusing wording in my original comment. All I meant to say was that between the name and appearance it's clear the mascot is canid rather than feline. Not that the anime girl with dog ears is an accurate representation of the Egyptian deity haha.

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

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather not raise money for "hardworking" developers if their work is spreading DRM on the web. And it's not just "Big Serious Corporations" that don't want to see your furry art.

I'm not commenting on the value of this project (I wouldn't characterize captchas as DRM, but I see why you have that negative connotation) and I tend to agree with the OP that this is simply wasting energy, but the amount of seething over "anime catgirls" makes me want to write all the docs for my next projects in UwU text and charge for a whimsy-free version. (o˘◡˘o)

i love this thread because it the Serious Business Man doesn't realize that purposeful unprofessionalism like anime art, silly uwu :3 catgirls, writing with no capitalization are done specifically to be unpalatable to Serious Business Man—threatening to not interact with people like that is the funniest thing.

negative signaling works!

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

#760

I'm a scraper developer and Anubis would have worked 10 - 20 years ago, but now all broad scrapers run on a real headless browser with full cookie support and costs relatively nothing in compute. I'd be surprised if LLM bots would use anything else given the fact that they have all of this compute and engineers already available. That being said, one point is very correct here - by far the best effort to resist broad…

Bot blocking through obscurity

I like it, make the bot developers play whack-a-mole.

Of course, you're going to have to verify each custom puzzle aren't you.

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