5 ms·
With the calm, respectful understanding that everything is subjective and there's no accounting for taste - and in my personal capacity - I do not understand
by mpalmer 1y ago
With the calm, respectful understanding that everything is subjective and there's no accounting for taste -
and in my personal capacity -
I do not understand how cutesy anime characters have been deemed sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne enough to be displayed to literally every single person who visits my site.
With apologies to fans of the art style, it is a negative signal to me. I do not prefer to use Cloudflare for things like this, but I would not use Anubis unless I could disable the imagery, and every time I see it on another site, I think: "hm. weird. whose branding is this?"
- account42 1y agoI don't like the art either but much worse is how accepting open source projects are of putting the DRM that's behind it on their websites.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- overboard2 1y agoI for one don't see anything wrong with anime characters, though I suppose neither of us are likely to change our minds.
- mpalmer 1y ago"sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne" != "wrong"
- necovek 1y agoI would say you are being unnecessarily pedantic: the GP said "anything wrong", and the original comment obviously believes that there is "something wrong" which makes the choice not "sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne" (/me looking up "anodyne"). The obvious positive reading of the GP comment is that they disagree anime characters make it not "sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne".
- nightpool 1y agoYou are replying to the GP.
- necovek 1y agoI am replying to the "parent" comment which replies to the "grandparent" comment on the "original comment". You seem to be unnecessarily pedantic too, while being wrong at the same time (I would get those relationships wrong sometimes if I thought it was clear enough).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- squeaky-clean 1y agoGP is overboard42. mpalmer is GGP / OP.
- c0balt 1y ago> but I would not use Anubis unless I could disable the imagery, and every time I see it on another site, I think: "hm. weird. whose branding is this?" They do offer an unbranded version, botstopper. It is part of their commercial offering [0] and intended for "professional" environments [0]: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
- account42 1y agoIMO this makes it even worse - not only are FOSS projects now happily putting DRM on their websites, they also add ads for a commercial service.
- mpalmer 1y agoCan't fault the logic. Will never use it if that's part of what they've chosen to paywall.
- xena 1y agoOnce the project is sustainable (where I define sustainable as monthly recurring revenue--not one time donations--to be at $5000 USD per month as that is the point where my bank account stays flatlined not accounting for tax), an option to remove it will be added to the version you don't have to pay for. Otherwise, it's MIT licensed software. You can remove it all you want, but I will use that as a signal to focus my time and energy as I see fit.
- mpalmer 1y agoI appreciate the response, and your point is valid. FWIW there's no sarcasm in what I said up top; I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum. I have been reading your stuff for a while, and if anything disproves my original point, it's your published output. cheers -
- xena 1y agoThank you. I'm sorry if I was overly abrasive or rude, but it's getting really old. People have sent me horrible things because of this. I've had to start withdrawing from joining new places under my main identity. Just please take one femtoiota of care that the other side is also a human being with thoughts, feelings, and that they may just be incredibly tired of hearing people complain about something.
- AndyKelley 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mpalmer 1y agookay EDIT: zig is very cool thank you
- clickety_clack 1y agoI respect the expression of individual taste, but it suggests strongly that the platform has not reached professional maturity.
- cma 1y agoProfessional maturity: https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/kv5651/what_art_style_is_this_the_best_i_can_think_of_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/kv5651/what...
- Duralias 1y agoIt has simply been normalized and for a lot of smaller scale sites, that this was first made for, being a little less professional isn't a problem. But for situations where a company simply won't use Anubis because of its branding then they do sell a unbranded version. https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper
- strogonoff 1y agoWhat an ingenious approach for a sustainable OSS project: serve the free version with playful art that you enjoy and that expresses your individuality, but which some people are bound to find triggering/improper; sell a bland lifeless corporate edition to those people.
- Krssst 1y ago> some others would find triggering/improper I guess the main point is branding clash if you're a large company website (most companies care a lot about how their brand is shown, if they care about spacing/padding around their logo they also care about what pictures are shown when joining), hopefully nobody is triggered by this kind of art. (though resentment could build up if actual humans get frequently unexpectedly rejected as bots by this system, not sure if this actually happens however, didn't ever for me at least) The approach they took here looks very reasonable from that standpoint indeed.
- strogonoff 1y agoBranding clash also happens with Cloudflare. It’s only immediately clear when it is set up on a website you already know (e.g., Stack Overflow), but I remember when seeing it first I was visiting a new to me website and genuinely thought that’s what it looks like, and was taken by surprise when something with a completely different colour scheme, logo, typography popped up. I also recall Cloudflare did not (maybe still doesn’t) put up its own name up front on its captcha page, adding to the confusion. In any case, after a couple of times it’s no longer a problem to most people. The resentment point is a fair one! If that happens and maintainers care about public perception of the mascot, I can imagine them wanting to change it somewhat. > hopefully nobody is triggered by this kind of art I’ve known at least one person who genuinely seemed triggered by anime-like visual style.
- eddd-ddde 1y agoHow is it different from the classic corporate caricature of a person with unnatural body proportions? It's just art style.
- mpalmer 1y agoNot sure what you're referring to, or what you mean by "it's just art style". It's a style that is likely to clash with the website branding it precedes, in my opinion.
- pyridines 1y agothey're referring to the infamous Corporate Memphis style which is frequently used in big tech branding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
- forrestthewoods 1y ago> It's just art style. Art styles aren't picked randomly out of a hat. Humans are pattern matching machines and will draw conclusions based on choice of art style or mascot. > classic corporate caricature of a person with unnatural body proportions Corporate Memphis is an abomination and I harshly judge any company that uses it. Everyone hates Corporate Memphis and makes fun of it.
- userbinator 1y agoIMHO Corporate Memphis is much worse than anime art. "You have small brain" is the message it seems to imply.
- sdrinf 1y agoI actually _like_ this, and so does the comfyweb & weebs who are a very significant portion of the driving force behind calm, decade-long projects.
- userbinator 1y agoI couldn't care less about the art, but the user-agent discrimination is far worse. Implying that anyone not using an "officially sanctioned" browser is an AI bot is such a devious scheme that I don't think even Google themselves would've come up with it.
- TJSomething 1y agoI think you've got the logic backwards. It defaults to assuming that user agents that have "Mozilla" in them might be bots. Uncommon browsers don't get challenged. It wouldn't make sense for bad faith bots to use uncommon, easy to block user agents.
- account42 1y agoInteresting. I guess I'll have to write an extensions to make open source websites usable again. I feel like at some point this will be "fixed" though.
- kelnos 1y agoAll real browsers have Mozilla in the user agent string.
- debugnik 1y agoThe point is to allow bots that play nice and don't claim to be real browsers, as those can be identified in logs and blocked or rate limited fairly. But bad faith bots can be undistinguishable from browsers, so everyone else gets a PoW challenge to make their endeavour slower and expensive. At least that's the spirit, of course someone will eventually just use random strings as user agents, but then again this is all a tragedy of the commons anyway.
- odo1242 1y agoI mean, Anubis does allow you to change the image to whatever you want. (edit: apparently the feature is behind a paywall unless you edit the source code) I kinda like the Anubis girl though (as you said, subjective)
- OhMeadhbh 1y agoIt's the kids. They all like the anime. Not at all like the serious teams I worked with at IBM and DEC that slapped trek logos over everything.
- some-guy 1y agoDefine kids? I know plenty of Gen X and elder millennials into anime
- account42 1y agoOnly the ones that are still kids mentally.
- jamesnorden 1y agoUnlike you that commented no less than 25 times in this very thread, a lot of those calling this "DRM" and even "malware", the irony is palpable.
- hitekker 1y agoI think the GP is speaking tongue-in-cheek; it's a fun little joke
- brookst 1y agoThere are boomers, and there are kids.
- nine_k 1y agoKids as in "kids these days" and "get off my lawn".
- scythe 1y agoIn the radiology department at Westchester Medical Center, all of the portable X-ray machines have little nametags on them that read, variously, "Enterprise", "Voyager", "Defiant", etc.
- 1y ago
- gblargg 1y agoWorse, it prevents people with older browsers from even visiting the site.
- account42 1y agoYes it's DRM but somehow acceptable now (it shouldn't be).
- bowsamic 1y agoI do find the fact that anime is inescapable among mainly the American youth (not seen it as much here in Germany) to be alienating. I guess it’s just what it feels like to get old
- akk0 1y agoI don't feel you're right? I'm pretty sure that Germany experienced the same 80s anime boom that was felt in other parts of Europe too, and DoKomi (German anime convention) pulls ~180,000 people, very close to overtaking Comic Con. I'm actively involved in the European anime-adjacent DJ scene so I know Germany is not some low spot within Europe at all. I think perhaps you might be overestimating how popular anime is with Americans because of how popular it is on the Internet.
- nine_k 1y agoHmm, does the cutesy anime Octocat bother you? It's all over GitHub; admittedly, not as large, but definitely more pervasive. My point is that people get used to such things, and stop to even notice.
- mpalmer 1y agoThe context is a bit different from a proof of work captcha that sits in front of otherwise-unaffiliated sites.
- WhereIsTheTruth 1y agoIt could have been worse, it could have been a crab
- numpad0 1y ago~15 years ago I'd come across tweets sharing how European art teachers are struggling with cultural intrusions of anime into fine arts(lol), ~10 years ago Chinese companies started serving anime-style online games, ~5 years ago COVID kickstarted VTubers in anglosphere, now an anime art is in a major OSS like an AC/DC reference. It's funny how vehemently people respond to anime the first time, it's often so strong that they would not be consistent with their judgements or even own moral standards. It then subsides, and then it'll be something that "doesn't look like anything" to them. Anime wasn't always accepted in Japanese culture(where it was born); it always existed and was growing consistently over the entire postwar history, but there were still plenty of cancellation forces on Twitter when it launched in late 2000s. Don't worry, companies like Apple would be having an ultra sexualized silver gimpsuit teenager mascot by 2030 and anime hate would be replaced by something by then at this rate.
- account42 1y agoIf anything, I have only grown to hate the style more the more it is pushed everywhere.
- mpalmer 1y agoCan people just not like something? Not everything is a sociopolitical debate. > It's funny how vehemently people respond to anime the first time, it's often so strong that they would not be consistent with their judgements or even own moral standards. It then subsides, and then it'll be something that "doesn't look like anything" to them uh... no, not in my case at least.
- numpad0 1y agoYes in technical sense that only wrong countries try to control wrongthink, and no in the sense that if there are chances such opinions prevail. It'll be like insisting YOLO[1] renamed and presentation video changed up. We all kind of deserve a right to say so, and insisting anime is unprofessional and must be removed don't look that way yet, but IMO it very well could be considered insane talks in 5-10 years. 1: https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/ https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/
- pineaux 1y agoIts the cool kids doing it. It's the same kind of h4x0r esthetics as the nyan cat or unicorns and beavers everywhere.
- akk0 1y agoYou would be horrified to spend any time in Japan then, where such characters are used in official capacity for anything from shops to corporations to government agencies, police stations and street signs. It's just flashing a logo as the equivalent of a loading spinner while it does things. I don't see how the specific logo could possibly be interpreted as tasteless or offensive -- I know I'll take it any day over fucking Corporate Memphis. > very time I see it on another site, I think: "hm. weird. whose branding is this?" I'd hope at some point you'd start remembering whose branding it is, that would make things much less confusing for you :-) Now imagine if the developers of sudo were behind this, now that would be the stuff of nightmares...
- m4rtink 1y agoYeah, imagin typoing "ls" and having a Steam Locomotive drive through your terminal! Thankfully no one implemented that. ;-)