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The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get ov

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more. Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at that can be unplugged if necessary. I just wish Git itself had a more robust means of issue-handling (no, email is a 1980s protocol, it's not good enough, even if it is for Linux) and CI/CD, rather than relegating the matter to different hosts. And now everyone has to learn GitHub Actions, Gitlab pipelines, Jenkins pipelines, and more.

account42 1y ago
Oh no how dare people complain about the "cute" DRM.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Self-hosting is generally good I’ve contributed to a number of projects that try to self-host, with mixed results. It gets frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds, or when the self-hosted solution goes down for a week because the admin is on vacation and missed something. I’ve contributed to one server that feels the need to periodically delete dormant accounts for some reason. Every time I come back to the project I find myself creating a new user account. With the anubis-protected servers the anti-bot protection has a lot of false positives, so occasionally I have to switch browsers just to not deal with page load failures. One server adopted some black list that had my home IP in it for some reason, so I was just banned from accessing the server without a VPN. It all just feels old and tiring after a while compared to the breath of fresh air of just using a site like GitLab or GitHub that simply works. I understand why they’d want to do it, but I don’t think it’s without some tradeoffs.
- strogonoff 1y ago
  Contribution-wise, I find Sourcehut’s approach[0] very sound: you could never have troubles with your account because you don’t need one in the first place. If you want to contribute, create a patch and send it to respective mailing list. As a positive side-effect, a contributor is compelled to write a reasonable explanatory message to maintainers and keep the patch minimal and contained (compared to a typical Github PR with a dozen of commits mixing together fixes, features, newlines and indentation changes all over the place). [0] They did not invent it, obviously—it is what Linux kernel, the origin of Git, had (has?) been doing for a long time!
- hulitu 1y ago
  > server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds, Welcome to DE, where _every_ page takes several seconds to load.
  - Aachen 1y ago
    Desktop environment? Deutschland? Neither is true so I can't tell what you mean
- Aachen 1y ago
  > frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds That's a typical experience when the chosen solution doesn't match the available resources and desired scale. Projects like WordPress and GitLab may work for large enterprises, or when you add in enough caching that you don't have to do the large computation (generating one page) most times, but they don't work so well when you're wanting it to just work without custom solutions as a small team on a small budget Forgejo doesn't seem to have this issue as far as I've noticed. I've hosted the predecessor (Gitea) on a potato. It's so easy to host, I think it's actually still running but forgotten about. I should check if it needs updating at some point..
bakugo 1y ago
> A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it) If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website, then in my opinion it's completely reasonable for those people to point out how immature it is. Telling people to "get over it" just makes you sound equally as immature.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  > If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website It is a damn sight better than the maliciously-compliant and deeply annoying GDPR 'we use cookies' banners, pop-ups, and dark patterns like having to uncheck thousands of 'partner' boxes. This is merely a response to AI companies abusing scraper bots and having a callous, selfish disregard for Internet and server bandwidth. It was on this very website where I saw it put quite succinctly—AI-scraping bots have essentially started mass DDOS attacks on all small servers. > immature Maturity is empathy, human connection, understanding, perspective, compassion, altruism, and more. Not some arbitrary 'this is a cartoon, therefore it is immature'. 25 years ago Microsoft, the professional software behemoth, decided to put a cartoon dog and paperclip with googly eyes in its operating system and office software. A major mobile OS has a cartoon robot in its logo. Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind. They are much more mature than your shallow portrayal of them.
  - bakugo 1y ago
    > Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind. Maybe they are. But, in this case, nobody cares about the "artist's frame of mind". We care about accessing a website that has nothing to do with art.
    - necovek 1y ago
      Are you having actual, real problems accessing the source code due to the anime character being used in the bot-blocker?
KronisLV 1y ago
> yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it I think it's cute. It wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't cute. It's inoffensive and doesn't get in the way of the software serving its function, the only critique I could do if I wanted to is people unfamiliar with the project would get a bit confused if they only saw the character for a split second: https://anubis.techaro.lol/ https://anubis.techaro.lol/ I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it, that would be a nice UX improvement. Otherwise, agreed about self-hosting and the ability to choose whatever platform aligns with your goals the closest to be a good thing! > And now everyone has to learn GitHub Actions, Gitlab pipelines, Jenkins pipelines, and more. A part of me doesn't like the churn of new CI solutions coming in all the time. On the other hand, after learning GitLab CI, I'd generally prefer it to something like Jenkins, it just feels more pleasant. But with something like Drone CI or Woodpecker CI my non-work needs are also covered wonderfully, especially with a lot of the software I build being packaged in Docker containers, which further simplifies and somewhat standardizes things! A lot of the time I can also encapsulate most of the logic in shell scripts that are easy to run regardless of the environment (CI server or locally), which makes it even more portable.
- HappMacDonald 1y ago
  So wait, is the cartoon mascot at issue the Annubis one for the Cloudflare-like DDoS protection, or is it an actual FFmpeg mascot? Because I don't see any cartoon characters on the FFmpeg code, main, or wiki websites. But I am curious what kinda -tan they came up with. :P
  - KronisLV 1y ago
    It's the Anubis one, there are a few other drawings on the homepage of theirs. It was pointed out elsewhere in the thread that they also sell an unbranded version for companies: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper Cool way to make money, to be honest!
- userbinator 1y ago
  I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it Not if you have the right fingerprint - then you're not even aware the site is using CF.
jraph 1y ago
> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards. I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases with each project not picking it because of the weaker network effect?
- hulitu 1y ago
  > I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. The cloud companies do not want you to selfhost. It is good that Ffmpeg did not experience a DDOS attack yet, because that's what happened to someone who moved his email to selfhosting. We are living in a time when companies have become like mafia.
  - jraph 1y ago
    Do you have evidences that these individual HN accounts are from some cloud company mafia? I don't think this is it and I would not want to dismiss individual spontaneous, genuine feeling too early.
- eviks 1y ago
  > beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Since you're ignoring the reasons by calling them unreasonable, the armchair psychology alternative won't help get you what you love
  - jraph 1y ago
    I'm not calling people or reasons unreasonable, but the level at which they are triggered. And I stand by my point: being mad that someone chooses to self host is unreasonable and no amount of accusing me of doing armchair psychology will change anything to this.
__loam 1y ago
Anubis is funny because I think it's in the license that you have to keep the mascot. If you want to remove it you have to pay them.
- commoner 1y ago
  Anubis has a commercial version called BotStopper that allows the mascot to be changed: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper But, Anubis uses the plain MIT license, so you can modify it to remove the branding yourself: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE If Anubis used a license with that mascot requirement, it would not be free and open source.
  - __loam 1y ago
    I stand corrected. It's still a funny bit of marketing.
- madars 1y ago
  Anubis is MIT licensed so you should be able to modify it freely: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE It would be very funny if they did that though.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure, but so are your own comments. None of it is empirical, just personal opinion. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass how it's hosted. Still uses a protocol there's open source clients for? Cool. Not that I have pulled the ffmpeg source more than once in my life (which I suspect's the same for 99% of the people here). I'll continue to get it packaged for me by somebody else, who will pull it from wherever it's hosted, however they can. I'm just glad it still exists.
- jraph 1y ago
  > Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure, There's nothing wrong about critical and opinionated but respectful, but the comments that are now flagged, and some of the downvoted ones are very low quality, not just critical and opinionated.
cryptonector 1y ago
> I just wish Git itself had a more robust means of issue-handling (no, email is a 1980s protocol, it's not good enough, even if it is for Linux) and CI/CD, rather than relegating the matter to different hosts. Just shove the issues into Git itself. That's what Fossil does for its wiki and issues, while GitHub only does it for its wiki. There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself.
- account42 1y ago
  > There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself. Yes but that's also the problem. What's the point of doing it in git if whatever choice you make is incompatible with most clients?
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    One should win. Or Git should ship with one. > That's also the problem. There's no way to please some people.
  - cryptonector 1y ago
    Wait, why would it be "incompatible with most clients"?
nine_k 1y ago
> 1980s protocol TCP is even older; so what? It works, as does email. It's merely a transport layer. What is required is a well-defined standard to encapsulate relevant data into it: PR definitions, code review comments, approval / rejection votes. This all could be a zipped JSON attachment, for instance. The code change proper can continue be passed in the patch format. Or the whole thing could arrive via an exposed API endpoint, or even be pushed by git protocol. A tool could interpret the extracted data and update a database that powers a nice GUI / TUI, and controls a CI/CD interface. (Now if I only had time to properly design and implement that.)
- skydhash 1y ago
  Why all of this? You can just enforce some formatting rules and add a few script to the system mailbox to alter the message (add an issue number, send a notification when a change is accepted and merged, etc,...). No need to complicate stuff. Just send a standard plain text email that follows the rules.
elric 1y ago
I strongly disagree with the issue handling & CI/CD part of your comment. Those are concerns are orthogonal to distributed version control and greatly complicate any system. Not everyone even has to learn Jenkins/GH-Pipelines/whatever. In most teams I've worked on those are typically managed by one or two people, or by a different team entirely. And it's not even a hard skill to learn.
rustystump 1y ago
I love self hosting but the comments i think have to do with quality issues. Having an anime girl show up 99% of the time one visits due to AI bot protection is not the best experience no matter how much I love anime. Saying to “get over it” is dismissive to a large group of people who disagree with you. The comments are not a cesspool but standard hn being critical.
grep_name 1y ago
It's frustrating. As someone who is into self-hosting, I was hoping to find answers in the comments to questions like: - How self-hosted is it? Is it on somebody's computer at home? A colo? One of those university linux servers that runs for decades? Hetzner? Is there any redundancy? - How are the costs and responsibilities for the hardware broken down? - How is admin and patching handled? I'm actually very curious about that stuff, but nobody's really talking about it here

account42 1y ago

Oh no how dare people complain about the "cute" DRM.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Self-hosting is generally good I’ve contributed to a number of projects that try to self-host, with mixed results. It gets frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds, or when the self-hosted solution goes down for a week because the admin is on vacation and missed something. I’ve contributed to one server that feels the need to periodically delete dormant accounts for some reason. Every time I come back to the project I find myself creating a new user account. With the anubis-protected servers the anti-bot protection has a lot of false positives, so occasionally I have to switch browsers just to not deal with page load failures. One server adopted some black list that had my home IP in it for some reason, so I was just banned from accessing the server without a VPN. It all just feels old and tiring after a while compared to the breath of fresh air of just using a site like GitLab or GitHub that simply works. I understand why they’d want to do it, but I don’t think it’s without some tradeoffs.

strogonoff 1y ago
Contribution-wise, I find Sourcehut’s approach[0] very sound: you could never have troubles with your account because you don’t need one in the first place. If you want to contribute, create a patch and send it to respective mailing list. As a positive side-effect, a contributor is compelled to write a reasonable explanatory message to maintainers and keep the patch minimal and contained (compared to a typical Github PR with a dozen of commits mixing together fixes, features, newlines and indentation changes all over the place). [0] They did not invent it, obviously—it is what Linux kernel, the origin of Git, had (has?) been doing for a long time!
hulitu 1y ago
> server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds, Welcome to DE, where _every_ page takes several seconds to load.
- Aachen 1y ago
  Desktop environment? Deutschland? Neither is true so I can't tell what you mean
Aachen 1y ago
> frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds That's a typical experience when the chosen solution doesn't match the available resources and desired scale. Projects like WordPress and GitLab may work for large enterprises, or when you add in enough caching that you don't have to do the large computation (generating one page) most times, but they don't work so well when you're wanting it to just work without custom solutions as a small team on a small budget Forgejo doesn't seem to have this issue as far as I've noticed. I've hosted the predecessor (Gitea) on a potato. It's so easy to host, I think it's actually still running but forgotten about. I should check if it needs updating at some point..

bakugo 1y ago

> A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it) If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website, then in my opinion it's completely reasonable for those people to point out how immature it is. Telling people to "get over it" just makes you sound equally as immature.

delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
> If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website It is a damn sight better than the maliciously-compliant and deeply annoying GDPR 'we use cookies' banners, pop-ups, and dark patterns like having to uncheck thousands of 'partner' boxes. This is merely a response to AI companies abusing scraper bots and having a callous, selfish disregard for Internet and server bandwidth. It was on this very website where I saw it put quite succinctly—AI-scraping bots have essentially started mass DDOS attacks on all small servers. > immature Maturity is empathy, human connection, understanding, perspective, compassion, altruism, and more. Not some arbitrary 'this is a cartoon, therefore it is immature'. 25 years ago Microsoft, the professional software behemoth, decided to put a cartoon dog and paperclip with googly eyes in its operating system and office software. A major mobile OS has a cartoon robot in its logo. Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind. They are much more mature than your shallow portrayal of them.
- bakugo 1y ago
  > Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind. Maybe they are. But, in this case, nobody cares about the "artist's frame of mind". We care about accessing a website that has nothing to do with art.
  - necovek 1y ago
    Are you having actual, real problems accessing the source code due to the anime character being used in the bot-blocker?

KronisLV 1y ago

> yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it I think it's cute. It wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't cute. It's inoffensive and doesn't get in the way of the software serving its function, the only critique I could do if I wanted to is people unfamiliar with the project would get a bit confused if they only saw the character for a split second: https://anubis.techaro.lol/ https://anubis.techaro.lol/ I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it, that would be a nice UX improvement. Otherwise, agreed about self-hosting and the ability to choose whatever platform aligns with your goals the closest to be a good thing! > And now everyone has to learn GitHub Actions, Gitlab pipelines, Jenkins pipelines, and more. A part of me doesn't like the churn of new CI solutions coming in all the time. On the other hand, after learning GitLab CI, I'd generally prefer it to something like Jenkins, it just feels more pleasant. But with something like Drone CI or Woodpecker CI my non-work needs are also covered wonderfully, especially with a lot of the software I build being packaged in Docker containers, which further simplifies and somewhat standardizes things! A lot of the time I can also encapsulate most of the logic in shell scripts that are easy to run regardless of the environment (CI server or locally), which makes it even more portable.

HappMacDonald 1y ago
So wait, is the cartoon mascot at issue the Annubis one for the Cloudflare-like DDoS protection, or is it an actual FFmpeg mascot? Because I don't see any cartoon characters on the FFmpeg code, main, or wiki websites. But I am curious what kinda -tan they came up with. :P
- KronisLV 1y ago
  It's the Anubis one, there are a few other drawings on the homepage of theirs. It was pointed out elsewhere in the thread that they also sell an unbranded version for companies: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper Cool way to make money, to be honest!
userbinator 1y ago
I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it Not if you have the right fingerprint - then you're not even aware the site is using CF.

jraph 1y ago

> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards. I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases with each project not picking it because of the weaker network effect?

hulitu 1y ago
> I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. The cloud companies do not want you to selfhost. It is good that Ffmpeg did not experience a DDOS attack yet, because that's what happened to someone who moved his email to selfhosting. We are living in a time when companies have become like mafia.
- jraph 1y ago
  Do you have evidences that these individual HN accounts are from some cloud company mafia? I don't think this is it and I would not want to dismiss individual spontaneous, genuine feeling too early.
eviks 1y ago
> beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Since you're ignoring the reasons by calling them unreasonable, the armchair psychology alternative won't help get you what you love
- jraph 1y ago
  I'm not calling people or reasons unreasonable, but the level at which they are triggered. And I stand by my point: being mad that someone chooses to self host is unreasonable and no amount of accusing me of doing armchair psychology will change anything to this.

__loam 1y ago

Anubis is funny because I think it's in the license that you have to keep the mascot. If you want to remove it you have to pay them.

commoner 1y ago
Anubis has a commercial version called BotStopper that allows the mascot to be changed: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper But, Anubis uses the plain MIT license, so you can modify it to remove the branding yourself: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE If Anubis used a license with that mascot requirement, it would not be free and open source.
- __loam 1y ago
  I stand corrected. It's still a funny bit of marketing.
madars 1y ago
Anubis is MIT licensed so you should be able to modify it freely: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE It would be very funny if they did that though.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure, but so are your own comments. None of it is empirical, just personal opinion. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass how it's hosted. Still uses a protocol there's open source clients for? Cool. Not that I have pulled the ffmpeg source more than once in my life (which I suspect's the same for 99% of the people here). I'll continue to get it packaged for me by somebody else, who will pull it from wherever it's hosted, however they can. I'm just glad it still exists.

jraph 1y ago
> Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure, There's nothing wrong about critical and opinionated but respectful, but the comments that are now flagged, and some of the downvoted ones are very low quality, not just critical and opinionated.

cryptonector 1y ago

> I just wish Git itself had a more robust means of issue-handling (no, email is a 1980s protocol, it's not good enough, even if it is for Linux) and CI/CD, rather than relegating the matter to different hosts. Just shove the issues into Git itself. That's what Fossil does for its wiki and issues, while GitHub only does it for its wiki. There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself.

account42 1y ago
> There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself. Yes but that's also the problem. What's the point of doing it in git if whatever choice you make is incompatible with most clients?
- cryptonector 1y ago
  One should win. Or Git should ship with one. > That's also the problem. There's no way to please some people.
- cryptonector 1y ago
  Wait, why would it be "incompatible with most clients"?

nine_k 1y ago

> 1980s protocol TCP is even older; so what? It works, as does email. It's merely a transport layer. What is required is a well-defined standard to encapsulate relevant data into it: PR definitions, code review comments, approval / rejection votes. This all could be a zipped JSON attachment, for instance. The code change proper can continue be passed in the patch format. Or the whole thing could arrive via an exposed API endpoint, or even be pushed by git protocol. A tool could interpret the extracted data and update a database that powers a nice GUI / TUI, and controls a CI/CD interface. (Now if I only had time to properly design and implement that.)

skydhash 1y ago
Why all of this? You can just enforce some formatting rules and add a few script to the system mailbox to alter the message (add an issue number, send a notification when a change is accepted and merged, etc,...). No need to complicate stuff. Just send a standard plain text email that follows the rules.

elric 1y ago

I strongly disagree with the issue handling & CI/CD part of your comment. Those are concerns are orthogonal to distributed version control and greatly complicate any system. Not everyone even has to learn Jenkins/GH-Pipelines/whatever. In most teams I've worked on those are typically managed by one or two people, or by a different team entirely. And it's not even a hard skill to learn.

rustystump 1y ago

I love self hosting but the comments i think have to do with quality issues. Having an anime girl show up 99% of the time one visits due to AI bot protection is not the best experience no matter how much I love anime. Saying to “get over it” is dismissive to a large group of people who disagree with you. The comments are not a cesspool but standard hn being critical.

grep_name 1y ago

It's frustrating. As someone who is into self-hosting, I was hoping to find answers in the comments to questions like: - How self-hosted is it? Is it on somebody's computer at home? A colo? One of those university linux servers that runs for decades? Hetzner? Is there any redundancy? - How are the costs and responsibilities for the hardware broken down? - How is admin and patching handled? I'm actually very curious about that stuff, but nobody's really talking about it here