4 ms·

So... Is Anubis actually blocking bots because they didn't bother to circumvent it?

• loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Basically. Anubis is meant to block mindless, careless, rude bots with seemingly no technically proficient human behind the process; these bots tend to be very aggressive and make tons of requests bringing sites down. The assumption is that if you’re the operator of these bots and care enough to implement the proof of work challenge for Anubis you could also realize your bot is dumb and make it more polite and considerate. Of course nothing precludes someone implementing the proof of work on the bot but otherwise leaving it the same (rude and abusive). In this case Anubis still works as a somewhat fancy rate limiter which is still good.
  • elcritch 1y ago
    Essentially the Pow aspect is pointless then? They could require almost any arbitrary thing.
    • loloquwowndueo 1y ago
      What else do you envision being used instead of proof of work?
      • semiquaver 1y ago
        Rot13 a challenge string. It could be any arbitrary function.
        • loloquwowndueo 1y ago
          That wouldn’t have the fallback rate-limiting functionality. It’s too cheap.
          • elcritch 1y ago
            It’s too cheap as a rate limiter as it is if you read TFA.
            • trenchpilgrim 1y ago
              That's a configurable setting.
              • semiquaver 1y ago
                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.
                • loloquwowndueo 1y ago
                  Real users suffer much more if the site is entirely down due to being DDoSed by aggressive AI scrapers.
                  • semiquaver 1y ago
                    Yeah, and if this tool doesn’t stop them then the site is down anyway.
                    • raiph 1y ago
                      Right. The choice is presumably between: Bad: A site being usable for a significant amount of time per day, but also unusable for a significant amount of time per day, and the ratio between usable and unusable time per day significantly deteriorating. Worse: A site being usable for a significant amount of time per day, but also unusable for a significant amount of time per day, and the ratio between usable and unusable time per day significantly deteriorating _significantly faster_. Clearly, Anubis is at best an interim measure. The interim period might not be significant. But it might be. That is presumably the point of Anubis. That said, the only time I've heard of Anubis being tried was when Perl's MetaCPAN became ever more unusable over the summer. [0] Unfortunately Anubis and Fastly fought, and Fastly won. [1] ---- [0] https://www.perl.com/article/metacpan-traffic-crisis/ https://www.perl.com/article/metacpan-traffic-crisis/ [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1mbzrjo/metacpans_traffic_crisis_an_eventual_success_story/ https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/1mbzrjo/metacpans_tra...
• Aachen 1y ago
  s/circumvent/implement/