4 ms·
this is an increasingly common situation. it goes something like: - i have a free, niche resource - it becomes too popular - i make it more efficient -
by ynniv 1mo ago
this is an increasingly common situation. it goes something like:
- i have a free, niche resource
- it becomes too popular
- i make it more efficient
- now it's really popular, and people are "abusing" it
- let's make them proof-of-work
- ... and proof-of-work harder
- but now "legitimate" users can't use it
- ???
the core problem is that the average person uses a mobile device where work is expensive, and the "attackers" use servers where work is cheap. if you require expensive proof-of-work, next comes a cheap-work-as-a-service where inefficient mobile devices pay small amounts of money to get efficient servers to complete their work for them. now everyone has an interest in making their usage efficient, but there's still an obvious inefficiency in the system: why have people pay unknown 3rd parties to burn cpu cycles to reduce costs for a free service, when you could just have people make small payments that cover the service's costs?
which is called l402/x402. micropayments' day has come
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- inigyou 1mo agoWhat's actually stopping them isn't the PoW, it's the customisation effort. If one site has Anubis nothing scrapes it. If many sites have Anubis they write counter scrapers. Today if you make a slight change to the Anubis algorithm on your site, they'll burn CPU endlessly computing hashes with the original algorithm and submitting wrong ones. The author of Anubis hates this fact and will ban you if you mention it, so don't. He insists it's the PoW.
- ynniv 1mo agosounds right to me. ai will shred it
- Barbing 1mo agoSearching around for this, found "make users click the mouse three times"[1] as an anti-bot idea. Generally, makes sense that smaller site owners can make small customizations to existing anti-bot tech and see positive results until they're either (1) deemed valuable enough to receive custom attention or (2) the scrapers include LLM-based anti-antibot methods. >will ban you if you mention it Even if mentioned really politely? [1] would hope anyone trying this makes it accessible to visitors with disabilities
- QuantumNomad_ 1mo agoAsk your visitors “what does it feel like being you?” Anyone who responds with something like: > I don’t have subjective feelings, consciousness, or an inner point of view, so there isn’t a sensation of “being me.” is definitely an LLM.
- voidUpdate 1mo ago*They insist
- desterothx 1mo agoI mean generally what you said is true. But who is actually going to look at the linux kernel from their phone (probably just the maintainers in extreme circumstances)