4 ms·

> In other words not a meaningful barrier. And yet many report it works, at least for now, and the excess load due to scraping activity falls precipitously whe

> In other words not a meaningful barrier. And yet many report it works, at least for now, and the excess load due to scraping activity falls precipitously when Anubis or similar solutions are used. Maybe once this sort of challenge is used almost everywhere we'll see concerted attempts to get around it, but for now it is easier for them to just move on to another target. > a $5000 ASIC-based device can hash SHA256 at 200TH/s or more Peanuts for the big players, but many (almost all?) running smaller scale scraping operations are going to find $5000 rather prohibitive, and they are unlikely to be able to integrate it as they are probably running a “stock” scraper that they didn't write themselves.

semiquaver 1mo ago
You don’t need to spend $5000 to obtain the hash rate of a $5000 device on a rental basis. You may have heard of this thing called “the cloud”. Obtaining very high hash rates is effectively free, largely as a side effect of the crypto bust. Not sure why anyone would characterize these scrapers im general as all being fly-by-night operations that don’t have two cents to scrape together.
- dspillett 1mo ago
  And yet you have not addressed the point that many report that tricks like Anubis work. If they are so stupid an idea that they could never work, why do they seem to having the desired effect?
  - Dylan16807 1mo ago
    A significant amount of the effect is everything outside the proof of work. Not the cost of hashing but the need to run the javascript that submits it. If you've seen anyone post a comparison of crawl rate versus difficulty, I'd love to see it. There's probably some difference but I want to know how much of the overall effect it is.
  - semiquaver 1mo ago
    I never said the approach was so stupid it could never work. I just shared how it’s annoying and how I worked around my annoyance. An even stupider approach would work exactly as well or better, like a form saying “type the letter y in this box to continue”. The only benefit is as a road bump that makes the site in any way custom. The moment anyone you are defending against so much as looks at the mechanics of solving the challenge it completely falls apart.
    - dspillett 1mo ago
      > I never said the approach was so stupid it could never work. In that case I have read too deeply between the lines/tone. Sorry for the somewhat accusatory assumption of your opinion's details.

semiquaver 1mo ago

You don’t need to spend $5000 to obtain the hash rate of a $5000 device on a rental basis. You may have heard of this thing called “the cloud”. Obtaining very high hash rates is effectively free, largely as a side effect of the crypto bust. Not sure why anyone would characterize these scrapers im general as all being fly-by-night operations that don’t have two cents to scrape together.

dspillett 1mo ago
And yet you have not addressed the point that many report that tricks like Anubis work. If they are so stupid an idea that they could never work, why do they seem to having the desired effect?
- Dylan16807 1mo ago
  A significant amount of the effect is everything outside the proof of work. Not the cost of hashing but the need to run the javascript that submits it. If you've seen anyone post a comparison of crawl rate versus difficulty, I'd love to see it. There's probably some difference but I want to know how much of the overall effect it is.
- semiquaver 1mo ago
  I never said the approach was so stupid it could never work. I just shared how it’s annoying and how I worked around my annoyance. An even stupider approach would work exactly as well or better, like a form saying “type the letter y in this box to continue”. The only benefit is as a road bump that makes the site in any way custom. The moment anyone you are defending against so much as looks at the mechanics of solving the challenge it completely falls apart.
  - dspillett 1mo ago
    > I never said the approach was so stupid it could never work. In that case I have read too deeply between the lines/tone. Sorry for the somewhat accusatory assumption of your opinion's details.