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   SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 17:57:34 JST SuperDicq

   Proof of work when used in cryptocurrencyBad for the environment! Thousands of computers are wasting CPU cycles! We must stop this now!Proof of work when used to stop webcrawlersAmazing, very good. Best thing ever! It even has an anime mascot!Can someone explain to me why one is wasteful and the other is not? I personally find both usecases to be legitimate actually.

   • kaia likes this.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:07:21 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     Personally I am not a fan of Anubis, it requires me to have Javascript enabled for your website. I usually don't want to enable Javascript on websites that I don't trust.
     
     I understand why a proof of challenge might be necessary to prevent denial of service, but maybe some browser native solution, like an addon is a better solution?

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     kaia (kaia@brotka.st)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:11:16 JST kaia

     in reply to
     @SuperDicq can we bring it together in proof of work being used to generate crypto while deterring AI scrapers?
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:12:52 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • ベッサーヴィッサー :verify: :verified: :verified_flashing:

     @besserwisser@shitposter.world I think cryptocurrencies are a good thing and they have allowed me to safely transfer money in ways that would otherwise not be possible without being tracked.
     
     I think proof of stake cryptocurrencies have a lot of issues. I think proof of work is well suited here. I also don't think the resources used for mining is actually being "wasted", it is what actually makes the cryptocurrency safer to use. How can you consider that wasteful?
     
     Now in the case of Anubis it is arguably actually bad for the environment. The point of Anubis is literally to waste everyone else's resources just to save a few of your own resources (and prevent denial of service).

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     ベッサーヴィッサー :verify: :verified: :verified_flashing: (besserwisser@shitposter.world)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:12:53 JST ベッサーヴィッサー :verify: :verified: :verified_flashing:

     in reply to
     @SuperDicq Second one was used specifically to stop another resource waster. And I've seen several people say Anubis is a rather crude response but the only effective one they could come up with. Cryptocurrency had the unfortunate luck to be insanely successful, so people assumed it was a Ponzi scheme. Plus, they might be against it because they hate capitalism. Never mind Anubis has ultimately economical reasons anyway, too.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:19:07 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • kaia

     @kaia@brotka.st Just like how "captchas" are being used to do useful things like scanning books and doing image recognition I think it would not be a bad thing redesign Anubis in such a way that it would do useful things instead like mine cryptocurrency or protein folding or something like that.

     kaia likes this.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:27:12 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • ベッサーヴィッサー :verify: :verified: :verified_flashing:

     @besserwisser@shitposter.world Yeah people hate cryptocurrency because of all the web3 bullshit, all the ponzi schemes, pointless NFTs, etc.
     
     But it's easy to look an entire technology very black and white. I believe there's also a lot of good sides of cryptocurrencies. I definitely prefer paying with a cryptocurrency over a credit card.
     
     It's also very easy to avoid the bullshit. Just don't buy memecoins and don't go daytrading. Also avoid all proprietary cryptocurrency solutions.

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:28:35 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @SuperDicq >Can someone explain to me why one is wasteful and the other is not? I personally find both usecases to be legitimate actually.
     The former actually has a practical usage - it secures such cryptocurrencies and allows transactions to be done securely.
     
     The latter has no practical usage - it just wastes CPU cycles for the sake of wasting them and it does not stop scrapers, as they have more processing power to spare than those who run only free software and therefore is not legitimate.
     
     >Personally I am not a fan of Anubis,
     I am a fan of Anubis; https://www.gnu.org/software/anubis/ that is.
     
     >it requires me to have Javascript enabled for your website. I usually don't want to enable Javascript on websites that I don't trust.
     I just close the page if I see the that proprietary malware JavaScript is required (even if it under a free software license, the way it is served denies the users freedom and therefore is proprietary software for everyone but the web host).
     
     >I understand why a proof of challenge might be necessary to prevent denial of service
     PoW cannot stop big enough denial of service attacks unless the clients must connect to some other big server pool first and then can only access the server after doing the processing.
     
     When it comes to LLM scrapers, you can counter them fine without serving proprietary software.
     
     With minimal work and minimal processing power, you can;
     - Setup bait links (several follows and you get IP nullrouted for a time)
     - Setup ratelimits.
     - Setup bait files that serve gzip bombs as "content type" text/html & "content encoding" "gzip".
     - Setup a tor middle and see that the CCP goes and blocks packets from IPv4 Chinese scrapers with their firewall without you having to block anything (just make sure the site is also available over IPv6, so the Chinese can access it).
     
     With more work and processing power you can serve delicious Marklov slop and poison the training data.
   • Embed this notice
     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:33:05 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com Why go through the effort of poisoning their training data? That's just a bunch of work that does not help me. It frankly does not matter to me.

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 18:34:44 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @SuperDicq Since it teaches them a lesson and it possibly foils their proprietary schemes.
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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 20:41:14 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • Skyflare

     @skyflare@fosstodon.org Ah cool. I think Anubis should do something similar to give users the ability to run it using a local copy of the software instead of the one provided by the website.
     
     I think this could be made more convenient if implemented by a browser addon instead of a separate C program like this solution provides.

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     Skyflare (skyflare@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 20:41:15 JST Skyflare

     in reply to

     @SuperDicq
     There is also powxy https://forge.lindenii.runxiyu.org/powxy/-/repos/powxy/ which gives you the challenge and tells you to find out the nonce on your own if js isn't working.

     Here is a website that appears to be using it https://git.vitali64.duckdns.org/ (disable JS before visiting so that you can check it out with its full glory), the challenge page also have links to some offline solvers that you can use.

     It doesn't seem to have an addon but I would expect that implementing is easy (I am not an expert though so idk)

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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 21:19:13 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • Skyflare

     @skyflare@fosstodon.org I think calling cryptocurrency mining just a competition does not do the process justice.
     
     Every single miner adds more security the network. The less miners you have, the easier it is to take control of the network.
     
     This "competition" serves a purpose and the reward is just an incentive created to get people to start mining.

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     Skyflare (skyflare@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 21:19:14 JST Skyflare

     in reply to

     @SuperDicq I believe that it's mostly because how the vast majority of people use cryptocurrency as cryptoinvestment/speculation games/scams (and are super loud about spreading this bs). and tbh when cryptocurrency is used like that instead of being used as a currency it's a waste of everything.

     just to be clear, I am not saying that all cryptocurrency stuff are like that but I am saying the extreme prevelance of this stuff is why people view them and mining negatively

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     Skyflare (skyflare@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 21:19:14 JST Skyflare

     in reply to

     @SuperDicq Hmmmm, on second though, I think it could also be because Anubis and simillar stuff only run briefly when you are opening a specific website for the first time in a while from a specific machine while mining is a literal compitition about who who can do more work so mining is inherently waaaaaaaaay more expansive

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     SuperDicq (superdicq@minidisc.tokyo)'s status on Friday, 02-May-2025 21:24:32 JST SuperDicq

     in reply to

     • Skyflare

     @skyflare@fosstodon.org Also it just adds up based on popularity. It doesn't matter on which machines it runs on and for home long. "wasted" CPU cycles are still CPU cycles.
     
     If Anubis really takes off and every website in the world starts using it or a similar proof of work solution I wouldn't surprised if the total CPU power required to solve them adds up to numbers similar to the average cryptocurrency.