Board errors

[malloc]

By now, I kind of think that it's a nice testimony to the general attractiveness of the ZBB that people keep posting posts here each day despite the fact that that's so difficult to do.

Quite. There are theoretically other places I could go for conlanging and such but they just don't have the same atmosphere or familiarity. Sure, everyone here dislikes me but at least they know me. Also this place has avoided getting clogged with advertising and other forms of enshittification.

[WeepingElf]

I can't help here because I lack the relevant skills and knowledge, but I wish to express my appreciation of the efforts of those who work to deal with the problems. Mark and his helpers are really determined to keep the ZBB alive and functioning.

[Travis B.]

I've been doing more reading into Anubis as of late, and I highly suggest zompist take a look at it and, if possible, use it with the Zeeb. It really could stop the constant overloading of the board by bots.

[Man in Space]

I've been doing more reading into Anubis as of late, and I highly suggest zompist take a look at it and, if possible, use it with the Zeeb. It really could stop the constant overloading of the board by bots.

Instead of weighing their heart against a feather, they weigh a cookie.

[bradrn]

By now, I kind of think that it's a nice testimony to the general attractiveness of the ZBB that people keep posting posts here each day despite the fact that that's so difficult to do.

Quite. There are theoretically other places I could go for conlanging and such but they just don't have the same atmosphere or familiarity. Sure, everyone here dislikes me but at least they know me. Also this place has avoided getting clogged with advertising and other forms of enshittification.

Agreed. Despite its problems, this still remains the best place online to do conlanging.

(Oh, and it’s not that people dislike you! They just disagree with your political positions.)

[linguistcat]

By now, I kind of think that it's a nice testimony to the general attractiveness of the ZBB that people keep posting posts here each day despite the fact that that's so difficult to do.

Quite. There are theoretically other places I could go for conlanging and such but they just don't have the same atmosphere or familiarity. Sure, everyone here dislikes me but at least they know me. Also this place has avoided getting clogged with advertising and other forms of enshittification.

Agreed. Despite its problems, this still remains the best place online to do conlanging.

(Oh, and it’s not that people dislike you! They just disagree with your political positions.)

I don't even dislike his politics per say (as stated. The Trump worship by proxy of hopelessness is annoying); I just feel bad he doesn't realize his lack of hope for the world getting better is literally a medical condition that he could at least try getting treated. Because I was there myself, and I got it treated, and I am way better now. I can actually realize when I'm spiraling and stop myself. I don't feel hate, just pity and a bit of frustration.

[Travis B.]

I agree. I personally don't dislike Eddy's politics ─ but I am put off by his constant "all hope is lost, Trump is invincible" hopelessness and defeatism when, in fact, all hope is not lost and Trump is not invincible, and declaring that Trump has already won and nothing can be done only helps Trump. And as Eddy seems to be very liable to falling into catastrophizing in general (and not just with regard to Trump), this to me seems to be a mental health issue that could definitely be helped to Eddy's benefit.

[Travis B.]

Getting back on topic though ─ zompist, have you investigated Anubis? You really ought to if you haven't yet.

[lurker]

I've been doing more reading into Anubis as of late, and I highly suggest zompist take a look at it and, if possible, use it with the Zeeb. It really could stop the constant overloading of the board by bots.

Anubis does look interesting based purely on what I'm reading on its github page. It seems to be an access control system based on user agent headers. Having said that CloudFlare is dead simple for anyone who knows how to set up a domain name. It's not the best option if you want a more decentralized web, but it works for the problem at hand.

[Travis B.]

I've been doing more reading into Anubis as of late, and I highly suggest zompist take a look at it and, if possible, use it with the Zeeb. It really could stop the constant overloading of the board by bots.

Anubis does look interesting based purely on what I'm reading on its github page. It seems to be an access control system based on user agent headers. Having said that CloudFlare is dead simple for anyone who knows how to set up a domain name. It's not the best option if you want a more decentralized web, but it works for the problem at hand.

User agent headers are just the start. What it does is require clients that look like web browsers that can run JavaScript (e.g. 'Mozilla', 'Opera') to generate a proof-of-work (in the form of generating an SHA-256 hash from a challenge and a nonce with a specified number of leading zeroes) with code running in JavaScript on a once-per-unit-time (typically once-per-week) basis, after which it sets a session cookie that is valid for the specified duration that demonstrates that the client has successfully generated the proof-of-work.

This, for starters, filters out clients that cannot run JavaScript or which do not persist cookies, which blocks a very large proportion of AI scraper bots pretending to be users running browsers outright.

Secondly, for AI scraper bots that do run JavaScript, this either forces them to very frequently execute expensive computations (which costs money) or to persist the resulting session cookie, making them subject to rate-limiting based on the session cookie. This has the effect of dissuading AI scraper bots even when they do run JavaScript.

[zompist]

Getting back on topic though ─ zompist, have you investigated Anubis? You really ought to if you haven't yet.

I looked at it, but I'm a bit baffled. I couldn't see an installation guide. Note that I haven't been a programmer for a decade and I only have FTP access— I can't compile code.

[Travis B.]

Getting back on topic though ─ zompist, have you investigated Anubis? You really ought to if you haven't yet.

I looked at it, but I'm a bit baffled. I couldn't see an installation guide. Note that I haven't been a programmer for a decade and I only have FTP access— I can't compile code.

You don't need to compile code to use Anubis. Anubis comes both as Docker containers and as packages for a variety of distros. For the record, there is an installation guide at https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/installation/.

[bradrn]

Getting back on topic though ─ zompist, have you investigated Anubis? You really ought to if you haven't yet.

I looked at it, but I'm a bit baffled. I couldn't see an installation guide. Note that I haven't been a programmer for a decade and I only have FTP access— I can't compile code.

You don't need to compile code to use Anubis. Anubis comes both as Docker containers and as packages for a variety of distros. For the record, there is an installation guide at https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/installation/.

But, as mentioned previously, does Dreamhost allow users to configure proxies? I think that could prevent zompist from using Anubis.

[Ketsuban]

The solutions to the problem of DDoS (which AI scrapers are engaging in, however unintentionally) that I know of are as follows.

1. Anubis. Its solution is to inconvenience everyone the same amount and hope the AI scrapers are more annoyed than your users. It's annoying to set up because it assumes you have the same amount of willingness as the author to tolerate the modern hell that is "containerisation" (i.e. solving the problem of "it works on my machine" by making everyone run a copy of your machine rather than making software which is robust across different configurations). It assumes anything with "Mozilla" in the user agent is a legitimate browser—this works mainly because the people running AI agents are dumber than a box of rocks.
2. Cloudflare. Their solution is to inconvenience everyone the same amount and hope the AI scrapers are more annoyed than your users, but they only turns it on when they detect you're being attacked. Their politics are distasteful—they rejected any moral grounds to terminate their protection of the harassment coordination website KiwiFarms*, only doing it when KiwiFarms interpreted their complicity as support and escalated sending death threats to people.
3. Aggressively denying access to IP blocks associated with "cloud computing" (potentially up to and including "the entirety of China"). X has been dealing with this shit on The Cutting Room Floor for a while now, because in addition to being a repository of information and thus a target for AI scrapers it's also a target for actual attempted denials of service—bigots hate the idea that a queer furry made a successful website doing something useful for people while sitting on a forum with people they don't even like and complaining achieved absolutely nothing.

[Travis B.]

I know the problems with Cloudflare and with attempting to IP-block significant sections of the Internet... but seriously your issues with Anubis seem quite minor compared to what it solves. Is requiring users to have JavaScript and cookies enabled and requiring them to see an anime girl for what is usually a few seconds every week or so that bad? And you ignore the fact that for many distros packages are available so you are not being forced to use Docker if you hate it so much.

[malloc]

Is requiring users to have JavaScript and cookies enabled and requiring them to see an anime girl for what is usually a few seconds every week or so that bad?

Hmm, go on.

[Lērisama]

Apparently Anubis has a version that doesn't require javascript, but I don't know enough to know if this is useful or desired if the ZBB were to use it – I'd assume it's the cookies that'd be the bigger problem than javascript.

Edit: shortened link text because it doesn't seem to allow line breaks in links on my phone and it looked awful.

[Ketsuban]

Is requiring users to have JavaScript and cookies enabled and requiring them to see an anime girl for what is usually a few seconds every week or so that bad?

I mean, X doesn't like it enough to not be interested in rearchitecting their server setup to make use of it. I don't have a problem personally with seeing a picture of a wolfgirl every so often. I don't know how Zomp manages their own server, so maybe it's hard for them to implement as well—I'm just pointing out that other people have evaluated it, decided it's not for them, and found their own solution.

[Travis B.]

Is requiring users to have JavaScript and cookies enabled and requiring them to see an anime girl for what is usually a few seconds every week or so that bad?

I mean, X doesn't like it enough to not be interested in rearchitecting their server setup to make use of it. I don't have a problem personally with seeing a picture of a wolfgirl every so often. I don't know how Zomp manages their own server, so maybe it's hard for them to implement as well—I'm just pointing out that other people have evaluated it, decided it's not for them, and found their own solution.

The big thing is that the alternatives are worse. I personally am not happy with the idea of Cloudflare controlling even more of the Internet than it does already, and IP-blocks are not very effective due to the commonplace existence of residential proxies*. Anubis and similar tools seem to be the best option we have ─ and yes, they may annoy people who insist on turning off JavaScript** or cookies, but frankly protecting the small Internet from the AI scrapers is more important than one's personal ability to turn off JavaScript** or cookies.

* If you don't know what these are and why they are a major problem, basically what happens is that people use 'free' tools like 'free' VPN's which in reality enable other actors such as AI scraper operators to use their machines as proxies that look like residential users, which effectively nullifies the ability to block AI scrapers and like through IP-blocks. However, most of these residential proxies are not able to effectively make use of JavaScript, which makes requiring JavaScript in itself an effective way to block them.

** Yes, Anubis as mentioned now has support for using meta refresh as an experimental feature, but we will see how effective this really is at blocking AI scrapers in the long run.

[Raphael]

Did someone do something? Because I've got the impression that I've seen a lot fewer error messages than I've gotten used to over the last few days.