UCyborg wrote on Today, 08:02:

More and more websites run a miner on your computer (euphemistically called "bot checks") before they let you in, even more so if you use non-mainstream web browser.

Someone posted about https://git.devuan.org/, it ran for over 7 min on my computer in Pale Moon, making computer temporarily run out of RAM.

This goes on and the only sane reaction would be mass exodus from the internet.

Teh Internet is dead and has been for quite a while now, if its not crypto miners itll be AI slop content and bots talking to each other.

So I heard, but it's gotten more noticeable even for me who only visits small amount of websites. Can't even lookup useful info on stackoverflow.com without getting a god damn Cloudflare check in my face.

UCyborg wrote on Today, 08:24:

So I heard, but it's gotten more noticeable even for me who only visits small amount of websites. Can't even lookup useful info on stackoverflow.com without getting a god damn Cloudflare check in my face.

The Cloudflare thing is recent and due to massive DDOS attacks on their data centers and services, its not really working but they persist with it to make it look like they are trying to solve the problem.

Cloudflare being a backbone provider is in a difficult spot.

That's the cost of "free" services...

Grzyb wrote on Today, 08:47:

That's the cost of "free" services...

Couldflare isn't free.

was hoping this would be about the UK parliament requiring face scanning for social media platforms, but no it's complaining about passive AI scraper checks that don't require you to solve a puzzle (which Vogons itself needs some day, like go-away or anubis). 0/10

it's funny when commercial sites refuse to take my money on the grounds that I am 'a bot'

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 08:54:

Grzyb wrote on Today, 08:47:

That's the cost of "free" services...

Couldflare isn't free.

I mean the site behind Cloudflare - from user's perspective, it's free.
And if you don't pay for using that site, don't expect its owner to care about you.

The only way to fix the internet would be by turning users into customers - ie. paywalling everything.

leileilol wrote on Today, 08:56:

was hoping this would be about the UK parliament requiring face scanning for social media platforms, but no it's complaining about passive AI scraper checks that don't require you to solve a puzzle (which Vogons itself needs some day, like go-away or anubis). 0/10

So waiting 7 minutes for the goddamn website to open is normal to you!? That's 7 minutes of heavy strain on the computer and exhausting most, well of its RAM really. 0/10

Pale Moon-related issue
https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/issues/299

Not as bad on Edge, but still a long time...

And even without this, it's still pretty bad with all the tracking, misinformation, fake news etc.

The Internet gets worse every time it becomes less exclusive, and all of this stuff is vainly attempting to mitigate that reality.

Cloudflare checking doesn't seem to work on older browsers, so you can't access the site at all.

bakemono wrote on Today, 08:59:

it's funny when commercial sites refuse to take my money on the grounds that I am 'a bot'

Digikey is constantly giving me the bot check popup (the one where you have to hold a button down).

I get "only" 39 seconds on Pale Moon.

It's true that we're now inescapably in an era of the internet where everything is actively user-hostile in a myriad little ways, whether it's the spammers, scammers, and efforts towards AI sloppification of everything, or the various counter-attempts to circumvent and mitigate those things. But I have to wonder about Pale Moon lately. I've been a happy user for over a decade, but it seems like it's been dropping the ball dealing with the ongoing bloatware updates for a lot of sites - from github to archive.org's book reader, and I guess this thing is no exception.

Still hesitant to migrate, since it's a tall order trying to find an alternative browser that's privacy-oriented, doesn't shove AI into every feature, doesn't have a dumbed-down UI geared towards your grandma browsing FB, and still maintains compatibility with the latest web tech (even if 99% of the latter is bloat that no one asked for in the first place). But if I'm going to be dealing with anti-user practices on the web no matter what, I'd rather not have to fight my browser too on top of it.