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Ok, Youtube killed a tool that is essential to watch videos on Invidious (inv_sig_helper). Because of this my server literally exploded because invidious tried to reconnect to that tool which is not able to start at all *due to youtube changes*. There is nothing I can do (for now). I will try to find a way to fix it tho, but since that tool is written on Rust, I'm 100% clueless on how to fix it, and for sure, the fix is not an easy task. So yeah, Invidious is dead until a new update.
@fijxu Thank you so much for using a proof-of-work #captcha https://nadeko.net/announcements/invidious-and-the-bot-problem/ instead of centralised proprietary mass #surveillance aka Google/CloudFlare!
You're a hero.
google used to block me by demanding to run javascript on my browser; now invidious instances fail in just the same way
it was cool while it lasted, and thanks invidious for that, but now I can't even search for stuff to watch with mpv/ytdlp any more.
yet another brick on the WWWorst App Store Wall
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/wwworst-app-store.html
CC: @fijxu@noc.social
@lxo Yes it's unfortunate, but I mostly use it to share links. Does mpv/yt-dlp <URL> work for you?
Is there a way to make mCaptcha work with LibreJS?
presumably tagging the javascript as free software, as recognized by LibreJS, would make it work for those who only use LibreJS for javascript blocking.
but really, this entire approach is backwards. I mean, I know scraping bots are making server operators miserable, but the solution to that can't be to make everyone else miserable, slowing things down, wasting computing resources and rendering old computers unusable.
the premise that blocking bots is questionable. sure, it makes things more costly for the evil scrapers, but also to everyone else, and guess who has more computing resources to waste? surely not the people who are on old computers who are now being rendered artificially obsolete because of a misguided reaction to scrapers. surely not to people who are trying to automate things on the client side to make up for the asymmetry between servers, that are automated, and clients, that are denied the convenience of automation by stupid captchas that increase the asymmetry and thus the injustice.
@lxo It is sad, but we have had captchas forever. The skills to solve captchas are unevenly distributed. A PoW captcha only asks you to spend some electricity, which is a commodity more evenly distributed (among those who already have a browser and are using it for compute-intensive purposes like video). I have not measured how much additional electricity is consumed by visiting this sort of captcha, but I expect it is negligible compare to the playing of the video.
there has to be a better way to tell welcome users from unwanted ones than miseducating users into blindly running programs that web sites push onto their computers, and fighting wasted computing power with wasted computing power by making the overhead permanent and pushing it onto everyone
@lxo "playing the video is supposed to be useful to the user, whereas the proof of work [...]"
I don't really see the qualitative difference here. When I play the video or audio there are parts of the decoding that are redundant for me, for example the video may be too high resolution or contain a padding intro/outro I'm not interested in or audio frequencies I can't here.
"there has to be a better way"
Maybe. I don't run an Invidious instance so I don't know. On wikis, QueryCaptcha works.
it wouldn't be quite as bad as if the server actually took the PoW/mined currency as payment, ideally also offering alternate means of anonymous proof of payment for access (GNU Taler, browserless mining, whatever) to bypass the on-browser PoW
@lxo It's not like currency, precisely because it can't be accumulated. Timeless accumulation is the problem with currency; without it, a number of problems vanish.
Anyway, we've still not established that any significant waste exists. That's not a philosophical question but something that a power meter can determine.
Sometimes the result is used for something. Then it's not wasted.
What we're seeing is result that's not used for anything, only to slow down access indiscriminately, to burden LLM bots so they don't burden the sites so much. It's entirely wasted computing. How can there be any doubt about that?
This kind of waste multiplies and accumulates, whether or not one keeps track of it.
@lxo Captchas are always waste (compared to the user's task at hand). The question is whether this kind of captcha is more wasteful than the unfortunately more common ones. (The hypothetical benefits produced for datasets of proprietary captcha-makers are not verifiable and would only accrue to shareholders; they need not be counted.)
@lxo Fair enough. I treat captchas like an addictive drug: I follow #HarmReduction principles.
But I'm also sympathetic to the needs of server operators who're getting overwhelmed by LLM bots. PoW as micropayment, offering something tangible to the server, besides granting access to the client, with alternate means for anonymous payment available, seems a lot more sensible to me than PoWaste: it solves two problems, rather than barely solving one while inconveniencing everyone.
@lxo Truly privacy-respecting #micropayments could open many possibilities, yes. The #digitalEuro plans are interesting too, in this regard.
https://mamot.fr/@nemobis/111951626495391352
CC: @nemobis@mamot.fr