I just started using this myself, seems pretty great so far!
Clearly doesn’t stop all AI crawlers, but a significantly large chunk of them.
I just started using this myself, seems pretty great so far!
Clearly doesn’t stop all AI crawlers, but a significantly large chunk of them.
Which party of git performs proof-of-work? Specifically, intentionally inefficient algorithms whose output is thrown away?
the hashing part? it’s the same algo as here.
That’s not proof of work, though.
git is performing hashes to generate identifiers for versions of files so it can tell when they changed. It’s like moving rocks to build a house.
Proof of work is moving rocks from one pile to another and back again, for the only purpose of taking up your time all day.
okay, git using the same algorithm may have been a bad example. let’s go with video games then. the energy usage for the fraction of a second it takes for the anubis challenge-response dance to complete, even on phones, is literally nothing compared to playing minecraft for a minute.
if you’re mining, you do billions of cycles of sha256 calculations a second for hours every day. anubis does maybe 1000, once, if you’re unlucky. the method of “verification” is the wrong thing to be upset at, especially since it can be changed
Oh, god, yes. Video games waste vast amounts of energy while producing nothing of value. For sufficient definitions of “value,” of course. Is entertainment valuable? Is art? Does fiction really provide any true value?
POW’s only product is proving that you did some task. The fact that it’s energy expensive and produces nothing of value except the verifiable fact that the work was done, is the difference.
Using the video game example: the difference is the energy burned by the GPU while you were playing and enjoying yourself; cycles were burned, but in addition to doing the rendering there was additional value - for you - in entertainment. POW is like leaving your game running in demo mode with the monitor off. It’s doing the same work, only there’s no product.
This point is important to me. Cryptocurrencies aren’t inherently bad, IMO; there are cryptocurrencies based on Proof of Stake, which have less environmental impact than your video game. And there’s BOINC, where work is being done, but the results of the work are valuable scientific calculations - it’s not just moving rocks from one pile to another and back again.
in the case of anubis one could argue that the goal is to save energy. if too much energy is being spent by crawlers they might be configured to auto-skip anubis-protected sites to save money.
also, i’d say the tech behind crypto is interesting but that it should never have been used in a monetary context. proof of stake doesn’t help there, since it also facilitates consolidation of capital.
Proof of work is just that, proof that it did work. What work it’s doing isn’t defined by that definition. Git doesn’t ask for proof, but it does do work. Presumably the proof part isn’t the thing you have an issue with. I agree it sucks that this isn’t being used to do something constructive, but as long as it’s kept to a minimum in user time scales, it shouldn’t be a big deal.
Crypto currencies are an issue because they do the work continuously, 24/7. This is a one-time operation per view (I assume per view and not once ever), which with human input times isn’t going to be much. AI garbage does consume massive amounts of power though, so damaging those is beneficial.