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Comment by boutell | Hacker News Reader

Shut off the broken bot filter so we can read it please

From experience, these bot filters are usually installed because the site would be down entirely without rejecting AI scrapers, so the argument to shut it off to improve usability is rather silly.

They don't need to shut off Anubis, they just need to configure it beyond the defaults. If they turned on the meta-refresh based challenge then all browsers could access it while still keeping most of the bots away. But few people ever configure these things and just accept the broken defaults.

With the current broken default config my browser can't even run the JS challenge due to it using unsupported bleeding edge JS features.

Hi, can you please paste the error message you get? This should be using features that are supported widely as of 2022 and I regularly test on Firefox LTS.

I'm just getting "invalid response." in a 500 response from the `anubis/api/pass-challenge` endpoint – weirdly, when I added breakpoints and stepped through the code myself, it worked, but if I load again, I get the error. Maybe there's a timing component? (Firefox stable)

I don't get any errors in my JS browser console. It just tries to load the JS files and apparently they don't run.

[12:03:18.699] GET https://code.ffmpeg.org/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/13ce36fef98a3f4... [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 227ms] [12:03:19.483] GET https://code.ffmpeg.org/.within.website/x/xess/xess.min.css?... [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 611ms] [12:03:19.485] GET https://code.ffmpeg.org/.within.website/x/cmd/anubis/static/... [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 839ms] [12:03:19.486] GET https://code.ffmpeg.org/.within.website/x/cmd/anubis/static/... [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 391ms] [12:03:19.487] GET https://code.ffmpeg.org/.within.website/x/cmd/anubis/static/... [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 368ms]

For clarification I am using a version of Firefox from about 2015. But this version of Firefox does work with the meta-refresh based Anubis option.

Archived snapshots of the linked page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250813104007/https://code.ffmp...

https://archive.is/dmj17

You can read it on one of these without having to pass that specific bot check

Check out commit 13ce36fef98a3f4e6d8360c24d6b8434cbb8869b from https://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git if your web browser doesn't support Javascript. The linked page is just a git viewer for that specific commit.

Or read the documentation for the new whisper filter: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#whisper-1

That also works, I assumed the ffmpeg website would also be behind Anubis if the git server is, but it doesn't actually seem to be.

Anubis is not all that useful for static websites since serving them does not generate high load (unlike when a bot traverses a Git server UI).

Took my iPhone 12 Mini a whole of 0.1 seconds to pass it. What hardware/OS are you using?

Took me 8 seconds on my shitty desktop.

Took about 30 secs for me (5 yr old intel cpu). Looked like there was a progress bar, but it didn't progress. Maybe the difficulty varies depending on IP address?

Anubis has config for that: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/policies#request-weigh...

It's up to the site admin to configure it that way, but it's possible some IP ranges/user agents are more often used by bots and therefore have an increased weight.

For old browsers there's also an option to use meta refresh instead of JS (https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challeng...) but that's quite a recent addition and not enabled by default.

> Maybe the difficulty varies depending on IP address?

I'm currently roaming in Finland with a Spanish SIM so would have expected the opposite in that case.

my i5-6200U with firefox/linux is about 10 years old. I used a variety of add blocking and fingerprint blocking techniques. Cloudflare often complains and blocks me.

This page loaded pretty much instantly (certainly in the time it took to switch to the background tab I loaded in). But then ffmpeg is written by old school engineers with old school ways of working. Their social media accounts are a hilarity of trolling worthy of slashdot in its peak.

Took me zero seconds to be blocked with invalid response

It also instantly blocks me on GrapheneOS, both Firefox and Vanadium. Very odd, as I've never had an issue with Anubis before.

GrapheneOS here, with Vanadium in incognito, it doesn't block me, both in wifi and in mobile. Maybe it was a temporary hiccup.

Thanks for checking! Incognito blocks me too, no idea whats up. Maybe I'm getting tripped up by IP reputation or something (though I shouldn't, normal residential connection).

The stock chrome browser Google news uses

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