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Comment by delta_p_delta_x | Hacker News Reader

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool.

A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more.

Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at that can be unplugged if necessary.

I just wish Git itself had a more robust means of issue-handling (no, email is a 1980s protocol, it's not good enough, even if it is for Linux) and CI/CD, rather than relegating the matter to different hosts.

And now everyone has to learn GitHub Actions, Gitlab pipelines, Jenkins pipelines, and more.

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I love self hosting but the comments i think have to do with quality issues.

Having an anime girl show up 99% of the time one visits due to AI bot protection is not the best experience no matter how much I love anime. Saying to “get over it” is dismissive to a large group of people who disagree with you.

The comments are not a cesspool but standard hn being critical.

> yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it

I think it's cute. It wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't cute. It's inoffensive and doesn't get in the way of the software serving its function, the only critique I could do if I wanted to is people unfamiliar with the project would get a bit confused if they only saw the character for a split second: https://anubis.techaro.lol/

I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it, that would be a nice UX improvement.

Otherwise, agreed about self-hosting and the ability to choose whatever platform aligns with your goals the closest to be a good thing!

> And now everyone has to learn GitHub Actions, Gitlab pipelines, Jenkins pipelines, and more.

A part of me doesn't like the churn of new CI solutions coming in all the time. On the other hand, after learning GitLab CI, I'd generally prefer it to something like Jenkins, it just feels more pleasant. But with something like Drone CI or Woodpecker CI my non-work needs are also covered wonderfully, especially with a lot of the software I build being packaged in Docker containers, which further simplifies and somewhat standardizes things! A lot of the time I can also encapsulate most of the logic in shell scripts that are easy to run regardless of the environment (CI server or locally), which makes it even more portable.

So wait, is the cartoon mascot at issue the Annubis one for the Cloudflare-like DDoS protection, or is it an actual FFmpeg mascot? Because I don't see any cartoon characters on the FFmpeg code, main, or wiki websites. But I am curious what kinda -tan they came up with. :P

It's the Anubis one, there are a few other drawings on the homepage of theirs.

It was pointed out elsewhere in the thread that they also sell an unbranded version for companies: https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

Cool way to make money, to be honest!

I think even Cloudflare gives you a second or two to see what's going on before forwarding you to the page behind it

Not if you have the right fingerprint - then you're not even aware the site is using CF.

> Not if you have the right fingerprint - then you're not even aware the site is using CF.

I live in Eastern Europe, so for reasons beyond me that's never the case.

Either way, if I have to stare at something, I'd very much like to understand what it is: the difference between a CMD window popping up when you start your computer for a split second, vs it sticking around and you seeing that it's AMDAutoUpdate that you can track down to scheduled tasks and "C:\Program Files\AMD\AutoUpdate\AMDAutoUpdate.exe".

> Self-hosting is generally good

I’ve contributed to a number of projects that try to self-host, with mixed results. It gets frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds, or when the self-hosted solution goes down for a week because the admin is on vacation and missed something.

I’ve contributed to one server that feels the need to periodically delete dormant accounts for some reason. Every time I come back to the project I find myself creating a new user account.

With the anubis-protected servers the anti-bot protection has a lot of false positives, so occasionally I have to switch browsers just to not deal with page load failures.

One server adopted some black list that had my home IP in it for some reason, so I was just banned from accessing the server without a VPN.

It all just feels old and tiring after a while compared to the breath of fresh air of just using a site like GitLab or GitHub that simply works.

I understand why they’d want to do it, but I don’t think it’s without some tradeoffs.

Contribution-wise, I find Sourcehut’s approach[0] very sound: you could never have troubles with your account because you don’t need one in the first place. If you want to contribute, create a patch and send it to respective mailing list.

As a positive side-effect, a contributor is compelled to write a reasonable explanatory message to maintainers and keep the patch minimal and contained (compared to a typical Github PR with a dozen of commits mixing together fixes, features, newlines and indentation changes all over the place).

[0] They did not invent it, obviously—it is what Linux kernel, the origin of Git, had (has?) been doing for a long time!

> frustrating when someone’s GitLab (or other) server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds

That's a typical experience when the chosen solution doesn't match the available resources and desired scale. Projects like WordPress and GitLab may work for large enterprises, or when you add in enough caching that you don't have to do the large computation (generating one page) most times, but they don't work so well when you're wanting it to just work without custom solutions as a small team on a small budget

Forgejo doesn't seem to have this issue as far as I've noticed. I've hosted the predecessor (Gitea) on a potato. It's so easy to host, I think it's actually still running but forgotten about. I should check if it needs updating at some point..

> server is so slow that every page load takes several seconds,

Welcome to DE, where _every_ page takes several seconds to load.

Desktop environment? Deutschland? Neither is true so I can't tell what you mean

Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure, but so are your own comments. None of it is empirical, just personal opinion.

I personally couldn't give a rat's ass how it's hosted. Still uses a protocol there's open source clients for? Cool. Not that I have pulled the ffmpeg source more than once in my life (which I suspect's the same for 99% of the people here). I'll continue to get it packaged for me by somebody else, who will pull it from wherever it's hosted, however they can. I'm just glad it still exists.

> Cesspool is pretty strong language, dawg. They're critical and opinionated, sure,

There's nothing wrong about critical and opinionated but respectful, but the comments that are now flagged, and some of the downvoted ones are very low quality, not just critical and opinionated.

> I just wish Git itself had a more robust means of issue-handling (no, email is a 1980s protocol, it's not good enough, even if it is for Linux) and CI/CD, rather than relegating the matter to different hosts.

Just shove the issues into Git itself. That's what Fossil does for its wiki and issues, while GitHub only does it for its wiki. There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself.

> There are several open source ways to do this with Git itself.

Yes but that's also the problem. What's the point of doing it in git if whatever choice you make is incompatible with most clients?

One should win. Or Git should ship with one.

> That's also the problem.

There's no way to please some people.

Wait, why would it be "incompatible with most clients"?

It's frustrating. As someone who is into self-hosting, I was hoping to find answers in the comments to questions like:

- How self-hosted is it? Is it on somebody's computer at home? A colo? One of those university linux servers that runs for decades? Hetzner? Is there any redundancy?

- How are the costs and responsibilities for the hardware broken down?

- How is admin and patching handled?

I'm actually very curious about that stuff, but nobody's really talking about it here

> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool.

I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards.

I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for.

Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases with each project not picking it because of the weaker network effect?

I do have a sense of unease about most smaller hosting services and self-hosting solutions, in that I don't trust them to stay up in the long term, once no one is left to care about projects on them, or at least not about the old versions. (This isn't so big an issue for something as big as FFmpeg, but I'm talking about the general case.) Just try to download some old version of a minor library from the late 90s or early 2000s: unless it's been continuously using the same source control repo, the odds are better than not that the files disappeared during the intervening decades.

In contrast, whatever its faults, I fully expect public repos on GitHub to last for the next 10 years, likely the next 20, barring active removal by the author. (The biggest medium-term risk is a "GitHub is evil, take down all your repos" campaign a la Reddit.) Of course, it's not foolproof, the only way to get that would be to replicate the project in dozens of places, but I find it much better than the old status quo of files slipping away once forgotten.

That's a totally valid concern that I also have and that does need to be addressed.

I'm thinking of setting up mirrors for my stuff for this exact reason. Now that codeberg exists, that could be the solution and why not accept contributions from codeberg too if it doesn't make the development process too messy.

OTOH GitHub is a huge SPOF. I also trust that my stuff that matters is checked out by other people who will reupload somewhere else should something happen.

I think it is OK that repos and content in general disappear. It is healthy. If somebody is caring about hosting the thing it most likely means it is healthy project. If not you shouldn't probably be using it.

This obsession with saving everything forever leads to information overload. In 20 years the github namespaces will be so full that finding good name for a project will be impossible. People often bring up social media but i think that's even worse. If you like some of photos just keep and save them yourself. I don't think it's healthy to be randomly reminded (what facebook does) about what somebody was doing 8 years ago on this day. People are unable to forget and forgive. We should allow for this to happen automatically like our memories.

> beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for.

Since you're ignoring the reasons by calling them unreasonable, the armchair psychology alternative won't help get you what you love

I'm not calling people or reasons unreasonable, but the level at which they are triggered. And I stand by my point: being mad that someone chooses to self host is unreasonable and no amount of accusing me of doing armchair psychology will change anything to this.

There’s an irony to becoming so triggered by a couple angry comments that you become triggered and leave your own angry comments.

Oh no, we are trapped in a angry comments infinite loop! :-)

Yeah, I wouldn't say it triggered me but we should definitely have flagged the angry comment and moved on, as per the HN guidelines. I was negatively surprised, I'm not usually surprised by comments on HN.

In the end, all these comments were flagged and downvoted to death anyway.

> I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for.

The cloud companies do not want you to selfhost. It is good that Ffmpeg did not experience a DDOS attack yet, because that's what happened to someone who moved his email to selfhosting. We are living in a time when companies have become like mafia.

Do you have evidences that these individual HN accounts are from some cloud company mafia?

I don't think this is it and I would not want to dismiss individual spontaneous, genuine feeling too early.

I strongly disagree with the issue handling & CI/CD part of your comment. Those are concerns are orthogonal to distributed version control and greatly complicate any system.

Not everyone even has to learn Jenkins/GH-Pipelines/whatever. In most teams I've worked on those are typically managed by one or two people, or by a different team entirely. And it's not even a hard skill to learn.

> A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it)

If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website, then in my opinion it's completely reasonable for those people to point out how immature it is. Telling people to "get over it" just makes you sound equally as immature.

The “branding of your captcha page is immature” point is a downside unless you consider it not merely self-expression but an intentional motivator for “more mature” (which not infrequently goes hand in hand with “financially able”) people to subscribe to a commercial offering, thus helping keep an open-source project alive and in an honest business, despite competition with a VC-backed behemoth that’s become nearly a monopoly.

> unless you consider it not merely self-expression but an intentional motivator for “more mature” (which not infrequently goes hand in hand with “financially able”) people to subscribe to a commercial offering

I'm fairly confident in saying that self-expression is the #1 motivator here and the commercial offering was an afterthought.

I don't have a marketing degree, but I'm pretty sure that if selling your software to professional businesses is the goal, making the non-commercial version feel extremely unprofessional is really not the best way to do it, considering most people are likely going to find out about the project's existence by seeing it, and it won't leave a good first impression.

> if selling your software to professional businesses is the goal

If that was the goal, this wouldn’t be an OSS project, would it?

When we are talking about FOSS, the goal is to keep the project alive and sustainable without burning out or starving. There are various ways people do it (such as making it your side project in addition to the day job, charging for bug fixes and features, etc.), and this one doesn’t strike me as the worst—making it partly your self-expression creates that extra bit of motivation to keep going, and if it serves as an incentive for people who find it otherwise good (some of which may in fact not mind the default style personally but wouldn’t go for it at their place of employment) to become paid customers then all the better!

Do these same people refuse to use Go because the homepage has a gopher mascot that could be straight from western children's cartoon courage the cowardly dog on the homepage?

FreeBSD because of the cartoon devil? Bash because of the GNU goat with the facial expression that could be read as smug or stoned? Google's logo is some printed characters in primary colours, is that too childish?

Nah, that people have such a visceral reaction to the anime girl is not just because it's "childish" as so much else of our industry is "childish" and passes without comment, or sometimes even causes criticism when it gets taken away for blandness (see all the complaints when projects redesign their logos to Helvetica work marks)

> If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website

It is a damn sight better than the maliciously-compliant and deeply annoying GDPR 'we use cookies' banners, pop-ups, and dark patterns like having to uncheck thousands of 'partner' boxes.

This is merely a response to AI companies abusing scraper bots and having a callous, selfish disregard for Internet and server bandwidth. It was on this very website where I saw it put quite succinctly—AI-scraping bots have essentially started mass DDOS attacks on all small servers.

> immature

Maturity is empathy, human connection, understanding, perspective, compassion, altruism, and more. Not some arbitrary 'this is a cartoon, therefore it is immature'.

25 years ago Microsoft, the professional software behemoth, decided to put a cartoon dog and paperclip with googly eyes in its operating system and office software. A major mobile OS has a cartoon robot in its logo.

Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind. They are much more mature than your shallow portrayal of them.

> Maturity is empathy, human connection, understanding, perspective, compassion, altruism, and more.

Maturity is FFmpeg moving to Forgejo knowing and weighing the tradeoffs.

> Cartoons are metaphors and windows into the artist's frame of mind.

Maybe they are. But, in this case, nobody cares about the "artist's frame of mind". We care about accessing a website that has nothing to do with art.

Are you having actual, real problems accessing the source code due to the anime character being used in the bot-blocker?

That is just what LLM era brings.

It doesn't have to be - adding this kind of DRM is an active choice and definitely not the only option. Neither is the art style required.

> 1980s protocol

TCP is even older; so what? It works, as does email. It's merely a transport layer.

What is required is a well-defined standard to encapsulate relevant data into it: PR definitions, code review comments, approval / rejection votes. This all could be a zipped JSON attachment, for instance.

The code change proper can continue be passed in the patch format. Or the whole thing could arrive via an exposed API endpoint, or even be pushed by git protocol.

A tool could interpret the extracted data and update a database that powers a nice GUI / TUI, and controls a CI/CD interface.

(Now if I only had time to properly design and implement that.)

Why all of this? You can just enforce some formatting rules and add a few script to the system mailbox to alter the message (add an issue number, send a notification when a change is accepted and merged, etc,...). No need to complicate stuff. Just send a standard plain text email that follows the rules.

Anubis is funny because I think it's in the license that you have to keep the mascot. If you want to remove it you have to pay them.

Anubis has a commercial version called BotStopper that allows the mascot to be changed:

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/botstopper

But, Anubis uses the plain MIT license, so you can modify it to remove the branding yourself: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE

If Anubis used a license with that mascot requirement, it would not be free and open source.

I stand corrected. It's still a funny bit of marketing.

Anubis is MIT licensed so you should be able to modify it freely: https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis/blob/main/LICENSE It would be very funny if they did that though.

Oh no how dare people complain about the "cute" DRM.

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