I hate Cloudflare especially because it’s slowly becoming a monopoly (if it didn’t become already). Webmasters are giving too much power to a single corporation to rule over who can access online content and who can’t. Old browsers and privacy-oriented browsers (e.g. Librewolf) are known to be more likely to be refused by Cloudflare, and this is a form of prejudice.
Also, and bringing Anubis to the loop too, there’s the lack of user consent. As a guest/user, I’m unable to consent with the heavy computations (and potential damage to my decade-old laptop from overheating) before these happen.
What I mean about “lack of consent” can be better illustrated by the “This site uses cookies” message: it often offers buttons so the user/guest can choose to either “accept” or “reject”. Have you wondered why every website must give these options nowadays? Because it’s a literal law. Neither Cloudflare nor Anubis have a “we’ll need to validate your browser, do you consent? Proceed with verification / Leave the website”. Something tells me Cloudflare, and Anubis as well, are literally illegal pieces of code in European Union, given the lack of user consent, although this wasn’t tested in courts yet. I’m not European (I’m Brazilian), but it would be quite entertaining to see this tested on an European court.
Finally, these things can cause literal harm to a device. Yes, because when any kind of computation happens, the CPU gets a little warm, and when said computations involve cryptomining-like behavior, CPU temps can raise a lot. And for devices such as mine, an i5-7200U laptop whose fan isn’t good (and I can’t afford a new one), the CPU can easily get to 90C, to the point of damage, if the computations take long enough. Given a PoW relies on randomness, there’s a literal chance that a challenge would kill my laptop if it took several seconds during a Brazilian summer (>42C almost wet-bulb). And I doubt the webmaster would be liable for the material damage their website caused to my personal device, so I’ve been speedrunning my way to close websites as soon as I see “Just a moment” or “Making sure you’re not a bot” as their title, I even made myself an userscript for doing so.
Finally, these things can cause literal harm to a device
Unpack that a bit more. What are you using to determine the harm to the device? I understand the concept that heat kills, however, as someone who watches temps closely on my server and especially on my old PC, I can’t confirm that a site causes a dramatic rise in temps. I have openhardware monitor on my desktop that remains ‘always on top’ and I see very little variation from site to site as far as temps are concerned. Just curious as to how you came to that conclusion. Perhaps it’s because I lean heavily on my standalone pFsense firewall to filter traffic.
however, as someone who watches temps closely on my server and especially on my old PC, I can’t confirm that a site causes a dramatic rise in temps
I use a KDE widget (System Monitor sensor) seen in the screenshot. It’s kept on my primary screen, right next to the clock, so I can watch the CPU temps as closely as possible. I also have a secondary widget at the drawer, displaying the CPU usage, as well as RAM and swap usage.
Notice, in the screenshot, how I’m running Blender and, yet, my CPU temps are somewhere around 35-40C. Partly because it’s currently winter here in Southern Hemisphere (and it’s quite cozy-cold around here where I reside), partly because it’s just Blender and a couple of lightweight websites opened in Waterfox. Even Catodon, the Misskey-fork platform I use for interacting with the Fediverse, is quite lightweight, especially because I turned off heavy JS animations.
But this scenario would change if I was faced with a sudden Anubis or Cloudflare. Because I watch the temps and they update each second, I can readily notice the temps increasing as Anubis/Cloudflare do their shenanigans.
Sometimes I’m browsing the Fediverse while awaiting for Blender to finish the rendering of an animation/scene. The rendering itself doesn’t warm my CPU too much, as I can adjust the thread count for Blender, but SharedWorkers in JS can take as much cores as they want because they can be instantiated multiple times, e.g. one for each CPU core. So, if Blender is opened, the temp increase can be higher, because there would be two simultaneous heavy computations competing for CPU cores. And, as I mentioned in my previous reply, the situation gets more dangerous during summer (although I avoid putting my laptop into heavy computing situations during summer).
Huh…that’s interesting. I just went to safereddit.com which I’m sure uses Anubis, tho the transaction is so quick I can’t 100% confirm that, but I think they do. Now, I have retro-fitted two pretty powerful, not your standard, fans in the old PC to mitigate some of that heat, along with the stock fans that I used to build it. Whereas your laptop generally utilizes one fan. I don’t know, but it intrigues me so I’ll keep a closer eye on it just out of mild curiosity.
Anubis, tho the transaction is so quick I can’t 100% confirm that, but I think they do
The amount of time which Anubis and other PoW-based algorithms take to solve a cryptographic challenge will depend on several factors, namely: the challenge level (depending on the webmaster’s settings, the level can be increased if site traffic has increased), the CPU clock speed and amount of CPU resources available for your browser (and, by extension, for Anubis’ ServiceWorkers), as well as… luck. It’s dealing with randomness, after all.
retro-fitted two pretty powerful, not your standard, fans in the old PC to mitigate some of that heat, along with the stock fans that I used to build it
Not to mention how a desktop CPU, even when old (and especially when old, as it likely means a standard big ATX rather than a mini-ITX), has lots of surface area to dissipate heat, and a metal PC case built for radiating the heat away while allowing for better internal circulation of air (contrasted with the non-conductive plastic case from cheap laptops such as the one I own).
Whereas your laptop generally utilizes one fan
Yeah. And in my case it’s a very inefficient, old fan. One that makes louder noise (akin to a car engine idling or cranking) as soon as it gets faster trying to keep up with the CPU heat… Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my previous replies: I also know when my CPU temps raised because the cooling fan becomes more noisy.
I don’t know, but it intrigues me so I’ll keep a closer eye on it just out of mild curiosity.
We often underestimate how much computing power the Web have been demanding from our personal devices. Web browsers have became full-fledged Operating Systems inside whatever Operating System the user uses, and some websites are massive in terms of CPU and RAM requirements. I mean, nowadays we have video editors, graphic suites, 3D suites, even 3D games, running entirely in browser…
(and especially when old, as it likely means a standard big ATX rather than a mini-ITX)
Oh this thing is monstrous. LOL It’s a Coolermaster Cosmos II case with a EVGA Classified SRX dual CPU with 96 GB RAM. So, yeah lots of room for heat dissipation.
Cloudflare is a Big Tech company (first red flag) based in USA (second red flag) and Big Tech are known for giving not popular things like privacy concerns.
When it comes to Cloudflare, they decrypt your HTTPS traffic in order to process the data (a very BIG red flag). And you can’t do shit about other than refuse to use Cloudflare on your website.
But how often will that happen with all the ignorant and careless people all around the world? Very rare! So I tend to just avoid the shit instead.
People don’t like Cloudflare, I assume, because it’s concentrating your data into one channel. They have control much like a lot of major data centers. So it’s 6 of this, half dozen of the other, and those idiosyncrasies are justified differently by different selfhosters. I would hazard a guess that all major banking institutions use Cloudflare. It’s just that ubiquitous. I use Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust and I absolutely love it. Cloudflare is unavoidable on the internet.
ETA: To answer your question directly, yes lemmy.world does employ Cloudflare.
Does lemmy.world use cloudflare?
Also im confused, is there a reason people dont like cloudflare? Other than eating up caching for the entire internet of course?
I hate Cloudflare especially because it’s slowly becoming a monopoly (if it didn’t become already). Webmasters are giving too much power to a single corporation to rule over who can access online content and who can’t. Old browsers and privacy-oriented browsers (e.g. Librewolf) are known to be more likely to be refused by Cloudflare, and this is a form of prejudice.
Also, and bringing Anubis to the loop too, there’s the lack of user consent. As a guest/user, I’m unable to consent with the heavy computations (and potential damage to my decade-old laptop from overheating) before these happen.
What I mean about “lack of consent” can be better illustrated by the “This site uses cookies” message: it often offers buttons so the user/guest can choose to either “accept” or “reject”. Have you wondered why every website must give these options nowadays? Because it’s a literal law. Neither Cloudflare nor Anubis have a “we’ll need to validate your browser, do you consent? Proceed with verification / Leave the website”. Something tells me Cloudflare, and Anubis as well, are literally illegal pieces of code in European Union, given the lack of user consent, although this wasn’t tested in courts yet. I’m not European (I’m Brazilian), but it would be quite entertaining to see this tested on an European court.
Finally, these things can cause literal harm to a device. Yes, because when any kind of computation happens, the CPU gets a little warm, and when said computations involve cryptomining-like behavior, CPU temps can raise a lot. And for devices such as mine, an i5-7200U laptop whose fan isn’t good (and I can’t afford a new one), the CPU can easily get to 90C, to the point of damage, if the computations take long enough. Given a PoW relies on randomness, there’s a literal chance that a challenge would kill my laptop if it took several seconds during a Brazilian summer (>42C almost wet-bulb). And I doubt the webmaster would be liable for the material damage their website caused to my personal device, so I’ve been speedrunning my way to close websites as soon as I see “Just a moment” or “Making sure you’re not a bot” as their title, I even made myself an userscript for doing so.
!selfhosted@lemmy.world
Unpack that a bit more. What are you using to determine the harm to the device? I understand the concept that heat kills, however, as someone who watches temps closely on my server and especially on my old PC, I can’t confirm that a site causes a dramatic rise in temps. I have openhardware monitor on my desktop that remains ‘always on top’ and I see very little variation from site to site as far as temps are concerned. Just curious as to how you came to that conclusion. Perhaps it’s because I lean heavily on my standalone pFsense firewall to filter traffic.
I use a KDE widget (System Monitor sensor) seen in the screenshot. It’s kept on my primary screen, right next to the clock, so I can watch the CPU temps as closely as possible. I also have a secondary widget at the drawer, displaying the CPU usage, as well as RAM and swap usage.
Notice, in the screenshot, how I’m running Blender and, yet, my CPU temps are somewhere around 35-40C. Partly because it’s currently winter here in Southern Hemisphere (and it’s quite cozy-cold around here where I reside), partly because it’s just Blender and a couple of lightweight websites opened in Waterfox. Even Catodon, the Misskey-fork platform I use for interacting with the Fediverse, is quite lightweight, especially because I turned off heavy JS animations.
But this scenario would change if I was faced with a sudden Anubis or Cloudflare. Because I watch the temps and they update each second, I can readily notice the temps increasing as Anubis/Cloudflare do their shenanigans.
Sometimes I’m browsing the Fediverse while awaiting for Blender to finish the rendering of an animation/scene. The rendering itself doesn’t warm my CPU too much, as I can adjust the thread count for Blender, but SharedWorkers in JS can take as much cores as they want because they can be instantiated multiple times, e.g. one for each CPU core. So, if Blender is opened, the temp increase can be higher, because there would be two simultaneous heavy computations competing for CPU cores. And, as I mentioned in my previous reply, the situation gets more dangerous during summer (although I avoid putting my laptop into heavy computing situations during summer).
!selfhosted@lemmy.world
Huh…that’s interesting. I just went to safereddit.com which I’m sure uses Anubis, tho the transaction is so quick I can’t 100% confirm that, but I think they do. Now, I have retro-fitted two pretty powerful, not your standard, fans in the old PC to mitigate some of that heat, along with the stock fans that I used to build it. Whereas your laptop generally utilizes one fan. I don’t know, but it intrigues me so I’ll keep a closer eye on it just out of mild curiosity.
Thanks.
The amount of time which Anubis and other PoW-based algorithms take to solve a cryptographic challenge will depend on several factors, namely: the challenge level (depending on the webmaster’s settings, the level can be increased if site traffic has increased), the CPU clock speed and amount of CPU resources available for your browser (and, by extension, for Anubis’ ServiceWorkers), as well as… luck. It’s dealing with randomness, after all.
Not to mention how a desktop CPU, even when old (and especially when old, as it likely means a standard big ATX rather than a mini-ITX), has lots of surface area to dissipate heat, and a metal PC case built for radiating the heat away while allowing for better internal circulation of air (contrasted with the non-conductive plastic case from cheap laptops such as the one I own).
Yeah. And in my case it’s a very inefficient, old fan. One that makes louder noise (akin to a car engine idling or cranking) as soon as it gets faster trying to keep up with the CPU heat… Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my previous replies: I also know when my CPU temps raised because the cooling fan becomes more noisy.
We often underestimate how much computing power the Web have been demanding from our personal devices. Web browsers have became full-fledged Operating Systems inside whatever Operating System the user uses, and some websites are massive in terms of CPU and RAM requirements. I mean, nowadays we have video editors, graphic suites, 3D suites, even 3D games, running entirely in browser…
!selfhosted@lemmy.world
Oh this thing is monstrous. LOL It’s a Coolermaster Cosmos II case with a EVGA Classified SRX dual CPU with 96 GB RAM. So, yeah lots of room for heat dissipation.
spoiler
Cloudflare is a Big Tech company (first red flag) based in USA (second red flag) and Big Tech are known for giving not popular things like privacy concerns.
When it comes to Cloudflare, they decrypt your HTTPS traffic in order to process the data (a very BIG red flag). And you can’t do shit about other than refuse to use Cloudflare on your website.
But how often will that happen with all the ignorant and careless people all around the world? Very rare! So I tend to just avoid the shit instead.
People don’t like Cloudflare, I assume, because it’s concentrating your data into one channel. They have control much like a lot of major data centers. So it’s 6 of this, half dozen of the other, and those idiosyncrasies are justified differently by different selfhosters. I would hazard a guess that all major banking institutions use Cloudflare. It’s just that ubiquitous. I use Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust and I absolutely love it. Cloudflare is unavoidable on the internet.
ETA: To answer your question directly, yes lemmy.world does employ Cloudflare.