146: When AI Attacks

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We're joined by Xe Iaso, who discusses a creative solution to relentless AI bots and the unexpected delights of running an outrageously overpowered homelab.

Special Guest: Xe Iaso.

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• Block AI scrapers with Anubis - Xe Iaso — I got tired of this and made a tool to stop them for good. I call it Anubis. Anubis weighs the soul of your connection using a sha256 proof-of-work challenge in order to protect upstream resources from scraper bots. It's a reverse proxy that requires browsers and bots to solve a proof-of-work challenge before they can access your site, just like Hashcash.
• Building native packages is complicated - Xe Iaso — Normally when I make projects, I don't expect them to take off. I especially don't expect to front page news on Ars Technica and TechCrunch within the span of a few days. I very much also do not expect to say sentences like "FFmpeg uses a program I made to help them stop scraper bots taking down their issue tracker". The last week has been fairly ridiculous in that regard.
• TecharoHQ/anubis — Anubis weighs the soul of your connection using a sha256 proof-of-work challenge in order to protect upstream resources from scraper bots.
• Open source devs are fighting AI crawlers with cleverness and vengeance — In a “cry for help” blog post in January, FOSS developer Xe Iaso described how AmazonBot relentlessly pounded on a Git server website to the point of causing DDoS outages. Git servers host FOSS projects so that anyone who wants can download the code or contribute to it.
• The surreal joy of having an overprovisioned homelab - Xe Iaso — Tonight I’ll tell you what gets me excited about my homelab and maybe inspire you to make your own. I'll get into what I like about it and clue you into some of the fun you get to have if one of your projects meant to protect your homelab goes hockey-stick.
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