this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

the functional difference is that this does it once. you could just as well accuse git of being a major contributor to global warming.

hash algorithms are useful. running billions of them to make monopoly money is not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Which party of git performs proof-of-work? Specifically, intentionally inefficient algorithms whose output is thrown away?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

the hashing part? it's the same algo as here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

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