Anubis Mascot v2 and other announcements

[Xe]

Hey all,

As I've mentioned around places, I've been commissioning an artist to make Anubis (character) v2. I wanted to make her more cozy and Canadian. Here's the WIP we have:

This is unfinished (needs shading, etc), but overall gets across the vibe we want to have. This image would be the "happy" image that shows when a challenge is passed. I commissioned CELPHASE, an independent European artist for well above market rate. CELPHASE has also done the mascot design for PluralKit.

I plan to make these into physical printed stickers to give out if you attend the same conferences I do.

Do you have any thoughts or feedback?

Other big things coming up (many do not have issues yet because they are still being thought out):

• Rewrite of the proof-of-work check to use WebAssembly (probably Equi-X) on the client and server
• Overall refactoring
• Caddy module
• Traefik/Nginx integration
• Expanded matching on requests
• Non-binary pass/fail thresholds
• Expanded checks including but not limited to HTML canvas rendering
• Documentation additions, so many documentation additions

Unrelatedly, holy cow Anubis has been blowing up. I made Ars Technica this week and here's a visualization of the GitHub star history compared to my blog and biggest other projects:

It's been a lot, but it's weird to see something take off like this. Next big step is getting some kind of financial freedom from having to work my dayjob, but I can let that be a slow burn.

Thanks for following Anubis! I hope it's helped you get uptime back from scrapers.

Xe

[3kh0]

I love the new mascot! I think as the project grows, it will be nice to have a rotation of art displayed on the challenge page to keep things fresh.

[ayumi-tyan]

She looks great!

[Maffsie]

she's cute and Canadian! one suggestion I have is that it'd be thematically appropriate if the lil ring on her right ear was an Ankh, since the project's named Anubis :3

[garfieldairlines]

Credit the artist please ?

[Xe]

Updated in the post (had to get permission from the artist) but here's a copy of the thing I added:

I commissioned CELPHASE, an independent European artist for well above market rate. CELPHASE has also done the mascot design for PluralKit.

[Xe]

I forgot to mention, but I also want the next release to ship binary packages. This will require some cleverness and bringing yeet up to snuff. Give me time, the Docker image will work for now.

[awilfox]

Rewrite of the proof-of-work check to use WebAssembly (probably Equi-X) on the client and server

I love Anubis, and I am accepting of the fact that it will take some pain to access FOSS sites using older machines because of the unfair monopoly of Web traffic by AI scrapers, however…

WebAssembly is basically impossible to run on big-endian systems (Power, SPARC, and hopefully some Arm64 SBCs soon when I am done doing some magick). This would be a hard death knell for these systems. Please reconsider this for the client-side, or at least make it a setting where I can beg bcooksley to disable it.

[Sleepful]

I imagine I am not the first to ask this but I did not find any other issues:

Configuration options to change the branding to some other picture(s)?

Cheers

[Sleepful]

I suppose it is just a matter of building the Docker image myself with proper replacements instead of using the one from ghcr.io/techarohq/anubis:v1.15.0, yeah?

[bragefuglseth]

FWIW, you’re kindly asked to support Anubis financially if you intend to remove or replace the character.

[Xe]

Right now you need to fork the project and replace the pictures. Keep in mind that doing this will mean you will be downstream of a very active project and it will incur a lot of maintenance work. I am looking for people that want to white-label in #123 because if there's enough interest in it, I can potentially replace my income and not have to work at my dayjob (which, ironically, is in generative AI). I would really love to work on this full time, but food prices and rent keep going up.

[Albirew]

isn't it possible to softly change it by having an additional docker volume like - "./folder-with-new-mascots:/web/static/img:ro" ?

[Xe]

Not currently. I need to write up the sustainability plans that will have a monthly donation goal for implementing that.

[ggtylerr]

What about the old mascot? Would it be possible to add it back? (Also since someone mentioned credit, where is it from and/or who drew it?)

[dogederp]

I would also like to know more about the old mascot

[bragefuglseth]

The old mascot was AI generated (which is one of the reasons why it was replaced).

[dogederp]

The old mascot was AI generated (which is one of the reasons why it was replaced).

Oh aight, thanks for the info!

[gs-101]

[BlitDev]

idk what the end result will be, but the old mascot is much better now. Anyway, you need to make the mascot selection in the config, and no problem)

[Xe]

New assets are PR'd in #204! Gonna merge it tomorrow morning

[Popolon]

Not totally related but instead of have the dark/light version only change by clicking the button, you can also have it automatically selected this way:

    <link href="/css/dark.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" />
    <link href="/css/light.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" />

[Xe]

It should already natively support dark and light preferences. I test on Firefox and chrome and it natively supports that OS setting in my testing.

[Minecodes]

I'd be interested in the caddy module. What is the current progress there? I'd be interested in contributing, and maybe add Anubis to my private website when the caddy part is released (I use the caddy fork frankenphp as my webserver)

[JasonLovesDoggo]

see #16. There is going to be a decently large refactor soon from what I know so we're waiting on that.

CC @Xe if i'm wrong on this

[Akselmo]

I absolutely love the mascot, but I would want to eventually change it to my own character. :D

Right now you need to fork the project and replace the pictures.

I take it this is still the case? I am willing to wait for this feature of course and I don't mind the current one at all. I just want to eventually commission someone for my own version of it. :)

I am no big money guy but will throw you donation(s) for that!

[hvisage]

Though I'm not too phased about the image, it was an IMMEDIATE TURN OFF for several of my clients as they claimed it to be questionable "young girl picture" in the context of child pornography and child trafficking ;(

I'd advise to have it a more mature looking one for the enterprise clients please.

[Xe]

If you care about the image, you can pay to support the project.