What you’re up against blocking bots: A solo developer built Obscura, a headless browser that spoofs fingerprints well enough that no tracker can catch it. (via Aymane Mrini)
- Obscura is an open-source headless browser built in Rust by a single developer, weighing 70MB and booting in 85ms on 30MB of RAM, compared to Chrome's 300MB disk footprint, 200MB memory use, and two-second startup time.
- It runs real JavaScript through V8, speaks Chrome DevTools Protocol natively, and works as a drop-in replacement for Puppeteer and Playwright with no code changes required.
- The fingerprint spoofing angle is worth watching: per-session randomization across GPU, canvas, audio, and battery signals, plus blocking 3,520 tracker domains, makes it harder to detect than standard headless Chrome setups.
