181–190 of 207 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If an ad can be rendered on a page or if it uses audio it can be blocked. We have it easy right now with how trivial it has been to block ads, but we could face off against rendering and wiping them in real time if we need to.
Not really. Modern DRM uses Intel ME / AMD / ARM equivalent. These execute code the OS doesn’t have privilege to access.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had 'click all the lettuces' - it told me I was wrong for not clicking on a cabbage
It's not comparing your response to some hard truth, it's comparing your response to a typical response. Sort of like how LLMs dish stuff out based on what's probable, not based on hard truth. So when you fail, it's not really saying you're wrong, it's saying you're not like most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it would not. Spammers are still paying for the devices - most botnets are built and used (to spam) by different actors. Systems that require more computational power to spam take up more of their resources, making spamming significantly less profitable.
Depends on how much do you want real users to spend per captcha in electricity cost? If say it is $1/captcha it would be untenable for real users. If it is 0.01 cent, it wouldn't hurt spammer's margins.
I don't have any knowledge of what spammers' financials are like, but it's possible that even 0.01c/captcha would still be impactful if the click rate is low enough.
Probably the best way to start tuning the PoW difficulty is just by starting out with what users are willing to tolerate - e.g. 3s solve time on the median mobile device. The gap between mobile and desktop devices has significantly lessened over the past decade, so desktop-grade equipment won't have that much of an advantage - say 1s per captcha, which is a lot for a spammer who would otherwise be able to send out dozens of spam per second.
It's not about making spam impossible, but about making it unprofitable enough that the criminals go elsewhere. Economic warfare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The last time I got blocked by captcha I went through a dozen of them in a row before being told I wasnt human enough (possibly true after 30 years in IT!) and so on principal I reject all websites that include captcha. And anyway, why are we training these image recognition tools for free.
Were you trying to access archive.is using the CloudFlare DNS resolvers?
Someday, I'm hoping some sociologists look for evidence of socioeconomic discrimination in captcha implementations.
In my experience, performing the exact same actions with your mouse in Mountain View leads to a completely different outcome than it does in lower income areas (red-voting white, ethnic minorities, etc) surrounding the Bay Area.
SMS is the next big frontier for ads, every few messages with someone you can see a little ad about something related to your conversations. Or if a conversation has gone stale and someone hasn’t replied in several days, inject an ad to wake it back up.
SMS is dead. The US is basically an abberation in still using it. Rest of the world has moved on to whatsapp/imessage/whatever.
I think there are historical reasons. There was a time where most plans had free SMS but expensive internet, and even today the cheapest plans have free SMS and very limited data (ex: 50MB/month for the free.fr 2€/month plan).
Countries that didn't have good SMS infrastructure and advantageous plans are the most likely to have switched to private, internet-based messengers.
I don't know if it is still the case now with 4G/5G and the phasing out of earlier standards, but SMS had the advantage of going through congested networks better than anything else, including phone calls, MMS and internet data. Probably because it is an ouf-of-band signaling protocol.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While i know its evil, i always wished widevine was an option for creating captchas. Most captcha solutions are defeated by services like 2captcha.net and generally aren't the most privacy respecting.
I'd prefer to see proof-of-work based captchas. I'd much rather give up 10 minutes of CPU time for a token that can be revoked as soon as I actually use it for evil than give up all of my privacy (and two minutes of my personal time) for the privilege of using your annoying website.
The basic idea is that they'll happily let you sneak a few spam messages through iMessage if you're willing to spend a few hundred dollars on a burner iPhone. This is one reason why they're so resistant to allowing gateway protocols between iMessage and third party devices or RCS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari on visionOS supports Content Blockers and extensions just like on every other platform. In what sense is visionOS any different from iOS or macOS in this regard? EDIT: I suppose the developer of the content blocker needs to already have an iPad version and check the “visionOS” box, but Apple has made this extremely easy and it’s in both Apple and the content blockers’ interest to release a visionOS version.
"Content blockers" are trivial to bypass though. It's a half-assed "solution".
My strategy for managing ads is adblock + a mouse with a thumb button configured to CTRL + F4. If adblock doesn't catch it, my thumb twitch reflex when a popup appears will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Modern DRM uses Intel ME / AMD / ARM equivalent. These execute code the OS doesn’t have privilege to access.
Oh really, that's news to me. I thought one could always read the video frames one at a time.
The comms is encrypted on the bus using strong cryptography, so you can’t sniff it.
All these software blobs are signed and encrypted, you can’t replace it without the signing key.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari on visionOS supports Content Blockers and extensions just like on every other platform. In what sense is visionOS any different from iOS or macOS in this regard? EDIT: I suppose the developer of the content blocker needs to already have an iPad version and check the “visionOS” box, but Apple has made this extremely easy and it’s in both Apple and the content blockers’ interest to release a visionOS version.
"Content blockers" are trivial to bypass though. It's a half-assed "solution".
That's it. I've occasionally had to add a custom blocking pattern but essentially nothing else has been impossible to block.
I can't think of many other "half assed solutions" that have worked as advertised for almost a decade.