Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#211

Post by r721 » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

wisebit wrote: post #159

"Powering these advances is machine learning and a combination of threat yadda yadda" Looks like they do little more than just check for a Google cookie [1]. [1]. https://www.blackhat.com/docs/asia-16/materials/asia-16-Siva... edit: still, it's far better than the previous state of captchas. I'm glad they did this. But it's like for anything to be considered "advanced" or "good" in tech lately, it has to have been po…

Yeah, I have third-party cookies blocked and have never seen "i'm not a robot" captchas, it's "street signs"/"mountains" ones all the way.

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#212

Post by dsp1234 » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #134

dsp1234 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that "free work"? The original recaptcha was used to help clear up text from book digitization projects where OCR couldn't understand the data. The appeal of this was that these works were in the public domain, and thus proper digitization of these works is a societal-wide benefit. Since Google purchased it, they've been using it to: 1.) Clean street view data for a proprietary product (Google maps) 2.) Build…

Recaptcha was not a free service. Or if it was, why did Google end up paying millions for it? And it's not free now, unless the engineers and scientists working on it are working pro bono. According to Wikipedia and the New York Times, reCaptcha was not developed for public domain works. Its pilot project was to digitize the NYT archives, archives which were not released to the public domain nor are fully available w…

Recaptcha was not a free service.

It was provided a free service[0] (search free). I'm pretty sure that no one in this conversation is saying that the cost to run the service is free, and arguing such is a strawman.

was not developed for public domain works.

pilot project was to digitize the NYT archives

While the original "recaptcha.net" website is no longer available online (even via archive.org). There are plenty of sources still available that bely this claim. that will help convert printed text into computer-readable letters on behalf of the Internet Archive[0]. The team is involved in digitising old books and manuscripts supplied by a non-profit organisation called the Internet Archive[1]. "There's still about 100 million books to be digitised, which at the current rate will take us about 400 years to complete - Luis von Ahn, Carnegie Mellon"[1]. The sources are from 2007, when recaptcha was first introduced. There are more, but I picked the first two by going back to the beginning of the wikipedia entry for recaptcha and looking at the supplied sources.

This is before Google bought it in 2009. While I can't speak for anyone else, this is what I mean when I say "original" recaptcha.

laugh at your suggestion that Google could "pay a group of people to do".

They got a group of people to do it for free, which implies (barring salaries) that they could also get a group of people to do it for not-free. Thus the argument that people don't want to work for Google for free.

Google hadn't learned from massive user data

And when Google has met it's ML goals and decides it gets no further benefit from recaptcha? Remember, it's not a free-to-run service. They only continue it as long as they benefit. If recaptcha shuts down, it would have been nicer to have the fruits of that work available through something like the Internet Archive, than something like Google Books.

[0] - http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may24_recaptcha.sht...

[1] - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7023627.stm

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#213

Post by illnewsthat » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

rodionos wrote: post #7

Is there a sample page somewhere, where I can 'see' the invisible recaptcha at work?

Here you go: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo?invisible=true

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#214

Post by illnewsthat » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

vidyesh wrote: post #8

This is so confusing. It doesn't explain how it works nor a demo page nor the reason behind why it went invisible.

Here is the demo: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo?invisible=true

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#215

Post by joshuamorton » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

bbarn wrote: post #153

jpatokal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original pre-Google reCAPTCHA was used for digitizing books. Using it to read house numbers for Street View was a Google addition.

The original inventor also went on to found Duolingo, which uses teaching someone a language as a way to translate web pages as a service. I like that model a lot more, as at least you get something in exchange (the language learning)

(am google)

To be fair, if you use google maps, and don't have any ethical issues with helping googler, you do get a return on investment, in that you get improved ML capabilities and improved address recognition in google maps.

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#216

Post by iaml » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 5:18 PM UTC

endless1234 wrote: post #41

vidyesh wrote: post #8

This is so confusing. It doesn't explain how it works nor a demo page nor the reason behind why it went invisible.

Instead of the user having to click the "I am not a robot" checkbox, then the submit button (or w/e), this basically binds clicking the submit button to reCAPTCHA. So whatever checks clicking "I am not a robot" would run are instead done automatically when submitting. No idea how the additional prompts (e.g. "select the parts of the image with a street sign") are shown nicely in this "invisible" UX though.

They are shown in a lightbox in the middle of a page.

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#217

Post by iaml » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

illnewsthat wrote: post #214

vidyesh wrote: post #8

This is so confusing. It doesn't explain how it works nor a demo page nor the reason behind why it went invisible.

Here is the demo: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo?invisible=true

To get the actual verification process open in incognito mode.

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#218

Post by neurostimulant » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #184

I remember when they advertised it with "you just need to click a checkbox". In reality, I always have to solve a streetview captcha, possibly several times in a row.

Are you behind a NAT/VPN (i.e. your public ip is shared among many other users), or not logged in to google?

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#219

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #203

StavrosK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would not having ReCAPTCHA prevent this?

Using some other bot-filtering system would prevent it. Of course the makers of that filter would be able to bypass it, but I guess you could use multiple filters...!

Can't you do that now, then?

Re: Introducing the Invisible reCAPTCHA

#220

Post by throwaway2016a » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

macrael wrote: post #4

Google using captchas to get humans to read street addresses captured by street view cars to improve maps results remains one of the most Googly things they've ever done. Genius, lateral, and a little weird.

Goog-411 predates that quite a bit an dis arguably more Googley. Launching a free 411 service (at a time when you usually paid per minute for that) and using it to improve your voice recognition algorithms.

It was essentially "OK Google" for dumb phones.

For anyone not familiar, 411 (in the US at least) was the directory service number. You could call it to get things like what time a restaurant was open until. Directions to the airport. Etc.