71–80 of 205 posts
Not reCAPTCHA, please. It’s horrendous in any environment that blocks any real amount of tracking. Rate limiting would solve the bot issue without inconveniencing regular users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fetish we have with trying to private sector everything is a financial disaster. We can pay people to build it directly, it's ok. There doesn't need to be an unaccountable greased palm making $100 million in the background through some "public-private partnership". If the contractor makes a profit we pay more. If instead the government makes a profit, we pay less (see public banking for an example). Kinda funny h…
The government makes a profit? How does that work?
Norway uses one for their pension program (AUM of > $1 trillion, owning over 1.4% of the global stock market, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...)
My favorite one, however, was created by Ronald Reagan, the United States Mint Commemorative Coin Program:
> Since the modern commemorative coin program began in 1982, the United States Mint has raised more than $506,301,189 in surcharges to help build new museums, maintain national monuments... and much more.
https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/commemorative-co...
Honestly a world where the government has, say a commercial for-profit version of NPR, high speed internet, etc, that coexists with other current offerings and then re-invests that into government programs and needs less tax dollars from me sounds like a great idea. Tax payer money already paid for most of the infrastructure, we might as well profit from it.
There's some odd political animosity to it however, as if asking for a tax-payer owned version of NBC with some entertaining primetime shows is like some kind of slippery slope to autocratic socialism ... it's actually bringing capitalism into the government like never before and allowing them to say, not have to ask me to vote on raising my sales tax to build a train. Instead they ask us how we want to use all those sweet profits.
... it'd be nice ...
I worked in the bot defense space for quite some time, and it’s insane how much of the bot efforts were dedicated to getting camping spots. I’m happy to see this being recognized because I had many summers ruined because I couldn’t just get my old favorite camp spot.
Not reCAPTCHA, please. It’s horrendous in any environment that blocks any real amount of tracking. Rate limiting would solve the bot issue without inconveniencing regular users.
As someone with lots of anti-anti-botting knowledge - both are ineffective. Even if it's a "global rate limit" I'll find out the value (never ran into someone randomizing it) and jump on the web request faster than anyone else RIGHT as it comes up. With CAPTCHAs I'll bypass with a solving service and/or computer vision if it's easy, or even just get past the noCAPTCHA solutions with primed browser instances from cred…
Any recommendations for books/other information sources? Currently doing some backend work for a company that mainly does scraping and a lot of this seems to be based on the tribal knowledge of the resident old wise one.
But why the government have to do it? Isn't it a profitable business in itself?
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
Why don't they run a lottery rather than first-come-first-served on a website?
They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite). I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.
Seriously. I hate that visiting a national park now involves the same sort of online shenanigans as getting a popular concert ticket. That's not the vibe that should be associated with our parks system. Anyone botting the site should feel ashamed.
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