Hardest captcha ever? • Hacker News Board

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#11

Post by mvalle » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

I don't think it would be hard to do, in fact, they reverse the whole point of a CAPTCHA.

A CAPTCHA is supposed to be a task that is easy for humans, but difficult for computers. High-level mathematics is difficult for humans but easy for computers.

They do have some success of telling computers and humans apart, though.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#12

Post by perlgeek » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

Actually I find that much easier than blurred text on random lines in the background

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#13

Post by pieter » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:39 PM UTC

I tried a few, and it looks like most (all?) of them can be answered by wolfram alpha.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#14

Post by jxcole » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:39 PM UTC

I could easily write a captcha breaker for this...It's much simpler to do than one with fuzzy characters.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#15

Post by nickolai » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:41 PM UTC

makmanalp wrote: post #4

Ha, by this logic, a large majority of the current world population aren't humans :)

It's just a little more targeted than the average captcha. It should weed out both bots and people you wouldn't want using the website in the first place.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#16

Post by presto8 » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

This looks like the derivative of a constant value, which is always going to be zero. I reloaded the page several times, and each time, no matter how complex the formula looked, it was always a constant.

Still, it is cute.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#17

Post by ugh » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

pluies_public wrote: post #2

I thought it had to be static, but no: the captcha actually changes at each page reload. At least it will weed out the non-mathematicians easily...

Hardly. You can just type it into WolframAlpha, that works perfectly. (Which is quite funny because you are letting the computer solve something that’s supposed to keep computers out.)

You don’t even need to learn any fancy syntax, “derivative of” works great. (High school math homework would be so much easier with WolframAlpha.)

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#18

Post by drndown2007 » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

Am I the only one saddened by the fact that this would have been a piece of cake back in high school/college, but can't remember how to do them (integrals) anymore? :(

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#19

Post by tydok » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

The required value seems to be a small integer. A bot trying zero each time, IMO, has good odds passing the captcha.

Re: Hardest captcha ever?

#20

Post by artmageddon » Fri, Mar 04, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

drndown2007 wrote: post #18

Am I the only one saddened by the fact that this would have been a piece of cake back in high school/college, but can't remember how to do them (integrals) anymore? :(

The notion of "use it or lose it" is always disappointing, but honestly if you learned them once you can learn them again.