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Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

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Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#351

Post by kortilla »

thephyber wrote: post #279
jariel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nazis also shop at Macy's and drink at Starbucks. Cloudflare was purely acting out of market based fear, there wasn't a hint of moral impetus. Literally he said: "I don't want people saying they won't work with us" - which is giving into the mob. Where is the ACLU on this? We were all screaming for Net Neutrality just a couple years ago. It's up to communities and governments to make decisions on content, it would ac…

> Cloudflare was purely acting out of market based fear, there wasn't a hint of moral impetus. IIRC, the reason DailyStormer pissed off CloudFlare is because the users claimed (lied) about CloudFlare was somehow participating / sponsoring the site/activities. Sports teams have non-disparagement clauses; I don't see this as much different. The only thing I'm not clear about is if it was just a rando user on DS that sa…

> Society didn't walk away from CloudFlare (eg. "vote with your feet/wallet") and Congress didn't choose to create any laws.

Neither of those things mean you did the right thing. It’s really easy to pick on a widely unpopular minority group and not get laws passed against you or lose a noticeable amount of customers.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#352

Post by Thorrez »

waheoo wrote: post #344
Thorrez wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you move fast you tend to break things. When half the internet relies on you you want to avoid outages.

They seem to move pretty fast when things are broken for non blind people. Are you saying it's ok to discriminate? I know there are varying degrees at play here, all I'm trying to do is point out your priorities are fucked. CloudFlare is working on something right now, why not this?

When things are already completely broken then it's acceptable to move fast because things are already completely broken. When things are only slightly broken you need to be careful you don't expand the breakage.

Are you sure CloudFlare isn't working on this right now? Captchas are very hard (if not impossible) to do right, and audio captchas are no exception. Check out http://uncaptcha.cs.umd.edu/ As far as I know CloudFlare might have a large team that's been working on this for a while but has been unable to create something solvable by a human but unsolvable by a bot.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#353

Post by Thorrez »

bayindirh wrote: post #349
Thorrez wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to regulate the captcha industry there should be a law passed specifically regulating the industry. Blindsiding the industry with judgments against them when there are no laws about it will decrease confidence in the rule of law, which will hurt the economy as businesses lose confidence in their ability to predict the future.

Rules and laws are good tools and, I understand how law works in the most superficial way but, I fail to understand normalization of ignorance of some required features with the "nobody forced us to do this, so we just didn't care". As human beings first and programmers later, we should understand that people with disabilities exist and assistive technologies need attention. Why, as decent human beings, don't we do s…

I agree we should do nice things without the push of law. But ztjio was advocating for the push of law without following the process of creating a law, which I disagree with.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#354

Post by fred123 »

DrJosiah wrote: post #304
miki123211 wrote: post #250

Cloudflare is horrible for blind people. Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical…

Hi! I work at hCaptcha (we handle the CF captchas), and to respond specifically: audio is inaccessible for those with visual and auditory processing issues, as well as being broken by ML techniques. Not to project, but we suspect this is why Google turns it off if your browser looks at all suspicious. Another user mentioned the Privacy Pass solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23902870 While Privacy Pass is…

Captcha submit requires two touches on iPhone 6S because the submit button will scroll out of view on first touch.

Do your devs or product people ever use your own product? That’s one of the first things I’d notice and fix.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#355

Post by DanBC »

waheoo wrote: post #272
1f60c wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Cloudflare switched to using hCaptcha a couple months ago, I think and I only just noticed that they do not offer an audio-based captcha. However, hCaptcha integrates with Privacy Pass[0], and you can top up your tokens by solving a captcha at [1] and [2]. What you could do (and I realize this is far from ideal), is getting a sighted friend to solve a couple of captchas so you h…

This is such an out of touch dev response. The problem is hcaptcha, the solution is stop using hcaptcha. Not placate and evade with work arounds you wouldn't even suggest to non blind people. Also this ask a friend solution is like telling someone in a wheelchair to ask a friend to help them up those steps instead of just installing a ramp. You don't get to take over half the internet and just ignore social responsib…

> and just ignore social responsibility.

...and they're ignoring the law in many place.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#356

Post by maccam94 »

manquer wrote: post #318
DrJosiah wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I work at hCaptcha (we handle the CF captchas), and to respond specifically: audio is inaccessible for those with visual and auditory processing issues, as well as being broken by ML techniques. Not to project, but we suspect this is why Google turns it off if your browser looks at all suspicious. Another user mentioned the Privacy Pass solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23902870 While Privacy Pass is…

Yes there are subset of people with visual problems who also have auditory problems, that does not mean you should not support the ones with vision only problems. Are there not "ML techniques" for visual captchas too ? With more and more powerful models like GPT-3 coming along every few months, Even if the accuracy levels are less for visual over audio today how long do you think that is going to last ?

I believe they meant that audio captchas have become inaccessible to humans in general. Bots have gotten so good at audio captchas that the difficulty level has to be high enough that humans are also unable to complete them.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#357

Post by htfu »

jariel wrote: post #336
thephyber wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a very slippery slope. > This issue is only going to get much worse and more complicated over time. Slippery slope is a fallacy. Humans aren't required to follow the precedent of previous decisions like SCOTUS justices are. People eventually see the problems with previous choices once the consequences hit a tipping point. We are having multiple moral panics right now. They will pass. People will eventually get…

The 'slope' has been 'slipping' for at least 10 years, and here is no indication that it's going to let up. The opposite of 'fallacy' - it's literally happening all around you: 1) We now have major corporate support for 'social claims' with brands backing (and cashing in) on celebrities for their politics, not their skill at 'whatever', and supporting some causes surrounding a lot of public disruption. These have led…

1, partly 5) Who are you to be the arbiter of what is 'supposed' to make people popular? It doesn't work that way. Can you read the mind of Kristen Bell and know she acts out of fear?

2, 3) No guidance other than the whims of CEOs... oh and congress. How does that add up?

4) On a slippery slope from yellow journalism to...

I'm sorry for the low-effort post, but something like this is quite tricky to respond to. Much like your view of the thing you're railing against, any legit points you may have drown in a sea of outrage completely lacking perspective and full of non sequiturs.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#358

Post by nix23 »

Reelin wrote: post #267
nix23 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we've come to depend on privately owned backbone No, you can use any other service you want. CF has no private toll roads, in fact you can make your own 'toll' road right know. But if you have your private toll road you can forbid any bumper sticker you don't want on YOUR road.

> if you have your private toll road you can forbid any bumper sticker you don't want on YOUR road If this existed in reality somewhere in the US (or wherever you happen to live) are you seriously saying that you would be ok with it?! Do you really not see the necessity of having neutral infrastructure? > CF has no private toll roads They are largely analogous. They transport your traffic from point A to point B for…

>which is also private and subject

Then go to your Government and ask them to make such a Service, look there is just no point arguing about that, as a private firm you don't have to serve everyone, especially groups that are potentially bad for your brand.

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#359

Post by reactchain »

miki123211 wrote: post #250

Cloudflare is horrible for blind people. Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical…

I'd love to read more about the economics of captchas - what is the "labor" of classifying images worth? What is the marginal cost per captcha of human solver farms, etc. Can anyone point me to some resources?

Re: Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called “Cloudflare”

#360

Post by ramanova »

miki123211 wrote: post #250

Cloudflare is horrible for blind people. Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical…

The a11y problem is super urgent for the majority of products out there. Not only it prevents blind/non hearing people of using systems. People also tend to forget that having a11y in place elevates UX on another level. It enables using apps/web with shortkeys, makes everything more readable, changes entire UX flows into simpler ones.
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