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CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

shkspr.mobi

211–220 of 700 posts

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#211

The crosswalks Captcha provides the most difficult cultural discrepancy for me. Some US crosswalks look like European "forbidden for all traffic" road markings. Pretty much the opposite of a crosswalk. I always have to do a double take on those.

The two I've had trouble with are Traffic Lights and Parking meters.

Some of pictures are the kinda that hang suspended from a cable. We just don't have those in Australia so I tend to miss them.

Not sure I've ever seen a real parking meter. (Just ones in cartoons like the Simpsons). I kept getting mixed up with what was a parking meter and what was too ambiguous to tell. (Like could be intercom or a letter box, they pictures get blurry)

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#212

I'm not American and I often see captchas that ask about "cars" or "trucks". And they use similar images. I sometimes don't pass through those. My question is, when I see a truck and I'm being asked to select all cars, should I select the truck or not? For me a truck is a car. Is it not one?

A side quest to yours - when I'm told to select traffic lights - should I include the pieces with just the poles or it's fine to select only the ones with actual lights? I never get through them.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#213
post #75

The crosswalks Captcha provides the most difficult cultural discrepancy for me. Some US crosswalks look like European "forbidden for all traffic" road markings. Pretty much the opposite of a crosswalk. I always have to do a double take on those.

There's a captcha for fire hydrants which we don't have in the UK either

Thanks GTA. A lot of the captchas I'm able to complete, you are the reason :)

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#214

not trying to stir up a shitstorm, but since this article mentions IQ tests - "what's a nickel?"... Check out the history (1971) of Larry P. and California's use of IQ testing in schools. > As a group, African Americans across the country scored lower on IQ tests. The lawsuit alleged that was because the tests were biased toward Eurocentric culture. Questions like, ”Who wrote Romeo and Juliet,” they argued, didn’t as…

> Questions like [..] didn’t assess a student’s innate capacity to learn

Back in the day, I did a boat-load of tests and passed a boat-load of exams at school and then university. I have a drawer full of certificates from (apparently) respected institutions to prove it.

None of which are any use to me right now.

I can't say that any of the tests or exams I sat actually assessed anything close to my "innate capacity to learn".

Q: Is this just me?

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#215
Yeeeeeeess!

And frankly, the ones in TFA aren't the worst. I'm familiar with yellow taxis from American films. I'm not familiar with 'crosswalks' (full stop) or American 'fire hydrants'.

Your buses also look somehow different often, and those can be hard. Traffic lights even more so, some are familiar, but some styles I would just never see in the UK, so I actually have to look at each square to check, I can't rely on recognising them.

Then, even once you get past all that, it'll frequently complain you haven't selected them all, and you have to guess which square that doesn't have a bicycle it thinks has a bicycle.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#216
post #96

Google's CAPTCHA is a cancer of the internet. We're all training their AI without any renumeration. I genuinely hope that some government figures out how to sue them. I've sat down for minutes, repeating CAPTCHAs over and over again, just to log in to an account or download something.

This is really really weird from you comparing it to cancer of the internet. Catpcha was not invented to make the internet worse and solving one is not a real hurdle to you. I'm not sure why you 'sat down for minutes' to solve any of them, you might just be really bad in comparison to a lot of other peoples. Nonetheless, this helps YOU it makes YOUR experience better by making it harder for bots. Have you ever seen a…

It would be interesting to see why someone would downvote it.

Since when are captchas a bigger issue than spam bots and fraud users?

and yes i also think that those tasks are actually helping our society. Adding models for self driving cars, for security/emergency breaking systems etc. So whats the issue?

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#218

Here's a different but similar whine. Probably worth its own blog post except I don't blog. Dear Apple, can you test your products outside California? I just left my laptop for 10 minutes on the balcony because I had to get a delivery. Because I'm not in California, the temperature on said balcony is 3 Celsius. Yes, I'm not american and I don't understand Fahrenheit. Guess what, when I came back the laptop was shutdo…

Around 2015, or so I was visiting Boston during some really cold winter (was -10 outside)

We were at the office, went out to wait for a bus, waited for 15 minutes, and since it was freezing we decided to go back inside and get uber/taxi.

I pulled my laptop out of the backpack, tried to turn it on - it was dead.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#219
post #20

I've come to the conclusion that most bots are not that sophisticated. Basic CSRF-protection seems to eliminate most automated requests and the need for captchas.

That is true for crawling bots which hit simple web forms. Also using some JavaScript kills most of them. Although such methods won't work with targeted bot attack.

> Although such methods won't work with targeted bot attack

Neither will Captcha

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am from the UK. Taxis are not yellow. “Cross-walks” are called zebra crossings etc But come on. It’s easy to figure these things out. This is an invented problem.

Do you think your culture might be close enough to the US that your opinion is biased in a certain way?

It'd certainly be interesting to see how people got on with captchas where you identified plain-looking vehicles as taxis because they were obviously Hindustan Ambassadors. Or whether guesswork alone was sufficient to identify unfamiliar terms like 'layby' or'sleeping policeman'
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