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

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

#241

Post by Wowfunhappy »

nottorp wrote: post #228
josephduffy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree working in a wider range of ambient temperatures would be nice, but they do have a support article stating the temperature should be over 10°C, so I wouldn't say they've not tested it. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201640 Note that the iOS devices work from above 0°C ( https://support.apple.com/en-sg/HT201678 ) so maybe improvements will be brought to laptops too.

> I agree working in a wider range of ambient temperatures would be nice, but they do have a support article stating the temperature should be over 10°C, so I wouldn't say they've not tested it. Yeah, the point is 10 C is sufficient ... for California. Not necessarily for the rest of the world. I'm sure they specify some temperature range, it's just not quite enough. Besides it was left outside for 10 minutes, not ho…

I don’t think you’re being entirely reasonable here. If you need a laptop that works at 3°C, don’t buy one that states it needs 10°C. If you just didn’t know, you’re presumably still in the laptop’s return window.

Fwiw, I’m in New York, and I really do think this is a reasonable operating temperature for a laptop.

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

#243

Post by Normille »

andai wrote: post #163
grishka wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Зебра (zebra) in Russian too, especially if you're referring to the road markings themselves. I find recaptchas downright humiliating. I think twice before completing one — is whatever it grants access to worth it?

If you use a browser which blocks fingerprinting, CAPTCHA may fail you 3-4 times even if you give correct answers. CAPTCHA was giving me anger management issues last few weeks until I realized I can just open same URL in another browser and then most of the time it doesn't even ask for CAPTCHA because the fingerprinting is so accurate it knows who I am (or it lets me in after the first round).

Or just leave that website. Why should you be subjected to torment for the privilege of boosting some website's visitor numbers?

Imagine if, every time you went to the supermarket or the library, there was some goon on the door who wouldn't let you in unless you could do ten press-ups and answer half a dozen general knowledge questions. They'd soon go out of business --as all websites which treat their visitors with such contempt deserve to do.

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

#244

Post by leejo »

nottorp wrote: post #195

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…

I do wonder about that, could it be battery operation? I know when I'm out using my GoPro on the slopes the battery will die very quickly when it's a super cold day. I blogged a while back about a possible problem of using Macs at altitude when it comes to battery swelling: http://leejo.github.io/2019/07/27/altitude_sickness/

Anyway, on the original topic here's a talk on the [mis]use of CAPTCHAs which is definitely worth your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gKRTg-RXsc # note the first 10s or so are cut off.

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

#245

Post by qw »

OJFord wrote: post #221
StavrosK wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what everybody else is talking about too?

I don't think 'crosswalks' require road traffic give way to pedestrians? Don't they just mark where crossing the road is not 'jaywalking'?

At least in Scandinavia, all road traffic (including bicycles) must give way to pedestrians at crosswalks, unless the crossing is controlled by traffic lights

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

#246

Post by MaxBarraclough »

kodisha wrote: post #218
nottorp wrote: post #195

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.

Lithium batteries don't like extreme temperatures. Is it possible to make a laptop that copes ok with extreme temperatures?

edit Apparently the Toughbook is able to cope with -16°C. Wonder how they do it.

https://business.panasonic.co.uk/mobile-solutions/more-about...

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

#247

Post by dayve »

Being an African born & bred in Nigeria, I particularly find this appalling. Captcha usually asks users to identify fire hydrants, crosswalks & other objects with design patterns that are not common here, in everyday living. There's a big question on whether these approaches work well for onboarding the next billion users to the internet, especially since the demographics are much different from existing internet users.

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

#248

Post by kwhitefoot »

grishka wrote: post #123
ChrisRR wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything you do on google is training their AI for free. Do you think they're offering you free email out of the kindness of their hearts?

Don't they sell ads in the web UI like many other free email providers do?

I use gmail but I never see ads because I always use a non-Google mail client. (Thunderbird on Windows and Linux), SimpleEmail on Android.

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

#249

Post by arp242 »

Macha wrote: post #174
circlefavshape wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republ...

Driven primarily by frustration with foreign companies expecting post codes - the postal service was late to computerising which paid off in having better OCR/address lookup when they finally did so actually said they were pretty indifferent to the implementation of postcodes.

When I got a (remote) Irish jobs a few years ago I had to fill in a post code at my tax service and a few other things, and I also had to fill in an address in the format of "street number". This makes perfect sense in the Netherlands, and I can't really blame Dutch folk for not knowing that Ireland doesn't have postal codes and that not all houses have house numbers (but rather house names).

tl;dr: making stuff international is hard.

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

#250

Post by Normille »

lysp wrote: post #77
krtkush wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in India, they are commonly refereed to as "Zebra Crossing". No one refers to them as cross-walks and most have no idea about that term.

Pedestrian crossing in Australia

So basically it seems that in almost every country in the world they're referred to as 'Zebra Crossings' except in the US. But, of course, we've all got to 'adopt' their terminology.

It's a bit like that idiotic back to front MM-DD-YYYY date format that no-one else uses outside America, but even non-US gadget manufacturers insist on making the default. I nearly sent my Xiaomi MiBand back when I realised it was hard-wired to display the date back to front. Luckily, with my middle-aged eyesight and the minuscule 3pt text it uses to display the date, I can't read the fecker anyway, so the annoyance is slightly diminished.

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