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

shkspr.mobi

301–310 of 700 posts

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

#301
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't anything like the sort of questions involved in IQ tests. IQ tests rarely involve words at all, usually a series of geometric shapes where you're supposed to pick the next one.

Not in 1971 when the lawsuit was filed. Now they use picture-based tests because those are supposedly less dependent on learned knowledge. (Though I find that many Raven's progressive matrices-type questions are a lot easier if you know about symmetry groups and XOR.)

> Though I find that many Raven's progressive matrices-type questions are a lot easier if you know about symmetry groups and XOR.

Yes, at that point people who have already developed certain mindware have an advantage, but arguably that's the point of an IQ test. You're not testing the potential of a person to eventually be really smart, you're testing for the current problem-solving potential.

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

#302

I understand the purpose of CAPTCHAs when used as a security measure, but recently it seems like there has been a huge proliferation of them in all sorts of random places and it’s becoming very annoying. Even Google has taken to occasionally popping up CAPTCHAs just so I can see search results! (“suspicious activity on your network” - I’m using a reputable, top-tier UK mobile provider) Is there grounds to legally cha…

> Even Google has taken to occasionally popping up CAPTCHAs just so I can see search results!

The most annoying one for me recently has been stackoverflow. The most basic use of stackoverflow (other than arriving through a web search) is to use its own search bar to search for something. Every time I do so, it asks for a captcha. It would make some sense to ask for a captcha when asking or answering a question, but why ask for a captcha when searching? And it's always the first search after opening the browser (the browser is set up to clear cookies on close), so it's not some sort of rate limiting.

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

#303

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…

Yeah, this is a pain with Apple - instead of trying to understand the business and consumer culture of the particular country, Apple tries to impose US business model everywhere. Some of the things I have observed in India: - Apple tried to entice and sell iPhones through the carrier, where as Indians largely have a cultural apathy to buying expensive phones on loan / credit and locked to a network. - Apple still doe…

You should ask your carrier why they are charging for SMS. There is no reason to do that in 2020.

Though you are right Apple needs to deal with the reality of their customers.

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

#304

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. 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.

I don't need a laptop that works at 3 Celsius. I need a laptop that won't completely shut down if temporarily exposed to 3 Celsius.

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

#305
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google it, heh. The way I learned it, a "car" is any roofed 4+ wheeled vehicle up to van and SUV size (yeah, more Americanisms). Pickup trucks and larger are "trucks".

Is the Reliant Robin not a car then?

It's not a car. Legally anyway.

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

#306
post #16
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.

Zebrastreifen in Germany.

I like it when you speak Deutsch to me.

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

#307

As a blind person with english as not native language, the audio captchas are pure hell. I can't imagine other visually impaired people who don't know english at all and have to deal with a lazy website which dumps them the default english audio captcha if there is audio at all.

At one point a vendor tried to claim that ReCAPTCHA was accessible because of the audio fallback. No-one in my team or at the vendor could actually pass it, so we blocked them from implementing it.

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

#308

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…

Yeah, this is a pain with Apple - instead of trying to understand the business and consumer culture of the particular country, Apple tries to impose US business model everywhere. Some of the things I have observed in India: - Apple tried to entice and sell iPhones through the carrier, where as Indians largely have a cultural apathy to buying expensive phones on loan / credit and locked to a network. - Apple still doe…

> Why would indian carriers absorb the cost of an international SMS

Because SMS pricing is a scam and in practice is a rounding error to handle all of those activation messages. Both countries should just exclude that number from billing.

This is similar to how European carriers suddenly started competing on free international calls/data once EU enforced better rules. We've been told for decades it's really expensive, but now? Nah.

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

#309

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 know where you live but I've spent enough winters right next to Cupertino, 20 minutes walking distance from 1 Infinite Loop to be precise, and it's not warm at all, in fact it's cold as hell without heating (not as cold as some places apparently, but still cold enough to freeze your balls off, or cause your laptop to shutdown). So no, it's chemistry at work, not "Cupertino is warm enough to not have this problem."

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

#310

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.

No, the owner of the site is getting a free service from Google to try and prevent bots from using their site. If you don't like CAPTCHAs then your problem is with the site owner, not google.

Google's CAPTCHA is specifically engineered to gaslight you though. Often it will ask you to identify fire hydrants or bicycles, and despite selecting all of them (and it being easy to recognise them as they are fairly unique objects), it will still give you an error, and give you a new set of images to try again. If it is feeling really malevolent it will even give you a third round. Hell, it happens regularly on the second and especially the third try it will give you excruciatingly slowly crossfading images, and the last image routinely seems to need 2-4 clicks to finally make the object it wants you to identify go away.

Hcaptcha (Cloudflare's alternative) is an absolutely breeze by comparison, and it even allows you to pre-generate a bunch of tokens via an extension (PrivacyPass).

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