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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)

#471

Post by eythian »

lagadu wrote: post #113
edent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could , but that's quite a hard problem for Google's engineers to solve.

Doing that tends to make stuff worse. I've lived in countries where I don't speak the local language and despite everything being configured to use English, via IP detection some sites decide to just show me content in the local language when I'm trying to log in. Paypal is notorious for this.

The Nintendo Switch store also. I can't convince it to give me game descriptions in the system language rather than the language of the country where my account is registered.

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

#473

Post by sudosysgen »

artichokes wrote: post #116
philshem wrote: post #69

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…

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.

This is very wrong. Most complete IQ tests contain a lot more than just progressive matrices, because there is such a thing as verbal IQ that can't always be measured well by progressive matrices.

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

#474

Post by sudosysgen »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #301
yorwba wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, it is problem, because the assumption is that you're measuring a proxy for g that supposedly doesn't change. So if it can change, by something as simple as learning some boolean algebra, the IQ test isn't measuring what it is assumed to be measuring.

That being said, you're right that it would still be useful for measuring problem solving potential, but that's explicitly not what IQ tests are supposed to measure.

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

#475

Post by xbar »

dayve wrote: post #247

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 use…

It would be racist and anti-Afro to suggest that either you are a bot or a scammer for failing all your captchas. Also it would be offensive and inappropriate. And it would be outside the scope of this topic, and it would be a decidedly ad hominem comment when you should be celebrated for standing up to such narrowly contrived captchas.

As an aside, how do you like American security questions? "What was the make and model of the car in which you had your first kiss?"

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

#476

Post by chessmango »

tomxor wrote: post #422
Reason077 wrote: post #176

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…

> I’m using a reputable, top-tier UK mobile provider I'm in the UK too and have found that If you use any mobile internet provider, and have a browser configuration that dumps cookies etc on close, you will get a google captcha every - single - fucking - time... I just end up tunneling everything through sshuttle to one of my servers to save time, but these days you also get a bunch of websites blocking IP address bl…

Pretty sure this is at least somewhat related to Carrier-Grade NAT[1]. Influx of connections from a single public IP shared by multiple public users = 'security concern'. Not to forgive the big tech giant of its inflexibility :P

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT

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

#477

Post by g00gler »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #431
Number157 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can answer the questions, I assume?

These are hard sometimes for me, from UK: What counts as a truck? Is a fire engine a truck, is a 4x4 (like a Landrover), a HGV (ie lorry), a box van? What counts as a bus? Is a coach a bus, a minibus? What counts as a bicycle? Is a pedal-and-pop (a pedal cycle with an engine)? The image shows part of a headset that might be on a bike, is that enough to call it a bike, might be a lightweight motorbike? Is a hovercraft…

I don’t think anyone knows exactly what they’re looking 100% the time.

I have to redo captchas all the time so don’t feel bad!

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

#478

Post by silvestrov »

altitudinous wrote: post #395

Yes, the American focus of the internet is absolutely appalling. Assumptions of timezones - PST, CST and the others whatever they are. Northern hemisphere assumptions of seasons - fall, etc - in the southern hemisphere the seasons are the opposite and we don't use the word fall. Even Apple, known for its "sensitivity" to cultural matters has a big miss on this one.

and 12-hour clocks. I can never remember if "am" morning or afternoon.

Why is 12am before 1am? Makes no sense at all.

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

#479

Post by furyofantares »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #431
Number157 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can answer the questions, I assume?

These are hard sometimes for me, from UK: What counts as a truck? Is a fire engine a truck, is a 4x4 (like a Landrover), a HGV (ie lorry), a box van? What counts as a bus? Is a coach a bus, a minibus? What counts as a bicycle? Is a pedal-and-pop (a pedal cycle with an engine)? The image shows part of a headset that might be on a bike, is that enough to call it a bike, might be a lightweight motorbike? Is a hovercraft…

Are these examples of captchas that have failed you or just questions that come to mind? I ask myself the same sorts of questions but then haven't actually had captchas fail me for it much.

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

#480

Post by sgerenser »

xbar wrote: post #475
dayve wrote: post #247

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 use…

It would be racist and anti-Afro to suggest that either you are a bot or a scammer for failing all your captchas. Also it would be offensive and inappropriate. And it would be outside the scope of this topic, and it would be a decidedly ad hominem comment when you should be celebrated for standing up to such narrowly contrived captchas. As an aside, how do you like American security questions? "What was the make and…

Security questions are completely pointless anyway and you should just always treat them as an extra set of passwords and store them in your password manager. I have changed from using randomly generated items to vaguely plausible sounding nonsense instead since sometimes you have to actually read these things back to a human.
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