Live data from Hacker News

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

shkspr.mobi

481–490 of 700 posts

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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody should have to know this, frankly.

I agree nobody should have to know this, but on the other hand what harm does it do to learn it? In the US in elementary school I studied world capitals, major cities, history, etc. and came away with a pretty decent primer on things overseas, which I really value. Later in life I’ve come to know a fair bit about European football, about daily life in Taiwan, about the systems of government in Australia and New Zeala…

I don't think it's about whether it does harm learning it: I think the problem is the relative barrier to entry that it creates for people who don't already know this information. Friction like this reduces social mobility and access to services for many.

As for your last point: that would apply to anything. There is _always_ something worse to get worked up about.

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

#482

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.

I've lived my whole life in the UK where the 12-hour clock is commonplace and I also still can't remember this either...

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

#483

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…

My heuristic (which seems to be pretty accurate) is to accept anything that's vaguely related to the object that they ask for. eg. if they ask for "bicycles" and the picture has a motorcycle I select it.

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

#484
post #432
post #57

Captchas have gone mad. The other day a major service gave me less than 10 seconds to solve a puzzle with a mouse in a maze and some cheese, and subsequently locked out of my account. Actually before I got locked out, I thought I would stand more chance with the alternative for the visually impaired. It jumped straight in to a fuzzy voice reading 20+ numbers at a rate of more than 1 per second. I was already behind o…

> The other day a major service gave me less than 10 seconds to solve a puzzle with a mouse in a maze and some cheese Guessing you might be referring to the ones Epic uses[1], which indeed look terrible. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/EpicGamesPC/comments/ihiidp/new_mou...

That's the one! But it wasn't Epic.

Imagine being faced with this problem. It's not even visually clear what's going on in the picture. That's before you even get to solving the puzzle. Just "identify what we mean by a mouse" would be enough to be the captcha.

And then -- and I don't know how everyone else's brain works -- but, being the simpleton that I am, it's a linear search checking each one against the condition. There's enough time to look at about 3 of them before the clock ran out. No, I really don't want more time, either.

I'm comforted by the comments in that Reddit post. I haven't gone crazy.

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

#485

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…

Those are all equally hard for me as an American (except for the helicopter one, I'd be pretty sure that was put there to trick AIs).

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

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Identify which country calls them vasistas because Germans used to ask "was ist das?" from a smaller aperture on the door before opening the actual door"

For anyone else who didn't know about this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vasistas

To be fair to the Americans, it seems like the word originated in France

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

#487

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.

Is there a way I could contact you privetly ?

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will check it out.

Hi, I'm the author of the extension. You can find more installation options in the GitHub description. Make sure to also install the client app to simulate user interactions. Open the extension's options to get started and download the client app, then follow the guide linked below to finish the installation. I'm happy to chat on GitHub if you need further help. https://github.com/dessant/buster#readme https://github…

Great!

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

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, will check it out.

Hi, I'm the author of the extension. You can find more installation options in the GitHub description. Make sure to also install the client app to simulate user interactions. Open the extension's options to get started and download the client app, then follow the guide linked below to finish the installation. I'm happy to chat on GitHub if you need further help. https://github.com/dessant/buster#readme https://github…

>Hi, I'm the author of the extension.

You've saved hours of my life. I get dramatically fewer captcha requests with Captcha buster installed than otherwise (it's a fact.)

Downloading anime without installing Universal bypass and Captcha buster is masochism - recaptcha would just go crazy infinite loop mode.

Thanks a ton.

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

#490
What’s more fun is being American and intentionally misinterpreting the captcha. Select all street lights? Then think of how that question could be translated and misread in another language. Then select everything that would qualify as a light on the street: lamps, car headlights, crossing signals, et al.

Sometimes I select a square that I think the machine placed in the set to get more certainty but doesn’t match. For example, “select all chimneys”. If it presents me with an image of a house in the distance that has an object infront/behind it that is not a chimney but due to positioning and image quality it appears to be a chimney I will select it.

Captcha is a game.

- For Alphabet/Google the game is: mine the public for image recognition data so we can automate a car/drone and sell it to said public.

- For me the game is: can I play captcha chess with Google’s AI?

And if Google flags me as a bot, so what? At any point I know that I can quit playing captcha chess by giving it what it wants for a round or two and I’m trusted again.

Post reply on HN