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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)

#501

Post by oblio »

silvestrov wrote: post #478
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.

Gaaaaaah! I scheduled an exam for an online certification at 12 AM, I think. And then I found out that's midnight :-(

Just make it 06:00, 13:00, already :-(

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

#502

Post by celsoazevedo »

Rillen wrote: post #216
Rillen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

If I had to guess:

> "solving one is not a real hurdle to you"

My experience is that it can be a real hurdle.

Sometimes reCaptcha forces me to complete 2 or 3 captchas (or more), some of them with an annoying artificial delay when loading new images. It seems to be worse when using a VPN or a browser like Firefox (or some privacy extension) that blocks Google tracking.

I understand why people use reCaptcha and that it works well for some users, but it can be a pain in the butt if you don't use Chrome, aren't logged in to your Google account, or if other devices in the network did something that Google doesn't like. I sometimes get captchas on my phone when using mobile data (on a major provider here in the UK) and Google search because of "unusual traffic from your computer network"...

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

#504

Post by technofiend »

silvestrov wrote: post #478
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.

Yeah you're not wrong, but AM is ante meridiem and PM is post meridiem where meridiem is mid day. I'm not sure if that really helps?

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

#505

Post by lattay »

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…

That is not similar at all. 3°C is not a normal use condition, silicon normal working temperature is around 50°C (sustained by its own heating in normal condition) and there is probably a notice where the minimal temperature is stated in celcius. The OC is about assumption on user culture. Assuming that a macbook won’t be used in extreme condition is just normal engineering scoping. You aren’t chilling on the balcony in underwear, are you? Well of course not because your body, even raised in a cold climate, needs to keep itself at 37°C. Your macbook too need to keep warm, and it cannot use its muscle when the CPU is not heating enough. But, hey, maybe you just got a good business plan ! Design a macbook parka to sell to your fellow countrymen.

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

#506

Post by segfaultbuserr »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #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.…

To me it's not a game and not fun at all (I use Tor so I've seen more edge cases than most people). I found CAPTCHA is a school quiz. Some questions are ambiguous and open to interpretation, if it happens, it's not important to select the "correct" answer, but the "expected" answer.

- Select all squares with $object.

If $object only occupies 1/2 or 1/3 of a square, should I select it or not? The "correct" answer is selecting them, but Google marks it as a wrong answer. The "expected" answer is ignoring them.

When using Tor, Google switches the CAPTCHA to the more strict "9 pictures" (or even the "endless pictures with delay on each") version. The rule of "If there is none, click skip" no longer applies. In this version, when Google misidentifies something as the object and you are not selecting it, the answer is wrong because Google thinks you are not selecting all answers. You must guess which one is the misidentified object and select it.

- Select all squares with a traffic light.

If there's a road sign with a picture of traffic light, should I select it or not... Also, sometimes both the big traffic light and a smaller one in the next crosswalk are visible, should I select the smaller one or not? The expected answer is "no", but there are exceptions... Even worse, sometimes there will be 3+ traffic lights spread across a crosswalk, if I select them all, Google marks it as "wrong", sometimes it's unclear which one is the expected answer at all.

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

#507

Post by lyx0 »

Bayart wrote: post #496
wongarsu wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One question that I apparently answered wrong for years as a German are the traffic lights. In English, traffic light seems to refer only to the assembly of two or three lights used to control the flow of traffic. The equivalent German word most commonly refers to the entire installation, including the pole, button (for pedestrians and visually impaired), speaker (for the visually impaired) etc. So I selected much mo…

Wait, you don't have to select the whole pole ? ...

This always throws me off, if it says 'Select all cars' for example and there is a car going into the next part for 10% but the main thing of that square is a tree or whatever, do I mark that? But I also always select the whole pole, no idea if it's right

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

#508

Post by dessant »

sarathyweb wrote: post #493
gostsamo wrote: post #12

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.

As someone with almost 100% visual impairment, I'm having a hard time dealing with CAPTCHAS. I find it more difficult to slove hCAPTCHA than Google reCaptcha. Most of the times I can easily solve Google reCaptcha. However, If I don't know the meaning of the object being displayed / any difficulties seeing it, Google won't let me switch to audio mode ( It'll display something like "This feature is currently unavailabl…

The error you're seeing is a false-positive, an it may be illegal for reCAPTCHA to deny you access.

I've rised the issue last year with the W3C [1] and now your experience is publicly documented [2], though the next step would be to file complaints and take legal action for your rights to be respected.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/apa/issues/25

[2] https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/#version-2-are-you-a-robot

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

#509

Post by oblio »

salawat wrote: post #459
durnygbur wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Americans - "identify cyclist driving through the downtown"

Cyclists ride. They do not drive. Drive implies you aren't the prime mover in the mechanism (i.e., an engine is doing the work, and you're merely performing the task of executive signaling and control to that set of movers and systems carrying you along do so. The inflection point is actually legal in nature; in that once you slap a motor on it, you require licensure, because you're driving now. This is also why I di…

First of all, they've self identified as non-American and presumably not a native English speaker. You could have presented the difference between drive and ride with less pedantry.

Secondly, cities with large numbers of cyclists tend to have better, not worse traffic. It's obvious why: fewer people driving plus infrastructure for bikes is developed and separated from car infrastructure. You should wish for more cyclists, not fewer.

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

#510

Post by segfaultbuserr »

cesarb wrote: post #302
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…

> 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 w…

Search is restricted because it's an expensive operation and prone to abuse. This practice is not just found at Stack Exchange, now GitHub doesn't even display the full code search result to visitors. The only option is to log in (if you are already an established SE/GitHub user and doesn't mind the web tracking)...
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