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I’m reminded of Artistotle’s 4 kinds of causes—or, here, you might say 4 kinds of “whys”
> Part of it is the sheer hassle of repeatedly identifying objects — traffic lights, staircases, palm trees and buses — just so I can finish a web search. Does Google ask you to complete a CAPTCHA to run a web search? I've never experienced that - is that a thing?
> Part of it is the sheer hassle of repeatedly identifying objects — traffic lights, staircases, palm trees and buses — just so I can finish a web search. Does Google ask you to complete a CAPTCHA to run a web search? I've never experienced that - is that a thing?
Basically, the more you appear like you might be trying to scrape Google results or otherwise abuse Google with an unreasonable quantity of requests, it'll ask you to prove you're human and not a bot.
For me this effect is significantly compounded by not being from the US / North America. This has come up on HN before (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25226805 ) but it still strikes me as so odd that you need quite a bit of USA cultural / vernacular knowledge to navigate the internet anywhere in the world (or at least English speaking sites?). What a strange view into another country to see each day!
> Part of it is the sheer hassle of repeatedly identifying objects — traffic lights, staircases, palm trees and buses — just so I can finish a web search. Does Google ask you to complete a CAPTCHA to run a web search? I've never experienced that - is that a thing?
If Google doesn't trust your browser for whatever reason (eg. privacy-conscious browsing).
> Part of it is the sheer hassle of repeatedly identifying objects — traffic lights, staircases, palm trees and buses — just so I can finish a web search. Does Google ask you to complete a CAPTCHA to run a web search? I've never experienced that - is that a thing?
It's a thing. Turn up privacy features in your browser (including the undocumented ones you need to go to about:config to adjust) and stay logged out of google and you'll get them. Or just fire off a lot of searches pretty fast e.g. by launching a bunch of tabs to search for variations of a term.
about:config isn't a thing in my browser.
For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.
For me a part of the melancholy feeling comes from the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human, and then the frustration at this stupid world we've created which requires me to do so which immediately follows the indignity. A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.
Being asked by a machine to prove that you are human is sometimes really humiliating, especially if you fail the captcha a few times in a row.
Hilton.com is a big annoyance.
Here I was expecting a deep analysis and explanation of why the engineering and businesses at play behind Captchas leads to such depressing images... instead I simply found a litany of the ways in which the images are depressing. Not quite as interesting. I’m reminded of Artistotle’s 4 kinds of causes—or, here, you might say 4 kinds of “whys”