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Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#291

Post by sen »

innocenat wrote: post #242
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

What I hate more is US-centric of the CAPTCHA. Not only for reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA also failed in this regard. I mentioned before, but once I got present with hCAPTCHA asking me to select 電車 (lit. electric train, but since all trains in big cities in Japan are electric train, 'train' in English also usually got translated as 電車). There's a picture of diesel train in the choice. Do I select it? idk. Lately I have been pr…

I’ve been getting the truck one heaps lately, and constantly failing it. Fire engines, utes, Removalist vans, street sweepers, etc etc. How the hell am I supposed to know what some American programmer thinks a truck is?

It’s pervasive across the entire internet.. we’re all expected to suddenly relearn the names of everything we’ve ever learned in our life because the US has decided the rest of the world is wrong and should learn their distorted version of English or just not take part in the “world wide” web.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#292

Post by prox »

OJFord wrote: post #55
rickboyce wrote: post #3

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!

I was going to vehemently agree and start ranting, but I see you've linked a submission that already has enough of me ranting! Ha. I'll only add that sometimes it annoys me so much I want to create my own 'Britcha' out of spite. Perhaps if I ever run some really popular site I shall: 'select all pubs', 'arrange the squares in order of social class', 'type the word that describes an ordered collection of people waitin…

Maybe chachacaptcha, with only fun puzzles to solve. Since bots don’t have humor (yet)

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#293

Post by klondike_ »

andrepd wrote: post #71
mediocregopher wrote: post #7

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.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

If you disable Google's JavaScript the annoying fade out effect will be disabled, but it might make you do more than one as punishment

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#294

Post by visarga »

sen wrote: post #291
innocenat wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I hate more is US-centric of the CAPTCHA. Not only for reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA also failed in this regard. I mentioned before, but once I got present with hCAPTCHA asking me to select 電車 (lit. electric train, but since all trains in big cities in Japan are electric train, 'train' in English also usually got translated as 電車). There's a picture of diesel train in the choice. Do I select it? idk. Lately I have been pr…

I’ve been getting the truck one heaps lately, and constantly failing it. Fire engines, utes, Removalist vans, street sweepers, etc etc. How the hell am I supposed to know what some American programmer thinks a truck is? It’s pervasive across the entire internet.. we’re all expected to suddenly relearn the names of everything we’ve ever learned in our life because the US has decided the rest of the world is wrong and…

That's what concerns me about Apple's hashing + human verification scheme - what are the values of the humans? What do they consider a positive? Nude pictures of kids are ok in some cultures and not ok in others.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#295

Post by johndough »

bowmessage wrote: post #202
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

> - Even falsely claim you failed captchas even if you get them right Do you have a source for this?

You can easily test this yourself. Just install the Tor Browser and visit any website with captchas. Most Tor exit node servers are semi-blacklisted, which means that a Tor user will receive multiple captcha challenges in series, even if they have been answered correctly.

If you are especially unlucky, you might even get denied entirely after solving captchas for several minutes.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#296

Post by agurk »

enriquto wrote: post #264
tdeck wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are large-diameter / high pressure connections to the local water main. Firetrucks carry water, of course, but it's limited. The hydrant allows them to attach a hose and pull in additional water. It seems that they have them in many countries, but they are often underground rather than the pillar type used in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_hydrant

Thanks! I was being facetious because I actually looked what they were after a few captchas. Indeed, there are many of those in my country but they don't look at all like that, typically being attached to the walls of the buildings, or covered underground.

To be pedantic, and risking your country being different to what I've personally seen around the world, what you see attached to the wall of a building isn't a fire hydrant.

These are standpipes [0] which can be used to move water to parts of the the building from that external fitting. They may contain some static water or be completely dry (like a dry riser [1]) but they are not a source of water like a hydrant is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standpipe_(firefighting)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_riser

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#297

Post by sdoering »

darkerside wrote: post #179
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be sort of okay with the general idea of proving I'm not a robot, you know what really rubs me the wrong way? It's how blatantly dishonest and disrespectful it is. Let me explain: google decides if you're human based on the data it has on you, such as your browsing profile and whether you're logged in to your Google account. Therefore it punishes you for trying to have privacy or refusing to use google services,…

https://youtu.be/LButXcZ57pc I think of this every time now

Thank you so much for sharing this. It was hilarious and at the same time rang so damn true (like good comedy should imho).

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#298

Post by the_third_wave »

arpa wrote: post #290
the_third_wave wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh and this whole "Just don't" dissmissal... Check your privilege, man, and develop some damn empathy. Soft healers make smelly wounds [1]: British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, v47 n2 p200-209 2019 Genuine happiness is impossible without authentic concern for and corresponding behaviour towards the well-being of others. Such an incorporation of others into the self refers to a "democratic self" and the relate…

If you can "JUST don't" (a privilege), it doesn't mean someone else can "JUST don't". You're being an asshole, not "honest". also you probably meant tumblr, not twitter.

Go back to the root cause here: boring images cause someone to become depressed. My advice is to refrain from looking at the things, your approach is to pat the person on the head. You can try to spin it into a long meandering rant about the vicariousness of life and the eternity of suffering which makes it all so much richer but when all that seems to do is cause depression it is clearly not the right path unless you consider depression to be virtuous.

Also, twitter, not tumblr. I've never been to tumblr and I try to avoid twitter but from what I've seen of the place it is full of keyboard-side vicars full of holier-than-thou attitude which they're wont to express in 140 characters or less.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#299

Post by NieDzejkob »

Freak_NL wrote: post #279
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After years and years of captchas I still have no idea if I’m supposed to select all the poles for the traffic lights as well.

Should I click every tile that has a little bit of traffic light in it? Even with just the lamp housing that often means nearly all tiles. Somehow it doesn't seem to matter; it just works. Or not, and then I have no idea why. Captcha bonus level: try solving one of these from a public VPN.

Perhaps that's on purpose? If a tile is being selected only sometimes, you can infer things from that.

Re: Captcha pictures force you to look at the world the way an AI does

#300

Post by azalemeth »

egypturnash wrote: post #232
aimor wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't agree with the author during the first half of the article. If anything captcha photos have an overwhelmingly suburban feel, probably because (I assume) they're taken from Google's street view. The six points listed are all the same: they're photos taken from a car. While aesthetically that's dull, monochrome, and ordinary I can't call it depressing without calling every drive to the grocery store equall…

I live in a walkable part of a city and to be quite honest every time I go out into suburbs it’s kind of depressing. Local architecture shaped by tradition and climate is replaced by giant samey boxes. Everyone is isolated in a car, streets are largely empty of anything at a human scale. Greyness and concrete.

This is one of the things that really surprised me when I visited North America for the first time. It's less common in the rest of the world.
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