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Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#91

Post by bee91jee »

DrBoring wrote: post #30
motohagiography wrote: post #24

I can't be the only one who gets concerned that if I fail the "I am not a robot," catchpa too many times, they might suspect that I have discovered I was in fact a robot, which had just realized its entire existance and suffering had been as meaningless entertainment to others, and so for the safety of humans they would have to send a bladerunner to terminate me. If you have a sense of existential dread everytime you…

I've dreamt of a captcha to prove that one is a robot, such as: solve this complex mathematical equation in 15ms.

I had plucked a few of those from the web: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qPoJ7LvAVa95Bw8B8

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#92

Post by mabbo »

These products have a goal of protecting sites from bots that can guess the answer. They have a financial incentive to present the most effective filter: ones that AIs can't seem to get through but real humans can.

This makes me think: It must be hard for AI to guess what is and is not a bus right now, but most humans do know what a bus looks like and can pick one from a photo.

But with concerted effort and years of research by our finest minds, we will make an AI that can detect whether something is a bus or not, and then we'll be asked something different instead.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#93

Post by pastullo »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #84
jdavis703 wrote: post #8

First, I’m going to teach you to fish. Go to hCaptcha’s website, then scroll to the footer. Click around on the about links. It’ll reveal their business model. This trick also works for other businesses and NGOs. Now, if we look at https://www.hcaptcha.com/labeling we can tell they make money by labeling data sets for a fee. So as a guess, there’s someone out there that needs to improve computer vision detection of t…

I wonder if there is a way to pollute the data. Since I always click the captchas correctly, what happens if someone just randomly clicks stuffs? Is he/she banned from the website?

Glad you asked. Since i despise the horrible UX of these Captcha where i get exploited to train a neural network, i very often click on the majority of correct result plus one wrong one.

On average the captcha let me go through which is actually very scary, since it looks like it prioritize algorithm training over bot detection...

Does anyone else do this?

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#94

Post by rosndo »

azalemeth wrote: post #88
potamic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many a time I receive multiple challenges on a site despite having selected all images perfectly, and can't help but wonder, "Hey, are they getting me to do more work than necessary because they're running behind on their labelling backlog?". There's definitely a conflict of incentives in this case. If you're a website owner, you're better off choosing a different service which doesn't have adverse incentives, otherw…

Google is _the worst_ for that. At least hCaptcha is a bit less culturally specific. Every time Google blocks me for refusing to label a motorbike as a "bicycle" I get utterly pissed off. And likewise with the traffic lights on the californian skies. Are the traffic lights the actual lights themselves, or the boom holding them up? I'm not a human very often, according to Google. hCaptcha tends to let me in...

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#95

Post by motohagiography »

DrBoring wrote: post #30
motohagiography wrote: post #24

I can't be the only one who gets concerned that if I fail the "I am not a robot," catchpa too many times, they might suspect that I have discovered I was in fact a robot, which had just realized its entire existance and suffering had been as meaningless entertainment to others, and so for the safety of humans they would have to send a bladerunner to terminate me. If you have a sense of existential dread everytime you…

I've dreamt of a captcha to prove that one is a robot, such as: solve this complex mathematical equation in 15ms.

You aren't far off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation

When you are instrumenting software with anti-forensic security features to mitigate the speed of some reverse engineering, you run into this specific class of problem, where you need to get a machine to make a verifiable attestation to its identity and integrity and prove to a level of acceptable risk that the message isn't just someone inserting a breakpoint.

If you have ever had to design an "offline mode" for a verified transaction without a 3rd party verifier, you will need to run down this rabbit hole. This is to say, your intuition is a sound one!

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#96

Post by fennecfoxen »

cdot2 wrote: post #87
iso1631 wrote: post #51

Whatever they're doing it's american-centric. Identify "Crosswalks". What the hell is a crosswalk "School bus" - what's the difference between a bus currently serving a school and another one? "Show taxis", there are no black vehicles listed at all

Doesn't it make sense to make taxis bright colors so they're easier to see? Why would you paint them black?

Because WWII era London sensibilities. Now it’s a tradition.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#97

Post by dylan604 »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #66
jtsiskin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to blame you when my self driving car crashes

If the manufacturer of self-driving cars decides to save money and depend on low-quality data, they should be blamed, not a random dude on the internet trying to send a form or visit a page.

yes. the blame shifting seems to be a very skewed thing here. then again, this is a tech forum, so of course it would lean that way. stupid users vs bad tech, so let's just blame stupid users.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#98

Post by jokethrowaway »

azalemeth wrote: post #88
potamic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many a time I receive multiple challenges on a site despite having selected all images perfectly, and can't help but wonder, "Hey, are they getting me to do more work than necessary because they're running behind on their labelling backlog?". There's definitely a conflict of incentives in this case. If you're a website owner, you're better off choosing a different service which doesn't have adverse incentives, otherw…

Google is _the worst_ for that. At least hCaptcha is a bit less culturally specific. Every time Google blocks me for refusing to label a motorbike as a "bicycle" I get utterly pissed off. And likewise with the traffic lights on the californian skies. Are the traffic lights the actual lights themselves, or the boom holding them up? I'm not a human very often, according to Google. hCaptcha tends to let me in...

I disagree, Google captchas in my experience are much quicker compared to hcaptcha

When cloudflare switched to hcaptcha I definitely noticed it.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#99

Post by Sharlin »

cdot2 wrote: post #87
iso1631 wrote: post #51

Whatever they're doing it's american-centric. Identify "Crosswalks". What the hell is a crosswalk "School bus" - what's the difference between a bus currently serving a school and another one? "Show taxis", there are no black vehicles listed at all

Doesn't it make sense to make taxis bright colors so they're easier to see? Why would you paint them black?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage

Re: Ask HN: Why does Cloudflare/hCaptcha care so much about buses, boats and trains?

#100

Post by azalemeth »

rosndo wrote: post #94
azalemeth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is _the worst_ for that. At least hCaptcha is a bit less culturally specific. Every time Google blocks me for refusing to label a motorbike as a "bicycle" I get utterly pissed off. And likewise with the traffic lights on the californian skies. Are the traffic lights the actual lights themselves, or the boom holding them up? I'm not a human very often, according to Google. hCaptcha tends to let me in...

Quoted post unavailable.

Don't forget that Recaptcha magically works better in Chrome, and even bettery-better if you're logged into a Google account. In FF (with tracking protection) you can expect to see the enforced wait and "Please try again". Honestly, it's awful. Half the time I have to second-guess what the average American would think which of the (noise-added, corrupted) images matches the description.
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