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Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

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Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#101

Post by kalleboo »

withinboredom wrote: post #73
captn3m0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this one today, which asks you to pick a "cheese" illustration: https://imgur.com/a/fQSQpX4 . I'm very much of the opinion that almost all modern captchas are american-centric. Mailboxes, fire hydrants, Trams are not recognizable for billions of people.

My “favorite” ones happen where the site doesn’t pass on the language and you get a captcha in another language. So now you have to google translate and hope to language gods that the word doesn’t have multiple meanings.

It's not too uncommon for Japanese websites to use CAPTCHAs in hiragana, so you have to be able to type in はしらす or whatever

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#102

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Airbnb has been very human hostile since the beginning.

The first time I had to create an account, they required that I connect with a google account with access to all my contacts. Then ask me to make a video of myself.

I didn't create the account and booked an hotel.

Now they are less aggressive with their new procedures, but still, you can see that the people behind it see technical solutions way before they perceive the human impact.

My grand-father was like that. A brilliant engineer from the most elite school of his generation in France. He once told me very seriously a solution for making more accommodations for the poorest people would be to remove individual bathrooms, and create common ones for the whole building instead.

Airbnb tech teams remind me of him.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#103

Post by cbg0 »

gpderetta wrote: post #43
fastball wrote: post #37

As someone who added CAPTCHA to their own platform recently after resisting for years because of how much I hate them, I have to tell you that the unfortunate truth is that eventually bad actors ruin the party for everyone on every platform. CAPTCHA is necessary for the same reason locking your car/house is necessary. You can probably not do it 9 times out of 10 and it will be fine, but then that 1/10 happens, all yo…

Well, CAPTCHA is more like locking your store and then asking your customers to pick the lock.

You're comparing solving a typically simple puzzle with breaking and entering.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#104

Post by jack_pp »

postit wrote: post #88

That's the moment I'd recommend you to close the website and book a hotel. The whole pandemic reminded me I miss staying in hotels. Not having to worry about groceries, lunch, cleaning ... A great hotel experience turns your holiday into a holiday experience. The older I get the whole bnb experience feels like a premium stressful hostel.

I use airbnb and booking.com specifically for searching cheaper alternatives to hotels. If their value for money proposition wasn't better than a hotel I doubt they would even exist at all.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#105

Post by jack_pp »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #39

That looks like a really poor captcha, as overhyped as machine learning is I think defeating a system like this accurately is something you’d give as a class project. It might slow down legitimate users but anyone nefarious will get through. Never mind you can outsource solving these to Bali for a penny each - maybe less.

I think the trick is to change the puzzle very often or produce 1000 puzzles and randomly assign one

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#106

Post by szszrk »

captn3m0 wrote: post #3

It's Arkose Labs (also used by Roblox, GitHub, Dropbox, Twitch, and more). There's some more links here: https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 (Buster is a browser extension for automated captcha solving). You can subscribe here https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/320 Their audio captcha (no longer available?) involved listening to 3 MIDI tunes and picking "the sad one".

Good luck being both visually impaired and autistic... Captchas are great when not needed and horrible when actually needed.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#107

Post by ricardo81 »

feupan wrote: post #69
Brian_K_White wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser is a bot that interacts with the platform. It's not physically possible to use any website except by directing a tool to do it for you.

That’s pedantic and not even that right. The browser is an agent, not a bot. A bot takes semi-autonomous actions after being instructed by a human, for an undetermined amount of time; A browser just does something it’s told for a few seconds (or as long as the website’s open)

Using a headless browser would muddy the waters then.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#108

Post by heavyset_go »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #76
joosters wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible analogy. Are you saying that once a visitor completes a captcha on your website, they can steal all your stuff? In that case, the problem is with you and your website security.

> That's a terrible analogy Well, a more apt one would be that someone breaks into your house or car and puts all their litter everywhere so that you have to spend hours or days cleaning. Sometimes I don't get the logic of these spambot creators. Do they honestly believe that creating thousands of fake accounts with links to "hot dating site" in my webshop will help them in any way? These data are completely invisibl…

> Sometimes I don't get the logic of these spambot creators. Do they honestly believe that creating thousands of fake accounts with links to "hot dating site" in my webshop will help them in any way? These data are completely invisible outside (why would anyone want to present their customer data to the world).

The goal is link building[1].

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

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#109

Post by dorchadas »

postit wrote: post #88

That's the moment I'd recommend you to close the website and book a hotel. The whole pandemic reminded me I miss staying in hotels. Not having to worry about groceries, lunch, cleaning ... A great hotel experience turns your holiday into a holiday experience. The older I get the whole bnb experience feels like a premium stressful hostel.

Plus if you stay in a hotel you don't have to worry about taking housing away from the local residents of the place. I loathe AirBnB for multiple reasons, but that's the primary one.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#110

Post by dorchadas »

jack_pp wrote: post #104
postit wrote: post #88

That's the moment I'd recommend you to close the website and book a hotel. The whole pandemic reminded me I miss staying in hotels. Not having to worry about groceries, lunch, cleaning ... A great hotel experience turns your holiday into a holiday experience. The older I get the whole bnb experience feels like a premium stressful hostel.

I use airbnb and booking.com specifically for searching cheaper alternatives to hotels. If their value for money proposition wasn't better than a hotel I doubt they would even exist at all.

Their value-to-money is better because the externalize all the cost to the local community where they remove supply and up the rent for what supply is left.
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