Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HBO Max new Captcha system

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 330 posts

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#261

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

mdasen wrote: post #55
wrs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am baffled as to why they had to launch an entirely new app rather than just rename the existing one. Could Apple have made them change the bundle ID? It's like they're putting in deliberate obstacles for existing subscribers.

Some it was probably "this gives us an excuse to rewrite the system, but better this time!" Rebranding often gives a certain amount of cover to do things you want to do even if you don't have to do it. Often new management wants to put their stamp on things. I've been in situations where we've had to do major redesigns because a new leader wanted to leave their mark. I've been in situations where each new leader want…

I can tell you that the old app (on AppleTV) was a bug farm. It was constantly crashing and hanging. I often had to force-quit it. I haven't had enough time with the new app, to see if it's better.

To be fair, many of the other apps also suck. I think it may be because Apple allows TV apps to be written in JavaScript, and some of them are almost certainly poor ports of Web apps.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#262

Post by colanderman »

SecretDreams wrote: post #249
poopiokaka wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a PhD in Computer Science and if I am failing multiple basic addition problems, I assure you that it isn't me, the answers are wrong I also have a PhD in Computer Science and I assure you that the degree does not give me as much blind faith in my math ability

This person has the more believable PhD. One of the requirements to getting a PhD is the knowledge that a PhD is not the proof of intelligence you thought it would be when you started. It is better a proof of resilience, patience, and being dead inside.

Coincidentally, exactly the skills required to complete a bad CAPTCHA.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#263

Post by bscphil »

x-complexity wrote: post #243
danpalmer wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once suggested to a PM from the GOV.UK Verify team that if the UK wants to do age verification for porn, which it has threatened many times over the last decade, that Verify would be the perfect tech for it as content sites would only find out you're over 18, and auth providers would only know they're proving basic details about you. The PM did not like the idea of the government being the porn passport for the who…

> I once suggested to a PM from the GOV.UK Verify team that if the UK wants to do age verification for porn, which it has threatened many times over the last decade, that Verify would be the perfect tech for it as content sites would only find out you're over 18, and auth providers would only know they're proving basic details about you. To me, that's still * way too much* . Just from that, the government now immedia…

> Just from that, the government now immediately knows what site you've been to

If I understand the idea correctly, this isn't how it works. Your user agent sends a signed request (with proof of identity) to the GOV.UK verification server, saying "please give me a signed certificate that provides no information other than my age". Because GOV.UK knows who you are, they can provide such a certificate. Your user agent hands this to the porn site, saying "you requested proof I was over 18, here's proof". Because the certificate was signed by an authority the porn site recognizes, they approve the certificate and let you in the site.

So the government doesn't know what site you visit, and the porn site doesn't know any of your personal information.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#264

Post by Xenoamorphous »

What about twitter itself, where this was posted? It’s similar to this one and beyond ridiculous, and the best part is that at the end of the process it failed with a generic error message. Not sure if they were a/b testing or what but I ended up not creating the account.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#265

Post by Brendinooo »

CSMastermind wrote: post #33

Someone had to make this. At some point some software engineer had to sit down, look at it, and say, "looks good to ship to production"

At some point someone on the management side said "we want this and we're writing the check", the developer complained, and the project manager said "I know, I agree with you, but it's out of our hands"

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#266

Post by eloisius »

jacurtis wrote: post #9

I experienced the HBO Max captchas just a few days ago. Everyone did since they launched a new app and made everyone switch to that and re-login. Some of the solutions are clearly just wrong. I have a PhD in Computer Science and if I am failing multiple basic addition problems, I assure you that it isn't me, the answers are wrong. I had to do the same audio puzzles and got the first audio puzzle wrong too, and I even…

This dice puzzle looks like it’d be trivial to solve with a little Python and opencv too. Rare CAPTCHA that seems harder for a human than a computer.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#267

Post by avidphantasm »

jacurtis wrote: post #9

I experienced the HBO Max captchas just a few days ago. Everyone did since they launched a new app and made everyone switch to that and re-login. Some of the solutions are clearly just wrong. I have a PhD in Computer Science and if I am failing multiple basic addition problems, I assure you that it isn't me, the answers are wrong. I had to do the same audio puzzles and got the first audio puzzle wrong too, and I even…

If getting math problems somewhat wrong gets you past the captcha, it seems like this is something things like ChatGPT would be able to pass, ironically.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#268

Post by planede »

amai wrote: post #252
planede wrote: post #246

Some genius who designed the dice captcha: "You know what's easy for humans but computers suck at? Addition!"

It is not the addition, that is hard for computers. What is quite hard for computer vision algorithms is to count the number of dots on dices in an image.

Good. So why require the user to add up the values? Some alternatives:

* Click all the dice with value 5.

* Click all the pictures with a roll of 4 and 5. (each picture shows a pair of dice).

If you test for pattern recognizing the number of dots on the top of the dice, then you can just verify only that. No need to make a human user to do a task that a computer can easily do.

I can imagine a bunch of users pulling out their phone calculator app to do the addition, which should tell how stupid this captcha is.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#269

Post by jon-wood »

tombert wrote: post #236
bobthepanda wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire thing reeks of bad decisions. The new CEO from the Discovery side of the merger cancelled a bunch of HBO Max programming that was doing well, because their background is in cheaper to produce reality content. It seems fated to join the very long list of bad media mergers.

What I do not understand about business is basically everything, but I still don't really understand why they felt the need to remove existing programs. I can understand canceling Close Enough and Infinity Train because they're too expensive, but I don't really understand what it's hurting for them to just say on the servers and continue to be streamable. Hard drive space is pretty cheap, especially at HBO's scale. I…

I don’t have any direct insight into this but I’ve read elsewhere that removal of first party content from streaming services could also be because contracts with actors/writers/other crew give them a cut each time it’s shown. By removing the content from streaming it’s no longer getting shown and generating income for those involved.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#270

Post by pixl97 »

bscphil wrote: post #263
x-complexity wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I once suggested to a PM from the GOV.UK Verify team that if the UK wants to do age verification for porn, which it has threatened many times over the last decade, that Verify would be the perfect tech for it as content sites would only find out you're over 18, and auth providers would only know they're proving basic details about you. To me, that's still * way too much* . Just from that, the government now immedia…

> Just from that, the government now immediately knows what site you've been to If I understand the idea correctly, this isn't how it works. Your user agent sends a signed request (with proof of identity) to the GOV.UK verification server, saying "please give me a signed certificate that provides no information other than my age". Because GOV.UK knows who you are, they can provide such a certificate. Your user agent…

Heh, until the UK logging requirements ensure some component of the token that can be decoded later gets left in the server logs, then Oops, we know exactly who was on the porn server.
Post reply on HN