I remember interviewing for Airbnb and how every interviewer made it a point to say user experience & design is in their core. In my head I was thinking slow page load time, dark user patterns, it takes several clicks to get to search results, home page feed is pretty much static.
Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
131–140 of 384 posts
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Breaking and entering is not particularly difficult, in fact it's probably easier than a lot of CAPTCHAs. The reason people inclined to do illegal / immoral things don't do it is the likelihood of getting caught and the consequences therein.
Of course most people aren't spammers or burglars so in most cases it doesn't matter.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#133Airbnb 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 perce…
I don't understand the grandfather bit. Wasn't he right? Makes sense to me that a shared bathroom would decrease the cost, and I've lived in an apartment like that and it was fine.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#134Why can't Google and apple solve the 'are you a human?' check at operating system level. As a user on mobile phone they are already tracking our clicks and should be easy to communicate that to the apps and browsers.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#135I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could solve these no problem, let's use them". In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people or by ML bots. Arkose Labs (the maker of this particular captcha) explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farm…
How do I get to play with this?
I want to know if I would be filtered out
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's the ironic part, machines are able to solve these just fine so they defeat the purpose entirely. I wonder if the strategy is to create such a large number of different tasks that it becomes practically difficult to build solutions for all of them individually. For instance, detecting 'sad' music is an easy task, but what if that is only 1 of 500 possible Audio-Captcha types - which also include 'select the a…
The strategy is security through obfuscation. Solutions to solve some specific CAPTCHAs haven't spread through the CAPTCHA-solving ecosystem yet. Solving most of these CAPTCHAs are easy, and you could probably repurpose and retrain existing solutions given enough data.
> Solving most of these CAPTCHAs are easy, and you could probably repurpose and retrain existing solutions given enough data.
You are right that you can probably repurpose / retrain solutions fairly quickly, but if the CAPTCHA-creators can create frameworks to create new Captcha-types fast enough (e.g. put a structure in place so it takes 1 person a day to create a new type, and you can have a team of 20 people churning out new ones constantly) then the economics of running a captcha-solving team becomes exponentially harder, and building a captcha-solver involves a lot more work.
i.e. If it is quicker to create a Captcha rather than solve it, and the people who are creating the Captcha's have more resources than the Captcha-crackers, they will stay ahead.
Security through obscurity is a valid strategy to slow down efforts, and will definetly help when you have teams of people working to defeat your security.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been so turned off by the entire concept of AirBnB, ever since their practices ruined several cities I love with massive overtourism influence. Like so many tech companies, the influence has just gotten completely out of control in the modern world on a global scale.
Why would Airbnb be to blame for this? They're providing a market that fulfills demand for low cost or privately owned accommodations, competing directly with the established hotel industry. Not everyone wants or needs to stay in a hotel, and many people prefer the tourist experience facilitated by local hosts. Long-term rentals are also a convenient way to experience a location that doesn't involve complicated paper…
> Why would Airbnb be to blame for this?
Because they have pushed back hard on cities’ attempts to regulate and enforce what is happening due to the influence of their service. They have no respect for what is happening in some places and how residents are impacted.
Your argument is similar to saying that Facebook is not to blame for the spread of misinformation. Tech platforms create a new world and then want nothing to do with the consequences of their influence. It is arrogant and irresponsible.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#138Why can't Google and apple solve the 'are you a human?' check at operating system level. As a user on mobile phone they are already tracking our clicks and should be easy to communicate that to the apps and browsers.
lol no thanks I'd rather not have an OS based tracking API, even worse for every website out there. Just dont use captchas. "Are you a human" is not something a website should know.
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#139You use both ABP and uBlock Origin? Why?
and Privacy Badger
Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices
#140I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could solve these no problem, let's use them". In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people or by ML bots. Arkose Labs (the maker of this particular captcha) explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farm…
How do I get to play with this? I want to know if I would be filtered out
You can go to https://www.twilio.com/login/password and enter a fake email address and repeated fake passwords. Or one of the addresses listed here: https://github.com/dessant/buster/issues/178 Though I got pretty easy ones trying it.