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CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

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Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#251

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #2

In my country (UK) taxis are not yellow either (although yellow is a common colour for taxis throughout the world) but I am still able to guess which pictures are of taxis when the other options are of palm trees and a van. I think that's the point of these captchas. The average human being has no problem passing the test even if they are not 100% familiar with all the details. There is obviously a limit and indeed p…

Can't we make systems that work for people with below average abilities? i.e. half of the population.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#252

Post by croon »

superasn wrote: post #148
croon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely don't aim to defend Googles captcha here, but the other day I was setting up an Outlook account for my son, and I ran into Arkose Labs bot detection, and I actually got heatedly angry, which is extremely rare for me. I wanted to punch anyone related to that abomination. Upon researching it seems to be used by the Epic launcher and Roblox (among others), which might explain why I've never encountered it b…

Wow what the hell is that. Thank god I've never had to see that. It's better to load a broken image and ask to enter the numbers (that has happened to me though).

Oh, that actually reminds me of an entire other dimension of the whole thing. I blame rage induced fugue state.

What I described was just the procedure of 1 "level" of captcha. I had to complete either 2 or 3, the delineation is kind of blurred at this point.

The one I had before the above was audio based, but it failed to load a bunch of times, and failed my answers a few times as well, inexplicably.

It read out not 4-5, but 10-12 numbers, which honestly was manageable, but there was no audio spacing between the numbers that anyone who has to look at their keyboard to type would have to re-listen to it a few times to keep up. This one would also be entirely solvable by a bot, but problematic for a significant portion of humans.

I just don't understand how they make money, nor why Microsoft specifically would pay them for their services. I find the LEAST outrageous explanation that they're bribing someone in Microsoft's COTS purchasing.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#253

Post by OJFord »

StavrosK wrote: post #239
OJFord wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think 'crosswalks' require road traffic give way to pedestrians? Don't they just mark where crossing the road is not 'jaywalking'?

Hmm, I thought they did, but now that you mention it I realize I'm not sure. In the UK they do, but "crosswalk" refers to the US one. Can any US people clarify?

Sorry I assumed you were in the US, our (I'm also in the UK) zebra crossings do yes, but I was under the impression that they just marked any crossing (even at traffic lights) in the US.

But I'm basically only familiar with them from bloody reCaptchas, so I don't know!

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#254

Post by Normille »

alias_neo wrote: post #190
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what to make of this argument. We adopted English, the language from the British. The standard colonial oppression arguments already start from why use a foreign Language. They used zebra crossing (even though there are no Zebras in the UK either, I think), so we used it. Now the new argument is that the cultural imperialism of the US is forcing us to change the term again. Sure, the term "cross-walk" s…

We do have Zebra, have you never heard of a Zoo? (I jest; you are of course correct). As for cross-walk making more sense; Zebra crossing are so named because of the black and white stripes they comprise of, they require you to have seen one, yes, but, I'd argue that without context "cross-walk" is no more descriptive. Collectively, we call our crossings (Toucan, Pelican, Zebra, Pegasus), "road crossings". They are s…

Another one that I've seen on reCraptchas is "Boardwalk". If it had not been for the song "Under the boardwalk" I'd have had no idea what that was referring to. We call it a "Pier" round these parts. Taking Crosswalk as a reference, Boardwalk sounds like it should therefore refer to a place where you walk on some boards... such as where there are roadworks... or a wooden bridge... or outside the saloon in a Western.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#256

Post by arp242 »

lagadu wrote: post #113
edent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could , but that's quite a hard problem for Google's engineers to solve.

Doing that tends to make stuff worse. I've lived in countries where I don't speak the local language and despite everything being configured to use English, via IP detection some sites decide to just show me content in the local language when I'm trying to log in. Paypal is notorious for this.

Google is bad at this as well, even if I go to google.nl it insists on offering me the damn Indonesian version. I have to add hl=nl to get the Dutch version I want. While I can deal with an Indonesian UI (I do for Google Maps, can't be bothered to change it all the time), dealing with Indonesian search results in harder.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#257

Post by thinkharderdev »

sabret00the wrote: post #24

Google's CAPTCHA is a cancer of the internet. We're all training their AI without any renumeration. I genuinely hope that some government figures out how to sue them. I've sat down for minutes, repeating CAPTCHAs over and over again, just to log in to an account or download something.

No, the owner of the site is getting a free service from Google to try and prevent bots from using their site. If you don't like CAPTCHAs then your problem is with the site owner, not google.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#258

Post by intellirogue »

lagadu wrote: post #113
edent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could , but that's quite a hard problem for Google's engineers to solve.

Doing that tends to make stuff worse. I've lived in countries where I don't speak the local language and despite everything being configured to use English, via IP detection some sites decide to just show me content in the local language when I'm trying to log in. Paypal is notorious for this.

ReCaptcha actually does this too. Everything on my system is configured for English, but it asks me to find the "Fußgangerweg" or whatever. Have to use Google Translate just to know what I'm supposed to be looking for.

It still shows US-centric pictures though...

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#259

Post by Normille »

zeepzeep wrote: post #44
sabret00the wrote: post #24

Google's CAPTCHA is a cancer of the internet. We're all training their AI without any renumeration. I genuinely hope that some government figures out how to sue them. I've sat down for minutes, repeating CAPTCHAs over and over again, just to log in to an account or download something.

Let Googles AI solve Googles CAPTCHAs for you! "Buster: Captcha Solver for Humans" is one of my top 3 browser extensions.

Buster is a godsend and has probably saved me from having to abandon half the internet sites I visit.

Now if only someone could come up with similarly useful extensions that got rid of the other two forms of cancer that are ruining the internet:

1: Cookie consent dialogues*

and

2: Those modal overlays that suddenly cover up what you're reading and ask you to subscribe to some poxy newsletter or mailing list.

*not "I Don't Care About Cookies". It slowed my browser to a crawl when I installed it.

Re: CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

#260

Post by harimau777 »

tchalla wrote: post #13

It always amazes me that we as a society insist on using ambiguous words ("crosswalks" or otherwise) when there is an option to use an unambiguous option.

What's the unambiguous alternative for crosswalk? The only alternative that I can think of is "pedestrian crossing" and I'm not sure if that would be clearer.
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