Comment by sidewndr46

3 days ago

> The CAPTCHA forces vistors to solve a problem designed to be very difficult for computers but trivial for humans

I'm an unsure if this deadpan humor or if the author has never tried to solve a CAPTCHA that is something like "select the squares with an orthodox rabbi present"

15 comments

sidewndr46

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windward  2 days ago

I wonder if it's an intentional quirk that you can only pass some CAPTCHAs if you're a human who knows what an American fire hydrant or school bus looks like?

  • lproven  1 day ago

    > an American fire hydrant or school bus

    So much this. The first time one asked me to click on "crosswalks", I genuinely had to think for a while as I struggled to remember WTF a "crosswalk" was in AmEng. I am a native English speaker, writer, editor and professionally qualified teacher, but my form of English does not have the word "crosswalk" or any word that is a synonym for it. (It has phrases instead.)

    Our schoolbuses are ordinary buses with a special number on the front. They are no specific colour.

    There are other examples which aren't coming immediately to mind, but it is vexing when the designer of a CAPTCHA isn't testing if I am human but if I am American.

  • latexr  2 days ago

    I doubt it’s intentional. Google (owner of reCAPTCHA) is a US company, so it’s more likely they either haven’t considered what they see every day is far from universal; don’t care about other countries; or specifically just care about training for the US.

  • jeroenhd  2 days ago

    Google demanding I flag yellow cars when asked to flag taxis is the silliest Americanism I've seen. At least the school bus has SCHOOL BUS written all over it and fire hydrants aren't exactly an American exclusive thing.

    On some Russian and Asian site I ran into trouble signing up for a forum using translation software because the CAPTCHA requires me to enter characters I couldn't read or reproduce. It doesn't happen as often as the Google thing, but the problem certainly isn't restricted to American sites!

wingworks  3 days ago

There are also services out that will solve any CAPTCHA for you at a very small cost to you. And an AI company will get steep discounts with the volumes of traffic they do.

There are some browser extensions for it too, like NopeCHA, it works 99% of the time and saves me the hassle of doing them.

Any site using CAPTCHA's today is really only hurting there real customers and low hanging fruit.

Of course this assumes they can't solve the capture themselves, with ai, which often they can.

  • petesergeant  3 days ago

    Yes, but not at a rate that enables them to be a risk to your hosting bill. My understanding is that the goal here isn't to prevent crawlers, it's to prevent overly aggressive ones.