‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

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

92 points · 90 comments · theanonymousone

  1. swiftcoder · · focus · HN ↗
    Even as someone who lived a long time in the US, I've failed a bunch of these on unclear definitions.

    When you say "stoplights", is that just the lights themselves, or also the poles that support them? Is a tile that contains 1/3 of a bike wheel "bicycle" or "not bicycle"? Is a coach also considered a bus?

    1. lemagedurage · · focus · HN ↗
      Being pedantic about the captcha is the less-human thing to do here.
      1. swiftcoder · · focus · HN ↗
        I think I'm failing the captcha by not being sufficiently pedantic. It genuinely never occurred to me that a coach might not be considered a bus by the algorithm (where "algorithm" is presumably "distilled responses of many thousands of other humans")
      2. kruffalon · · focus · HN ↗
        Ha! I guess I'm less human than expected, and finally I understand why I've failed sooooo many CAPTCHAs over the years :)

        Thanks, I really never knew!

      3. agons · · focus · HN ↗
        This comment doesn't help the pedant
      4. skissane · · focus · HN ↗
        I actually found I had more success with reCAPTCHA when I made myself think less about what the answer was.

        I also learned this trick that a lot of the questions have a standard number of answers – e.g. there are always three buses, or fire hydrants, or whatever – so once I've picked three, I'm done. (There often is a fourth ambiguous case, which it accepts but doesn't require.)

    2. bmacho · · focus · HN ↗
      I think you are supposed to click on all tiles that contain any part of said object (and pole is part of the stoplight object).

      They certainly could've been more clear about what they want.

      1. pixel_popping · · focus · HN ↗
        I feel that's actually the whole point of the system, to know how humans respond when it's vaguely defined.
        1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

          [deleted]

        2. swiftcoder · · focus · HN ↗
          The problem with recaptcha style systems is that once the underlying model is trained, you are basically playing family feud - you aren't trying to provide a correct answer, as much as you are trying to match the "survey says..." majority opinion
Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.