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

Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by pbhjpbhj on Friday November 27, 2020 @09:30AM (#25228936)

These are hard sometimes for me, from UK:

What counts as a truck? Is a fire engine a truck, is a 4x4 (like a Landrover), a HGV (ie lorry), a box van?

What counts as a bus? Is a coach a bus, a minibus?

What counts as a bicycle? Is a pedal-and-pop (a pedal cycle with an engine)? The image shows part of a headset that might be on a bike, is that enough to call it a bike, might be a lightweight motorbike?

Is a hovercraft a boat? Is a helicopter an aeroplane (according to the people setting the question)? Do pedestrian facing lights count as traffic lights?

Then every now and again they add in an image that is, I assume, purposefully obscured (uniform noise) as if painted by an impressionist and titled "boring city with smog as viewed by someone with cataracts, there might be half a bicycle wheel in somewhere".

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by wongarsu on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:00AM (#25229700)

One question that I apparently answered wrong for years as a German are the traffic lights. In English, traffic light seems to refer only to the assembly of two or three lights used to control the flow of traffic. The equivalent German word most commonly refers to the entire installation, including the pole, button (for pedestrians and visually impaired), speaker (for the visually impaired) etc.

So I selected much more than what Google expected me to select, I selected all the cables and poles as well.

I'm pretty glad that hCaptcha at least gives me an example of what it's looking for

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by Bayart on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:06AM (#25229761)

Wait, you don't have to select the whole pole ?

...

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by lyx0 on Friday November 27, 2020 @11:20AM (#25229920)

This always throws me off, if it says 'Select all cars' for example and there is a car going into the next part for 10% but the main thing of that square is a tree or whatever, do I mark that? But I also always select the whole pole, no idea if it's right

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by hhjinks on Friday November 27, 2020 @12:23PM (#25230570)

Can't wait for self-driving cars to always crash into the outer part of a car because it looks straight past it thanks to our square-based teaching.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by greenshackle2 on Friday November 27, 2020 @02:13PM (#25231709)

I was genuinely stumped by this one:

https://ibb.co/1bjZyxm

Do any of the tiles count? If so, do the tiles that barely have just the edge of a "tire" count? Who knows?

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by smsm42 on Friday November 27, 2020 @02:45PM (#25231977)

Ceci n'est pas une bicycle.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by dafoex on Saturday November 28, 2020 @01:04PM (#25239186)

I'd skip this, because it would tell the AI that this "bicycle looking thing" is not a bicycle. If they wanted a cycle lane, they'd ask for that.

Then again, if they wanted a zebra crossing they wouldn't ask for a crosswalk, but here we are...

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by greenshackle2 on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:40PM (#25257274)

My goal is not to optimize google's AI training, it's to get access to the damn website. I think part of what it does is compare your answer with other people's, if the AI is not sure, so it's more like a Keynesian beauty contest where I'm trying to guess which tiles the average person would pick.

(And fail and then have to go through 5 more screens of this.)

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by anoncake on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:19PM (#25241422)

I wouldn't skip it because I find the idea of Google cars braking to avoid crashing into a pictogram hilarious.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by smsm42 on Friday November 27, 2020 @02:43PM (#25231965)

I live in US (though not born here) and truck and bike ones give me a bit of a pause too. The fact that bike is both a bicycle and a motorcycle doesn't exactly help either. And btw is scooter a bike?

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by gruez on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:48AM (#25229572)

My heuristic (which seems to be pretty accurate) is to accept anything that's vaguely related to the object that they ask for. eg. if they ask for "bicycles" and the picture has a motorcycle I select it.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by g00gler on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:36AM (#25229461)

I don’t think anyone knows exactly what they’re looking 100% the time.

I have to redo captchas all the time so don’t feel bad!

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by furyofantares on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:41AM (#25229510)

Are these examples of captchas that have failed you or just questions that come to mind? I ask myself the same sorts of questions but then haven't actually had captchas fail me for it much.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by pbhjpbhj on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:31PM (#25241104)

Mostly real examples, FWIW.

I use Brave with Tor quite often, every other site is behind a captcha.

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by daveFNbuck on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:51AM (#25229606)

Those are all equally hard for me as an American (except for the helicopter one, I'd be pretty sure that was put there to trick AIs).

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Re:CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re Ame... by pbhjpbhj on Saturday November 28, 2020 @05:34PM (#25241126)

Sometimes the turbine housing, or a section of a stabiliser aerofoil looks quite aeroplaney. But yes, I assume I've resolved that one correctly -- just getting in to the flow of my rant!

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