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Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by rndgermandude on Monday February 21, 2022 @07:14AM (#30414961)
>Wut? Have you actually ever met a person who can't?

I have met a few, yes, including people who are intellectually limited (colloquially called "dumb"), people who were born or acquired mental handicaps, people who are suffering most likely suffering from dyscalculia (dyslexia for arithmetic/numbers). E.g. we think my grandma might have had a milder form of the latter, as she had a lot of trouble adding up numbers in particular, which would have made this CAPTCHA very hard for her - but not impossible. And a friend of my mom has Turner syndrome, which is linked to dyscalculia, and she is indeed very bad at basic math.

Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by LizardsAreCute on Monday February 21, 2022 @07:37AM (#30415195)
In most of the cases you mentioned, that would be considered a handicap though. In such cases it's a failing on adding an accesability option or secondary option.

Among people, who aren't straight up unable due to handicaps, who couldn't solve them? It seems easy enough that mostly anyone could.

Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by unfocussed_mike on Monday February 21, 2022 @08:26AM (#30415620)
If your starting position is that dyslexia and dyscalculia are handicaps that mean people need to be treated differently, you're failing right out of the gate.

They are quite common problems with a wide spectrum of severity.

Back when you could take your car to a local garage, your car would very likely be repaired by a very clever person who was dyslexic (even dyscalculate) because as a career, men in particular who struggled with written language (or even modestly complex maths -- differential gear yes, differential equation no) could do it and thrive at it.

Should that person be treated as handicapped if they need to fill in a form? Or should forms not be designed to make people waste their time with puzzles or kafkaesque processes of any kind?

[dead]
Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by rndgermandude on Monday February 21, 2022 @07:39AM (#30415213)
I don't see why my grandma - if she was still alive - or my mom's friend wouldn't be booking Airbnbs; people of at least "average" intelligence by the way, except for their issues with basic math. My mom's friend is an avid global traveler in fact, and if I remember correctly she used Airbnb on several occasions in the past, and yes, she does her own bookings.
Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by unfocussed_mike on Monday February 21, 2022 @08:29AM (#30415650)
[edited to remove a bit of my comment because it did actually come across as rude, my apologies]

Summing dice together is not the only ability you need to solve this puzzle.

It's not the totality of what is being tested.

In other words, it's instructive to consider why a computer struggles to solve it with this particular photographic presentation, and why a person might.

Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by kortilla on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @12:53AM (#30424459)
What the fuck does summing dice together have to do with booking an Airbnb?

“If you cannot lift 100 lbs over your head, should you be operating a fork lift?”

Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by crimthrw2022 on Monday February 21, 2022 @07:55AM (#30415366)
If technology doesn't make things easier, what's the point of it?
Re:Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding... by redsparrow on Monday February 21, 2022 @12:50PM (#30418552)
Well, this is a cynical answer, but I think in this case: make money. Making things easier is one way to use technology to make money. Having a significant market share and making it difficult for others to enter the market is another way to use technology to make money.

There was (probably) a point in history where AirBnB existed to make things easier. Now I'm pretty sure it's just there to make money.