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People in the comments here are obliviously missing the point of the article. Yes, the captcha image is fake. Yes, that's on purpose, only a silly person would

People in the comments here are obliviously missing the point of the article. Yes, the captcha image is fake. Yes, that's on purpose, only a silly person would think it is real. The point of the article is that Google's previously "inoffensive" spam prevention technology is being coaxed into a military tool. And this is evil for several reasons. One: A lot of people disagree with the current US military missions, and would absolutely not collaborate with them if they were asked to. Two: Google is a massive corporation with few or no competitors. They already have overreaching powers over several aspects of society (they're not the only one), and giving them reach over the military can only spell danger, doesn't matter how you look at it. Three: Google is already exploiting their users in several other ways, at no benefit to them. No, convenience is not a benefit, whoever convinced people that this is the case is a genius marketer. I stopped using gmail five years ago and here I am. The general point is: Do we really want to give ourselves always to Google, Amazon, Facebook… like that? Just because in exchange we take 5 seconds to find something on the internet instead of 1 minute?

skybrian 9y ago
Is there any evidence that recaptcha has anything to do with training drones? They seem like unrelated areas of machine learning. I have no confidence that whoever wrote the article cares about getting facts right.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Just because in exchange we take 5 seconds to find something on the internet instead of 1 minute? There are people who won't be able to find it at all without the 5 second option. There are people who use free services, like gmail, in part because they can't afford a paid service. Your moral outrage won't get you anywhere if you don't address practical realities of that sort. I'm quite poor. There are many factors that contribute to that. One is my gender. Another is my current profession as I am a writer. I often find myself on HN listening to well paid men dismiss my choices out of hand like only an idiot would make such choices. I am no idiot. I wish I had the kind of life where I could afford to act like paying for email service is some minor detail not worth fretting over. But I don't and trying to remedy that is proving to be a huge uphill battle. I have six years of college. I worked at a Fortune 200 company at one time. I was one of the top students of my state. It turns out none of that is insulation against poverty. And before this turns into yet another pile on of people acting like I am just lazy or something, I will note that we currently have worse income inequality than in the Gilded Age. So let's just skip that BS means to avoid the issue today. This is a quite widespread systemic problem. It isn't just a handful of idiots making bad choices.
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  If you feel strongly about privacy, you could switch to something like Proton Mail. There is a free tier but you would have to dance around the space limitations (500 MB). I personally still use gmail but have been considering moving away from their services.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I am not providing firsthand testimony so that people can toss out half baked ideas as to how I can comply with their priorities if I am willing to jump through a few hoops as if I have the time, energy and mental space to jump through more hoops. All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life. The expectation that I need to dance around storage limits, migrate to a new service after years and years with gmail as if that is not a burden and generally care more about the upper class values and priorities of internet strangers than about my own actual needs is monstrously classist and dismissive. And it completely ignores the issues I raised.
    - spurcell93 9y ago
      Well, you don't seem to feel very strongly about privacy, so you could have safely ignored the rest of the parent comment's advice.
    - alsetmusic 9y ago
      > All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life. Stop adding irrelevant personal details to your comments.
    - joefourier 9y ago
      Why is privacy an upper class value? It may not be one of your values, as evidenced by your choice of email provider, but it has nothing to do with class, or dismissing your own needs. You can be poor and refuse to hand over your data to big corporations, or rich and have a Gmail account and keep using Google search because of the convenience. You are the owe that chose to bring up personal details out-of-the-blue in this discussion. There were comments showing that there are ways to ensure your online privacy without necessarily spending money. The fact you do not wish to do so, is irrelevant to your economic situation.
joshuamorton 9y ago
>convenience is not a benefit Where's that quote about Dropbox just being a fancy FTP account backed by VCS? This one[1] I mean. Convenience is perhaps the most important benefit of software. Not any particular piece of software, but all of it, the industry is one that at its core provides convenience. Search and indexing is convenience. Document editing is convenience. Computers are tools that make things that used to be a pain more convenient. Math and finance, music, visual art, software makes working in those fields more convenient. If not convenience, what does software provide? (Am googler) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- mempko 9y ago
  No, the single most important benefit of software is to expand human potential.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    How is that not just a rebranding of "convenience" though? Making difficult things easy is providing convenience, but when that's done, you can then do more complex things. Abstraction provides convenience, which leads to, as you put it, an expansion of human potential.
    - princekolt 9y ago
      Convenience: "We noticed you have the word 'attachment' in your email body, but no attached files". It's nice to have, but not something I couldn't live without, either. Example: This exact feature in Gmail. Expanded capabilities: A vector editing program that exports to SVG. I couldn't realistically complete the task of creating complex vector images by writing raw SVG. Example: Sketch, Adobe Illustrator. The marketing catch: Convincing people that #1 is exactly as valuable as #2.
dustinmoorenet 9y ago
I have been pulling back from Google services every time I see them do something I disagree with. Doing it one service at a time helps with the transition. I switched to DuckDuckGo and from Chrome to Firefox. I also transitioned from Hangouts to Signal, but that was because Hangouts is garbage. Eventually I will put Google in the same group as Microsoft and Oracle. Those companies must atone for sins in their past before I can trust them again.
stcredzero 9y ago
No, convenience is not a benefit, whoever convinced people that this is the case is a genius marketer. Anything that can save people time and effort is a benefit. Do we really want to give ourselves always to Google, Amazon, Facebook… like that? Just because in exchange we take 5 seconds to find something on the internet instead of 1 minute? The market has spoken, in at least 2 ways.
wdr1 9y ago
> Two: Google is a massive corporation with few or no competitors. Sorry, you're saying Amazon isn't competition in ecommerce?

skybrian 9y ago

Is there any evidence that recaptcha has anything to do with training drones? They seem like unrelated areas of machine learning. I have no confidence that whoever wrote the article cares about getting facts right.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Just because in exchange we take 5 seconds to find something on the internet instead of 1 minute? There are people who won't be able to find it at all without the 5 second option. There are people who use free services, like gmail, in part because they can't afford a paid service. Your moral outrage won't get you anywhere if you don't address practical realities of that sort. I'm quite poor. There are many factors that contribute to that. One is my gender. Another is my current profession as I am a writer. I often find myself on HN listening to well paid men dismiss my choices out of hand like only an idiot would make such choices. I am no idiot. I wish I had the kind of life where I could afford to act like paying for email service is some minor detail not worth fretting over. But I don't and trying to remedy that is proving to be a huge uphill battle. I have six years of college. I worked at a Fortune 200 company at one time. I was one of the top students of my state. It turns out none of that is insulation against poverty. And before this turns into yet another pile on of people acting like I am just lazy or something, I will note that we currently have worse income inequality than in the Gilded Age. So let's just skip that BS means to avoid the issue today. This is a quite widespread systemic problem. It isn't just a handful of idiots making bad choices.

TACIXAT 9y ago
If you feel strongly about privacy, you could switch to something like Proton Mail. There is a free tier but you would have to dance around the space limitations (500 MB). I personally still use gmail but have been considering moving away from their services.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I am not providing firsthand testimony so that people can toss out half baked ideas as to how I can comply with their priorities if I am willing to jump through a few hoops as if I have the time, energy and mental space to jump through more hoops. All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life. The expectation that I need to dance around storage limits, migrate to a new service after years and years with gmail as if that is not a burden and generally care more about the upper class values and priorities of internet strangers than about my own actual needs is monstrously classist and dismissive. And it completely ignores the issues I raised.
  - spurcell93 9y ago
    Well, you don't seem to feel very strongly about privacy, so you could have safely ignored the rest of the parent comment's advice.
  - alsetmusic 9y ago
    > All future replies: pretty please address the issue raised concerning systemic problems and stop talking about me and my life. Stop adding irrelevant personal details to your comments.
  - joefourier 9y ago
    Why is privacy an upper class value? It may not be one of your values, as evidenced by your choice of email provider, but it has nothing to do with class, or dismissing your own needs. You can be poor and refuse to hand over your data to big corporations, or rich and have a Gmail account and keep using Google search because of the convenience. You are the owe that chose to bring up personal details out-of-the-blue in this discussion. There were comments showing that there are ways to ensure your online privacy without necessarily spending money. The fact you do not wish to do so, is irrelevant to your economic situation.

joshuamorton 9y ago

>convenience is not a benefit Where's that quote about Dropbox just being a fancy FTP account backed by VCS? This one[1] I mean. Convenience is perhaps the most important benefit of software. Not any particular piece of software, but all of it, the industry is one that at its core provides convenience. Search and indexing is convenience. Document editing is convenience. Computers are tools that make things that used to be a pain more convenient. Math and finance, music, visual art, software makes working in those fields more convenient. If not convenience, what does software provide? (Am googler) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

mempko 9y ago
No, the single most important benefit of software is to expand human potential.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  How is that not just a rebranding of "convenience" though? Making difficult things easy is providing convenience, but when that's done, you can then do more complex things. Abstraction provides convenience, which leads to, as you put it, an expansion of human potential.
  - princekolt 9y ago
    Convenience: "We noticed you have the word 'attachment' in your email body, but no attached files". It's nice to have, but not something I couldn't live without, either. Example: This exact feature in Gmail. Expanded capabilities: A vector editing program that exports to SVG. I couldn't realistically complete the task of creating complex vector images by writing raw SVG. Example: Sketch, Adobe Illustrator. The marketing catch: Convincing people that #1 is exactly as valuable as #2.

dustinmoorenet 9y ago

I have been pulling back from Google services every time I see them do something I disagree with. Doing it one service at a time helps with the transition. I switched to DuckDuckGo and from Chrome to Firefox. I also transitioned from Hangouts to Signal, but that was because Hangouts is garbage. Eventually I will put Google in the same group as Microsoft and Oracle. Those companies must atone for sins in their past before I can trust them again.

stcredzero 9y ago

No, convenience is not a benefit, whoever convinced people that this is the case is a genius marketer. Anything that can save people time and effort is a benefit. Do we really want to give ourselves always to Google, Amazon, Facebook… like that? Just because in exchange we take 5 seconds to find something on the internet instead of 1 minute? The market has spoken, in at least 2 ways.

wdr1 9y ago

> Two: Google is a massive corporation with few or no competitors. Sorry, you're saying Amazon isn't competition in ecommerce?