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I feel like the author of this article is still slightly misunderstanding the reCaptcha. Not to criticize him, but it's almost immediately clear which word you

I feel like the author of this article is still slightly misunderstanding the reCaptcha. Not to criticize him, but it's almost immediately clear which word you are actually being tested on, because it's has the same general 'look' to it each time. Take the first one: 'Secretary' is clearly out of some book. The other thing is the real test. Now, reCaptcha never gives you real words as a test, so he shouldn't be surprised that it isn't a real word. The third captcha complained about is actually incredibly easy. The first thing is clearly the word form a book, so you can just type a short bit of nonsense there. The second thing is 'ndaaar'. It's pretty legible and easy to enter. Other 'impossible' ones are pretty easy also. Again, not trying to pick on the author, but hopefully someone will have an easier time after reading this comment. And while Captchas are annoying, I don't really feel they are impossible. Edit: To the commenter below - I have no idea what green names mean here, so I don't know how that influences people. What do they represent?

dereferenced2 14y ago
The author's blog post is retarded; "herp derp I don't know how recaptcha works and it's too hard for me." He has a pretty blog and a green name on HN, so everyone upvotes it. Pretty sad IMO.
- wcoenen 14y ago
  Green names mean the opposite of what you think they mean. It's for accounts which are less than 5 days old.
georgemcbay 14y ago
I feel like you didn't read the article, because the author already addresses what you said and had you read the article you'd realize you made incorrect assumptions that, again, he already addressed.
- freditup 14y ago
  I disagree: "The capatchas were not only difficult for a computer to read, but impossible for a human." He goes on to quote that computers can guess capatchas at 10%. My point is that if you understand capatchas, you can get them right almost all of the time. (Not talking about the audio ones here, since the visual ones seemed to be the focus of the article.)
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    I understand captchas and so does the original article writer (if you read the article he clearly explains how reCAPTCHA works). While I would have agreed with you a couple of years ago, the author's point that reCAPTCHA has reached a point where it isn't working nearly as well is spot on. I myself fail on them about 75% of the time now -- quickly approaching the failure rate of computers. For reCAPTCHA it used to be close to 100% success for me, but something has certainly changed with them, I don't know if it was intentional or is the result of a dwindling data set and as an end user, it doesn't matter, what matters is that they are really difficult to solve now.

dereferenced2 14y ago

The author's blog post is retarded; "herp derp I don't know how recaptcha works and it's too hard for me." He has a pretty blog and a green name on HN, so everyone upvotes it. Pretty sad IMO.

wcoenen 14y ago
Green names mean the opposite of what you think they mean. It's for accounts which are less than 5 days old.

georgemcbay 14y ago

I feel like you didn't read the article, because the author already addresses what you said and had you read the article you'd realize you made incorrect assumptions that, again, he already addressed.

freditup 14y ago
I disagree: "The capatchas were not only difficult for a computer to read, but impossible for a human." He goes on to quote that computers can guess capatchas at 10%. My point is that if you understand capatchas, you can get them right almost all of the time. (Not talking about the audio ones here, since the visual ones seemed to be the focus of the article.)
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I understand captchas and so does the original article writer (if you read the article he clearly explains how reCAPTCHA works). While I would have agreed with you a couple of years ago, the author's point that reCAPTCHA has reached a point where it isn't working nearly as well is spot on. I myself fail on them about 75% of the time now -- quickly approaching the failure rate of computers. For reCAPTCHA it used to be close to 100% success for me, but something has certainly changed with them, I don't know if it was intentional or is the result of a dwindling data set and as an end user, it doesn't matter, what matters is that they are really difficult to solve now.