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> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human.
by xtracto 12y ago
> and it's frankly very insulting and rather disturbing that they think someone who inputs "unusual" search queries, according to their measure, is not human.
Insulting? how is that insulting? You are entitled. You are entitled you block scripts, use Google's FREE service to perform any search query to search the web while blocking any program that attempts to identify you as not a bot.
But if while using their free service they cannot identify you as a human given the factors they measure(becuase you actively disabled the programs that measure such factors), then I see nothing wrong in them trying alternative ways (which were a standard before).
I think you are making a storm in a teacup. If you feel offended by the way their website work, just don't use them. I don't see any red flags at all.
- 001sky 12y agosee no evil. here no evil. speak no evil.
- Houshalter 12y agoNo one should complain about anything, ever.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoActually it would be great is someone has some ideas for ways to identify humans that don't require stuff like javascript. From the perspective of a service provider (and I'm one) the bots are a scourge, they consume resources and they are clearly attempting to 'mine' the search engine for something, but they are unwilling to come forward and just ask the search provider if they would sell it to them. And since they are unwilling to pay, but willing to invest resources in appearing more human like, it leaves service providers in a pretty crappy position. So anyone have some CSS or otherwise innocuous ways of identifying humans I'm all for it.
- 001sky 12y agoIsn't this just the cost of having a "free" product? Bots are not really a problem. Its just that their traffic cannot be monetized. If you could monetize-bot traffic your problem would be solved. Or put another way, if you framed the issue as a business model one, not a technical one, it might be a useful exercise.
- innocenat 12y agoIt need not to be commercial service. For example, Wikipedia is a donation-only service. A bot visit is generally not different then most user visiting (I'd assume most users don't donate anyway). Wikipedia doesn't really mind serving users that aren't donating, but the bot, while generally not different to normal user, are stealing resources away from actual users.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago> if you framed the issue as a business model one, not > a technical one, it might be a useful exercise. That was kind of my point. Clearly most of the bots are trying to scrape my search engine for some specific data. I would (generally) be happy to just sell them that data rather than have them waste time trying to scrape us (that is the business model, which goes something like "Hey we have a copy of the big chunk of the web on our servers, what do you want to know?" but none of the bot writers seem willing to got there. They don't even send an email to ask us "Hey, could we get a list of every site you've crawled that uses the following Wordpress theme?" No instead they send query after query for "/theme/xxx" p=1, p=2, ... p=300. On a good day I just ban their IP for a while, when I'm feeling annoyed I send them results back that are bogus. But the weird thing is you can't even start a conversation with these folks, and I suppose that would be like looters saying "Well ok how about you help load this on a truck for me for 10 cents on the dollar and then your store won't be damaged." or something.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- SiVal 12y ago
- baddox 12y agoIncluding about other people's complaining.
- Houshalter 12y agoIt was sarcasm.
- ThomPete 12y agoThey should, but the proper response would be a solution that solves what others can't not complaining about someone not solving something you decided yourself to try out.
- jotm 12y agoSaying "just don't use Google/Bing/search engines" is like saying "don't use the airlines". The security checks suck big time, but really, these services are must-have and there is no better alternative. Complaining and hoping for some change is all that's left.
- robertfw 12y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/
- mjt0229 12y agoDDG is excellent most of the time, but way behind when doing video or map searches. I have it as my default in most places, but sometimes I just have to fall back to Google.
- mod 12y agoI don't disagree, but it did trump the point of the comment it replied to. DDG will get the job done.
- azinman2 12y agoI wish that were true. I tried to switch to them after they did their 'next' a few months back but the results were most of the time not nearly as good as Google's for my queries and I had to switch back.
- tracker1 12y agoPart of the reason google is so good is that they track you.. if you disable traffic, they aren't quite as good.
- firloop 12y agoAgreed. Additionally, DDG is useless when searching for current news events. Google is great at flowing in headlines for recent events with searches, which often leads me to include the "!g" bang if searching for a recent issue/store.
- forgottenpass 12y agoYou are entitled. Has calling someone entitled ever been useful? For the last few years it's felt like nothing more than a petty "you're wrong" remark with bonus condensation built right in.
- freshhawk 12y agoBeen useful at changing their behaviour/beliefs? No, for the same psychological reasons any direct contradiction isn't. Been useful at communicating that they feel someone is confusing expectations with rights? Yes, that's why there is a word for it. Also, I get it's annoying to hear entitled, ad hominem, logical fallacy, privilege, and other currently trendy words being over used and often misused. But I'll take it over what there was before that, which was no discussion at all at that level of abstraction most of the time. The places where these words are overused are places where the community is learning these concepts.
- balls187 12y ago>Has calling someone entitled ever been useful? Not useful, and more over, it's ad hominem.
- redthrowaway 12y agoIt's only ad hominem if it's used as support for an argument not directly related to the other's personality. It's not ad hominem in this case, because "you're entitled" is being used to support the claim, or as a parallel claim, that it's unreasonable to be insulted by a computer program thinking you're another computer program. Claim: Turing was wrong about the Church-Turing Thesis because he was a homosexual -> ad hominem Claim: Turing was immoral because he was a homosexual -> not ad hominem (although still not a good argument)
- slayed0 12y agoDo you mean condescension? Not trying to be a smart ass, I just got a chuckle out of the word choice.
- 12y ago
- jules 12y agoYou'd have a point except for the fact that recaptchas have become increasingly impossible to solve (for humans!). And recaptchas aren't just on google sites, they're everywhere.
- mynameisvlad 12y agoWhich is what this is trying to help solve. They know they're getting harder, so they're trying to identify you before even hitting the captcha part so that you don't have to do it.
- xnull1guest 12y agoGoogle's services are not free. You trade your data, screen real estate, and attention for their service. This is worth a lot - Google is worth a lot. They didn't do it by giving out services for free.
- hahainternet 12y agoGoogle's services are free. By trying to redefine what free actually means into 'has no cost whatsoever to anyone' you ruin the word.
- xnull1guest 12y agoIf you trade a fish for a service it isn't free. If you trade a gold bar for a service it isn't free. If you trade a service for a service it isn't free. If you trade data for a service it is not free. To consider "free" a function only of fiat currency is naive, both of history and of economics. Google search is not free. If it is I have no idea how they made so much money... Or maybe you can tell me what 'free actually means'?
- gambiting 12y agoIf a fisherman gives you a fish in exchange for writing your name and time of your visit down in his logbook, I consider the fish to be free for all intentions and purposes.
- xnull1guest 12y agoI would agree with that. I would also posit that Google looks and does nothing like that fisherman.
- sysk 12y agoBy that broad definition, there is practically no free website on the web (analytics, logs, etc.). Actually, by posting this on HN, I just "traded data, screen real estate and attention". Would you argue HN isn't free as well? I get what you mean but I don't think this is how the word free is commonly used. Besides, I believe the original point made still makes sense if "free" is assumed to mean "non paid".
- tripzilch 12y agoYou're generalising. This argument only makes sense if Google's entire ecosystem of services was just like any other random, independent selection of sites on the Internet. There is no equivalent to Google. Nobody else is doing this, particularly not to this extent. Not using all that computing power and AI to do it. Yes, if Google thinks I'm a robot, I don't think it's so strange to consider that some sort of value judgement, even if it's done by a legion of machines. Definitely more so than if some random small-time website decides to make that call based on a couple of if-then statements. Imagine if using a web service is like visiting a shop, and you get directed to the slow-checkout+ID-check lane because maybe you stammered your order, or because you know the store that well, your shopping-cart route through the aisles is deemed "too fast" (read: efficient, also avoiding the "special offers", cookies/candy/soda/junk aisles). Amusingly, how I feel about that "judgement", varies. Sometimes it's annoying sometimes it's cool because I feel "hey I'm doing something clever that humans usually don't". Similar to how being ID-checked in a liquor store can be both annoying and flattering (depending on your age and how often it happens).