Zeta
mccHoly fuck I just got literally Plato's Cave'd by ReCaptcha
dominic → @@mcc .. did it require you to select that or
@barometz i'm really curious if it would have but the act of taking the screenshot and pasting it into Paint took long enough the image set expired.
jonathankoren™@barometz @mcc probably. I’ve been forced to call mailboxes streetlights before.
It’s ironic. Originally, this was supposed to be some data collection for recognizing objects for computer vision. Literally a task computers at the time weren’t good at. Now, humans are forced to confirm the computers’ bad decisions. Really feels like they lost the thread and now have confused the map for the territory.i
nachtet@jonathankoren @barometz @mcc how do blind people recaptcha? Let the alt text play and chose between "stairs", "no stairs" and "awaiting verdict"?
@nachtet @jonathankoren @barometz They click the headphone button in the bottom left (tooltip text "Get an audio challenge").
How does the headphone button appear to a screen reader? No idea.
BewilderedKat 
@nachtet @jonathankoren @barometz @mcc Nowadays there are audio captchas that sometimes actually work.
I used to volunteer with a service that would connect you to someone with vision impairments to assist with something (I think it was BeMyEyes but I can't remember) and CAPTCHAs were one of the most frequent requests. There have been some improvements since then, but not as many as there should have been (imo)
Rain@h3mmy @nachtet @jonathankoren @barometz @mcc despite being able to see, audio captchas are often the only way I'm able to pass them.
@h3mmy @jonathankoren @barometz @mcc
That's sounds like a really useful service, great that you volunteered! Also great, that a lot it isn't necessary anymore.
How did that work technically? Would you get access to their device, like remote IT support?
@nachtet It was more like a screen sharing thing. A lot of the time the preference was to switch over to Skype since that was widely used back then. Teamspeak was another common option in certain circles.
There were a few instances where something wasn't even keyboard accessible, and there would be a routine of "ok, a little to the left, too far, a smidge upwards, okay now click!". Often the track pad would need to be enabled since it was common to just have that disabled as a default.
There was also a video call thing so you could help with reading a label or figure out something color coded.
groff 🇺🇦@jonathankoren @barometz @mcc Try growing up somewhere other than America and trying to guess what a fire hydrant looks in diffetent places there. Here ours are underground covered by a cast iron plate. I swear AI would be better at those stupid photo captchas than I am.
CAPTCHA: Click all the busses.
Me: There aren't any but I can see three coaches. Do you mean COACHES?! Well? DO YOU!? Screw it I'll hit 'back' and go to your competitors website that doesn't have this crap.
demize
Natanael ⚠️
GFD@mcc meanwhile i’m instantly captivated by how the centre‐left one looks so perfectly like a narrower version of the common stone stair texture from Ocarina of Time, which itself had always stood out to me for looking odd or unrealistic
@GFD Yeah now that you mention it that one photo DOES look like a staircase that a low-poly Tony Hawk skater would do a trick off of
Adam Patridge
Primo
Robert Hutchinson
Ian Scott 
🐙@mcc reminds me of this time it thought the rumble strip on the side of a road was a crosswalk
@polpo This feels like an uncomfortable mistake for image software that is hypothetically training self driving cars
Developing Stacy 
Wait so it wouldn't let you in unless you agreed that the shadow of some railings was a staircase?
I thought the point of recaptcha was that the AI learned from you...
@The4thCircle Actually I don't know if the shadow was right or wrong! By the time I had taken the screenshot and pasted into Paint to save it the imageset had timed out.
Aviva Gary@mcc So like... yes or no lol 😜
@Aviva_Gary I messed up!! By Posting about this I wasted enough time the imageset timed out :O
It might not have told me anything either way tho because it's only ever testing you on *some* of the images in the set and you don't know which ones.
@mcc fair... it would have been interesting to know though 😆
David Cantrell 🏏@mcc trick question, they're all outdoors so they're steps, not stairs
Joachim Jablon
Trump & Epstein: Biz partners.@ewjoachim @mcc
"Going UP"?
I wasn't aware there are "one way" stairs? 😆 😉
@MugsysRapSheet @mcc I’m sorry but I’m going to have to answer with something French, so I hope you speak french or that youtube translated captions are any good. Sorry otherwise.
Kenneth@mcc
Stoops next. Three steps maximum? Four‽
Stoops next. Three steps maximum? Four‽
Clive Thompson@mcc Outstanding
this reminds me that I just wish CAPTCHAs would get weirder and weirder and weirder
they’ve already tended towards some uncanny stuff as they’ve chased the long tail of fuzzy Loch-Ness-monster-quality pictures of fire hydrants
I said just let it rip
@clive I have seen this future and I did not actually enjoy it.
Yeah fair
Claude Gohier
historic drystone sheep dyke@mcc please select the ideal Stairs, of which all other stairs are mere flickering replicas
Rev. Odessa Cathode Ray 
@mcc Careful. If you tell them it's just light and shadow, they may try to kill you.
Ratboy (reformed dino pirate)@mcc @MisterMadge you are not alone today
Alex 🔧🔮🌎🪿
Tim Hergert
Space Hobo@mcc I once got in a captcha death-spiral with Royal Mail when they asked me to click all of the squares containing boats, and I skipped all the squares containing ships.
Tiffany Lynch@mcc well I mean it's a stairs so it should be valid :P
spv@mcc did you select it?
Eli the BeardedI recall it once showing me some of those highway edge rumble strips and expecting me to consider them a crosswalk. Shadow beats that though
Dec [{(
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Ian Scott :apple_inc: 🐙 (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image @[email protected] reminds me of this time it thought the rumble strip on the side of a road was a crosswalk
standev
BrazMogu (i.e. Bruno Guedes)
Fi 🏳️⚧️
Glyph@glyph @standev @brazmogu @clive So a thought I toy with occasionally is, since I believe capitalism is the real paperclip-optimizing doom AI, we could have neutralized humanity's destructive impulse toward wealth-gathering by keeping the cryptocurrency ecosystem alive once we entered full communism. Let acquisition-minded people trade fake tokens to buy other fake tokens. Unfortunately, the success of the Proof of Work meme means cryptocurrency cannot be coexisted with by any civilization.
@glyph @standev @brazmogu @clive So in order to trap the capitalists in a plato's cave, we'd need to engage in a two-step process: First replace BitCoin with a fake algorithm that doesn't do the hashing, and convince miners to move the hashing to "quantum-based" miners that supposedly are 10x faster but actually just contain a single resistor, and THEN, once BitCoin is neutralized, get them into collecting BitCoin and NFTs and discontinue all commerce for "real" goods and services.
Mimir@mcc i think proof of stake is the ideal implementation tbh. they'll love it because it's literally hardcoded "the rich get richer"