Hacker News Reader

Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

> Mailboxes, fire hydrants, Trams are not recognizable for billions of people.

Cheese is though? And I'm pretty sure most of the world would recognise those things anyway - you forget how much American culture is spread through films and TV.

View on HN

Putting aside the fact that at least 50% of the world doesn't speak English and might not even know what "cheese" is, a lot of the world does not subsist on dairy products or use cheese and will not recognise images of cheese. Neither will they understand the traditional American schoolbus which is a very distinctive thing and will pick any old bus that appears on the photos as long as it looks like a large motor vehicle. Very few people percentage-wise will know what "crosswalk" or "sidewalk" or "mailbox" mean because these are very specifically American terms

Just for context, 65% of India is rural and a ton of these people do not have access to the internet and will have zero idea how to get through these arcane captchas. The internet is effectively locked off to them

Your argument only makes sense if the content behind the captcha is also local and relevant to the user.

> 65% of India is rural and a ton of these people do not have access to the internet and will have zero idea how to get through these arcane captchas

Damn I didn't know so many rural Indians without internet access are using AirBnB...

a ton of these people do not have access to the internet and will have zero idea how to get through these arcane captchas.

While I agree with both the theme and vigor of your position, your sentence made me wonder how people are seeing CAPTCHAs without the internet?

Did you look at the capture? For cheese it was a camera not actual cheese.

I believe you failed the CAPTCHA. I assume the bottom right is the only correct answer.

Jeez you're right, how could I have overlooked the cheese?! I thought it was even worse than it is, assuming you're supposed to associate the camera with someone taking a picture and saying "cheese".

What's it like being a robot?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com