That girl was always falling again and again

[venta]

I've noticed, of late, that I've been getting worse at filling in captchas correctly. I think that they're getting worse, and harder to read - but possibly this is just the equivalent of declaring as you get older than all your friends have started mumbling.

This was today's particularly troublesome specimen:



Is it just me, or is the second word hard to read, and the last letter just a splodge?

Is captcha-reading software getting better, forcing captchas to become ever more illegible?

Or am I, in fact, slowly devolving into a spam bot?

Comments

[ebee.livejournal.com]

Im normally good at those but no clue.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I can exclusively reveal that my guess of "glorifiod" appeared to be accepted.

However, a little testing has just revealed that the wretched site behaves identically if you *don't* type the correct words in (though presumably doesn't actually enter you into the competition). So I've no idea what it should have been.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

ReCaptchas only use the first word to stop spambots. The second word is unknown to the computer software - they're using you as free labour to tell them what the word ought to be. Don't worry about getting it wrong - they test it out on many people!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aha! I did not know that. Thank you :)

[hughe.livejournal.com]

yup as it says: first word = stop spam, second word = read books.

they take the most common suggestion and use that as the OCR word. reCaptchas are a little forgiving anyway.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I agree it says that, but I hardly think "stop spam read books" explains the whole thing!

Even the "?" text (which I've never read before, because I assumed it was the usual patronising "what is this?" text rather than an explanation of a thing I didn't even realise was happening) doesn't actually tell you about the first word/second word difference.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

Strictly, one of the words is unknown; the order is varied randomly (otherwise it'd defeat the point).

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

The ReCaptcha software uses words from digitized books that have not been correctly recognized by the computer. As more words are correctly identified by using humans, the more obscure and difficult results are left.

Is my theory, anyway.

[ceb.livejournal.com]

This is really true. And the second word is definitely 'glorified' (I have a lot of experience of reading badly scanned books).

[uitlander]

I have always found them difficult to read correctly, to the extent that I lost all access to one group account completely. Oddly I find the first word on this indecipherable without your transcription, but can instantly recognise the second. Perception is an odd thing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Tell me, what did you recognise the second as?

Glorified?

As I said below, I thought (possibly completely wrongly) that I was explicitly looking for something which was not an actual word. If I'd been looking for something approximating a word, glorified would have been my guess.

(Buggered if I know what I'd have gone with for the first word, though, as AFAIK saltord isn't actually a real word.)

[uitlander]

Yeah, 'Glorified' was what my brain said, but you're right - the last letter is smudged.

[lnr]

I'd go for "glorified" for the second word, even though that last letter is a splodge. I find that these ones in particular are often very hard to read, and irritatingly don't always seem to use real words, which makes it much harder. I've no idea at all if your "saltord" is correct, that l could be an i or even and r for all I can tell.

I think the reCAPTCHA ones are particularly bad for this, as they're apparently deliberately using words that already failed OCR - harder for bots yes, but there doesn't seem to have been any thought into *why* they failed, and the fact that some of them are just impossible out of context.

[venta.livejournal.com]

"Glorified", y'say?

Y'see, I was under the impression that captchas usually used non-words, so automatically ruled out anything which was, like, actually a word :(

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Not if they're reCaptcha ones ... those use (as I think someone else has mentioned) words from scanned books which have failed OCR. The first word is a known test value, the second one is using the humans as a distributed intuitive OCR system.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that too.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I get saltord (...which is not a word...) and glorified. Though as three of the so-called letters only make sense in context, if it's meant to be a non-word then anyone trying to identify it is sunk.

The third letter could be any of o, e, a or even u, the eighth letter ditto, and of the final smudge the less said the better...)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

The second looks like 'glorified' to me, but the first - is that even a word? 'saltord'? Should it be 'Salford'?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Salford would have capital S surely? -- but I can't think what else it might be,

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think most captchas are non-words - pronouncable, plausibly word-like things, but not actually words. So "saltord" makes sense to me.

See most of the other comments, the second one probably is a word! (And hence probably is "glorified".)

[marjory.livejournal.com]

Oh I am *terrible* at reading captchas, which gives me that 'little old biddy' feeling. I try the listen option if one is available or just have to try repeatedly.

Je ne suis pas un bot!

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I often get CAPTCHAs wrong (and this isn't a case of them giving me a word from a book, as it tells me I got it wrong).

At least you didn't get one of these!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh, some of those are truly excellent.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I'd have gone for "saltord" and "glorified". But both of my parents are doctors, and I'm the designated "scrappy handwriting decipherer" in the office ...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm normally pretty good on bad handwriting, but that relies on recognising real words (and context helps). I incorrectly thought that I was looking for things which weren't real words above, and once you can't glance at it and go "ah, clearly glorified" but have to look at actual letters, you realise most of them aren't there.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

)f course you'e good at bad handwriting, you get a letter from me every week. saltord and glorified, incidentally, but I think we see the last letter as d because it's what we expect.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Fair point.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I have no trouble at all seeing that as glorified, but saltord would stump me for a while.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have no trouble at all seeing it as "glorified", except my (incorrect) operating parameters were that it must not be a real word.

Reading bad handwriting/poor printing/wonky computer-deying letters is way easier if all you have to do is spot a known word.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Well, I was responding to is the second word hard to read, and the last letter just a splodge - no, to me, it really isn't. I'm not sure why I don't see that as a splodge, but I don't. I think it may be related to the way I read in general - I can read very very quickly when I want to, on a skim-read basis, so perhaps my brain is filling in what my eye isn't processing?

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

http://myapokalips.com/show/23%23comic

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

"saltard" and "glorified" here. I despise non-english Captchas, but they are at least better than eg TicketMiser who seem to use random characters, and ou need to get them all right, even case.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

I had this problem just now so I tried the audio version for blind users. Just as incomprehensible. I believe that Skynet is awakening, we may not have long to get to the bunker.