180191401
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
Google's Captcha fails to account for locale. Eg: we do not have crosswalks, we have Zebra crossings.
However, that is not the most serious problem with Captcha: when they say "bicycles" does that include or exclude motorcycles? does it include or exclude parts of a bicycle? (Or staircase, or bus) if parts, how small are the parts? Does the last 3mm of a handlebar count as a bicycle? Does just the wing mirror count as a whole bus? Does a quarter of the bottom step count as a staircase? and why are the pictures so small and blurry on my 4k screen that I can't actually tell what is in the picture anyway? Why can't the pictures scale to the window? Some people have 8k screens. It is not 2010 any more!
Now Google says I am a robot, and won't let me read my own mail. Is this cruel and inhuman torture according to any known legislation? Are Google fit to be in charge of anything at all? What can be done about this?
180018920
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
I have been on YouTube since it started, and I have never clicked on an advert. Not once. I was taught by my grandmother "if they need to pay for advertising, what they are selling must be terrible!" (OK, this was in the 1950's when food, clothing and everything else was rationed — but hunger is hard to forget).
However, If I go on YouTube, I am literally pounded with adverts, even though YouTube know I won't click. I am a pensioner — I can't afford to pay for the stuff, even if I did want it. But advertisers are paying for it — and I know its not cheap — my employers used to buy Google Ads.
Google Ads are pocketing the money — knowing it won't ever sell anything. How is this not theft?
179876586
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
Today I watched a video about WW2 in which the the battle of the Atlantic was being fought by Yu-Bots!
I know some people have accents that are a little hard to understand, but the YouTube process for generating captions is about 20 years behind the rest of the planet — particularly in failing to recognise the context of videos and adapting its dictionary accordingly — you would thing that Russian and Ukrainian names and places would be recognised in videos about ware in Ukraine, even (especially) if not in British football chants.
I was led to believe there was a thing called AI — I can believe the Artificial part, but Intelligence? Not to much!
176320053
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
I am a Linux and OpenBSD user. I have not used Windows since XP, partly because I was involved in writing Windows device drivers and know how insanely insecure it is.
Today, Google has started bombarding me with messages that there is "suspicious activity on my account" every time I try to read my mail from my Linux desktop — which is how I have always read my mail. What exactly do they expect me to do?
Obviously I cannot speak to a human, — Google may employ some, but they would never condescend to letting their customers actually speak to them!
I my have to go as far as running my own mail server — but its hard work setting it up, and I am lazy. (My Physics lecturer in college used to remind us every day "never postpone to tomorrow, what you can postpone till the day after" But its not all his fault!
In any case, Google is crap at almost everything else too these days.
Have they got tired of having customers?
Is their any way to explain to them that using Linux is NOT suspicious activity — using Windows IS!
175711311
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
Today, I have twice failed to complete a capcha despite trying as hard as I can for absolutely ages.
Is this because I am secretly a robot?
Or is it because the pathetically poor, grainy, low resolution pictures are impossible for humans to interpret?
Not helped by instructions given in US English?
This side of the Atlantic (LANG=en_GB), our fire hydrants look different, we do not consider motorcycles to be bicycles (despite both having two wheels), and we don't have sidewalks or crosswalks (but do have pavements and zebra crossings).
Also, the foolish questions to not specify whether a part of a motorcycle wheel is considered to be a whole bicycle, and if a part is considered to be the whole, how small a part? Does a single pixel count?
Does the handrail count as part of stairs?
I am not opposed to the concept of captchas, However, Google's implementation appears to be designed by the kind of American that does not understand that the rest of the world considers American English to be the work of unintelligible idiots.
71348167
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
The British Government web site for applying for for a licence to be a security guard requires a plugin providing Internet Explorer emulation on Firefox to login and apply for a licence. It wont work with Firefox without the add-on, but it also wont work with Internet Explorer! (I tried Win XP and Win7 Professional). The error message says "you have more than one browser window open on the same internet connection". I didn't. and "to avoid this problem, close your browser and reopen it". I did. No change. I tried three different computers, with three different OSes.
Still no change.
I contacted their tech support and they said "Yes ... a lot of users complain about this. We have known about it since September, and are working on a fix! Meanwhile, we have instructions on how to use the "Fire IE" plugin to get round the problem". Eventually, I got this to work on Win7pro. (The plugin will not work on Linux). The instructions require a very old version of the plugin, and a bit of trial and error is needed to get it to work with the current one.
How can a government department concerned with security not get this sort of thing right?
Besides a massive amount of bribery and corruption, what could explain how the designers of the web site can't fix a chronic useability problem after 6 months?
70402135
submission
Anne Thwacks writes:
Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Mawson told the [Scottish Police Authority] committee that a total of 20,086 records had been lost because a "computer programmer pressed the wrong button between May and July last year".
He added: "That lost the results data from those records. So they had been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error.
"We have been working really hard to recover that data. I have personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails to officers and follow-up audits. We have been working hard with HMICS to oversee everything that we do, to make sure it is done properly and I am pleased to say that the vast majority of that data, those results, are now back on the system."
Will anyone will be jailed for not implementing a backup strategy? Inquiring minds want to know!
