Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Speaking at the Library of Congress

23 comments:

  1. Am I the only one that doesn't follow the "wasted 10 seconds" argument? At least for me, deciphering two unrelated words takes about twice as long as deciphering one, so the reCAPTCHA should waste the same amount of humankind's time, but also put an equal amount of time to good use.

    I really like this idea, and think it's worthwhile, but I don't buy the implication that you're turning the time wasted on CAPTCHAs into useful work.

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  2. We have measurements (across millions of human responses): it takes equally long on average to type two english words as it takes to type one random string with 6-8 characters.

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  3. We have measurements (across millions of human responses): it takes equally long on average to type two english words as it takes to type one random string with 6-8 characters.



    I think it will depend on how long are these two english words that you are talking about.. Are you saying that it takes equally long on average to type two "n" character words as it takes to type a single random string with "n" characters... its hard to believe.

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  4. How many CAPTCHAs have you encountered that were one or even two letters in length?

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  5. Great stuff! I've filled in a few of these now and didn't realise I was helping out... wish I'd known what books/papers I was helping with!

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  6. Well, typing two words which make language sense take lesser or equal time than typing some character sequence that is totally random. So yeah, a recaptcha should take less time, and I can, in turn get all the new york times on my sony reader.

    So yeah, I will buy the idea!

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  7. It is very interesting to read how hackers "cracked" the recaptcha mechanism to hack a Time Inc online poll.

    http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/

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  8. They didn't crack it. They sat there manually typing CAPTCHAs. Cmon.

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  9. Luis you are an awesome speaker.

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  10. Unrelated information, just something about guatemala : http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/11/guatemala-white-cros.html

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  11. Púchica! I just found your video on reddit and found it fascinating. Great speech!

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  12. Proof positive that small things CAN make a big difference. I saw this video via reddit and it is truly inspiring. Such a simple and brilliant solution borne out of a need to curb spammers.

    What's next Luis?

    I wrote an article to help spread the 'word':
    http://twistedsifter.com/2009/06/why-nerds-rule-luis-von-ahn-and-recaptcha/

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  13. "I think it will depend on how long are these two english words that you are talking about.."

    He's clearly talking about the average words automatically used in Captchas, and that data is far more relevant than anything else...

    @Sérgio Nunes
    If a hacker could crack the Captchas, then there wouldn't be a problem digitizing books and newspapers...

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  14. i think this is just brilliant...We are all in it together

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  15. I saw a small clip on tv about your invention, so I googled it and watched you speech. This is genius! This idea is amazing. Putting use to what people do everyday into something productive and also functional is genius.

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  16. That is really amazing. I learned a lot in the video!

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  17. We are doing some thing similar to this project but applied to helping families cope with a crisis (like illness, job loss, or homelessness). Our website encourages people to share exactly how to get help from government agencies etc. With one website to go to with all the info on what resources are nearby and how to use them everyone adds information to refine and build the best way to solve similar problems many families face. Applying the massive power of the web for good is what we all should be doing.

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  18. Perdon que mi comentario no es nada relacionado con esto pero en tu entrevista con Revista D como me llego cuando te preguntaron sobre bill gates,
    dijiste

    "No es que seamos cuates de chupe"

    Cual es tu twitter?? Te quiero seguir, talvez se me pega algo de vos jeje

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