←back to thread

405 points blindgeek | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.793s | source
Show context
Rastonbury ◴[] No.42172733[source]
Some captchas are getting pretty discriminatory, not everyone lives in the West and can identify the objects they are asking you to. Another recent one sticks out where they asked me to pick a shape as the same number of conoids on screen. If you ask people on a street what a conoids I bet a significant amount will give you blank looks

Also at least now I know some people call those markings crosswalks

replies(14): >>42172759 #>>42172860 #>>42172930 #>>42173105 #>>42173173 #>>42173178 #>>42173224 #>>42173273 #>>42173453 #>>42175276 #>>42175734 #>>42176014 #>>42177270 #>>42177387 #
ta1243 ◴[] No.42172860[source]
Sorry I live in the west, what's a "crosswalk"

Did you mean to say

> not everyone lives in the USA

Other things I don't have a clue about - a fire hydrant, yellow taxis, yellow buses

(Obviously I do, because of American cultural imperialism through things like Captchas which mean the world has to understand American cultural touchstones)

replies(11): >>42173060 #>>42173085 #>>42173153 #>>42173308 #>>42173581 #>>42173626 #>>42173694 #>>42173704 #>>42177294 #>>42177960 #>>42184875 #
smitelli ◴[] No.42173694[source]
I distinctly remember a captcha which asked me to identify fire hydrants. Some of the pictures were hydrants, while others were standpipes. These are different things, and I answered accordingly.

The service refused to acknowledge my humanity until I relented that a standpipe was a hydrant. If at some future date any of us burn to death due to an automated fire truck that misbehaved due to this, we’ll know why.

replies(2): >>42175159 #>>42175377 #
seanhunter ◴[] No.42175159[source]
Yup - I recognize this problem. I am a motorcyclist and I frequently have to grit my teeth and misidentify scooters as motorcycles if I want to get past captcha.

For non-bikers, a scooter has an automated gearbox and small wheels etc. Think vespa.

In the UK at least they are generally a different category of license, although that's because of the size of a standard scooter engine.

replies(4): >>42175710 #>>42175800 #>>42177384 #>>42180628 #
gsk22 ◴[] No.42177384[source]
Except scooters are literally motorcycles? From Wikipedia:

> A scooter (motor scooter) is a motorcycle with an underbone or step-through frame, ....

Scooters are often legally motorcycles as well. For example, I had to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license for a scooter I owned, because the engine displacement was too large for the extremely restrictive "moped" category in my state.

replies(2): >>42177762 #>>42180720 #
1. andrewflnr ◴[] No.42177762[source]
They're not really considered as such by motorcycle people, for decent reasons too. Scooters generally have rather different ergonomics and controls, notably CVTs rather than manual transmissions for "proper" motorcycles. Overall a pretty different experience to ride. There's not really a good umbrella term, either, though.
replies(2): >>42179000 #>>42191106 #
2. esperent ◴[] No.42179000[source]
I live in Vietnam where the entire population drives small motorbikes or scooters. There's no defining feature except for having a cutaway to place your feet in a scooter. Even the engine placement is less of a clear thing now that many of them are electric.

There's motorbikes with scooter like controls, there's scooters with motorbike like controls. Many small automatic motorbikes feel basically identical to driving a scooter except that your sitting position is very slightly different.

replies(1): >>42179240 #
3. andrewflnr ◴[] No.42179240[source]
Presumably an American motorcycle purist's brain would simply explode in such an environment. :)
4. gsk22 ◴[] No.42191106[source]
The "decent reasons" just sounds like snobbery or a reason to feel superior. Cars are cars, whether manual, automatic, CVT, whatever. Why should bikes be any different?

I'm a big fan of two-wheeled transport in all its forms, but wow is there a prevailing toxic attitude among a large group of "true motorcycle" riders. Instead of welcoming people into the fold, it's just tribalism -- you drive a scooter, you're not a true biker; you ride a cruiser, true bikers only drive super sports; you drive an e-bike, but only loud pipes make a true rider!

replies(1): >>42196240 #
5. andrewflnr ◴[] No.42196240[source]
Agree about the snobbery, but there is a real difference in kind between them that would be nice to have a good name for. Even if, as the other reply pointed out, they exist on a spectrum, the endpoints are pretty distinct.