Tired of Boring CAPTCHAs, This Developer Created a Doom-Themed One:
Not all CAPTCHA tests need to be boring. A web developer in Spain has decided to create one revolving around the classic PC game Doom.
The developer, Miquel Camps Orteza, uploaded his creation to his GitHub page. To prove you're a human, and not a bot, the test asks you to shoot four "imps" from Doom using a handgun.
What ensues is a simple, but fun mini-game. There are no moving sprites; the monsters and background are rendered in static 2D images. Nevertheless, the CAPTCHA test is loaded with the game's music and gunshot sound effects to help recreate the feel of playing the original Doom.
If you gun down all four imps in the time allotted, you'll pass the test. If not, play again. Try it below. (Note: The music is loud, but it will stop once you solve the puzzle.)
[...] "My CAPTCHA about Doom only validates from user-side (client). There is no backend to a server to validate the user request," he added. "For [someone] who can code, they can see how easy it is to validate the CAPTCHA."
[...] Anyone can also freely incorporate his Doom-themed CAPTCHA test into a website form.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Samantha Wright on Thursday May 27 2021, @10:06AM (4 children)
Those are not, in fact, the game's gunshot sound effects. Or its weapon sprite. The background appears to be a screenshot from the Windows 95 Maze screensaver. How on earth do you mess up getting Doom assets?!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:10PM (2 children)
Where is the captcha? All I saw on the linked page was a static image.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:16PM (1 child)
Here. [github.io] Second link in the article, well above the bit that reads "Try it below."
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:22PM
Ah, so it was actually two Captchas.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:48PM
It was only claimed the Imps are from Doom. Stop reading more into something than is claimed. If it was all Doom it would probably get a takedown notice. Using different assets, it's fair use.
The CAPTCHA itself sucks. You can only click on the imps. Clicking anywhere else does nothing, so all you need to do is automate clicking everywhere and you'd bypass it every time. His other CAPTCHA is far more entertaining. It could even generate income if its video feeds were posted on TikTok: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/squat-captcha [producthunt.com] Again easy to bypass, but who cares?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @10:24AM (3 children)
No, tired of all CAPTCHAs, even the not boring ones. People get tracked around the web in the most detail possible, but they can't figure out who is a bot and who isn't?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday May 27 2021, @10:36AM (2 children)
Why do you see a contradiction? The latter problem is harder. Also you can follow around bots and draw satisfaction from that (ask Facebook).
The claim from DuckDuckGo at least is that for searching, the following around is not needed, you can advertise based on search terms equally effectively. I tend to believe their claim which would imply that Google and the likes are really wasting money. I guess that this wasted money is probably not hurting the bottom line too much and tracking is done more for the potential than for any real effect.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:16PM (1 child)
Why is it harder to distinguish bots from humans? I think if you look at real data (what it accesses and how quick it follows links and other sites), it might be pretty simple to seperate them, even the User-Agent string might give some data away. No human is going to visit 10 sites in a minute 24/7.
As for the wasting money by Google and such, Google delivers the tracking data to its customers, they believe it and decide to give Google money for it. For Google it doesn't matter if it is wasting money, the customer is wasting it by paying them. As long as the customer believes the data Google serves, they pay. The same with Google itself (the search engine), everyone thinks it gives the best results, but in practice it gives the result that is good enough for most people. If you're looking for something specific you get served crap, just like almost any other search enigine, and have to move to the 2nd or 3rd page te get what you need (after that there is more crap).
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday June 02 2021, @11:30AM
But if you're one of these sites, you only know it's visiting your site. You don't know about the nine others.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @11:07AM (1 child)
before you allow people out into the proper internet, make them pass a thorough turing test, in the form of a game.
kind of like "the talos principle".
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday May 27 2021, @07:02PM
So, before people can go interact with internet bots, they have to prove they're human?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:27PM (3 children)
I have not tried it yet but it sounds a lot more fun then "Click on all the bridges, motorcycles, cars, fire hydrants, traffic lights, buses, crossings ...." or whatever it is they are using these days most of the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @12:59PM
... tractors, bikes, capitalists, socialists, ...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:20PM (1 child)
Don't you hate it when like a very small part of the object is in another tile... do I have to click it (to be correct, and something what a bot would do)... or not (like a lazy human)?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday May 27 2021, @01:24PM
That is quite annoying, also when the images are such bad quality and you are not quite sure if this is an X or not and. Instead of WWJD it becomes a matter of what would other people (or bots) see or do and then you try and guess what you think they thought and that usually ends in disaster, or that you have to click another set of images like some kind of Pavlovian puppet.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday May 27 2021, @03:55PM
The Soylent team continues to get more interesting content by reposting hacker news submissions from a few days ago.
As always, if you want an actual discussion with some smart people, and famous industry leaders - join the original thread below. You won't find any clowns there, because their IP gets shadowbanned within a day. If you want to debate two loud autists and their twenty accounts, which is quite entertaining in itself, Soylent all the way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27264988 [ycombinator.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27 2021, @10:10PM
Rapidly click all over the picture and you hit all 4 targets.