Talk:2415: Allow Captcha

Wow, this took me a while to figure out... — The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭 ^{talk stalk} 03:48, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Behold, the most ominous caption of all time. 172.69.34.152 07:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

When I saw this explanation the title text was explained like this:

Title text is a similar recaptcha thing trying to also do identity fraud at coords 3,3 and 4,3.

What does that even mean? I will change it, but if there is a meaning to those coordinates? then reinsert and explain... --Kynde (talk) 10:09, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm guessing 3,3 and 4,3 refer to the table of boxes in the comic itself - the two boxes that contain the malware window are in the third row counting down from top, counting from the left one is in the third box and one in the fourth left box. Not particularly relevant to the title text, though. 172.68.146.216 13:50, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Not all 9-tuples of digits can be determined from their pairs of digits. For example, 123-45-6781 and 234-56-7812 have the same pairs. Likewise, 121-31-4151 and 121-41-5131 have the same pairs 162.158.62.157 13:23, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

This makes me wonder what the smallest difference n-m is so that you cannot uniquely determine an n-tuple of numbers from all m-tuples contained within it. 162.158.158.253 20:24, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

It's zero. Even judging by the tuples of length n-1 contained within the n-tuple fails when the n-tuple alternates between two values, e.g. 121212121.162.158.187.129 01:57, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

This is called a Clickjacking attack, isn't it?--162.158.183.211 01:45, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Aside from the manipulative elements of the 'CAPTCHA', this makes me think of a 'reverse Turing Test'. Instead of trying to get computer/human to prove their humanity, you ask them to do something that only a computer can excel at and a human will normally fail. (If used as a true-Turing test, the imperfect answer might be your clue as to who is(n't) faking, but that's why computer-candidates for these tend to always include deliberate 'tics', such as deliberately bad 'typing', grammar, punctuation, trying to seem less 'prefect' than the human correspondent.) With this comic's array, I'm left wondering if I'm getting the right verbs... is that even a verb..? "Doing word, right... but am I think of that one as an adjective and missing its verb use..?" when a robot-mind with the right lookup table would quickly assess everything 'correctly', and almost instantly. Which might (in legitimate CAPTCHA use) also be a clue that it's a robot-response, but only if the setter is that slightly bit more devious than the creator of the challenger. Complicated! 141.101.104.241 15:07, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Added a Table section, from scratch. It may copy or restate things said in the main Explanation (which needs a lot of subediting down, IMO) but I think adds many things not already mentioned that aren't Computer Geeky but aren't too verbose for being Lexicographer Geeky. I of course welcome clarifications, corrections, etc. I thought I put enough in to not need Wiktionary/other external referencing, but that's still the most obvious enhancement (without increasing pure text content). Have at it, then, my fellow XplainKCDers! 141.101.99.49 19:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Is there a category that would include this and https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2228:_Machine_Learning_Captcha? SDT 162.158.74.59 02:04, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I understand the malware box that offers to install a "helper" tool. But is there any special significance to the "DELAY" box and the "AVOW" box? Both of these have more prominent borders than the rest. Tenbob (talk) 11:48, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I was under the impression that they were a cutout of a larger window, similar to captcha usage of snips of a picture file. This is most likely intentionally a "feature" additionally added to give some credibility to the actual clickbait.OhFFS (talk) 17:53, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

This entire comic ignores a simple fact of basic web page construction, specifically, that the action performed is separate from the label on the screen. So the button labeled "Deny" could be linked to the action to allow. In fact, it could be programmed that clicking anywhere in the entire picture could trigger a download. So if someone were behaving maliciously, they would not have have to hide an "Allow" button and trick people to click it. The entire page could be a "button" that when clicked would trigger a download. Rtanenbaum (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I thought the concept was rather to obscure the fact that part of what's displayed is NOT the webpage, but the OS security dialog.

Comic with a similar concept: https://xkcd.com/565/ (Security Question)