July 10, 2015

I learned today that when you have to enter those annoying Captcha words to submit forms on web sites you are actually deciphering words in digitized copies of books that computers can't figure out.

Old books are difficult for computers to read because well, they're old. The print is too faded. But humans CAN read them. So when a Captcha comes up, it's just a pic of a word the computer can't figure out. When YOU figure it out it goes back and updates the answer from the source book and moves on to the next word.

Cool, huh? Good job! Pat yourself on the back.