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Admin
recaptcha VFIRST is shutdown?
Admin
The 1.99999987796 hardest things in software development:
Naming things
Cache management
Off-by-0.9999999972946 errors
Admin
Yeah, given that 72x CD-ROM drives were briefly a thing, until everyone noticed that lots of quite ordinary CDs couldn't take being spun at 15K+ rpm, I would say that a 322x write speed would be very, very scary indeed.
But equally, at 0x, that ISO will take a while to get written.
Admin
"Unsave"!?
Admin
So how does storing version numbers as floating point work when there are three parts to the version number? Time to get the latest macOS version 10.13500314159!
Admin
You couldn't spin the disc at 322X, but it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to scan a laser around the disc at that speed....
Just very, very expensive....
Admin
The ReCaptcha V1 shutdown is TRWTF. I have a couple .NET sites that no longer build in the latest visual studio. It would be a lot of work to get the site to build again, work that the client won't pay for. Fortunately, there's a way around this. The Captcha disable always returns "true", no matter what you type for an answer. Since the view is uncompiled, you can just go into that and "display:none" the reCaptcha image, and change the label on the answer to something innocuous, like "confirm security answer". And it will look like it works.
Admin
4.9999999972946 hey, that's my luggage combo.
Admin
I'm sure it would be a difficult engineering problem, and less reliable due to increased moving parts, but I always expected someone to come out with an optical writing drive where the writing laser moved in the opposite direction that the disc was spinning to increase the relative speed. That should (theoretically) let you break the "if we spin the disc any faster it will explode" speed limit. I guess 70x should be fast enough for anyone...
Admin
So, basically, just "Are you a human?" -yes -no Could just strip out the Captcha completely at that point, and put the good ole' "Are you a human?" with a textbox after it, and then "Are you sure you are a human?" with radio buttons for yes and no. For most sites, that's more than enough; only botters who actually care will make it past that.
Admin
I get the ReCaptcha V1 shutdown thing at Explain XKCD. I entered "recaptcha v1 is shutdown" as the response and it worked -- I never figured out that any entry would work.
Admin
It looks like that's from a LinkedIn post, where "Save" and "Unsave" are really more of a "Bookmark" and "Remove Bookmark" to a particular job application.
Admin
A workaround solution for reCaptcha being dead is taking something open source like captcheck.netsyms.com and modifying it to use the same variables and URLs as reCaptcha. Then either swap the URLs (find/replace might even work on compiled code, since strings are strings) or do some host file tricks.
Admin
I think TRWTF is that Visual Studio can't open projects of a certain age. Even if the full feature list of the last version of VS won't work on the older project, it should at least be able to open it and compile it out again. I can't think of any other programming language that behaves like this (yes, I'm equating .Net with a programming language because it's almost always C# code).
Admin
Huh, I did exactly the same thing. Still, I think they're going to upgrade soon, so it won't matter.
Admin
How about 12 lasers, pointing at different parts of the disc as it spins at 32x? Allowing for some slack it might average 322x on a long read.
Admin
There's also 372x in the list, for even more fun.
Anyone have a plausible theory on how that list of numbers might have been generated?
Admin
(Yes, I'm the same one that submitted the CD thing. You can also find me on IRC as "cheapie" if you have any more questions about this.)
Steve_The_Cynic: The 72x CD drives (Kenwood TrueX) used a complicated 7-beam pickup and spun at something like a 24x rate, reading 3 tracks at once. The other 4 beams were placed between tracks to effectively make it function as a 3-beam pickup for all 3 tracks at once. I think 56x is the fastest that any drives would actually spin a CD.
On the other hand, PLDS did produce some 24x DVD burners, most commonly sold under the Lite-On brand as the iHASx24 series. 24x on a DVD is the same spindle speed as 72x on a CD. It's.... scary fast. They're also fun for various crossflashing and firmware modding tricks :)
RobyMcAndrew: I suspect keeping the sled on track when it wants to be flung outwards from spinning that fast might be problematic. Probably at least not explosive though, at least not until something goes wrong.
Scarlet_Manuka: I... have no idea. That screenshot is from Opti Drive Control talking to (IIRC) a TSST TS-H492C with a 52x CD-R inserted. Other software such as ImgBurn works correctly with it, and the same software works correctly with other drives. I've been meaning to look at the raw data it returns to see if there's anything unusual about it but haven't actually gotten around to that yet.
As a sort of side note, "Ultra Speed Plus" normally refers to the fastest speed of CD-RW discs, which have a write speed of 32x. Certainly not all that fast compared to the speeds it offered, and actually irrelevant since a CD-R disc was in the drive and not a CD-RW. I also don't think "Ultra Speed Plus" is actually trademarked - I think the trademark is for "Compact Disc ReWriteable Ultra Speed+"
Admin
Version numbers stored as a floating point are as equally stupid as defining a kilobyte as 1024 bytes. Just because a version number with two parts looks like a float, it IS NOT a float. And kilo means thousand, not thousand-and-twenty-four.