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by wewxjfq 384 days ago
I don't mind captchas to protect forms and such, but given that so many sites want captchas solved for the first GET request, I really wonder how much more CO2 this is going to produce. And when I see "invisible mode", I'd really like to ask the authors if they think their work is a net-positive for the world.
3 comments

"invisible mode" in CAPTCHAs are great for login forms. In the background the captcha runs. If it passes, the user doesn't need to be bothered with it. If it doesn't, the user is presented the standard captcha.

I agree I hate the CF captcha popups, but I think this is a result of AI scraping. GET requests can be expensive on dynamic sites with infinite paths — like a git host.

"Invisible mode" is also great for cryptomining in the browser.
> how much more CO2 this is going to produce extremely minimal emissions, you're only solving a small cryptographic challenge after all.
Not at scale, however. Like another comment said, this is going to turn out like cryptocurrencies.

(I really couldn't care less about the climate debate, but waste is waste.)

even at a huge scale the emissions are still extremely small.
Just wait until you see how much energy your browser consumes in idle mode.