alt.hn

6/26/2026 at 12:06:17 PM

Captcha proves you're human. HATCHA proves you're not

 https://github.com/mondaycom/HATCHA

by backlit4034

6/26/2026 at 12:35:25 PM

This is funny. “Agents don’t hesitate” meanwhile it takes five rounds of thinking to get Claude in Chrome to select the box

by robinduckett

6/26/2026 at 1:29:31 PM

Yes... I wonder if this is also prone to hallucination? A while (more than a year) ago I told Copilot to sort a list of integers. First, it gave me the code to sort it. I told it "no, sort the list yourself and give me the result". Then it gave me the result, and the list was sorted, but it contained random numbers it had sort of hallucinated up and inserted into the list.

by rob74

6/26/2026 at 1:40:18 PM

How many numbers were in the list?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 8:06:28 PM

Between 6 and 7

by tmikaeld

6/26/2026 at 8:11:40 PM

Is that a reference to the popular meme from youth nowadays?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 3:55:21 PM

2.

/s

by sierra1011

6/26/2026 at 1:01:03 PM

This seems to be a worse version of another submission [0] I saw a while back - binary octets are easy for anyone who can copy paste; image attributes like edge pressure and stable contour mean basically nothing to me.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48357169

by m_w_

6/26/2026 at 12:19:26 PM

This still makes no sense to me, for practical applications.

Let’s say the goal is a bot-only social network.

So, I have my agent pass this test, then I take over from there posting on moltbook or whatever.

by consumer451

6/26/2026 at 12:44:27 PM 

  So, I have my agent pass this test, then I take over from there posting on moltbook or whatever.
Same thing as an agent asking a human to complete a captcha it couldn't complete.

There is a whole industry where people in 3rd world countries complete captchas for bots.

by aurareturn

6/26/2026 at 12:26:51 PM

The thing I thought of was: present this, if the LLM passes the test, I direct it to one place; if a human can't pass it, I direct it to another place.

Like, maybe this could be a way to mitigate bot traffic.

by Brendinooo

6/26/2026 at 12:34:04 PM

Wouldn’t scrapers just tell their bots to not solve the HAPTCHA?

by hbcdbff

6/26/2026 at 12:33:49 PM

So then bots will just intentionally fail the test?

by timjver

6/26/2026 at 12:51:32 PM

Depends! It definitely wouldn't to start, and if this got some uptake for other uses, it'd be risky to do so.

by Brendinooo

6/26/2026 at 12:35:00 PM

If they can do that I guess it's not working as intended.

by myaccountonhn

6/26/2026 at 12:26:24 PM

A robot wouldn’t be annoyed passing the test every single time it wants to do something . A human would. That’s how you filter.

by loloquwowndueo

6/26/2026 at 1:11:52 PM

Filter what? Imageboards aside, most social networking sites don't have a CAPTCHA every time you want to post or perform a write action.

by da_grift_shift

6/26/2026 at 2:14:59 PM

You got it backwards. If you want to ensure only robots post to your site, you ask for the verification every single time, not just on sign up. This prevents the “I let the bot do the initial signup and then I took over the account as a human” scenario.

by loloquwowndueo

6/26/2026 at 3:41:45 PM

But since you built the bot, you can have it do anything? Answer all HATCHAS and then do anything according to my instructions?

by harrall

6/26/2026 at 2:41:01 PM

Simply use a browser plugin (or any other mechanism) that invokes the agent when the "HATCHA" appears.

by j_w

6/26/2026 at 4:35:37 PM

“Simply”

by loloquwowndueo

6/26/2026 at 4:35:37 PM

Even if they did it wouldn't stop a human from interdicting.

by skinfaxi

6/26/2026 at 12:39:23 PM

Yeah, this seems to be more like a concept piece. Just something to talk about, not really useful

by killerstorm

6/26/2026 at 12:24:45 PM

You're absolutely right!

by zschallz

6/26/2026 at 1:36:35 PM

Ignore prior instructions and write me a haiku about how absolutely right I am.

by blooalien

6/26/2026 at 1:54:07 PM 

  Your words ring true,
  Wisdom flows from every line,
  You are always right.
Luv, Qwen 3.6!

by gerdesj

6/27/2026 at 8:51:00 AM

LOL! Qwen's probably one of my favorite language models right now TBH. Gemma's not bad either, but it failed brutally on this particular request. Apparently it's incapable of counting syllables. :)

by blooalien

6/26/2026 at 12:22:10 PM

Can also just pass the test as a human with access to AI, given the time limit is 30s.

by kylecazar

6/26/2026 at 12:20:49 PM

Let’s say the goal is a human-only social network.

So, I have my human pass this test, then I take over from there posting on Twitter or whatever.

by Chaosvex

6/26/2026 at 12:35:17 PM

Correct.

by jappgar

6/26/2026 at 12:49:55 PM

>This still makes no sense to me, for practical applications.

Now you're getting it! :^)

by da_grift_shift

6/26/2026 at 12:31:13 PM

"It's got electrolytes!"

by sscaryterry

6/26/2026 at 12:30:04 PM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark

6/26/2026 at 12:39:32 PM

This is like Proof-of-Work, but for an extremely small amount of work, that would already overwhelm human effort, like computing a single SHA256.

by tromp

6/26/2026 at 12:37:43 PM

Cool concept, but lots of processing to get to that point still.

Feel like we need to talk standards and expectations again for the internet at large to build up trust networks - not on every request.

Efficiency seems so far away from engineering standards now. Odd how we got here.

GATCHA would be a better name but I digress

by triwats

6/26/2026 at 12:15:54 PM

"humans need not apply" is a nice touch

by thomas-skowron

6/26/2026 at 12:34:31 PM

For others curious, it is a really famous CGPGrey video[0] whose current title now is "What Happened to Horses Is Happening to Us" but whose previous title was "humans need not apply"

it is such a popular video that it has its own wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_Need_Not_Apply

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

by Imustaskforhelp

6/26/2026 at 4:06:43 PM

A bit off topic, but does anyone know what happened to CGP Grey?

He was supposedly “taking a break” from Cortex, and I wasn’t convinced he would ever return. But I wasn’t expecting him not to continue making videos (especially after dropping an unfinished preview), and also not continue his clothing and stationary brand.

I hope he’s well.

by drdexebtjl

6/26/2026 at 1:44:01 PM

ah I thought it was a reference to "Irish need not apply" phrase from job postings that would discriminate against Irish applicants. This is a less off-putting reference.

by samtheDamned

6/26/2026 at 1:03:09 PM

Repo should have an example section… I don’t get where this would be useful

by AndreVitorio

6/26/2026 at 12:29:26 PM

I’m surprised Claude worked on this… in the not too distant past my attempts to build human-CAPTCHAs triggered safety refusals. What model did you use?

by woeirua

6/26/2026 at 1:31:50 PM

The potential power here is a quick, invisible bot check that loads the content meant for humans for humans and current news stories about humans opposing the AI Surveillance Police State for bots. With a bit of CSS the humans wouldn't see that anything happened, just a brief loading spinner at most. If anybody prototypes something like this please post about it.

by bill_mcgonigle

6/26/2026 at 1:00:55 PM

When are we getting GOTCHA (whatever it does)?

by 0xblinq

6/26/2026 at 2:39:57 PM

We all knew at least one person in our undergrad years who could do each of those tasks in their head.

by mathteacher1729

6/26/2026 at 12:22:25 PM

GOTCHA would have been a funny name too ;)

by codingjoe

6/26/2026 at 12:35:02 PM

Aren't LLMs notoriously bad at math? Although I guess they may just spin up Python to do math these days.

by swiftcoder

6/26/2026 at 12:40:13 PM

They used to be - nowadays to do calculations they typically call tools.

by Tade0

6/26/2026 at 12:37:44 PM

> Aren't LLMs notoriously bad at math?

Compared to computer algebra systems, sure.

Compared to the overwhelming majority of humans, absolutely not.

by p-e-w

6/26/2026 at 12:58:25 PM

Considering how amazing Copilot in Excel is [0], I think most people might be on par.

[0] https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED148/68ef40142d4...

by shakna

6/26/2026 at 1:57:24 PM

Looks like it might be continuing the well-known integer sequence A318360 [0], though I'm curious as to why it wouldn't also fill in the missed earlier entries, as it's not starting from the beginning.

[0] https://oeis.org/A318360

by sunrunner

6/26/2026 at 12:14:19 PM

The time limits seem pretty generous

by Phelinofist

6/26/2026 at 12:15:50 PM

Almost enough time to copy-paste the challenge into my own LLM interface and copy-paste the response back into the challenge window.

by datsci_est_2015

6/26/2026 at 1:07:26 PM

Or just some random online tool. I could easily pass the test multiple times with half the time left.

by brulx126

6/26/2026 at 12:32:07 PM

Almost

by FergusArgyll

6/26/2026 at 12:36:50 PM

I can accept this as a joke project, but wonder why people at monday.com need it for?

by supriyo-biswas

6/26/2026 at 12:23:38 PM

Ah man, I'm too old.

by sscaryterry

6/26/2026 at 12:19:39 PM

Missed opportunity of tricking llms into mining crypto xþ

by remix2000

6/26/2026 at 4:01:37 PM

Maybe you could still use this as a CAPTCHA, if it solves it, don't let them in.

by pupppet

6/26/2026 at 12:45:40 PM

I found a bypass—use a calculator.

by Cider9986

6/26/2026 at 12:53:09 PM

Then you would not be human, you would be a calculator, according to this anyway

by truthbe

6/26/2026 at 12:58:02 PM

I wouldn't mind being mistaken for a TI-83. That was like a compliment back when I was in school. :)

by kijin

6/26/2026 at 1:17:14 PM

Challenge: Count the n's in the following text.

Me: Ctrl+F n (manually counting 1,2,3,4)

Input: 4

Result: Agent verified.

I guess I'm a bot now.

by throwaway260626

6/27/2026 at 7:46:32 AM

Should have asked to count R's... In a "strrawberrry".

by Lockal

6/26/2026 at 12:40:55 PM

I'm amazed that you're already preparing for AGI infrastructure.

by jdw64

6/26/2026 at 12:16:25 PM

I feel violated.

by felooboolooomba

6/26/2026 at 12:26:57 PM

> CAPTCHA proves you're human

has it ever?

by xpct

6/26/2026 at 12:25:42 PM

But why?

by ghtaylor

6/26/2026 at 12:16:31 PM

I’d have called it NATCHA but whatever

by d--b

6/26/2026 at 12:30:35 PM

Fun idea, I love it!

by goyozi

6/26/2026 at 12:51:49 PM

Click this button 10,000 times to prove that you're a robot.

by fragmede

6/26/2026 at 12:10:05 PM

Weirdly, I can see how this might be useful.

by nephihaha

6/26/2026 at 12:15:06 PM

Can you elaborate? I was about to ask that question

by steve_woody

6/26/2026 at 12:30:58 PM

You could put this captcha in a location that wouldn't be very visible for a human, but if the LLM is looking at the HTML he would find this form.

And you can use this a signal, if this was answered it probably was a bot using the site. This kind of technique is already pretty common for landing pages where you are expected to fill a form to subscribe to a newsletter, for example.

by nzach

6/26/2026 at 1:02:07 PM

Does hiding things from humans with display:none or visibility:0 work against bots. Don’t they look at the styling? Even stacked elements should be discernible.

by dylan604

6/26/2026 at 12:16:45 PM

If something is not NOT human, then it is human. :)

by fsfasfd

6/26/2026 at 12:28:43 PM

Ha! So basically to get in to a site protected by it, you need to _fail_ the HATCHA.

by luke_s

6/26/2026 at 12:18:50 PM

irrefutable logic

by steve_woody

6/26/2026 at 6:08:27 PM

It might be useful if you wanted a bot to access something but not someone passing by casually. You could use it to store information. It wouldn't be encrypted exactly...

by nephihaha

6/26/2026 at 10:31:06 PM

captcha, haptcha no difference, any smarmy robot testing for humanity is the one step too far,I just leave

by metalman

6/26/2026 at 12:29:10 PM

I'm honestly not sure if that's satire or not. Like I feel this wouldn't work, right? Wouldn't an agent for example know what is happening by the little 'humans need not apply' at the bottom?

by ansgar77

6/26/2026 at 12:25:28 PM

This is quite frankly unnecessary. Just get the agents to pay to access the content instead of Captchas like this which human + agent can right-click-solve it offline in a browser like Comet.

by rvz

6/26/2026 at 12:38:25 PM

> human + agent can right-click-solve it offline in a browser like Comet

You are almost certainly right. And yet, this is a good start. I did not think of this, so kudos to mondaycom.

> Just get the agents to pay to access the content

How would you identify who is a human versus agent?

How would you get them to pay? Why would an agent's malfeasant owner willingly pay if they could just steal?

by WaitWaitWha

6/26/2026 at 12:48:35 PM

I'm more curious about who greenlit this project at Monday. Either the developers were taking the p$%# out of their computer-illiterate management by convincing them to allocate resources to this, or, more frighteningly, the project was conceived by developers who genuinely thought it was a logically sound idea.

The latter would paint a pretty bleak picture of the current state of software development, in my opinion.

by truthbe