Jen Sorensen for April 30, 2019

All valid points!

The struggle is real.

I encounter the last panel often, but I don’t actually have an ad blocker. I have a browser add-on that disables the trackers. It still usually displays ads, but certain sites such as the Washington Post insist it’s an add blocker and demand I either disable it or pay to read the story.

With my macular degeneration, I struggle with the issue shown by the first panel, especially. Plus, my desktop PC has constantly asked me if it is a robot, and repeatedly I have explained to it that it does not have mechanical arms, or a vision system, or servomotors. Is my PC having a cybernetic identity crisis???

I find some captchas to be almost unsolvable and then there are the multiple ones which are insane. I tried setting up an account for something and just gave up.

The robot thing once prevented me from getting Springsteen tickets at Ticketmaster. Items kept appearing that covered more than one box so couldn’t figure out which one to click, and clicking both caused a fail. I now boycott sites that use it.

The American concept of “Free Speech” has been infected with “irresponsible” speech. Now, with social media as the unregulated messenger.. there are no bounds.

thank you everyone for your comments. now I know I am not the old geezer I thought I was! ; – )

As for the 3rd. Panel: if my caller I.D. doesn’t show me a NAME I KNOW, the call either gets hung up on, or goes to my voicemail, where 98% of the time it’s just a busy signal because it’s a robocall that automatically hangs up.

There are several problems with letting calls go to voice-mail unless it is a name you know. Doctors that call from their personal cell phone have with “Unknown” as the name because they block their info because they don’t want patients calling them at that number. My doctor’s office has one official office number that I call, but the staff calls from several numbers. Having ordered furniture for delivery and carpeting for installation, I get calls from several numbers I don’t know.

The ad blocker I use was for video ads only but I still have to turn it off for many sites. If ads were not ridiculously disruptive, we wouldn’t need to block them.

Thanks for the captcha panel, I was hoping it wasn’t just me. And headlines now contain the spoiler, too late to look away.

the Herald Spitoon? Their motto? “All the News, that’s fit to Spit.” Ptooie!

Arya had sex. I saw it on Gay of Thrones.

I would turn my adblocker off if they would back off on the number of ads on a site. If I am on the road and tethering off my phone in a mountain on 3g it is impossible to see or do anything. Even on high speed they kill the whole point of any site you are on popping up and auto playing while you are trying to read.

Many places will allow you to prefer an audible test for humanity, which usually works better for me. At least one place let me in anyway after I failed 4 or 5 captcha screens.

I use the Privacy Badger browser plugin, which works… not too badly to help cut down on the amount of intrusion. I also use Cookie Autodelete which helps a lot, but does make my web experience a little less pleasant. That’s a tolerable balance, for me.

I do assume that every single call is a robocall unless I see your name on my screen. Amusingly, we have an emergency system here that robocalls you. I never pick it up.

Computers are not our friends……..