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I've just attempted to post a question on Unix&Linux Stackexchange. I was prompted with a CAPTCHA with a picture of HAL 9000 and the following text:

Human Verification Are you a human being? We apologize for the confusion, but we can't quite tell if you're a person or a script. Please don't take this personally. Bots and scripts can be remarkably lifelike these days!

Check the CAPTCHA box, and we'll be out of your way.

<UUID>

There is no link, no CAPTCHA and no way to actually post the question. I'm not sure what's going on here.

I'm not surprised that I am being prompted to pass a CAPTCHA, my browser is atypical and so may appear like a bot.

Does stackexchange use Google for their CAPTCHAS?

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    Could your browser be blocking 3rd-party javascript? related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/315918/…
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Commented Oct 2, 2018 at 13:08
  • Maybe also: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312941/…
    – Jeff Schaller Mod
    Commented Oct 2, 2018 at 13:09
  • This sounds to me like your browser is blocking some aspect of the page being rendered properly.
    – slm Mod
    Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 1:59
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    @JeffSchaller It depends on the 3rd party javascript. In this case I am assuming that Stackexchange is using google's reCaptchas. My firewall blocks google owned IP addresses. Hence the sentence of my question.
    – diestl
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 10:44

1 Answer 1

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I don't speak for Stack Exchange, but according to the accepted answer (by a "Developer on the Stack Overflow team") at Human verification page not loading in China

Outside of building our own internal captcha there isn't a whole lot we can do here. We have talked about many various options none of which were very technically appealing. We will continue to listen to those affected by this and will readdress this if it becomes a large scale problem.

There is also Data Explorer CAPTCHA doesn't work with Google blocked whose accepted answer (by someone who "work[s] at Stack Overflow") says, in part:

We rely on Google to provide reCAPTCHA and also as a login provider for our sites. If you block Google, reCAPTCHA and login via Google will not work. It thus is a requirement of our websites, to some degree, that Google is not blocked. This is by design.

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    I've personally white-listed Javascript from ajax.googleapis.com for Stack Exchange sites -- but I never considered how this dependency on Google would suck for people living in China.
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Commented Feb 28, 2019 at 16:50
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    @AnthonyGeoghegan Yeah I didn't think about that either. My situation is entirely self inflicted, others are not that fortunate. I'm guessing google does not allow one to host the reCAPTCHA yourself. For that matter, is google really the only provider of CAPTCHAs? That doesn't sound right...
    – diestl
    Commented Mar 1, 2019 at 10:19

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