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If you have signed in to basically anything on the Internet these days, then you're most likely familiar with the whole CAPTCHA program. That's the thing where you have to prove you're not a spambot by typing some nearly unreadable words into a box:

Well, this is awkward.

What you may not know is that by using it, you've most likely contributed to the translation of thousands of old documents.

In 2009, Google and a couple of other companies had a problem. They wanted to digitize years of old newspapers and books, using software that can "read" the print it's scanning and then convert it into actual text. But even the most advanced computers had problems reading some of the poor quality scans, because the text was smudged or crooked, or in a font that has been out of use for years.

google recaptcha

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We remember the Smudgy Smear font came packaged with Windows 3.1.

So, they simply placed those unreadable words in between you and your porn, and told you that you'd need to translate them before going any further. Spambots can't read them because reCAPTCHA uses only the words that the computers already said they couldn't read. It's as brilliant as it is simplistic. The program is called reCAPTCHA, and you've probably seen it this week, if not today. It's currently used by Facebook, Ticketmaster, Twitter, 4chan, CNN.com, StumbleUpon, Craigslist, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration and thousands of other smaller sites.