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<title>Blog on </title>
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<description>Recent content in Blog on </description>
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<item>
<title>Testing on screenreaders</title>
<link>/blog/testing-on-screenreaders/</link>
<pubDate>Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/testing-on-screenreaders/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;www.han.nl&#34;&gt;HAN University of Applied Sciences&lt;/a&gt; kindly did an&#xA;accessibility test of the mCaptcha widget and the showcase site, which&#xA;features a real world integration of mCaptcha in a third-party service.&#xA;The report motived us to make screen reader testing an integral part of&#xA;the release process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;android-in-built-screen-reader-on-fennec&#34;&gt;Android in-built screen reader on Fennec&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;iframe title=&#34;Testing mCaptcha on Android screenreader with Fennec browser&#34; width=&#34;560&#34; height=&#34;315&#34; src=&#34;https://peertube.batsense.net/videos/embed/e9579d73-b19e-4051-9337-8432fc15c3b3&#34; frameborder=&#34;0&#34; allowfullscreen=&#34;&#34; sandbox=&#34;allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups&#34;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;nvda-on-microsoft-windows-and-mozilla-firefox&#34;&gt;NVDA on Microsoft Windows and Mozilla Firefox&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;iframe title=&#34;Testing mCaptcha on NVDA screen reader on MS Windows with Mozilla Firefox browser&#34; width=&#34;560&#34; height=&#34;315&#34; src=&#34;https://peertube.batsense.net/videos/embed/cf534270-8089-4aad-95b3-543c467a6a12&#34; frameborder=&#34;0&#34; allowfullscreen=&#34;&#34; sandbox=&#34;allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups&#34;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;macos-in-built-screen-reader-on-google-chrome&#34;&gt;macOS in-built screen reader on Google Chrome&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;iframe title=&#34;Testing mCaptcha on macOS in-built screen reader and Google Chrome browser&#34; width=&#34;560&#34; height=&#34;315&#34; src=&#34;https://peertube.batsense.net/videos/embed/45be4f8c-1978-4650-b9f1-972cfead8420&#34; frameborder=&#34;0&#34; allowfullscreen=&#34;&#34; sandbox=&#34;allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups&#34;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;ios-in-built-screen-reader-on-safari&#34;&gt;iOS in-built screen reader on Safari&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;iframe title=&#34;Testing mCaptcha on iOS screenreader with Safari&#34; width=&#34;560&#34; height=&#34;315&#34; src=&#34;https://peertube.batsense.net/videos/embed/ac9722a4-3dce-4c40-bb0c-7bc8d721c3db&#34; frameborder=&#34;0&#34; allowfullscreen=&#34;&#34; sandbox=&#34;allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups&#34;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Introducing mCaptcha net</title>
<link>/blog/introducing-mcaptcha-net/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/introducing-mcaptcha-net/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;mCaptcha uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) based algorithm to offer&#xA;Denial-of-Service protection, because of &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/#proof-of-work&#34;&gt;its excellent accessibility&#xA;characteristics&lt;/a&gt;. PoW&#xA;within mCaptcha is configuration &amp;mdash; webmasters can configure&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;/docs/terminology/difficulty-factor&#34;&gt;difficulty factors&lt;/a&gt; for their&#xA;installations, which determines waiting time for visitors. But PoW can&#xA;become inaccessible if webmasters choose a very high difficulty factor.&#xA;So they have to maintain a balance which imposes sufficient load on DDoS&#xA;attackers while also being accessible to common folk.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>February, 2023: Monthly Report</title>
<link>/blog/february-2023-monthly-report/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/february-2023-monthly-report/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Hello and welcome to the (August 2022 to) February, 2023 monthly report!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;tldr&#34;&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://gusted.xyz&#34;&gt;Gusted&lt;/a&gt; and I secured funding from NLnet to work&#xA;on mCaptcha in 2023, we suffered an outage from 15 January to February&#xA;6, polyfill benchmarking support in mCaptcha&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;we-have-funding&#34;&gt;We have funding!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://gusted.xyz&#34;&gt;Gusted&lt;/a&gt; and I applied and secured funding through&#xA;2023 development is funded through the &lt;a href=&#34;https://nlnet.nl/entrust&#34;&gt;NGI0&#xA;Entrust&lt;/a&gt; Fund, via &lt;a href=&#34;https://nlnet.nl&#34;&gt;NLnet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>July, 2022: Monthly Report</title>
<link>/blog/july-2022-monthly-report/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/july-2022-monthly-report/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Hello and welcome to the July, 2022 monthly report!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;tldr&#34;&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Codeberg is trying out mCaptcha, Gitea is getting mCaptcha support,&#xA;mCaptcha supports MariaDB, I&amp;rsquo;ve applied for NLnet and Open Tech Fund,&#xA;documentation is updated: tutorials and glossary is added and glue libraries&#xA;have new releases.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;codeberg-is-deploying-mcaptcha&#34;&gt;Codeberg is deploying mCaptcha&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Codeberg is committed to trying out mCaptcha to make their platform more&#xA;accessible: they currently use a text-based CAPTCHA, which will be&#xA;replaced by mCaptcha. The decision was finalized after I presented&#xA;mCaptcha to them at a meeting their organized. Please see&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://batsense.net/talks/codeberg-introducing-mcaptcha/&#34;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for&#xA;slides.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>June, 2022: Monthly Report</title>
<link>/blog/june-2022-monthly-report/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/june-2022-monthly-report/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Hello and welcome to the June 2022 edition of the monthly report!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;mcaptcha-is-incorporated&#34;&gt;mCaptcha is incorporated!&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spent June doing non-technical tasks but I made significant&#xA;progress: I had been trying to do it since summer 2021, but I faced&#xA;various setbacks along the way. A family friend, who is also an auditor&#xA;helped me finally get mCaptcha incorporated!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we&amp;rsquo;ve already filed successfully filed the first tax return too!&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>May, 2022: Monthly Report</title>
<link>/blog/may-2022-monthly-report/</link>
<pubDate>Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/may-2022-monthly-report/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Hello and welcome to the May 2022 edition of the monthly report!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mCaptcha, for a while was showing all the signs of a dead project:&#xA;no commits on the repositories and no monthly updates. But the project&#xA;is far from dead!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;python-bindings-to-mcaptcha-powhttpsgithubcommcaptchapow_sha256&#34;&gt;Python bindings to &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/mCaptcha/pow_sha256/&#34;&gt;mCaptcha PoW&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/mCaptcha/pow_py&#34;&gt;pow_py&lt;/a&gt; contains bindings to&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/mCaptcha/pow_sha256&#34;&gt;pow_sha256&lt;/a&gt;, the&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work&#34;&gt;proof-of-work&lt;/a&gt; library&#xA;that mCaptcha uses. For the uninitiated, the bindings allow for python&#xA;programs to automatically solve mCaptcha.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>December, 2021: Monthly Report</title>
<link>/blog/december-2021-monthly-report/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/december-2021-monthly-report/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;Hello and welcome to the first edition of the monthly report!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe free software like mCaptcha is critical to a healthy internet&#xA;but being a one-person show, there&amp;rsquo;s hardly any accountability in the&#xA;way software is built. I hope, through monthly reports, I can explain&#xA;the logic and intentions behind decisions taken in the development&#xA;process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This month, the following things were accomplished:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;1-full-librejs-compliance&#34;&gt;1. Full LibreJS Compliance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CAPTCHA widget and the admin dashboard are 100% LibreJS compliant!&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Survey</title>
<link>/blog/survey/</link>
<pubDate>Thu, 28 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/survey/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Survey link:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://survey.mcaptcha.org/survey/campaigns/b717e51e-24d4-4ab6-912f-de2dfe3ce1fe/about&#34;&gt;https://survey.mcaptcha.org/survey/campaigns/b717e51e-24d4-4ab6-912f-de2dfe3ce1fe/about&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE:&lt;/strong&gt; The survey(at least, the lucky draw is temporarily suspended&#xA;due to some logistical reasons. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mCaptcha relies on a&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work&#34;&gt;proof-of-work(PoW)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;mechanism to guard against bots. In order for this to be effective, the&#xA;difficulty factor should be configured properly. If the difficulty&#xA;factor is too high all the time, it will inconvenience the users and if&#xA;it&amp;rsquo;s too low during attack, the defence will be weak.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
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<item>
<title>PoW performance</title>
<link>/blog/pow-performance/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/pow-performance/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;mCaptcha uses a&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work&#34;&gt;proof-of-work(PoW)&lt;/a&gt; mechanism&#xA;to rate limit users or potential bots. In order for this to be&#xA;effective, the PoW should be configured properly. The difficulty&#xA;requirement can&amp;rsquo;t be too high, as it could cause accessibility issues on&#xA;the client-side while at the same time, it shouldn&amp;rsquo;t be too low, as it&#xA;wouldn&amp;rsquo;t offer proper protection against bots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Malicious bots(the ones that wreak havoc), run native code which is&#xA;capable of running in a multi-threaded context. This creates an unfair&#xA;advantage for crackers using these bots over legitimate users, who&#xA;usually use browsers to access a website.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Say hello to mCaptcha</title>
<link>/blog/say-hello-to-mcaptcha/</link>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<guid>/blog/say-hello-to-mcaptcha/</guid>
<description>&lt;p&gt;At mCaptcha, we believe in digital freedom and privacy and so we built a&#xA;&lt;a href=&#34;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work&#34;&gt;proof-of-work&lt;/a&gt; based&#xA;CAPTCHA system that doesn&amp;rsquo;t track. Seriously, no tracking. But that&#xA;isn&amp;rsquo;t the killer feature, our system doesn&amp;rsquo;t require the user to&#xA;pick cars or ID sidewalks &amp;mdash; our system does it&amp;rsquo;s thing(usually&#xA;at the click of a button) and gets out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2 id=&#34;how-does-it-work&#34;&gt;How does it work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mCaptcha uses SHA256 based proof-of-work(PoW) to rate limit users.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
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