To be fair, they're operating in a situation (budget vs. volume of material to collect and share with the world) where it's necessary to minimize the human overhead of this mechanism AND to attempt to reduce their legal exposure -- sure they can get legal help from some of the very best, but mostly out of people's goodwill, they don't have the budget to be defending themselves constantly.
(Disclaimer: former IA employee, but I do not in any way speak for IA.)
I'm still waiting for Brendan Eich to apologize for donating $1k to the campaign to to pass Prop 8 which held up same sex marriage in California for five years.
What's actually wrong with reCAPTCHA is that google has convinced so many sites all over the web to require it to use them, and all that free labor is going to just improve Google's machine learning programs.
Having both, I'd say that the indoor sensor is not worth it. It doesn't have both sensors so it isn't equipped to test them against each other. I do like the outdoor sensor though.
No, it is not like touch-typing. That is a skill that won't be obsoleted when a vendor decides to change the user interface on a whim with the next OS release.
Learn how to understand who the "customer" of your software is and how to deliver what they need. Learn what you're inherently good at and not so good at (and develop strategies to work around your weak points.) Learn that code reviews are discussion of how you did something, not an attack on your ego. (or at least they shouldn't be.) Find mentors you can trust.
It seems that what changed is that sometime in recent years it became much easier for shady gateway providers to remain in business. In earlier times, it would appear that originators of fraudlent caller ID data where shut down rapidly.
Such things were possible with core memory, bubble memory, and FRAM. None are really fast enough by today's standards, though you can get some microcontrollers and battery-backed SRAM replacements made with FRAM.
(Disclaimer: former IA employee, but I do not in any way speak for IA.)