this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Controversial benchmarking website goes behind paywall — Userbenchmark now requires a $10 monthly subscription (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 9 months ago by issue0315 to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

The fee is only for their benchmarking software, whose results get uploaded to the website.

only a limited unspecified number of users can test for free at any one time, and if no slots are open, then only subscribers to the $10-per-year Pro plan can test

When there are free slots, users will have to complete a 3D captcha minigame where the goal is to shoot down 13 ships. The minigame isn’t particularly difficult on the surface, but it can get very tedious as there are very few opportunities for users to actually shoot down any ships. We attempted to complete the captcha ourselves but gave up after a few minutes

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The ship minigame actually isn't too hard. You do have to realize that the side panels are radars. However, it requires at least 15 minutes of time at first sight, just for a benchmark?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

Once we reach the second threshold, to confirm you're not a bot and submit a benchmark you need to beat Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.

Once we reach the third threshold, to confirm you are a sadistic gamer and submit a benchmark, you need to play through all 326 paths of Shadow The Hedgehog on an online GameCube emulator in this window.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

...why the fuck does a program running a benchmark on my PC need a "free slot" to function?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

My guess is uploading slots

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's crazy I had to scroll down this far to see a comment from someone that actually read the article.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You guys read the articles? I just read the comments. Scrolling to here I've learned that:

  1. The founder of userbenchmark apparently started the site to allegedly manipulate stocks. Specifically Intel and AMD stocks.
  2. There's other sites than my goto sites from passmark.
  3. Some lemmings actually read the articles abd
  4. The website isn't really getting paywalled.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

lemmings

Look again 😏