I agree that the underlying ideas were interesting, but the books had so much padding. So much of the story was just “but wait, it gets worse” that I found it hard to get through at times. I feel like the books could have been half as long and still conveyed the same interesting concepts without losing much.

Supposedly they are more likely to give you captchas if there is high traffic, like every week when people try to claim their prime free games at the same time. If I get a captcha I just close out and try again later because you never know how many you are going to get.