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Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

kabir.au

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Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#341

Post by Gigachad »

bawolff wrote: post #297
Nifty3929 wrote: post #296

Must I beg to have an acronym spelled out a least once, the first time it's used? Even if you assume 90% of readers already know, the other 10% (including me, in this case) will thank you, it doesn't take much effort, and it expands the reach of your communication or idea. Exceptions for cases where the acronym is just so well known that a lot of people don't even know what it stands for even though they know the con…

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for. More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on…

The annoying thing is even if you know what it means, multiple groups will use the same initialisms for different terms. So without more context you can’t know what it means.

It isn’t common but I feel it would be best when posting to HN to just expand the initialisms even if the source title didn’t.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#342

Post by [deleted] »

bawolff wrote: post #324
doublescoop wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best practice in writing about technical concepts is to spell out acronyms like this on their first use. There is a ton of stuff I learn about here on HN that I didn't know anything about before. It doesn't help that the linked article never bothers to explain this either.

> There is a ton of stuff I learn about here on HN that I didn't know anything about before. But that is about you right? Its a little entitled to expect every piece of content on the internet to have a 101 explanation attached. If they were specificly aiming to have the blog post appear on HN that would be one thing, but they (presumably) weren't.

[deleted]

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#343

Post by shric »

Gigachad wrote: post #341
bawolff wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for. More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on…

The annoying thing is even if you know what it means, multiple groups will use the same initialisms for different terms. So without more context you can’t know what it means. It isn’t common but I feel it would be best when posting to HN to just expand the initialisms even if the source title didn’t.

You can also over use the same initialism: ATM the ATM is connected via ATM

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#344

Post by thin_carapace »

mold_aid wrote: post #228
thin_carapace wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hammers are both a great tool and a deadly weapon at once

Not at once, surely

limp response brah, both possibilities remain plausible until one crystallizes at the moment of observation

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#345

Post by circus1540 »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #296

Must I beg to have an acronym spelled out a least once, the first time it's used? Even if you assume 90% of readers already know, the other 10% (including me, in this case) will thank you, it doesn't take much effort, and it expands the reach of your communication or idea. Exceptions for cases where the acronym is just so well known that a lot of people don't even know what it stands for even though they know the con…

“hacker” news, ladies and gentlemen

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#346

Post by 0x20cowboy »

bawolff wrote: post #297
Nifty3929 wrote: post #296

Must I beg to have an acronym spelled out a least once, the first time it's used? Even if you assume 90% of readers already know, the other 10% (including me, in this case) will thank you, it doesn't take much effort, and it expands the reach of your communication or idea. Exceptions for cases where the acronym is just so well known that a lot of people don't even know what it stands for even though they know the con…

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for. More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on…

I dont know what CTF stands for so I dont know if I am interested in this article or learning anything about it. Maybe I am.

Are you really arguing for not just typing out whatever 3 words this stands for once in the name of clarity?

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#347

Post by PunchyHamster »

0x20cowboy wrote: post #346
bawolff wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for. More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on…

I dont know what CTF stands for so I dont know if I am interested in this article or learning anything about it. Maybe I am. Are you really arguing for not just typing out whatever 3 words this stands for once in the name of clarity?

it's the first result I get on anonymous google search.

It's like complaining about not spelling C in "bake cake in 170 C"

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#348

Post by PunchyHamster »

jaybrendansmith wrote: post #205
baq wrote: post #44

Replace ‘CTF’ with ‘high school’ or ‘university’ and you’ve described the total slow motion collapse of education; the only saving grace is that most of it requires in person presence. We’ve figured out the human replacement pipeline it seems, but we haven’t figured out the eduction part. LLMs can be wonderful teachers, but the temptation to just tell it ‘do it for me’ is almost impossible to resist.

Everything we've learned in the last 10 years is telling us that computers do not help human education in the slightest. We remember better when we write with pen and paper. We learn better with whiteboards and paper books. The simple answer: Remove most computing from education entirely. Blue composition books, pencils, whiteboards is what trains humans. Calculators are helpful perhaps but it is quite possible that…

I disagree with that statement. There is nothing inherently wrong with using computer to learn and if your personal goal is to learn it in lot of cases makes it much easier, whether to search for or visualise a piece of knowledge you're' learning.

The problem is frankly computer and now computer with LLM makes it easy to cheat.

The kid doesn't want to learn, the kid wants good grades so parent is happy with them, and the young adult wants to get the paper coz they were told that is required for good life. It's misalignment of incentives.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#349

Post by PunchyHamster »

entropyneur wrote: post #67
daymanstep wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful teachers that give unreliable information with total confidence?

I had human teachers who did that in middle/high school. Took me many years to pick out all the hallucinated bits of "knowledge". I don't think the current models are any less reliable that what we currently have on average.

The problem is that people seem to trust whatever AI hallucinated way more than if they heard same thing from human

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#350

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

Jenk wrote: post #98
IanCal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps I understand the second much better and feels less clickbaity and includes more info. I do agree with the points you made about the confusion although I find frontier a term used in this area a lot, “frontier AI models have” would probably resolve that.

If the title simply said "AI is out-performing humans at CTF" then none of this confusion exists. Nothing is "broken," we don't need to be superfluous with "frontier," and the point is still there.

CTF competitions and leaderboards are broken. Major competitions have stopped. Top competitors have dropped out.
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