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Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

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Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#471

Post by ruszki »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #466
ruszki wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making fun of people who are saying that this article is shit, without addressing that part at all.

consider 2 conversations "hey what X means?" "X means it" vs "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?" The commenter could just say the first instead of deciding his learned helplessness is everyone's else problem

The commenter above replied to me, who checked what it is, which is clearly stated in my comment. So your comment cannot be applied to the guy who came up the first with "learned helplessness" in this thread, who replied to me. That guy clearly just wanted to shift the topic from that the article is shit, because they cannot do anything with it.

Also yes, search for CTF is not simple regarding security, because first you need to know that you are searching something in the topic of security. Because every other usage of this is way more frequent. Especially that there is an other way more frequent computer related usage. And the article doesn't make this clear in its first 173 words for laymen. Even I had a problem with this, who is not at all layman, just never cared about this part of security. It's a bad article.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#472

Post by [deleted] »

amarant wrote: post #233
Gigachad wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are interviewing for a software dev role and we made the first round in person to prevent cheating. The gap between people who learned pre ai vs post is immense. I had a dev with supposedly 3 years experience and a degree in software who wouldn't have been able to write fizzbuzz without AI.

Meh. Before AI I've had "senior" colleagues with 10 and 8 years experience each, doing pair programming for 2 days straight, and in that time they hadn't managed to checkout a new branch in git. It's not even that they got distracted, they sat there trying, for 2 whole days, with concerned colleagues giving them hints like "have you tried checkout -b"... They didn't manage! How the hell do you work for a decade in th…

[deleted]

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#473

Post by AlexeyBelov »

SquareWheel wrote: post #276
12_throw_away wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I forgot basic python syntax If you cannot write "basic syntax" for any language then you are not a programmer, and certainly not a software engineer? This is not a value judgement, it's ok (probably good tbh) to not be a programmer. But you are wasting everyone's time by interviewing for a programming position in this case.

Personally, I forget syntax all the time. There's always a warm up period after I switch languages, and it takes me longer to be start writing good, idiomatic code. Like sure, I can probably write some python, but will it be pythonic? I might still be Java-minded for a while, trying to OOP my way into solutions. Earlier today I needed to write some PHP and couldn't remember if it used length, count, or size. I had to…

Right, but on interviews I've been on it's never the goal to test _exact syntax knowledge_. It's not hard to distinguish between someone who just can't program vs. someone who has knowledge of many languages and has a bit of a mish-mash in their head in an interview setting.

There are people who just can't program for whatever reason, regardless of whether they could previously. And they constantly try to interview at a programming position.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#474

Post by RealCodingOtaku »

ajam1507 wrote: post #469
RealCodingOtaku wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments are annoying. No matter the niche, it is always good to write the abbreviation the first time it is used, in fact, W3C recommends it[0]. Anyone who does not follow this either are not informed well enough, or has ableism. Most replies in this thread shows the latter. https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/abbreviations

This page has 5 abbreviations that are not spelled out before you even get to the body of the article.

You meant 5 acronyms, and each are links, which contains their abbreviations. So they do follow the guideline.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#475

Post by archi42 »

legacynl wrote: post #461
archi42 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article addresses this: > Rules that ask people not to use LLMs are ignored and almost impossible to enforce in open online events. It's quite sad to see CTFs dying. I never had the time do seriously participate in CTFs, but I always respected those who did, as well as the people organizing these events.

> Rules that ask people not to use LLMs are ignored and almost impossible to enforce in open online events. That's such a non-reason. If your competition cannot enforce the rules of the competition, then what's the point? Does the CTFs specifically need to be 'open'?

I don't get your reasoning? You're agreeing with the author but are not?

The author argues that open CTFs are done for because of rampant cheating. You're agreeing with that, don't you?

The title is "AI has broken the open CTF format". If the format is "open CTF" then it is very specifically open.

As to your second question: Yeah, I believe having open CTFs was a good idea.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#476

Post by mastermage »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #347
0x20cowboy wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

There is so much wrong with this beginning with the fact that it would be correctly 170 °C (the degree is important because it implies an arbitrary scale)

Additionaly Bake Cake in 170 is very not clear, especially considering you have two major Temperature Scales in use in the Kitchen.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#477

Post by RugnirViking »

trescenzi wrote: post #358
worble wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CTF is a game mode for popular online games like halo (or at least, that's how I know it), so paragraphs like > My first CTF was HCKSYD, a 48-hour solo CTF. I full solved it and won in 2 hours. I was completely hooked. That led me to win DownUnderCTF, Australia's largest CTF, with Blitzkrieg multiple times. Blitzkrieg was one of Australia's strongest teams at the time. I later joined TheHackersCrew, an international…

It's also a game people play in person as well. It's the same as the Halo version except you tag each other instead of shooting. It's really fun to play in big open areas with large teams.

though this is not what the author is talking about. Theyre talking about a hacking competition, where you compete to get a secret word or something contained on some running server connected to a network protected with various means. They're complaining about AI agents removing a lot of the fun from this.

People are mad because we're literally on "hacker" news, so there is some expectation that people might be familiar with hacking or computer security.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#478

Post by jaybrendansmith »

ralph84 wrote: post #306
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> humans that can critically think from first principles This has never been achieved by, nor is it the point of, education for the masses.

But it should be, right?

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#479

Post by marshray »

saagarjha wrote: post #443
marshray wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the "function to reverse a string" in a job interview once. Then the interviewer reminded me that strrev() had been part of the standard C library since K&R. I'd been programming in C(++) for ~15 years by then and had never had the occasion to reverse a string. I still wonder whether that makes it a good job interview question, or a terrible one. Some of both probably.

strrev is not a standard C function. I actually don't think my computer even has it (it's a Mac).

Well I don't feel so bad for not having known it then. Thanks!

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#480

Post by marshray »

saagarjha wrote: post #442
marshray wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. For the first many decades of computing, recursion was just always the wrong answer for a production software system. (Feel free to provide a counter-example, but please begin with an explanation of how the size of a call stack frame is determined and how exceeding the base allocation is handled on this platform). So what tree-traversal/quicksort problems tend to measure is how long it's been since you last di…

There's no need to put your data on the call stack.

Great. Please explain how the size of a call stack frame is determined and how exceeding the base allocation is handled on the particular platform you're proposing to recurse upon.
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