Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format • Hacker News Board

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#401

Post by tpm » Sun, May 17, 2026, 8:26 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #323

tpm wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can anyone understand software if you don’t know assembly? I'm genuinely curious how someone who never wrote a program in assembly, or debugged a program machine instruction by machine instruction, can really understand how software works. My working hypothesis is most of them don't and actually it's fine because they don't need it.

"Assembly" is just another virtual machine instruction format sitting atop another, mildly better-hidden, pile of abstractions.

Depending on the particular processor.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#402

Post by rfoo » Sun, May 17, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

Retr0id wrote: post #74

amingilani wrote: post #22

I don’t think CTFs are dead, they’ll just evolve. The difficulty level will need to be increased or the rules locked down. Just like sports and racing persist despite the existence of performance enhancing drugs and rocket technology. I just did a CTF where I was in the top 10. It was the first CTF I completed and I used AI because the rules permitted it. That said, I couldn’t solve all challenges. But yes, it was si…

That doesn't work. The thing that made CTFs fun is the fact that the challenges are solvable in a short-ish timeframe, usually a day at most, if you have the requisite skills and talent.

Glad to hear that as I have some fun challenge ideas that would be otherwise too tedious to solve.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#403

Post by virgilp » Sun, May 17, 2026, 8:49 AM UTC

wookmaster wrote: post #160

sigmoid10 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've interviewed people like this 15 years ago. Degrees and experience mean nothing in this field. The best predictor I found was personal passion projects. Let them get as nerdy as possible, then you will see pretty quickly where their skills are at and what their limits are. And you will immediately filter out people who just studied CS because they heard you can make good money.

Completely agree with this, leetcode has become such a business now of memorization for interviews it’s useless to know if someone memorized a solution or not.

you can absolutely know. they do suspiciously well. you just give harder problems until they can't solve it. how they react/approach a problem that they can't immediately solve _is_ the interview - not the "how many things they solved correctly" part.

That said - I seldom need people to be hardcore algorithm solvers What I typically did was a variation of fizzbuzz (can the candidate code very basic logic?) and then finding a bug or minor requirements extension in their online screening test/"homework" and asking them to solve that on the spot (did they write the code themselves/can they modify it). It's typically enough, there's diminishing returns to test more in-depth the programming skills - the rest you can discuss domain knowledge, general experience, working style etc.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#404

Post by dolmen » Sun, May 17, 2026, 8:54 AM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #397

Aurornis wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a general audience this is good advice. This article was written for a specific audience who follows this blog because they know the term. If you start spelling out fundamental acronyms it makes the content look more basic and general. This always upsets the general audience who stumble upon the article (like this) but it wasn’t meant for a general audience. CTF is extremely well known and the people who would be…

It's the common practice in technical writing. Even when you are writing for other experts in the same field, your target audience never shares as much context as you would prefer. The world is much weirder and more varied than you would think. Informal writing about technical topics is another story. There you can assume a lot more shared context, as you are only writing for a specific subculture within the field. I…

But this isn't "technical" writing. This is member of a community talking about the state of that community. Jargon is expected. Even more, this what I look for, even as a foreigner.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#405

Post by w23j » Sun, May 17, 2026, 8:54 AM UTC

amirhirsch wrote: post #332

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…

Let’s reduce this to absurdity: I think you only wanted clarification of CTF (Capture the Flag) and not AI (Artificial Intelligence) and not GPT-4 (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer version 4) and not CLI (Command Line Interface) and not MCP (Model Context Protocol) and not LLM (Large Language Model) Quoting TFA (The Fucking Article): “just adapt bro” lol at the BGP example

For people who are confused by this comment: lol = laughing out loud!

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#406

Post by w23j » Sun, May 17, 2026, 9:03 AM UTC

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…

CTF stands for Capture the Flag. So with that definition you have exactly zero more information about the article then without it. So I assume next you want a short description of what it actually means, like "CTF (Capture the Flag) are security competitions where the objective is to break...", which is completely ridiculous to include in an article aimed specifically at the CTF crowd.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#407

Post by plaguuuuuu » Sun, May 17, 2026, 9:07 AM UTC

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…

you could try

* googling "CTF security"

* asking literally any AI to explain the article

Yes, you must beg. If you don't know what a CTF is, and don't want to find out, why read the article anyway

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#408

Post by watwut » Sun, May 17, 2026, 9:08 AM UTC

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #407

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…

you could try * googling "CTF security" * asking literally any AI to explain the article Yes, you must beg. If you don't know what a CTF is, and don't want to find out , why read the article anyway

Using AI to get factual information?

Also well written articles allow you to figure out what they mean after clicking onto them. People often read to learn.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#409

Post by jere » Sun, May 17, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC

ruszki wrote: post #388

PunchyHamster wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

If it means capture the flag, then it means a completely different capture the flag for almost everybody. I searched for it, read the first paragraph, and I still don’t know what the fuck is the topic. According to Wikipedia it’s a very new meaning. I could figure out only because of searching for “HCKSYD” and others.

Is 30 years old very new? We're on a site for tech people. I would wager most are familiar with this term.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#410

Post by jere » Sun, May 17, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

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…

It's kind of amusing that you're asking for acronyms you don't know not to be used and acronyms you do know to not be spelled out.