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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

#441

Post by Dzugaru »

wasmperson wrote: post #333
Dzugaru wrote: post #312

It's not only CTFs. I strongly believe being a programmer at a gamejam like Ludum Dare, or hackathons is pretty much over.

Ludum Dare 59 just wrapped up last week, and both first and second place were won by developers using "Agentic" coding tools, something the community there is still discussing: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/setidream/about-ai-ar... For what it's worth, the non-AI-coded entries were still quite good relative to the winners, so it's not so obvious that AI use confers an unbeatable advantage.

I did vibe code jam 59 entry with friends, the spirit of the rules there's a lot more lax. We didn't even get to top 100, but that's mostly due to gamedesign errors, not tech. This is the first entry in years which was vibecoded 100%, and I have very mixed feelings about it. It's no doubt anymore - 1.5x-2x speedup, which makes not using it (if allowed) a complete no-go. But psychologically it's tough losing control, and changing workflow to managerial one substantially, it diminishes the craft.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#442

Post by saagarjha »

marshray wrote: post #316
krapht wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go your entire career without recursing, or using a tree data structure in its raw form (i.e. you only use it as part of a library)

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.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#443

Post by saagarjha »

marshray wrote: post #321
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. It's just a low-end skill filter that got really popular. It could have easily been replaced by other tests like is this word a palindrome.

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).

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#444

Post by saagarjha »

bernds74 wrote: post #133
dguest wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll always remember my middle school science teaching telling us that nuclear fusion violates conservation of mass because the 2 protons in a pair of hydrogen nuclei combine to make helium with 4 nucleons. It's not true, but that's not the point. But he was a great teacher anyway. He was engaging and kept the kids in line and learning. I eventually learned the truth, and most of my classmates forgot about it. Teachi…

I had a chemistry teacher who told us that hydrogen reacts violently with oxygen, and this is how the hydrogen bomb works.

I had one that mentioned this too :(

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#445

Post by unrealhoang »

arthens wrote: post #243
Gigachad wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that is for sure new is the AI interview cheating tools which listen in on the call and provide answers in an overlay invisible to screen sharing. The only way to deal with it would either be invasive spyware on the applicants computer or asking them to do the interview face to face.

A relatively low tech solution could be to give them 2 separate conferencing links, ask them to join each one from a different device, and have the secondary device point the camera and the screen of the primary device.

And they can have an alternate screen outside the FoV of the second camera.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#446

Post by C4K3 »

ruszki wrote: post #424
jere wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Its article is 5 years old… So, yeah, it’s new.

Its article was reorganized (moved from plain Capture the Flag to Capture the flag (cybersecurity)) 5 years ago. It's been on Wikipedia since 2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capture_the_flag&...

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#447

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

bawolff wrote: post #376
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?

Yes, i would argue that people writing articles about niche interests aimed at other members of that niche are under no obligation to clarify it for people outside the niche. They aren't your teacher. They aren't trying to send the content to you. They are just blogging on their own website for their own audience. And its hardly unique to this article. If you are writing about the nitty gritty of linux networking, yo…

Especially when you can literally just paste the top paragraph into your LLM of choice and ask it to explain it to you. In the time it took the OP of this thread to write out their complaint they could have just solved it themselves

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#448

Post by unrealhoang »

fragmede wrote: post #357
anigbrowl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hire them at all then, just ask them what their favorite AI is and use that

Because I'm busy already doing that and need a copy of me/close enough to one, to do more of that.

So not being able to write fizzbuzz is nowhere close to me.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#449

Post by unrealhoang »

marshray wrote: post #321
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. It's just a low-end skill filter that got really popular. It could have easily been replaced by other tests like is this word a palindrome.

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.

It’s a good one, if you can still write functionally and same algorithmic complexity then it should not matter if you know strrev or not.

Re: Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format

#450

Post by Sesse__ »

samatman wrote: post #377
Sesse__ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my teachers in elementary school told us that people in the Arabic world wore long garments because as Muslims, they believed the Messiah would be born by a male, and thus, it was important to have something to catch the baby as it unexpectedly popped out one day and would otherwise hit the ground. She only really had two faults: She wasn't very bright, and she wasn't fond of children. I had her in about 80% o…

It may interest you to know that this was a misremembered truth. It is widely believed by their neighbors, that the _Druze_ wear baggy pants because they believe that the Mahdi will be born to a male, and the pants will catch the baby etc. I say "widely believed", the Druze are famously secretive and will not confirm or deny most things about their religion. The 'elect' Druze men do wear distinctive baggy trousers wi…

Thank you, that is an interesting tidbit!
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