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Comment by ACow_Adonis | Hacker News Reader

Ah, I actually followed that link trying to find out. All i see on my browser is a bit of text with a big blue button that says "will you capture the flag?", which isn't really helpful, which takes me back to...the original website.

Now on the one hand I'd say, ok, its not google's responsibility to try to have websites/non-standard browser configs set ups actually work with their web pages...

On the other hand, I'm sure the kind of security people google is looking for all surf the web with standard browser configs and permissions enabled...

And as the other commenter has pointed out, I know its radical of me, but I would have thought the "What is the google CTF" section should contain text which answers "What is the google CTF".

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I did. Its not a big page. There's nothing there.

Now I'm not a (total) idiot, obviously I can debug it if i have to (and if other people are telling me "there's stuff there, you just can't see it").

If i open it in chrome with extensions turned off or a default mobile browser, stuff now appears, so yeah, its got to do with script permissions and the like.

But again, why not just include actual text in the "what is google ctf" section that answers "what is google ctf?", and/or in the beginner's section that explains what's going on, and of all the groups of people you'd build your webpage for, are security people the ones that you want a website that breaks if they block your default scripts/permissions?

If your having this much issue with figuring out what a ctf is its probably not for you. Googles ctf is pretty damn hard

If their goal was to minimize participation and competition, then they certainly succeeded. I don’t think being unfamiliar with something should ever be outright disqualifying.

If I were holding a competition for bakers, I wouldn't feel obligated to include a paragraph explaining what a "bake-off" is. I knew what a CTF was years before I knew enough to compete in one; it's a central part of hacker culture going back to the mid-90s.

Every puzzle here places you in a different unfamiliar situation. The only "outright disqualifying" thing is whether you can figure out something on your own. You essentially failed the first test.

If you put it that way, it wouldn't be wrong to think of it as a disqualifying round

They probably didn't include the text there because there are "FAQ" and "Rules" links in that page, and clicking on those lead to lots of text. They could have made the links more noticeable though.

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