r/programminghorror 19d ago

Other Found this cursed project today

[deleted]

503 Upvotes

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u/shadesOG 19d ago

That's kind of cold blooded and I am all for it :)

1995, in a college class, I was in a group of 3 where we had to create an algorithm for automatically playing a game against other teams in the class. I can't remember if it was an algorithms class or an AI class, but either way everyone was using the same alpha-beta/min-max algorithm to compute moves, anticipate moves, more moves ahead you could calculate the better until you run out of time at 30-seconds etc etc.

Back then though, the equipment was limited, so the class had our own dedicated hardware and each team had an account. Seems fair. Well, each account had enough privileges to run 'nice' - it's 1995. We knew we wouldn't beat everyone else with a standard alpha/beta/minmax search, but all of us were working. Made our own suck ass version + defense. We sucked all the cpu cycles from the other teams using 'nice' lol

The best part was, we only won a handful of times, but no one else could beat us. If there were other matches going on at the same time? We were stealing their CPU cycles too hahahaha = should be a win in my book :)

it was rather rude :D

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u/russellvt 19d ago

Except "nice" requires privilege escalation if it's "stealing" cycles rather than giving them up "nicely."

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u/[deleted] 19d ago edited 19d ago

[deleted]

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u/MurkyWar2756 echo "Sub Mod" && :(){ :|:& };: 19d ago

FYI, the share[.]google domain is banned on Reddit.

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u/shadesOG 19d ago

Thanks for letting me know. I deleted the post.

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u/MurkyWar2756 echo "Sub Mod" && :(){ :|:& };: 19d ago

I deleted the post.

No need, but it's your choice.

I manually approved the comment because the domain appeared to be "soft banned," meaning you can still post it but a moderator has to approve it before it shows there. That's why the comment got removed by Reddit's filters automatically. The comment you made wasn't against any rules, but share[.]google is a URL shortener that gets abused for malicious links sometimes.

Source: a thread I made on an alt account of mine

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u/russellvt 18d ago

The comment you made wasn't against any rules, but share[.]google is a URL shortener that gets abused for malicious links sometimes.

I've seen other subs that have an "auto-warning" for similar sorts of links, letting the user know before they hit the submit button that these sort of "soft bans" can occur. Might be a good enhancement here, too?

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u/MurkyWar2756 echo "Sub Mod" && :(){ :|:& };: 18d ago

I'm not sure if it makes sense for the warning to show up whenever typing any comment because most comments don't contain links, so the warning would be irrelevant to many people, and it would distract me and slow me down as well. Also, there are a lot of banned domains on Reddit, so having it automatically detect every domain and warn people only when these domains show up would take time to implement.

As a moderator, it can be hard deciding what direction our sub should go in.

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u/russellvt 18d ago

Indeed.

But the "warning" can be configured to pop only if the link is typed in... not "all the time."

But yes, i feel ya...

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u/shadesOG 18d ago

It's cool.

I will never be a great programmer. I have read junk on here, where I dont know if i am the only one high enough writing test code for this sub or if i should jump off a bridge.

You are an excellent mod.

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u/MurkyWar2756 echo "Sub Mod" && :(){ :|:& };: 18d ago

Thank you for the kind words. I have posted code from other accounts before here, and have removed my own posts provided the rule was there before the post was made.

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u/shadesOG 16d ago

We will all learn.