[bawolff]

Which acronym do you mean? CTF? I think that acronym, just like BGP, is more well known by itself than what it stands for.

More generally, not every piece of writing is meant for every audience. Like if someone writes a blog post about CTFs aimed at people who like CTFs, nobody in the target audience needs to have CTF explained to them. Ultimately HN is a link aggregator, but sometimes its a bit like eavesdropping on a conversation. When you are just listening in you don't get the full context sometimes.

[0x20cowboy]

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?

[bawolff]

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, you probably aren't defining what TCP or UDP means. If you are writing a super detailed article comparing and contrasting plot structures of different animes, you probably aren't going to start by explaining what the word anime means. Etc

I'm not saying the world should be all RTFM, but if you are reading some sort of specialized content, then yes i think its a reasonable assumption that the reader has some basic background knowledge on the topic at hand, or is willing to do the research themselves.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

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

[PunchyHamster]

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"

[ruszki]

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.

[jere]

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

[ruszki]

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

[C4K3]

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&...

[sokoloff]

Most people on this site are also familiar with the “XKCD 10000”.

But not all, so: https://xkcd.com/1053/

(Amusingly, it even uses “30 years” as the timeframe.)

[jere]

Classic of course. The point being: don't make fun of people for not knowing something. In this thread we're making fun of learned helplessness.

[spoaceman7777]

More acronyms?? What the heck is an XKCD??? ;)

[fg137]

My search results for "open CTF format" beg to differ. Absolutely nothing even remotely related to "capture the flag".

Bear in mind that Google search results, just like ChatGPT output, are highly personalized and non deterministic, so "it's there if you do a Google search" means almost nothing these days.

In fact, I have no idea what's going on, so I came back to HN comments. Turns out it's "capture the flag" which I actually know, just not familiar with the acronym.

Which is why I am 100% with the top level comment here.

[mastermage]

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.

[fartfeatures]

"bake cake in 170" is genuinely confusing at first glance though.

[doublescoop]

Best practice in writing about technical concepts is to spell out acronyms like this on their first use. There is a ton of stuff I learn about here on HN that I didn't know anything about before.

It doesn't help that the linked article never bothers to explain this either.

[Aurornis]

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 interested in this topic would wonder what’s happening if it was spelled out. It would be so odd that it would probably attract accusations of ChatGPT writing.

[jltsiren]

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. It doesn't matter much if other people in the field fail to understand you.

[dolmen]

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.

[MobiusHorizons]

Does spelling it out help? From memory, it is a security competition where participants compete to gain certain objectives. I think capture the flag may explain how scoring is kept, but it wouldn’t help me find out what it is, given that capture the flag is also just the name of a game people play outside by running, or in laser tag or in certain video games.

[bawolff]

> There is a ton of stuff I learn about here on HN that I didn't know anything about before.

But that is about you right? Its a little entitled to expect every piece of content on the internet to have a 101 explanation attached. If they were specificly aiming to have the blog post appear on HN that would be one thing, but they (presumably) weren't.

[allenrb]

When I encounter new terms, I look them up. Just like any other new word. Been doing it since I was a kid with a dictionary. Now, it’s too easy not to. There is literally no excuse.

[ergonaught]

You could have just said “No”, if you had to say anything at all, rather than continuing the behavior.

Actively rude.

[MrSkelter]

It’s just bad writing. There is no such thing as a universally understood acronym. Even within fields. The cost of clarity is zero. Not elucidating means that over time the writing rots as meanings change and new “universal understandings” supersede old ones.

[watt]

If you think you know what every acronym stands for, I recommend CBT.

[razster]

What I see CTF I think Capture The Flag, Tribe player in me.

[lelandbatey]

CTF stands for "Capture The Flag" in the parent article. Just the security competition kind, not the FPS game kind.

[Gigachad]

The annoying thing is even if you know what it means, multiple groups will use the same initialisms for different terms. So without more context you can’t know what it means.

It isn’t common but I feel it would be best when posting to HN to just expand the initialisms even if the source title didn’t.

[shric]

You can also over use the same initialism: ATM the ATM is connected via ATM