4 ms·

It's a real red flag that he plays stronger moves after the browser window loses focus. I'd argue that's much less circumstantial than anything else so far.

• FireBeyond 4y ago
  Which shows ... I don't know ... naivety, or cockiness, or something. If I'm cheating at chess (or poker or whatever) online and I know that there are likely to be some form of anti-cheat scanning happening... why wouldn't you run your chess client on a computer beside you - then everything surrounding that is undetectable (processes, focus, CPU utilization, etc.)
  • kuboble 4y ago
    Because he likely wasn't aware they they track it and having this other computer introduces other risks. If he accidentally showed a picture of his second computer on the same desk during e.g. a stream it would be akin to guilt admission.
  • williamcotton 4y ago
    Cheating is a bad decision to begin with. I’m not surprised that further bad decisions were quickly in pursuit.
  • bena 4y ago
    People are still rather short-sighted when it comes to what a computer can do. They can really only think in front of them. If I put information into this program, I get information out. They don't think that applications can monitor their own meta-state. Or the state of other applications. So I'm not terribly surprised that he thought running the engine in another browser window would have been sufficient. He might have even had it open in "incognito mode". And since it's incognito, it can't be detected, right?
    • KennyBlanken 4y ago
      Most people don't realize that the online chat functions for a lot of customer service sites show every character you type, not when you hit 'enter' or 'send'.
      • bambax 4y ago
        Didn't know that. Is this really true? What would be the point of it? When chatting with a customer support it's quite apparent the csr is involved in many chats at once; wouldn't it be quite taxing for them to have to monitor not just the responses but every keystroke of the people they interact with?
        • bena 4y ago
          You could passively record without having to force the CSR to engage. You could also then use that text to help prompt the CSR.
        • permo-w 4y ago
          the way they justify it is to give faster responses. I suspect that is part of it, but another part of it is to weed out time-wasters and liars
    • permo-w 4y ago
      there are easily observed indications that websites can detect window focus. take facebook for example. if you get a notification while a facebook tab is open but not in focus, the tab title will irritatingly and eye-drawingly flash between "facebook" and "x messaged you" until you focus on the tab. or youtube. if you open a youtube video in the background it will not autoplay until you focus on that tab. these things are not hidden from the user
      • yucky 4y ago
        Easily observed to people who know what to look for or how these things work. I'm sure a mechanic would scoff at how many "obvious signs" the average driver misses about potential problems with their vehicle.
• IceWreck 4y ago
  Even if he was cheating, its a dumb move to do that. It's super easy to stop websites from knowing that you're switching tabs or windows. https://github.com/IceWreck/Page-Visibility-User-Script https://github.com/IceWreck/Page-Visibility-User-Script I made this a while ago. Or just use another computer.
  • usehackernews 4y ago
    You probably could have made your point without posting the GitHub link with the exact means to do so. I imagine there is one chess cheater reading this that will use your repo soon.
  • permo-w 4y ago
    yeah exactly. if you're cheating online at a high-level, would this not be the exact first thing you'd think about dealing with? chess.com can have all the crazy algorithms in the world to try and figure out if you're playing like a human, but if you're tabbing out every time your opponent plays a move, you're giving the game away in move 1 (or - to take a more literal approach - whatever move takes you out of your opening repertoire...) and yeah you could argue that if you're not into web dev it's not hyper obvious that websites are able to know when you lose focus on them, but I'd argue that it is fairly obvious. there are indications that should make it clear. facebook flashing notifications in their tab title until you click on them, to take a simple example.
    • openfuture 4y ago
      Well, if you are just 16 you are bound to make some slip-ups like this due to having an incomplete idea of the possible "attack" surface that the defender can use (to accuse you of cheating).
  • Taek 4y ago
    He's a chess prodigy not a computer nerd. It probably never even occurred to him that chess.com was tracking page focus to get a sense of cheating.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]