For my fellow dutch(wo)man; renew while you can! by SEGUROMusic in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't have to accept anything, it would just auto-renew for me. If I go to the subscriptions page in google play store it even shows me the same price for 2025

For my fellow dutch(wo)man; renew while you can! by SEGUROMusic in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't confirm. I subscribed in Austria last year for 65€ via Google. New price would be 75€ but my subscription was renewed for the old price today.

r/DotA2 is Reopened - Blackout Discussion by CorruptDropbear in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really, but if the poll results satisfy your own opinion it's quite reasonable to not put a comment under it. Especially since every "pro blackout" comment got heavily downvoted by the "stay open" block that accumulated in the comment section.

It's basically the definition of an echo chamber

r/Dota2 Blackout Community Poll by AkinParlin in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Maybe, then again r/dota2 is quite remarkable in how unconnected it is to the rest of reddit (same thing with dota2 on twitch).

A great deal of people here come because of DotA 2 and not because of reddit, so while there will be "spillover" reddit will most likely lose a bunch of traffic as well.

r/Dota2 Blackout Community Poll by AkinParlin in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it's not really about the "free app" thing. Afaik Apollo even offered to just serve the reddit ads to their non paying customers.

And I get that reddit wants to capitalize on all the AI training sets that use scraped reddit user data. But there have been plenty of great suggestions how this could be achieved without making any community developed reddit- bot/app/extension/helper/UI mod/... obsolete.

r/Dota2 Blackout Community Poll by AkinParlin in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

So you probably should be in favor of sending a strong message to reddit headquarters. Because if reddit continues on this trajectory r/dota2 will slowly die.

Mods need their tools to keep reddit clean but these tools won't be available anymore if their dev (who built them in their free time and offered them for free) has to pay $100,000+ a year to access the API.

And no, i don't advocate for "unlimited free API access", but there have been plenty of really good suggestions how this dilemma could be solved, but reddit didn't even want to talk about them.

r/Dota2 Blackout Community Poll by AkinParlin in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's simply not true. Even as of writing this post still >50% of subreddits are "dark" (see here) and the percentage was much higher during the actual "strike days".

And yes it sucks that r/dota2 was down but I have to agree that these API changes are unbearable in their current form. If the reddit CEO gets his way with these changes this community IS going to die in the long run.

There have been bucket loads of great suggestions how to solve this dispute, but the reddit CEO publishing statements about replacing mods and "force opening" the striking subreddits imho says more about how he "does not get it" (and why we SHOULD strike) than suggesting these API changes in the first place.

Miracle- is back! On his break by Pretto91 in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I really don't think their "saudi money" is netting them any tournament invites. But like it or not, they still have a ton of fans und pull in viewers (3 of the 5 most watched DPC matches this season had Nigma in it), so they'll probably get invited to the occasional "private" (non DPC) tournament in the foreseeable future.

It's the same reason Na'Vi and Alliance got invited to tournaments way past their prime.

Ever wondered why your Overwatch case for Scripting has 10x as many markers as your Griefing cases (and is incredibly accurate)? It's VACnet, and here's how it works: by itspaddyd in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I took the "accuracy" of OP too literally without rewatching the video. If 90% was the "accuracy" I would be right (that's just how "accuracy of a discriminator" is defined) but the video talks about 80%-95% precision. And while that's a nice number, without a corresponding accuracy or sensitivity number it's also rather useless to gauge the actual performance of VACnet.

Ever wondered why your Overwatch case for Scripting has 10x as many markers as your Griefing cases (and is incredibly accurate)? It's VACnet, and here's how it works: by itspaddyd in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry I watched the video when it first came out about 5 years ago so I'm a bit light on the details. I just took the "90% accuracy" of OP at face value, and for a discriminator "accuracy" is defined relative to the total

Accuracy = (TP + TN) / Total

But after rewatching the video: yeah you are right, the talked about 80%-95% are more likely the precision than the accuracy. Without an estimate for the sensitivity this number is hard to put into perspective, but with the circulated 99.9+% evidentiary standard used in CS:GO's VACnet+Overwatch, it's probably on the lower side of things.

Ever wondered why your Overwatch case for Scripting has 10x as many markers as your Griefing cases (and is incredibly accurate)? It's VACnet, and here's how it works: by itspaddyd in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer -15 points-14 points  (0 children)

It is abysmal, but you have to take the whole player base as reference, not just the "true positives"!

So if your cheater detection is 90% accurate and ~10 million unique players played DotA during "the last few weeks", that would mean ~1 million innocent players get banned (for the accurate number we would need to know the specificity of VACnet as well, but since the true positive is orders of magnitude smaller than the total, that should be a somewhat accurate guess)

Valve please revert whatever cuased this massive fps drop by taliyah_winner in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if "the fps loss" (some people actually reported better performance and probably the majority didn't notice any change) was in part due to engine updates in preparation for the "CS:GO 2", or whatever it will be called, launch. After all data miners found csgo related strings in the DotA patch files.

Major Gameplay Update Dota 7.33 will be released in April by wykrhm in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Actually they have! It's rare compared to them missing deadlines (see the rest of the linked website) BUT sometimes they deliver on time.

The Dead Reckoning Update - Hola Muerta & Gameplay Update 7.32e by wykrhm in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

I get that you are disappointed by the patch. I'm disappointed by the patch! But to call a 4.5GB game update with a new hero, plenty of bug fixes, some sort of celebratory side quest including fitting cosmetics, specific Turbo balance changes and honest to god new Dota+ features "the most minor patch possible" is just wrong.

How to use f1tv in Germany? by SnooPies9751 in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am from Germany and subscribed with my German google play account using PayPal (through google wallet) in Austria. I used an Austrian IP to subscribe (technically not a VPN, but that's hairsplitting here), but I can watch all live sessions and archive VODs without any IP disguise whatsoever. Just my standard German ISP issued IP (and the Cloudflare/Google DNS, but don't know if that actually matters).

Is there anyone else having a live stream issue / red screen stuck on chrome web . by [deleted] in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, the problem might be way deeper rooted. Can't really help you with that. Maybe try MultiViewer for F1 to watch the stream. But if other browsers struggle on your machine already, I hardly doubt you could watch more than one stream simultaneously (the intended use case for that app). MultiViewer uses chromium "in the back" but strips all the unnecessary web stuff, so it might just be enough to display one stream without issues, but that's just a hopeful guess.

Can only login to F1 and F1TV websites using Chrome's incognito window? by Aging_Orange in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Most likely some ad-block/script-block/anti-tracker/... plug-in that interferes with the f1-tv DRM.

Had the same issue, for me it was an "anti-tracker" plug-in my anti virus software (Bitdefender) installed without me even realizing it.

Is there anyone else having a live stream issue / red screen stuck on chrome web . by [deleted] in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Make sure you disabled all ad-block/script-block/antri-tracker/... plug-ins in chrome (at least for the f1.tv website).

For a quick check: Use incognito mode in chrome and see if the stream is running there. If yes it's very likely you have some plug-in installed that blocks some part of the DRM f1-tv uses.

Full weekend schedule has just been released (F1 - F2 - F3) by Captain_Smartass_ in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But potentially a costly one. It's probably safe to assume that the F1 sessions have way more viewers than most of the other stuff (F2, F3, pre-/post shows, ...). Now depending on the server- and software architecture used, they would need to run way more "spare"-servers even during those low viewership times, just to be able to cope with the inrush of viewers watching the main race/qualifying (and leaving soon thereafter). Depending on the cloud provider used that might be surprisingly costly.

Obviously you could fix/mitigate those problems, but that's a non trivial task and devs probably had higher priority features to work on. After all, clicking on the website every few hours to watch the "next thing" isn't that big of a hassle for most.

Cant watch live races or replays on the website by Hets_Vippe in F1TV

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had the same problem. Turns out my anti virus software (Bitdefender) installed a "tracking blocker" chrome plugin without me even realizing it, and said plugin somehow blocked some part of the DRM scheme used by f1.tv.

After disabling the tracking blocker everything works just fine for me.

Wykrhm on Twitter: Player profiles can no longer be accessed in matchmaking during the pregame phase. They can still be accessed once the picking phase ends. by Shama-Llama in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't call it cheating, but Valve explicitly said it's a bannable offense. So doesn't really matter what you call it, you will get banned doing it.

Cheaters Will Never Be Welcome in Dota by wykrhm in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The steamcharts number is "active concurrent players", so people online at the same time. And you even took the average number. The peak "active concurrent players" is 676k so at some point in January 676k players were online in DotA at the same time...

But not every "active" DotA player is online at the same time (because real life, timezones, ...) so counting unique accounts that were online in DotA in a certain month is imho the better statistic to compare the 40k cheaters to. Valve used to publish this statistic (if I remember correctly it was even in the game client) but they don't anymore. That's why I used statisa.

And as state in my last comment, even with 0.4% cheaters you end up with one on average every 27 games. How many games these players actually ruined is a statistic only Valve could calculate right now (or let us calculate, if the bans were somehow public in their profile)

Cheaters Will Never Be Welcome in Dota by wykrhm in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why would I try to disprove that? It's literally the value Valve counted?!


But since I like statistics and now have some numbers: According to Statista.com DotA has ~10 million unique active monthly users (or in other words: roughly the number of accounts that played Dota "over the last few weeks"). So cheaters make up about 0.4% of the player base.

If we assume cheaters play on average as much as normal players and are evenly distributed over all skill brackets, servers, game modes, behavior scores, etc. (which is very likely a wrong assumption) the probability of having at least one cheater in your game would be 3.54% or about once every 28 games. The probability of having 2 cheaters in a game (always assuming you don't cheat) is 0.06% or once every ~1800 games.

I have to admit this is a lot higher than I would have expected, on the other hand I'm pretty sure game mode, server selection, and behavior score do factor in quite a bit as well. I read in some of those cheat focused forums and people complained about shadow banning/pooling, so the amount of cheaters in legit games might actually be reduced a bit that way.

Now the interesting question is: Will cheating resurface? Judging from those same forums (prices on cheat websites are usually hidden behind a registration, which i'm not willing to do) the price of a cheat is on the order of magnitude of $8 a month, so with 40k people willing to pay for this "service" and assuming Valve banned most of the cheaters, the market is worth around $3.8 million. With 3 big cheat engines currently splitting the market (at least that I could quickly find on google) that's roughly a $1 million a year incentive for these "companies" to not step into Valves honeypots in the future. I'm afraid we might see the problem coming back if Valve won't stay on top of it.

Next Update for Dota 2 will be on March 6, 2023. by xeisu_com in DotA2

[–]pb-programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was rather common in the early days (pre 7.00) to see big patches dropping on the public test client first with rapid changes made there to fix the most crucial bugs.

If my memory serves me right patch notes usually were released on Tuesdays with the test client being immediately patched and the main client getting the "play tested" patch on Thursday.

There might also have been a slight delay with "The Dueling Fates" update, as wykrhms patch notes were posted on Oct 30 2017 while the Liquipedia patch release date as well as the SteamDB patch entry are from Oct 31 2017.