GameFAQs Contests

Lopen posted...

Also if you did something like ngirl's algorithm, and stored the ip addresses you'd used in an array or something so as to not attempt to vote from the same place more than once, the program would actually naturally slow down over time.

So yeah uh I don't think it's that weird for it to naturally slow down a little even if it is automated.

If you've got a computer good enough to run such a bot in the first place, it's not gonna be slowed down by what equates to a text file, no matter how massive it gets.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Besides, if you wanted it to run in such a way to avoid duplicates, you wouldn't have it save addresses as you used them

You'd have it run in numerical order, since you'd already have the numerical limits of the "Smallest" IP address for an area and the "largest."
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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StealThisSheen posted...

Besides, if you wanted it to run in such a way to avoid duplicates, you wouldn't have it save addresses as you used them

You'd have it run in numerical order, since you'd already have the numerical limits of the "Smallest" IP address for an area and the "largest."

No, you'd save it. Numerical order is the second easiest way to get caught vote stuffing.

The first is to use a bunch of known proxies.

You're right about it not slowing down due to the program though (little more than .txt, but not that resource heavy).

Singerton posted...

StealThisSheen posted...

Besides, if you wanted it to run in such a way to avoid duplicates, you wouldn't have it save addresses as you used them

You'd have it run in numerical order, since you'd already have the numerical limits of the "Smallest" IP address for an area and the "largest."

No, you'd save it. Numerical order is the second easiest way to get caught vote stuffing.

The first is to use a bunch of known proxies.

You're right about it not slowing down due to the program though (little more than .txt, but not that resource heavy).

Yes, but not if you don't expect to be caught.

I mean, let's be honest, here. In this scenario, we're assuming they're stuffing.

They'd already know from the first match that Bacon basically only checks geo-maps for stuffing, since it never got caught the first time.

But you're right. Say they were paranoid about being caught

Saving them still isn't going to slow it down if you've got a powerful enough computer to run such a thing so fast in the first place, like said, so either way.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Trust me, SEP, it will, I've coded things like this before (I actually have an idea of what I'm talking about here despite coding a stop at time X being above me lol). When data structures get large it can bog the program down-- there can also just be sloppiness in the code that has a resource leak somewhere.

And you wouldn't run in numerical order because that's easily seen as suspicious. You want it to look random.

As for why this has never happened before? Few reasons. First and possibly most important you need vote totals to be low enough that you can feasibly stuff enough for it to work. This actually would not work in say 2007 because the vote totals were too damn high. You also need someone with the knowhow, who cares enough, and who has the resources to do this. I actually might be able to code something like this but the other two not so much. That's the conundrum you're going to hit-- you expose to 330k fanatics and suddenly it's more feasible.

... though I have to say I'd be lying if I didn't claim to be a bit tempted to see if I could get Dante to blast away the competition with 50k votes... HEY NO STUFFING HERE STOP TRYING TO DQ ME FOR NO REASON BACON
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HOLY F***

Looks like I've got a lot of reading to do!
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Also keep in mind from a performance standpoint this isn't actually a huge dropoff. This is like... 80% efficiency, or something. That's not really a big deal. I'm not saying the computer is going to lock up or anything but yeah, it'll get slower.
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No, such a program isn't going to get bogged down, dude. Saving the addresses is not going to cause a sudden resource-drain large enough to cause what would already be a high-end computer to suddenly s*** bricks.

And I'm not going to suddenly buy the "I know all about this" now, of all points in the argument, even if you actually do. >_>
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Also the reason it slows down is not because of the size of "the text file" it's because with every new IP address rolled you need to check against that whole "text file" to be sure you're not voting with a dupe address. The amount of time that operation takes tends to ramp up. Then if you actually do hit a dupe you need to reroll-- the amount of rerolls you need to do will also ramp up as the chances of that happening increases.
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And I actually DO know it wouldn't cause things to slow down... Simply from working in telemarketing.

Telemarketing involves programs that have virtually the same idea: Millions of phone numbers, cycling through and keeping track of every number hundreds, possibly thousands of people are calling at a fast rate.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Anyone with the motivation to do this wouldn't be using a horrible computer that would slow down here. Standard i5's could easily handle several of these running. i3's probably wouldn't have a problem. Program wouldn't slow down until the list became ridiculously long (it definitely is not yet) and started to get exhausted.

More likely scenario: some bots have been manually turned
Just as likely scenario: Rallying has dropped off a bit, because that's what rallies do. LoL is probably coming back online now.

Just a thought but you probably aren't randomly generating the phone numbers to call, dude
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80% efficiency isn't actually a huge slowdown, though, as I've already said.

Anyway I honestly don't even think that ngirl's algorithm is what they'd be using to be honest I'm just explaining that it's not too weird for a program to slow down over time even if your computer is "way better than it"
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Lopen posted...

Just a thought but you probably aren't randomly generating the phone numbers to call, dude

No.

It's checking a list.

A list with MILLIONS of phone numbers on it.

That'd take even longer, since it's checking two different lists: The entire pool of phone numbers, then the pool of already called phone numbers. And THEN it has to double-check those against other factors, depending on what sort of telemarketing you're doing ("Call Back Later," "Already subscribed," etc. being common ones.)

Randomly generating numbers is pretty quick. Try running a brute force password generator and see how fast it gets through hundreds of thousands of attempts.

This is going at a fairly slow rate in comparison to other things.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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I mean, let's say you've got four people running such a program.

Draven has... Let's round up and say 40k votes.

That's only 10k addresses per person.

That's not gonna even come close to slowing something down.

Hell, 40k on just one computer wouldn't.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Yeah.

Randomly generate an IP. Check the empty list to see if you've used it before. Nope! Vote.
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 1 IP used to see if you've used it before. Nope! Vote.
...
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 6000 used to see if you've used it before. ... Still checking 6000 items... Nope! Vote.
...
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 120000 used to see if you've used it before. ...Still checking 12000 items... Yes! Reroll. Check the 12000 used to see if you've used it before. ...Still checking 12000 items. Nope! Vote.
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*shrug*

maybe they're smart enough to know to slow the scrip down during the dead hours to hide their tracks!

was this said already

I don't know

Go link !
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i'll do rydia -Dante

nintendogirl1 posted...

Yeah.

Randomly generate an IP. Check the empty list to see if you've used it before. Nope! Vote.
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 1 IP used to see if you've used it before. Nope! Vote.
...
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 6000 used to see if you've used it before. ... Still checking 6000 items... Nope! Vote.
...
Randomly generate an IP. Check the 120000 used to see if you've used it before. ...Still checking 12000 items... Yes! Reroll. Check the 12000 used to see if you've used it before. ...Still checking 12000 items. Nope! Vote.

This isn't a human doing that, though. This is a computer.

It'd check those 120000 that you've already used in the blink of an eye.

It'd be hitting closer to the millions before it got down to something like 80% performance.

Definitely not after 40k. And 40k is only if it's only one person.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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Maybe.

I don't know enough about computer efficiencies and speeds to know. I'm just giving my thoughts on how it might work.
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*shrug*

Well, you're right, more or less. That IS how it works

But the numbers to hit that point are much, much, much larger.
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SEP Nash, Smelling Like the Vault since 1996
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It looks like Draven finally stopped going up in percentage, at least!
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nintendogirl1 posted...

Maybe.

I don't know enough about computer efficiencies and speeds to know. I'm just giving my thoughts on how it might work.

Well, you've got the logic right for the potential algorithm. STS is right about the database requiring a LOT more entries until it starts to slow down the voting.

Of course, this is all assuming it's easy enough to "use" this generated I.P. address to vote.

Which it very likely isn't. Since faking I.P. address has a lot of utilities. And if it was a commonly available ability, outside of known proxies, it would likely have been used to execute DDoS attacks by now. Which it hasn't.

Looks like SBAllen has been online in the past hour.

Wonder if we get a topic
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[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

I'd be pretty surprised if we didn't get a topic.

I'd be astounded if said topic was anything more than "Fair, next."
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Welp, time for a Fictional Character Battle
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How funny would it be if there was literally no topic
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Then00bAvenger posted...

How funny would it be if there was literally no topic

No topic would just be Allen giving a silent approval of what happened, so really, no matter whether he makes a topic or not, the outcome will likely be the same.
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I wish this was Garen.
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BOOM!

That's the sound of Draven drawing more votes ALONE than any ENTIRE MATCH has this contest.

Checking a list is actually a fairly swift operation-- the problem comes when you have to do it repeatedly due to increasing risk of hitting dupes.

Say stuffing a vote takes such an amount of time that you can do say 300 per 5 minutes.

Say the execution time per vote is like... 1% generating ip 1% checking the list 97% sending the vote 1% adding to the list. Every time you check the list needlessly you just took 2% extra time on your vote. Once isn't really going to matter but every 50 whiffs you lose a vote. Yeah it's very fast but you can also miss a lot.

Also you're assuming perfect code which is probably a mistake on its own. Garbage collection overhead and stuff tends to get annoying. Also it's possible they're storing more than just IP addresses-- basically there are a lot of things to consider here and I don't think either one of us fully grasp it enough to say for sure. I probably have a better idea than you though since I've actually coded things like this before (granted it had to store larger things but they weren't that much larger than ip addresses), I mean I don't really want to pull that card but I'm just saying-- something working at 80% efficiency after 6 hours of execution is not that weird <_<

Also what Kleenex said is plenty possible too! Or a lot of things! The projected stuffed votes going down slightly doesn't outweigh the evidence to the contrary here.
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This is a cute and pop genocide of love!

Some of the stuff in this topic is hurting my brain. There is nothing inherently slow or difficult about the stuffing techniques mentioned here. The true challenge would be getting around the unknown stuffing checks that GF has. Presumably anyone who has done this has already "staked the place out" and deduced what they are.
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Be a good little washing machine, now... o_0

You know it doesn't matter if it's Link or Ryu and X
Even if Link gets all of Ryu and X votes combined and multiply them by 2 it's still not enough

Just so we're clear on this, /r/leagueoflegends is very central to the LoL scene. It is the #1 place for the English speaking community, ignoring the official boards (which are always full of crap, as with any game). Many of the North American and European professional players visit it, quite a few post there, and some employees of Riot (the game developers) use it as a secondary interaction point with the community. The subreddit is sometimes mentioned on the weekly tournament casts that are viewed by hundreds of thousands. It's a pretty big deal, incredibly active, and I'm confident that many, many people visit it without owning a reddit account or logging in.
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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

RockMFR posted...

Some of the stuff in this topic is hurting my brain. There is nothing inherently slow or difficult about the stuffing techniques mentioned here. The true challenge would be getting around the unknown stuffing checks that GF has. Presumably anyone who has done this has already "staked the place out" and deduced what they are.

Apparently that's what the Touhou matches were. The "obvious" stuffing got filtered out and the "non-obvious" stuffing got through.
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*shrug*

Touhou stuffing was merely an experiment to find out!
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Singerton posted...

Of course, this is all assuming it's easy enough to "use" this generated I.P. address to vote.

Which it very likely isn't. Since faking I.P. address has a lot of utilities. And if it was a commonly available ability, outside of known proxies, it would likely have been used to execute DDoS attacks by now. Which it hasn't.

You are right that there are utilities that can forge an IP address when sending IP packets to another "known" IP address. These utilities are abused by people trying to DDoS a website using forged IP addresses that don't exist. Attempting to track the actual source of the DDoS attack using this kind of utility would be difficult because of the forged IP addresses used in the IP packets. It would not be possible to use a utility like this to vote in a GameFAQs poll.
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Lopen posted...

Checking a list is actually a fairly swift operation-- the problem comes when you have to do it repeatedly due to increasing risk of hitting dupes.

Say stuffing a vote takes such an amount of time that you can do say 300 per 5 minutes.

Say the execution time per vote is like... 1% generating ip 1% checking the list 97% sending the vote 1% adding to the list. Every time you check the list needlessly you just took 2% extra time on your vote. Once isn't really going to matter but every 50 whiffs you lose a vote. Yeah it's very fast but you can also miss a lot.

Also you're assuming perfect code which is probably a mistake on its own. Garbage collection overhead and stuff tends to get annoying. Also it's possible they're storing more than just IP addresses-- basically there are a lot of things to consider here and I don't think either one of us fully grasp it enough to say for sure. I probably have a better idea than you though since I've actually coded things like this before (granted it had to store larger things but they weren't that much larger than ip addresses), I mean I don't really want to pull that card but I'm just saying-- something working at 80% efficiency after 6 hours of execution is not that weird <_<

Also what Kleenex said is plenty possible too! Or a lot of things! The projected stuffed votes going down slightly doesn't outweigh the evidence to the contrary here.

I've coded plenty as well, and you've suggested turning off the computer as opposed to exit(); return 0; or anything else that could stop a thread.

That aside, you're also assuming this program which could mass produce I.P.'s not only hasn't already created and stored I.P's (which is a more logical thing to do in this situation that you're suggesting, that they've created the program in advance), but can effectively use them not just for simple pings, but for full on communication. Again, this would have a LOT of uses outside of a simple popularity contest, and it really has yet to be seen. The most that's occurred in the past is bots that use proxies. Else DDoS'ing would be much, much more frequent and easier to perform.

Why randomly generate I.P.'s, vote, store it in a database, randomly generate I.P., then check, then vote, then store it in a database, then randomly generate I.P, then check...

Why not random generate all I.P.'s needed, store in database. When contest time comes, use I.P, vote, use I.P, vote, use I.P, vote...

Just set a timer between votes and voila...

If there was a way to check how many "views" or "clicks" the reddit link has it could be great

Also, you guys are arguing over fluff. Occam's Razor suggests that the answer with the least assumptions is the most likely to be correct. I don't see why it's so hard to believe that the Reddit rally was that successful, as opposed to conjuring up some mastermind vote stuffer who's never used his tools before in a match.
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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

That is not what Occam's Razor means.
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It's iubaris, not Lubaris.

Okay, I just got home from work. and all I can think is...

WHAT THE !@#$?????????????

Holy crap anyone got links to where the massive rallies are going down?

Achromatic posted...

That is not what Occam's Razor means.

Very, very, very technically, no it's not what it means, but you are splitting the smallest semantic hair I've ever seen anyone split.

New Elite ranking

Draven
Link
Snake
Mario
Cloud
Samus
Sephiroth
Mega Man
Sonic
Crono
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Iubaris posted...

Just so we're clear on this, /r/leagueoflegends is very central to the LoL scene. It is the #1 place for the English speaking community, ignoring the official boards (which are always full of crap, as with any game). Many of the North American and European professional players visit it, quite a few post there, and some employees of Riot (the game developers) use it as a secondary interaction point with the community. The subreddit is sometimes mentioned on the weekly tournament casts that are viewed by hundreds of thousands. It's a pretty big deal, incredibly active, and I'm confident that many, many people visit it without owning a reddit account or logging in.

Yep, this nails it.

It's one of the most active subreddit that is not one of the default subscriptions, if you look at the header at the top it's listed there.

FRONT-ALL-RANDOM | PICS-FUNNY-GAMING-ASKREDDIT-WORLDNEWS-NEWS-VIDEOS-IAMA-TODAYILEARNED-WTF-AWW-TECHNOLOGY-ADVICEANIMALS-SCIENCE-MUSIC-MOVIES-BESTOF-BOOKS-EARTHPORN-EXPLAINLIKEIMFIVE-GIFS-TELEVISION-ASKSCIENCE-CRINGEPICS-LEAGUEOFLEGENDS-BREAKINGBAD-POLITICS-REACTIONGIFS-POKEMON-4CHAN-CIRCLEJERK-MINECRAFT

As an addendum /r/pokemon is an active subreddit too, so it's very possible we might see some rallying there in the future as the pokemons get further in the tournament
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I came to this contest a little late, so I missed his round 1 match, but if this subreddit is so active, why didn't we see anything like this last round?
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Few more before I go to sleep just to see if the trend of "less extra votes->less percentage of extra votes to Ryu/MMX":

5:35-6:05:
Total vote intake: 2753
Yesterday's intake: 724
Extra votes: 2029
Draven's "extra" votes: 1923 (108 GameFAQs votes approximated)
Ryu + MMX's "extra" votes: 106
Ryu + MMX's percentage of rallied without adjustment/250/300 per 5: 5.2%/20%/46.7%

6:05-6:35:
Total vote intake: 2904
Yesterday's intake: 778
Extra votes: 2126
Draven's "extra" votes: 1951 (116 GameFAQs votes approximated)
Ryu + MMX's "extra" votes: 175
Ryu + MMX's percentage of rallied without adjustment/250/300 per 5: 8.2%/27.9%/53.8%

6:35-7:05:
Total vote intake: 2784
Yesterday's intake: 838
Extra votes: 1946
Draven's "extra" votes: 1821 (125 GameFAQs votes approximated)
Ryu + MMX's "extra" votes: 125
Ryu + MMX's percentage of rallied without adjustment/250/300 per 5: 6.4%/28.0%/85%

7:05-7:35:
Total vote intake: 2914
Yesterday's intake: 1050
Extra votes: 1864
Draven's "extra" votes: 1819 (157 GameFAQs votes estimated)
Ryu + MMX's "extra" votes: 45
Ryu + MMX's percentage of rallied without adjustment/250/300 per 5: 2.4%/12.3%/70.3%

So yeah basically trend holds. As the extra votes decrease we see a trend downwards on MMX/Ryu's percentage of the rallied votes. That'll be it for me.
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Figgy20000 posted...

Okay, I just got home from work. and all I can think is...

WHAT THE !@#$?????????????

Holy crap anyone got links to where the massive rallies are going down?

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1kpnus/we_have_to_vote_for_draven_voting_will_begin_10/
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Janus5000 posted...

I came to this contest a little late, so I missed his round 1 match, but if this subreddit is so active, why didn't we see anything like this last round?

We sorta did, but it was a much less organized rally that began mid-match.

This one was planned for.
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