I've worked a lot with LispWorks and tuning the gc had the same method of programmatically calling a full GC after every N operations. We also found setting the gc threshold to high amount helped a bunch.
Supposedly they have a concurrent GC in the works but I haven't played with it.
Awesome, I've been waiting for something like this
That being said, I've got a couple questions
Will all the CTFs be security focused?
One of the most common problems coursera ran into was people copying the assignments of other people. How do you intend to prevent copying for the CTFs? I see that you mentioned you're not going to DMCA tutorials or Let's Plays and instead track their every iteration on the code. I guess you can get rid of outright copying that way but I'd love to hear your other strategies.
Other than that this seems like a really interesting way to do recruiting. I can't wait to see the actual CTFs.
Also you've got a tiny typo in the WHY IS STARFIGHTER THE RIGHT TEAM FOR THIS? section:
"I have a folder in Gmail saving messages from geeks who used by career advice or salary negotiation tips to their advantage."
I think the by should be my
I saw someone talking about this today in tor-dev. It seems that since laptops/smartphones are not normally helpful as a Tor relay, they've made the instructions difficult on purpose. The consensus seems to be that they only want people with enough knowledge to be able to follow instructions at [0] to host relays.
They wanted to prevent all of the servers trying to contact the PXE server at the same time to avoid overloading it. Its basically to prevent an accidently self DDOS.