OK no worries then, I'll prolly just make some script to upload demos to google drive. It would be 12x as many demos if everyone did it so that is a large volume of extra hosting. This upcoming RGL LAN is requiring all of the players to record demos and upload them for the sake of making a frag video, and are just using google drive.

I think it would be cool to be able to use the demo viewer / demo metadata stuff on demos.tf somehow with POV demos but not actually hosting them to download, would it be possible to enable private uploads? Being able to look through quickly on the browser and view the killfeed and stuff like that is super useful (if the demo editor functionality is made good enough maybe these features could be incorporated into the same thing, basically being able to view and also quickly trim the demo in the browser and then download it)

Ended up messing around with this for a few hours and made a simple GitHub repo with some scripts in case anyone's interested: https://github.com/elliottower/demostf_pov_autouploader/tree/master

I was able to get a working python script that matches the STV demo for a given POV, and fetches metadata, which I can definitely see being useful, though it currently just uses the date timestamp in the filename (rather than looking at the demo contents itself).

• For the sake of using the in game recorder this should work well enough, but a better solution would be to actually inspect the metadata of the game (otherwise you can just rename any demo and trick it)
  
• I figure the developers of demos.tf can do this better than I can anyways, as I've never even looked at demo data, and the python tooling for this seems limited -- though it should be possible by decompiling and using https://github.com/Source-Python-Dev-Team/Source.Python

I found two issues from the demos.tf side:

• I tried out calculating the real start ticks, which I tried trimming with the editor (https://demos.tf/edit), and then uploading via https://demos.tf/upload, but it seems to have corrupted -- the duration went from `45:24` in the editor to `2579:53:21` in the uploader, when I trimmed off ten mins from it (pre-game ready up wait time). It then says error cannot upload demos longer than an hour.
  
  
• I also found that the demo uploading API seems to be broken. I was able to do get requests but all post requests sent to https://api.demos.tf/upload has 404 errors, maybe your account has to have a specific flag to be able to upload via the API?

I also made a proof of concept script to monitor your demos folder and try to upload whenever a new file appears (and isn't being currently written, which tf2 does continually until the match is finished), so if the API issues above are fixed this could potentially be used by players -- though it wouldn't have privacy options, and it would spam demos.tf with uploads (the titles would be `na.serveme.tf #559357 - RED vs BLU - Cronjington Magoo` which I thought was fine though, if someone sees a demo with a specific player name as a hyphen they can probably guess it's not the regular STV)

This is very cool, not sure how actively you're developing new features like this but I wonder if it'd be possible to automatically trim to the start of matches -- similar to how P-REC started recording then. I tested uploading a pov demo (link) to the site and was actually able to see the metadata, players, logs, etc. Given the filename was from my in game tf2 recorder I was then able to look through my logs and find the equivalent STV (link) by looking at map/dates and then confirming because it shows the same players when you pull it up. But of course since I uploaded a POV demo with the in game recorder, it recorded the pregame, and that's reflected in the logs you see when the POV one is pulled up (see first link above). Basically, I'm thinking that you can probably automate the process I'm doing and look for the same players and same map and same date, and match the POV to the STV, and then automatically trim it (not sure if the POV demos with in game actually end at the end of the match config, but there should be some way to match up events and such).

TLDR: I think it should be possible to automatically trim POV demos by looking up corresponding STV demos on demos.tf, and it would be a really awesome feature if you could upload POV demos and have the site automatically trim them. If this feature would be too difficult for you to tackle I (or maybe someone else on this site, we have tons of compsci nerds lol) could at the very least look into it.

---

Another feature that would be really really useful would be if it was possible to upload POV demos to demos.tf directly and have proper support for them--currently it actually shows up in the same list of STV demos and there's no clear way to distinguish them--someone could download the POV demo I linked above thinking it was an STV.

Some important features:
1. The ability to upload privately, and have it only show up under your name (currently you can filter basedd on logs you're in, but there could probably just be a separate tab for your POV demos or something)
2. The ability to share a link to a privately uploaded demo (e.g., send to admins to review, or send to submit to a frag video, jump competition, etc.)

Some simple-ish extra features that would be nice:
3. The ability for people to make their own lists, for example you could go through and select all of your match demos for a given season and organize them
4. Ability to export a list or batch download files (e.g., all of your demos from one season, or from a LAN)

Some much more complex features:
5. The ability to automatically upload from in game, similar to STV auto uploading. This one I'm not even sure if it is possible, but it would be huge because it removes the human error component (and if somebody goes away on vacation and leaves their computer, it will automatically be uploaded)
- I was thinking about doing a simple script for this to upload to google drive, but then realized well if there's already an API (docs) for demos.tf, that would be much better. Only problem was the privacy--some people likely will not want their POV demos to be public. But adding a simple privacy option I think would make this viable, and allow someone like me to test out auto upload scripts.

The motivation for this is that it would make it significantly easier for people to upload and share demos for things like RGL demo checks (see https://www.teamfortress.tv/64762/a-thank-you-letter-to-rgl for context, basically a lot of people have been punished for missing demo checks now that P-REC doesn't work).
* Currently people generally upload to google drive/dropbox/etc., but this is difficult to organize, easy to mess up sharing privileges, and often times has people uploading .zips which leads to security issues
* Currently there is no way to see metadata, or even verify it's the right demo except by opening it in game and viewing it--though it could very well be the same players on the same map but not the match, etc. My guess is admins don't even look at a large number of the demos uploaded, which is not exactly great practice, but if it was easier to see metadata and view things at a glance, they probably would more.

u love to see it

new development: admins told us we could reschedule to monday (fathers day and ppl on both teams being unavailable) but just now went back on that and are forcing us to play sunday with only a day's notice

how are they even allowed to do that, we were perfectly ready to play on thursday and then the night of the match they seemed to cave and say okay fine it can be reschedule (cuz there were gonna be 2 ringers on both teams), and now they're flip flopping again? this shit is seriously so absurd it's like they're trying to be as difficult and as possible

like sorry but the admins should just forfeit the right to make decisions for a div at a certain point, once the season is started let the rules be how they are for that season -- u failed to even start the season correctly with the map pool, had a shitfest swapping that around (but did it via a poll thankfully), tried to implement this nazi ass no reschedule rule mid season, changed it saturday to sunday, then said we could have this exception to do monday, then went back and said no exceptions, what's next? 3 more flip flops after this? jemond stepping in and saying enough is enough let the players have their way?

the lesson to be learned here is if you try to be too heavy handed as a league and make too many strict rules, you're inevitably going to make the wrong decisions and piss the players off (see all the RGL bad threads -- did we ever see those threads for esea or etf2l? no because they just let ppl play the game and don't get in their way), but alas our Community League cares less abt the community than their own power tripping

gotta love the classic RGL admins being completely out of touch and making overly strict rules, then refusing to admit they were wrong / head admin doubling down with unilateral decision for a division he has never played in

can we talk about the fact that they randomly decided in the middle of the season, that games cannot be rescheduled past saturday???

like i get it's stupid if a match gets pushed back more than a week or so, but to go from effectively no limit on rescheduling to the most strict limit it possibly could be, is a very Bad idea (also, playing matches on fridays or saturdays literally never happens in 6s lol at the very least let people play on sundays)

changing the map pool mid season is already crazy enough, but if you're going to do this, at least do the same process of polling all the team leaders and getting a consensus

i just played 2 centers and both were semi stacked at least and the second had ppl someone constantly sniping on the other team (warning in chat that theyll get banned doesnt stop ppl)

you should just change the config to disallow offclasses lol its a lobby so who cares if u cant heavy engi on last, better that than aids offclassing to mid IMO (im sure theres a way to override the RGL or ugc or whatever configs people run the lobbies on)

also you might want to do more linebreaks / paragraphs in your posts if you want people to read thru them cause a big wall of text a lot of ppl just skim over

stacking makes the site pretty awful a lot of the time but i do like that lobbies start up before scrim times usually and you can play *some* tf2 even if its not very high level

have to say tho, RGL open pugs seems strictly better (tf2mix/mixchamp basically, because of the auto picking, and actively developed even if still having flaws) and i feel like trying to get people to play there or in captain pugs is a better idea -- you can't all of the sudden change the culture for tf2center that's existed for like 10 years, the toxicity/stacking/people not comming/perma offclassing stuff will be pretty difficult to get rid of

people also have a bad taste of it in their mouths so avoid it, im sure tons of casual players tried it, had a bad experience and said nope not trying comp anymore

oh we got owned no denying that, but no way should any pug ever go for longer than an hour that’s an actual crime against humanity

anyways here’s some more bugs/things to fix for dolphin: when a pug is starting half the time it doesn’t make a noise, the ready up screen blocks you from seeing who’s added, it only shows the total number of players currently added in the name on your browser tab, you can’t add as different classes after readying (e.g., the A pug ended and you want to main class), if you click not ready (to see if you want to play the pug or not) you can’t re ready if more people add up later

the chat is also still minimized by default and blocks your view of medics if it
isn’t minimized (i believe at least) and seems to literally prevent you from typing if you say a swear lol (can’t hit enter, just censor it to “granary is ***” if you’re really worried about people saying meanie words like Ass, Hell, Shit)

the voice channels take a few minutes to detect the game is over and join the two together, and half the time it’ll leave someone out, shit is so over engineered, what it should be is just: when the pug is running the voice channels are locked, but after it ends they become public and don’t delete themselves after 10 mins (that way ppl can join and hang out while the next one is being picked)

dunno if this is possible but the way tf2center makes your voice channel name MEDIC: [current steam alias] makes it so much easier to figure out who’s who (had a newer medic be confused by this trying to figure out who “follow me” is), either that or do what pugchamp did and change people’s alias in game to their registered name

it’s also not at all obvious that the “div” next to your name is just your current elo lol, it should just show both the elo and their actual RGL div (as a captain I have to click through to their RGL to get real information about them, which takes 5 seconds cuz of the cloud flare does protection lol, just overall super janky)

just played an hour long pug please for the love of god make these end at 30 minutes or at the very least limit the overtime

pretty much what the others have said, especially these days a lot of the advancements have been engineering improvements (better methods for training/finetuning/rlhf, quantization/other optimizations), you want to do a PhD and actually do research you definitely have to like math and theoretical stuff (and tearing your hair out), but the vast majority of actual work is just engineering skills (applying other people's research)

on the topic of research i feel like ppl see the AlphaGo deepmind video and stuff like that and say omg this is the dream!! but if you really think you want to do research you need to accept the fact that you will have to stay up to date reading papers constantly (Pain) and there's a huge potential for burnout, it really isnt as sexy as it sounds (i did my masters and got a job and then realized i hated it, having to sit at a desk for 8 hours reading papers and working on shitty research code / be expected to write a paper on your own in 4 months, shit made me wanna kms)

also phd applications are even more competitive and almost impossible to get in unless you have a first author paper at a top conference, and a large number of ML or even data science jobs require a PhD, it sucks but if there's an exciting field that also pays well, odds are it's going to be very competitive and hard to get into

my main advice for ppl who want to get into cs stuff in general is to get as much real world experience or side projects as possible, the tough thing is if its a PhD people are willing to believe you learned something in your years of research, but a masters student who did only research for two years a) still can't get into phd programs very easily and b) employers don't give a shit about ur research and want real world exp ive seen some of the most horribly written code -- phds who got into top conferences doing their entire project in a jupyter notebook

dont get baited rahmed everyone and their dog wants to work in ai now and tech companies have already been extremely competitive and terrible to find jobs in bc of layoffs for the last few years (not sure if u were serious but figure someone reading this might have the same thought)

i know a number of people who have struggled finding jobs even with a bs or masters from a top cs program, the market has been shit for a few years, networking and startups are the only ways ive seen people find success, but as someone who worked for an ai startup that ran out of money (lol) i would recommend people do Other Things instead of jumping on the bandwagon

there are tons of tf2 people who studied cs tho so odds are someone you know is either in school for it or working in software somehow (we're all computer nerds it makes sense), talking to people is the best way to get a feel for the industry and whether or not you should try to pursue things

about the tutoring thing im sure this will make it a bit more difficult to get people to pay for tutoring, but my friends who have done online cs tutoring for example a lot of times are asked to help with complex problems that someone tried to figure out with gpt (lol) but failed to do so, plus i think people just enjoy talking to another human and having it not be as isolating / stressful struggling on a homework assignment

i may be wrong but i think the site only makes a noise when the pugs starting if you're added, it'd be nice if it did it for everyone so people knew when to add if they passively had the site open (e.g., you sit out the A pug and then miss the B pug right after it bc you're looking at something else)

Cool to see tftv new articles being written again, nice to get a glimpse into things for someone who doesn’t follow the eu scene much these days

Edit: maybe it would be possible to include the rosters for each team as well