
Darpa Subterranean Challenge - mhb
https://www.subtchallenge.com/
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hyperion2010
I know that this isn't what they are going for, but I couldn't help but think
of one of my favorite pieces of fictional millitary equipment
[http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Subterranean_APC](http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Subterranean_APC).

On a more practical note, here is a link to the announcment for those who
can't get the page to load. [https://www.darpa.mil/news-
events/2017-12-21](https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017-12-21)

~~~
glitcher
My first thought was also fictional tech - the mapping drones in Prometheus
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO-
eduvo904](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO-eduvo904)

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Mizza
I normally imagine tunnel warfare as a World War I thing, but it actually
played a huge factor in the Syrian Civil War:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-
east-36961912/syria...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-
east-36961912/syria-conflict-huge-tunnel-bomb-rocks-aleppo)

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otras
Not directly related to the content, but as a frontend engineer, I'm always
curious about the decisions that go into making a complicated web page.

In this case, my devtools reports the following as I load the page with uBlock
on with good internet:

> 60 requests | 71.3 MB transferred | Finish: 13.63s | DOMContentLoaded: 1.33
> s

Sorting by size shows that it's largely the background images taking up most
of the load, with the background header/mountain picture [0] making up 11.8MB
of the load. On a similar note, clicking into the tab from a different tab
makes Chrome freeze for ~1s on my 2017 MacbookPro. Not quite the most user-
friendly experience!

[0]
[https://www.subtchallenge.com/img/header/SubT_Header_Mountai...](https://www.subtchallenge.com/img/header/SubT_Header_Mountain2.png)

~~~
microcolonel
Yeah, nearly 12MB for a single hero image is kinda silly.

Added: One trick I have used for large photographic cutouts is to use svg for
the mask, and either embed or reference the lossy image (jpg) from there (gzip
settings to undo the expansion factor of base64 are not too slow, so sometimes
embedding is okay).

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evo_9
FYI - I had to turn off UBlock for this site to load.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
Loaded fine for me, though it did take a bit to get going.

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larrydag
Was this challenge specifically made for the Boring Company? Not that I'm
being all conspiracy theory.

~~~
luma
Not at all, the challenge isn't about digging tunnels, rather operating in an
existing subterranean environment.

