Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots • Hacker News Board

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#101

Post by vngzs » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

asutekku wrote: post #80

petters wrote: post #63

> The number “349” was the $40,000 winning number. > Pepsi had explicitly told its vendor factories not to print this number at all. Sounds dangerous to decide the winning number in advance. Makes it easier for a vendor or someone else to cheat. But I suppose they wanted short numbers.

How else would you define there to be only two winning numbers then? If you define the winning number afterwards, there’s no way telling how many numbers of those would’ve been in circulation.

Use a CSPRNG to produce the tokens and keep a list of the outputs. Select uniformly/randomly from this list for payouts.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#102

Post by vngzs » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

arkades wrote: post #73

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #3

For everybody who was saying "Wikipedia is complete, there's nothing left to write about" yesterday, as far as I can there is not a word about this on the whole site, certainly not on the Pepsi page. Time to get to work! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Pepsi+349&ns0=1&... Edit: I stand corrected, there is a single paragraph in here. Nothing standalone/linkable though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in…

People think Wikipedia is complete??? I could add stuff in my field of specialty constantly . I just don't want to jump through all the hoops that come with being a wikipedia contributor, so I keep all my notes on a private wiki.

Indeed, Wikipedia arguably has a deletionist bias[0].

[0]: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#103

Post by arkades » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #96

rjbwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it is the wikipedia administration, moderation, and editing team that have put up such barriers who are selfish. It is selfish to expect others to jump through your hoops to contribute advanced technical knowledge out of the kindness of their hearts.

Just a reminder that you're only assuming that the information that arkades would like to add is even accurate. (No offense to them, I'm sure it is, just pointing out that the process of editing that encyclopedia is burdensome for a reason).

No offense taken. Weeding out for accuracy is a fair and important concern, and there's no reason to assume a random person on the internet is the expert they believe themselves to be.

Though I'd point out that unless wikipedia has a team of people whose expertise equals or at least vaguely approximates my own (or that of any expert that might contribute), I have to raise the question of whether that's really what they're filtering, or simply something that superficially looks like accuracy to someone unfamiliar with the material.

It also assumes that the inaccuracy of the current articles is less than the inaccuracy of articles under a hypothetical alternative moderation policy. That might be true, or it might not - chase away enough contributors and you're left with one-sided, stale information. I imagine that's fine for an article on the simpsons, but maybe not great if you're looking up leukemias.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#104

Post by projektfu » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #47

projektfu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it debuted, McDonald's "Monopoly" game was a huge deal and people would eagerly open their tickets to see if they won a big prize. If they won it was usually a small fries or another ticket, but sometimes it was some money and one person won $1M. After a while the luster wore off and it faded into the background. I'm sure it boosted sales in its first few years quite a bit but now you hardly hear about it. I'm a…

I don't think it "wore off" or "faded into the background". The operation was fraud, at least in the US & Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud

Well it didn’t start with fraud, back in ‘87.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#105

Post by austincheney » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

Having lived for some time in a third world country that has real poverty and real day to day security worries, situations like this spring to mind when people completely without optics compare their situations to those in developing nations. Yes, as insanely ignorant as that sounds it happens. People here on HN last week, as one example, were trying to compare their experiences recently protesting to the Arab Spring. People in the Arab Spring were lighting themselves on fire and protesting everyday longer than most of us have been locked down from COVID. Not the same, not even in the same universe.

The same absurd comparisons also come up when entitled people people try to talk about poverty when it’s clear they have never seen poverty in the US, much less in an economy where people earn less than $5 per day working 5x harder.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#106

Post by arkades » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

vngzs wrote: post #102

arkades wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think Wikipedia is complete??? I could add stuff in my field of specialty constantly . I just don't want to jump through all the hoops that come with being a wikipedia contributor, so I keep all my notes on a private wiki.

Indeed, Wikipedia arguably has a deletionist bias[0]. [0]: https://www.gwern.net/In-Defense-Of-Inclusionism

This is largely what's kept me away. I'm comfortable adding piles of sources and citations to pass through some sort of Wikipedia Peer Review-Lite, but if I put in the hard work of creating a repository of knowledge for free and just see it go away...

I've tried contributing once or twice, and my work was erased like marks on the beach, promptly and without explanation. That was enough to ensure I don't do it again.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#107

Post by r00fus » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #85

asutekku wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else would you define there to be only two winning numbers then? If you define the winning number afterwards, there’s no way telling how many numbers of those would’ve been in circulation.

Make the winner number outside the normal printed range.

This is so obvious - what are the downsides? I mean, it could be easily guessable that the bottlecap is valuable, ruining the surprise.

Ultimately they didn't test. Or confirm the vendor's test. It's all Pepsi's fault for a mission critical bug.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#108

Post by ivosaur » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

john-radio wrote: post #96

rjbwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it is the wikipedia administration, moderation, and editing team that have put up such barriers who are selfish. It is selfish to expect others to jump through your hoops to contribute advanced technical knowledge out of the kindness of their hearts.

Just a reminder that you're only assuming that the information that arkades would like to add is even accurate. (No offense to them, I'm sure it is, just pointing out that the process of editing that encyclopedia is burdensome for a reason).

And then you end up running into a moderator who just refuses to accept factual well-sourced additions based on their own incorrect knowledge. I'm still bitter from my last attempt to contribute.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#109

Post by netsharc » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

ponker wrote: post #54

It’s great to be powerful, you can completely fuck some shit up and walk away with a shrug. Pepsi should have been held to pay the $32 billion and if they didn’t have it, go bankrupt and become the property of the creditors.

Reading the judges' conclusions I have to wonder if Pepsi bribed some people to get away with the not guilty verdict...

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#110

Post by netsharc » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

Udik wrote: post #57

What strikes me as food for thought is the stupidity and wickedness of the riots. I understand the rage if you own one of the few winning tickets of a lottery and the organization doesn't want to pay out. But in this case they knew that it had to be a mistake, as they all had the winning ticket. Were they really thinking that Pepsi should pay $40k to each and all of them because they all possessed the same identical…

You have to imagine people in poverty and a sum that is not only poverty-ending, but probably allowing you to live in relative luxury, probably allowing you to start a business to have a better source of income. Assuming you're an American not living in a leaky tin-roofed cardboard box in 2020, sure, for you $40,000 is not that sum of money, but in early 1990's Philipphines it probably was...