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'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#161

Post by michaelt »

ortusdux wrote: post #113
mschuster91 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IRC, the TOS of these betting markets prohibits tampering. Good luck proving it. > IIRC, someone bet on a streaker at the super bowl, did the streaking themselves, made 6-figures on the bet, bragged about it publicly, and the market negated the bet and recovered the money. Yeah, exactly. Far easier to prove and to even get the idea to investigate that person in the first place.

The markets make their own TOS and define the burden of proof needed to overturn a bet. They don't want tampering to risk their cash cow, so I'd imagine they are going to be proactive.

I'll tell you another thing that will risk their cash cow - a reputation for not paying out when gamblers win big, because of vague and specious accusations of fraud (which the gambler denies)

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#162

Post by MattGaiser »

pavl- wrote: post #140
samrus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we used to be a high trust society where degenrate gamblers wouldnt mess with scientific equipment to rip each other off

lol, the OP is such a classic HN take. "Why doesn't society simply absorb a negative externality created by gambling and add high cost redundancy layers that are otherwise useless" - Not every problem is technical.

To be more generous, it is the action that can be taken unilaterally.

Trying to eliminate gambling has vexed many an emperor and cleric.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#164

Post by thegrim33 »

ambicapter wrote: post #9

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#165

Post by antif »

krunck wrote: post #94

Quite literally EVERYTHING around us is now subject to possible manipulation by these idiots if they think they can profit. Even the US Government has executive and legislative officials profiting from secret information they know from doing their duties. I wonder when someone who does cloud seeding will place a bet about rain at some unlikely time and place. Or the next large forest fire.

Not only is everything subject to manipulation, but it’s incentivized—with a new opportunity to capitalize on the unwitting.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#166

Post by bayindirh »

thegrim33 wrote: post #164
ambicapter wrote: post #9

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

How can you know the data is higher quality?

In my city, the airport has wildly different weather than the city center, and the data I get has no relation to what I experience, for example.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#167

Post by uoaei »

thegrim33 wrote: post #164
ambicapter wrote: post #9

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

Only if you refuse to acknowledge the deleterious effects on society from ruining any notion of trust.

Being held hostage by bad actors until you fortify your defenses seems to be a very unnecessary technical solution to an easily predicted social one.

Normalizing this only means the subterfuge becomes more subtle, not that you remove it entirely. But you preserve the incentives by not changing this system. So you're spending a lot of resources wastefully when you could just... not.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#168

Post by petcat »

thegrim33 wrote: post #164
ambicapter wrote: post #9

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

I'm guessing the point was that the data was already high quality and reliable until these legalized prediction markets introduced perverse incentives to manipulate it.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#169

Post by Ethee »

thegrim33 wrote: post #164
ambicapter wrote: post #9

> There are no indications so far that the successful punters have had to return their winnings. However, the data source for Paris’s hottest temperature has since moved to a sensor at the smaller Paris-Le Bourget airport. Here's the negative externality that no one will care about. There's no reason gamblers won't repeat this stunt, until us poor schmucks who just want an accurate temperature reading have to build a…

So the "negative" externality is that the data you value has been forced to now be higher quality/reliable? From your perspective, isn't the result a positive?

No the negative externality here is that we've derived a value directly to this data, thereby negatively incentivizing this poor behavior. To further elucidate, it effectively introduces a cat-and-mouse game for the people who actually care about the data itself, they now have to worry about nonsensical third party behavior.

Re: 'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarket bet

#170

Post by qurren »

guyzero wrote: post #2

I don't understand who is taking the other side of all these insane Polymarket bets. Is Polymarket doing it?

I've been quite successful trading weather prediction markets.

The prediction markets were never about predicting outcomes. If that's the level you are playing on, you're playing at the lowest possible level, and probably won't win.

The markets are now about properly modelling other peoples' manipulation of prediction. That's how Wall Street works as well. Companies can beat earnings and their stocks crash immediately after. It makes zero sense if you just model companies. It makes full sense if you stochastically model how an ensemble of humans behave under incentives and human-written bots behave under human-written policies.

"Hairdryer sometimes get pointed at the weather sensor" and "Government sometimes fudges jobs/CPI data" are more or less the same thing. Build it into your model. That's the level you need to play on to profit in these markets. It's not that different from how a chess engine works.

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