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

telegraph.co.uk

221–230 of 270 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Isn't cryptocurrency (for the most part) very traceable > Mostly no. If you're connected it to a banking account, or other KYC platform, maybe, But if you're (say) and American betting on it, the money almost certainly flows through one of those entities. And if you're using bitcoin the ledger is totally public, so you could track it from Coinbase (KYC) to whatever wallet the prediction market is using to accept p…

How can I, an ordinary person, track it from Coinbase (KYC) to whatever wallet the prediction market is using to accept payment (or vice versa)." in order to link a real identity to a prediction market identity? I don't have access to that. The government which has access to that is the very government making money doing this, so would not investigate itself. If your question was purely technical, the answer is maybe…

> How can I, an ordinary person, track it from Coinbase (KYC) to whatever wallet the prediction market is using to accept payment (or vice versa)." in order to link a real identity to a prediction market identity?

KYC data is certainly confidential.

> The government which has access to that is the very government making money doing this, so would not investigate itself.

I'm not obsessed with the Trump administration, so let's not make everything about them, OK? There are other governments in the world and there will be other administrations in the US in the future. I would like to talk about prediction markets in general.

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

#222

> 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…

This is an existing problem with physical world sensing. Some data models are already heavily polluted by people manipulating observations for various purposes. Most people who rely on those measurements are just collateral damage. Prediction markets provide yet another incentive. It is far more difficult to reliably get at "ground truth" than I think people imagine. Unlike computing systems, the physical world is a…

> for various purposes.

What kinds of purposes?

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

#223
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint, why are we measuring temperature on what is basically a giant radiator?

Because that wasn't what caused the problem? The reason it didn't work was some asshole intentionally tampered with the equipment, not because of where it was.

[flagged]

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are ways to robustly clean this up analytically but it is largely beyond the capabilities of current tech stacks. Can you expand on that? Even just conceptually that sounds really hard, how would you know whether you're measuring genuine (unexpected) changes in the environment rather than the result of (possibly sophisticated and coordinated) deliberate manipulation?

If you don't trust your measurements, and you shouldn't because all physical world measurements are proxies, the alternative is to find several unrelated and redundant proxies for "ground truth" and have them corroborate and correct each other. There is a lot of errors, bugs, noise, idiosyncratic behavior, etc degrading the data even ignoring intentional manipulation so you really should be doing this anyway. Stitchi…

I recommend for you to read Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society.

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

#225
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 immediatel…

Says "prediction markets were never about predicting outcomes", writes long winded tripe stating that "prediction markets exactly about predicting outcomes". Thank you Tai Lopez.

Most of the so called “deep thinking” of HN is this. I think someone called them “deepities” at one point.

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

#226

The chapter of fake-news is over folks. We just started the everything is a lie unless the opposite is proven .

lies were invented recently?

They are a human factory setting that AI is amplifying to unprecedented new levels by making engineering them in industrial scale brutally cheap.

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

#227
post #170
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 immediatel…

> "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.

Is this comment satire? Bet on things being intentionally and secretly manipulated by people you will never meet? In what direction? This just sounds like a recipe for participating in the most financially dangerous questions.

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

#228
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't trust your measurements, and you shouldn't because all physical world measurements are proxies, the alternative is to find several unrelated and redundant proxies for "ground truth" and have them corroborate and correct each other. There is a lot of errors, bugs, noise, idiosyncratic behavior, etc degrading the data even ignoring intentional manipulation so you really should be doing this anyway. Stitchi…

I recommend for you to read Feyerabend's Science in a Free Society .

I'm not sure I see the relevance?

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an existing problem with physical world sensing. Some data models are already heavily polluted by people manipulating observations for various purposes. Most people who rely on those measurements are just collateral damage. Prediction markets provide yet another incentive. It is far more difficult to reliably get at "ground truth" than I think people imagine. Unlike computing systems, the physical world is a…

> for various purposes. What kinds of purposes?

Typical ones in no particular order: fraud; obscuring crime, espionage, or covert activity; manipulating your competitors or markets; skirting regulations. Quite a lot of low-level organized crime.

A lot of it is transnational and many countries are complicit so there is relatively little you can do to stop it. If you use data at risk of this then systems have to be designed under the assumption that it is going to happen. It has spread and become worse over time.

It is a bit like FinCEN data in that if you work with it long enough you'll see a lot more going on in it than it is your job to notice.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a result we should gain stronger epistemology. How many cities base their official temperature readings on just a few sensors rather than a widespread network? Sure you might argue, maybe this was an issue with Polymarket choosing a weak source rather than the gov, but is that really true? If you question measurements like this you quickly get labeled an climate denier. IMO this is good for the world, temp mea…

You completely missed the issue. Météo-France already has tens of thousands of stations across the country, they're very obviously not basing their entire models off of one sensor in Paris CDG. The degenerate idiots from Polymarket bet on this particular sensor . There's no law preventing people from betting on single sensors. And we can't make laws preventing people from acting on the world in all the diverse ways t…

I would like to see France ban the tourist scammers before they worry about fools willingly making stupid polymarket bets on a single sensor. Also good luck banning polymarket, isn't that the one that trades using crypto?
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