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Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by j-bos on Thursday April 23, 2026 @01:59PM (#47879052)
But why are they only using one sensor?
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by samrus on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:00PM (#47879077)
Because we used to be a high trust society where degenrate gamblers wouldnt mess with scientific equipment to rip each other off
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by j-bos on Thursday April 23, 2026 @03:31PM (#47880526)
I hear what you're saying man, but honestly it's a sensor. Sensors can fail all the time even without deliberate tampering. It doesn't seem to really make sense to have a single one in a single location. Besides for clarity, my question was more why was the market referenced on a single sensor rather than on multiple sensors?
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by slackfan on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:28PM (#47879529)
Counterpoint, why are we measuring temperature on what is basically a giant radiator?
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by dymk on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:29PM (#47879543)
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.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by slackfan on Thursday April 23, 2026 @06:11PM (#47882808)
Counterpoint - that thermometer is used for important temperature & climate data.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by gorjusborg on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:39PM (#47879720)
Counter-counterpoint, why are people wagering on an airport thermometer measurement?
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by wcfields on Thursday April 23, 2026 @03:22PM (#47880384)
It's a catch-22: I already gambled the coin I was going to use for the heads-or-tails bet.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by pavl- on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:30PM (#47879555)
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.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by MattGaiser on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:41PM (#47879757)
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 Polymarke... by jrm4 on Thursday April 23, 2026 @04:34PM (#47881509)
I'm sorry, what is this "high trust" society of which you speak?
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by belorn on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:20PM (#47879385)
I am a bit surprised by that for a scientific application where you want high accuracy reading. Temperature sensors has a error margin, and I think they can also drift a bit.

In a bit of expensive equipment I own it happens to have 4 temperature and pressure sensors, located in two different locations on the unit. All of them generally disagree with each other on the exact temperature by around 0.1 C, which is fine for my use of it.

Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by Analemma_ on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:03PM (#47879110)
Why didn't you put two locks on your door? Clearly you deserved to get burgled if you only used one.

Building Byzantine fault tolerance into absolutely everything is expensive, and makes everything we do and buy more expensive. It would be better and cheaper to rely on social trust, if that's possible-- and it was possible before these gambling sites. Prediction markets are burning social trust as fuel to make profit, they should be heavily taxed, the way polluters are taxed, as destroyers of the commons.

Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by jgeada on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:11PM (#47879244)
Prediction markets and all the market manipulation are the symptom, not the cause. Our society used to have real consequences for breaching public trust, but with our mere decades old "money is speech" legal system, there have not been any consequences for moneyed interest in quite a while. And as long as there are no consequences, they keep trying more and more egregious violations of public trust to establish where the new red line (if any) actually are.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by pocksuppet on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:47PM (#47879859)
Money is speech - but speech isn't speech. What's the latest thing a US citizen said in the US that got them arrested? They said in a private WhatsApp group that Benjamin Netanyahu should come and bomb their school to get them out of an exam. Benjamin Netanyahu was not in the group chat, but they got arrested anyway.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by dessimus on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:28PM (#47879527)
>Why didn't you put two locks on your door? Clearly you deserved to get burgled if you only used one.

I can reasonably test that the bolt is in a locked position every time I close the door and turn handle on the lock. But a single remote sensor could have malfunctioned or simply be out of calibration a few degrees.

If the actual temperature at the airport is important to any set of users enough so that the difference between it being 18 or 22 deg C is relevant, one should expect that there be at least 3 sensors (much like clocks) and assuming variances between the 3 sensors are within tolerance an average of the 3 temperatures is taken.

Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by drtz on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:56PM (#47880012)
> If the actual temperature at the airport is important to any set of users enough so that the difference between it being 18 or 22 deg C is relevant, one should expect that there be at least 3 sensors

Three sensors doesn't solve the problem. Manipulating becomes marginally more difficult with three sensors, but it's still very possible, and with enough monetary incentive it's still even likely that it happens again.

So why not 5 sensors? How about 10?

And what about more consequential issues like the toppling of governments or military blockades where true redundancy is impossible and people are actually harmed?

Is there not a point where you start to blame the incentives that are being chased?

Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by sixothree on Thursday April 23, 2026 @02:47PM (#47879874)
It's not like there aren't literally hundreds of sensors across the city.
Re:'Hairdryer used to trick weather sensor' to win Polymarke... by dzhiurgis on Friday April 24, 2026 @04:09AM (#47887188)
Probably would make sense for polymarket, but otherwise you get things like “mothers on average have 1.9 babies”