4 ms·

Anyone know why these lotteries stopped using the traditional bingo ball machines in favour of a black box?

by upofadown 9y ago

riazrizvi 9y ago
Harder to control?
LeoPanthera 9y ago
Perhaps somewhat ironically they thought balls were easier to rig.
- indolering 9y ago
  Where did you see this? Everything I read on it made it seem like they were lazy and just didn't want to have to manually run another ball lottery.
Phlarp 9y ago
I think this is a really worthwhile question. Is there some inherent flaw with the randomness of the older style bingo ball machines? Surely the upkeep and maintenance of a few ball tumbling machines is far cheaper than software developers and datacenter costs. Even the fancier air driven ball bouncing designs seem massively less complex and easier to manage long term than a software solution.
jmharvey 9y ago
It's a cost reduction measure. Maintaining a physical machine and conducting drawings of balls takes a fair amount of labor.
tuna-piano 9y ago
It's really telling when computer experts are the ones most scared ahout electronic voting, software lotteries, etc. Even the best BitCoin experts seem to recommend burying your bitcoin key in you yard or storing it on paper at the bank.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  Absolutely. The most useful idea I've seen about how to think about this is this: 'On a network, everything is at zero distance'. So, imagine the worst people you can imagine in the whole world, sitting right there in the same room as all the things you care about. You'd probably be worried about that, right? But, the argument goes, we have all these security measures in place between those things. They're not in the same room we've built all these walls! Sure, but those walls are not impenetrable by a long shot. None of them beats simply not being in the same place. Nobody has a teleporter yet, but those layers of security you are relying on are vulnerable to a constantly evolving landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and plain old fuck-ups. This is why air gaps are still such a valuable concept. Why off-siting your backup tapes is not an outdated step but rather a pragmatic step in securing your information assets. Why keeping some systems unplugged from any network when they're running critical infrastructure is sensible. Why buring your bitcoin wallet in some secret location is not the behaviour of an off-the-wall tinfoil nutter. There are, of course, steps to be taken if you have compelling reasons to stay connected, and those steps can get you to (or close to) the same level of assurance as unplugging. But those steps are complex, require ongoing maintenance, and operate in an evolving threat landscape. Think for example: Encryption protocols that we used to consider secure. There's a simple bypass for that effort and knowledge and it's to unplug. It's a very powerful tool, and yet often ridiculed, in my opinion from positions of either ignorance or zealotry.
mafsedan 9y ago
I don't know how feasible it is, but there was an episode of "Better Call Saul" where Jimmy McGill rigged a ball-and-air bingo machine used to run games in a senior home.

Anyone know why these lotteries stopped using the traditional bingo ball machines in favour of a black box?

riazrizvi 9y ago

Harder to control?

LeoPanthera 9y ago

Perhaps somewhat ironically they thought balls were easier to rig.

indolering 9y ago
Where did you see this? Everything I read on it made it seem like they were lazy and just didn't want to have to manually run another ball lottery.

Phlarp 9y ago

I think this is a really worthwhile question. Is there some inherent flaw with the randomness of the older style bingo ball machines? Surely the upkeep and maintenance of a few ball tumbling machines is far cheaper than software developers and datacenter costs. Even the fancier air driven ball bouncing designs seem massively less complex and easier to manage long term than a software solution.

jmharvey 9y ago

It's a cost reduction measure. Maintaining a physical machine and conducting drawings of balls takes a fair amount of labor.

tuna-piano 9y ago

It's really telling when computer experts are the ones most scared ahout electronic voting, software lotteries, etc. Even the best BitCoin experts seem to recommend burying your bitcoin key in you yard or storing it on paper at the bank.

FooHentai 9y ago
Absolutely. The most useful idea I've seen about how to think about this is this: 'On a network, everything is at zero distance'. So, imagine the worst people you can imagine in the whole world, sitting right there in the same room as all the things you care about. You'd probably be worried about that, right? But, the argument goes, we have all these security measures in place between those things. They're not in the same room we've built all these walls! Sure, but those walls are not impenetrable by a long shot. None of them beats simply not being in the same place. Nobody has a teleporter yet, but those layers of security you are relying on are vulnerable to a constantly evolving landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and plain old fuck-ups. This is why air gaps are still such a valuable concept. Why off-siting your backup tapes is not an outdated step but rather a pragmatic step in securing your information assets. Why keeping some systems unplugged from any network when they're running critical infrastructure is sensible. Why buring your bitcoin wallet in some secret location is not the behaviour of an off-the-wall tinfoil nutter. There are, of course, steps to be taken if you have compelling reasons to stay connected, and those steps can get you to (or close to) the same level of assurance as unplugging. But those steps are complex, require ongoing maintenance, and operate in an evolving threat landscape. Think for example: Encryption protocols that we used to consider secure. There's a simple bypass for that effort and knowledge and it's to unplug. It's a very powerful tool, and yet often ridiculed, in my opinion from positions of either ignorance or zealotry.

mafsedan 9y ago

I don't know how feasible it is, but there was an episode of "Better Call Saul" where Jimmy McGill rigged a ball-and-air bingo machine used to run games in a senior home.