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I was thinking this the other day - the best way to finagle the lottery now as a programmer is not to fiddle with the numbers chosen, but with the random number
by Nomentatus 8y ago
I was thinking this the other day - the best way to finagle the lottery now as a programmer is not to fiddle with the numbers chosen, but with the random number generator at the ticket machine (since so many people use it), so that some numbers or patterns are rare; then buy those and wait 'till they hit. I'll bet it's being done.
- samfisher83 8y agoSomeone did this he got up to 25 years in jail: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-lottery-rigging-scam-sentence-20170822-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-lottery-ri...
- Nomentatus 8y agoThanks for the link - still, this is fiddling with the RNG picking the winner NOT the quickpik RNG choices at the till as I had envisioned. Plus it's not doing that in the way I'm thinking about either (even if you decided to alter the winner-picker algorithm, which isn't necessary on my scheme.) "predictable numbers only on certain days" is not subtle. (I had known of this or a similar case when I wrote.) What I'm thinking of is much less traceable - just an RNG function that happens to leave say, 10% of the numbers as quite rare. There are easy ways to do this that can plausibly explained as mere programming errors. (Meaning you won't be convicted, since there's no code that's definitely tampered with, that couldn't possibly be there unless someone had the intention of cheating. Just a logic error.) You or your confederates buy tickets with those rare numbers, with a very positive ROI, until you're rich. Takes a while. Putting this on the QuickPic machine at the till means most customers will be competing for common numbers, so you can scoop up the rare ones.