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Fascinating stuff, not at all what I was expecting. Two things come to mind reading this. 1.) The crowdsourced and algorithmic solutions seem to be framed in c

Fascinating stuff, not at all what I was expecting. Two things come to mind reading this. 1.) The crowdsourced and algorithmic solutions seem to be framed in contrast if not exclusive to each other here. I wonder if combining the two couldn't have helped avoid this: >'However, the crowd was hopeless against a determined attacker. Before the first attack, our progress on the fourth puzzle had combined 39,299 moves by 342 users over more than 38 hours. Destroying all this progress required just 416 moves by one attacker in about an hour.' I'm wondering if it's easier to create a 'bouncer' algorithm that detects and blocks/reverts aberrant behavior than to solve the core puzzle itself. If that problem is in fact easier - identifying 'hurtful' or unusual moves, could addressing it help the core solution by helping avoid non-malicious 'back sliding' too? (I have no clue about these things.) 2.) The sort self-importance expressed by the attacker is just awful. Unlike the author, I don't see it as a concern about "how crowdsourcing puts the collective potential of humans above technology". That almost sounds noble. This impresses me as plain old envy and entitlement, an overgrown cousin to every "Why is this on HN?" or "Why is this on the front page? I submitted this before and no one voted for it." comment on HN. The whole thing is one big "should" of personal gratification.

xerophyte12932 12y ago
> The sort self-importance expressed by the attacker is just awful While I agree that instead of behaving maliciously, the other competitor should have lauded their simple yet effective solution, I can imagine the WTF he must have experienced upon discovering their site. I mean think about it, if your team has been spending god knows how long wracking your brains to come up with CV algorithms to solve this stuff, and then you realize the team in the lead isn't even using an algorithm! They are just using a huge amount of people to solve it! Now of course the right reaction to this should be to laugh wholeheartedly and ponder about how a motivated crowd can trump advanced technology. We had a similar WTF moment during Google Code jam 2011. In the qualification rounds, there was a problem Goro Sort[1] and the way the question was written, it appeared to be a very tough problem. Later we discovered that one of our friends solved it with a VERY simple algorithm: just count the number of elements out of place! and it WORKS!! The good part was, instead of being jealous, we did laugh about it and still do
Thimothy 12y ago
In my opinion, the attacker missed completely the point of the contest. Its aim wasn't to know who was the one who could come up with the most clever visual processing algorithm, but knowing which is the best way to solve that particular problem, and "Through computer-aid crowdsourcing" could very well be the best answer. I really hope he wasn't in the winning team.

xerophyte12932 12y ago

> The sort self-importance expressed by the attacker is just awful While I agree that instead of behaving maliciously, the other competitor should have lauded their simple yet effective solution, I can imagine the WTF he must have experienced upon discovering their site. I mean think about it, if your team has been spending god knows how long wracking your brains to come up with CV algorithms to solve this stuff, and then you realize the team in the lead isn't even using an algorithm! They are just using a huge amount of people to solve it! Now of course the right reaction to this should be to laugh wholeheartedly and ponder about how a motivated crowd can trump advanced technology. We had a similar WTF moment during Google Code jam 2011. In the qualification rounds, there was a problem Goro Sort[1] and the way the question was written, it appeared to be a very tough problem. Later we discovered that one of our friends solved it with a VERY simple algorithm: just count the number of elements out of place! and it WORKS!! The good part was, instead of being jealous, we did laugh about it and still do

Thimothy 12y ago

In my opinion, the attacker missed completely the point of the contest. Its aim wasn't to know who was the one who could come up with the most clever visual processing algorithm, but knowing which is the best way to solve that particular problem, and "Through computer-aid crowdsourcing" could very well be the best answer. I really hope he wasn't in the winning team.