5 ms·

Probably the best way to win is to deploy a couple dozen red balloons of your own...

• kakooljay 17y ago
  That's hilarious :) YC asks applicants to describe a time they hacked something to their advantage.. wouldn't that be a great answer?
• NathanKP 17y ago
  That certainly wouldn't be ethical (as it would cause havoc for the other contestants) and it would be ludicrous (as DARPA would obviously know that your balloons were fake).
  • nl 17y ago
    Putting up another 89 red balloons would be nice anti-war protest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons :) Also, making the contest more hostile would arguably be very ethical given that DARPA are funding it. It would presumably provide a better research outcome if the winning method had to deal with bad actors. It wouldn't be ludicrous, because it would force your competitors to deal with the problem of fake balloon, presumably increasing your chances of winning (assuming you have some method for determining what is a real balloon and what is a fake one)
  • briansmith 17y ago
    The fake balloons would be to trick your competitors into giving up early.
• nl 17y ago
  Deploy a few of your own, and burst a few of the original ones (after recoding the location!)