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Darpa's latest challenge: Locate these 10 balloons

9 points by njrc 17y ago

markbnine 17y ago
Our tax money at work. . .
- RevRal 17y ago
  It sounds to me like it could be valuable. On the surface, we'll see how long it takes. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was done in a couple of days. And it will also cause a lot of people to say: "wow, the power of the internet." It is probably a good way to gauge the potential influence of social networking on the internet. Which is a force that continues to grow, and we should do what we can to understand it. I'm interested to see how it'll be accomplished. It might pinpoint the best use of networking sites for promotion.
  - mad44 17y ago
    I bet it will only take a day to solve this. Several groups are planning to data mine using Twitter to solve the problem.
- joshu 17y ago
  Actually, it's a pretty interesting problem: what are the techniques by which an ad-hoc group of people can self-organize or cooperate? It's an aggressively large problem (anywhere in the US?) that seems quite exciting; they'll probably learn a hell of a lot.
storborg 17y ago
Here is an example attempt to solve this: http://www.redballoonrace.com/ http://www.redballoonrace.com/
joeld42 17y ago
They should have used 99 balloons.
pwnstigator 17y ago
What I'm curious about is if there will be any fake-out attempts. How hard is it to take a convincing picture of such a balloon in a cornfield (or even put one there) and claim phony coordinates?
- rudyfink 17y ago
  That does not seem to be strictly foreclosed by the rules ( http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx ), but there is this nice catch all clause which I suspect would come into play ("DARPA reserves the right to disqualify a participant whose actions are deemed to violate the spirit of the competition for any reason, including but not limited to, the violation of laws or regulations in the course of participation."). I do note that "[b]alloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives." I suppose you'd want to make sure to hard check the balloons and verify the representative part.

9 points by njrc 17y ago

markbnine 17y ago

Our tax money at work. . .

RevRal 17y ago
It sounds to me like it could be valuable. On the surface, we'll see how long it takes. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was done in a couple of days. And it will also cause a lot of people to say: "wow, the power of the internet." It is probably a good way to gauge the potential influence of social networking on the internet. Which is a force that continues to grow, and we should do what we can to understand it. I'm interested to see how it'll be accomplished. It might pinpoint the best use of networking sites for promotion.
- mad44 17y ago
  I bet it will only take a day to solve this. Several groups are planning to data mine using Twitter to solve the problem.
joshu 17y ago
Actually, it's a pretty interesting problem: what are the techniques by which an ad-hoc group of people can self-organize or cooperate? It's an aggressively large problem (anywhere in the US?) that seems quite exciting; they'll probably learn a hell of a lot.

storborg 17y ago

Here is an example attempt to solve this: http://www.redballoonrace.com/ http://www.redballoonrace.com/

joeld42 17y ago

They should have used 99 balloons.

pwnstigator 17y ago

What I'm curious about is if there will be any fake-out attempts. How hard is it to take a convincing picture of such a balloon in a cornfield (or even put one there) and claim phony coordinates?

rudyfink 17y ago
That does not seem to be strictly foreclosed by the rules ( http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/rules.aspx ), but there is this nice catch all clause which I suspect would come into play ("DARPA reserves the right to disqualify a participant whose actions are deemed to violate the spirit of the competition for any reason, including but not limited to, the violation of laws or regulations in the course of participation."). I do note that "[b]alloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives." I suppose you'd want to make sure to hard check the balloons and verify the representative part.