Hacker News Reader

Comment by smelendez | Hacker News Reader

Lottery couriers are companies that will buy and scan lottery tickets for you for a fee. Most of the time, they're not actually doing much courier work. If you win a small amount, they'll cash the ticket for you and credit it to your account, and if you win a big enough amount that you have to cash it in directly with the state, they'll actually deliver you the winning ticket.

It's basically a workaround for restrictions on online lottery sales. I'm not sure how states should handle online lottery gambling—there are a lot of considerations around addiction, potential fraud, money laundering, and erosion of retailer lottery revenue and shopper base—but I don't think this is it.

View on HN

A friend is working on a system that automates scratch off tickets and uses computer vision to detect winners. Not sure what the end product is.

The Texas lottery has an app you can use to scan the tickets unique barcodes printed under the scratch off layer and find out if and how much the ticket won.

Haven't ever dug into it but the app doesn't require a login to use that function so I'm willing to bet there's an unauthenticated API endpoint that could be sniffed out (they may possibly have it documented somewhere too).

Outside of being a fun itch to scratch, using the app directly is fast enough with very little effort.

In Michigan lottery tickets have (used to?) a one letter code somewhere in the blank area that gives you the winning amount. I used to be careful not to scratch non-play areas back when my grandfather owned a store as it might reveal the winning amount. Might be useful.

it’s literally encoded into the barcode there is no api involved

It'd be better to scan the barcode that lotto machines scan to determine if it won. It's possible, but rare, to get a misprint where the ticket does not have winning symbols, but scans as a winner.

I pick up and scan any scratchers I find littered near stores. I've made a few hundred dollars over the years on misprints like that.

What are you referencing to know if its a winner? You just bring them in and ask to scan?

In the US most places have a little reader thing that scans the barcode and tells you how much you’ve won. This helps cut down on the time it takes the cashier to scan each one. You know instantly if you’re a winner, no need to look at symbols.

For a visual version of the above. Go check out Mr Beast’s video where they scratch off 1,000,000 dollars worth of scratch offs. The ending wasn’t surprising to me but may be to some.

A very common, sad sigjt in rundown areas is some old person, clearly with limited funds, standing at the lotto counter in a convenience store, just rapid fire scanning scratch-offs. And then buying more scratch offs and rapid fire scanning them, etc.

How are customers protected against sellers pre-scanning tickets to find winner? In my location, winners can only be determined by scanning the barcode, and entering a value hidden under the scratch panel.

In California, you can just scan with the app.

I don’t even play the game on the scratcher sometimes.

Ouch. What company prints your state's scratchie tickets?

The Gambl-o-Matic?

> Not sure what the end product is.

Money? :)

why.... not just give the user the ability to see it and evaluate? Why the AI?

I assume the opportunity is doing this in huge volume. Getting a cheap computer to make the initial call is faster than relying on teams of humans.

This is peak late stage capitalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com