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"Applicants must pay 195,000 roubles to enter the competition"

This seems rather bizarre... ~$5500 cannot simply be a symbolic sum to deter idiots.

IMO Russians intend to make their venture profitable.

It wasn't clear to me from the article that there was any sort of time limit. Presumably a researcher could simply enter the contest once he was sure he had an exploit? The math doesn't really work out for profitability.

The deadline is August 13th, and the winner (if any) will be announced on the 20th. (According to an Helsinki Times article, but the English translation[1] doesn't have the dates)

[1]: http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/11...

Then the point stands. If a Russian researcher has an exploit on the 13th and thinks the prize is worth it, she'll enter. Why would anyone else enter? With that in mind, the proposed profit model seems unlikely.

Or probably the guy who thought of this is hoping for the odd $5500 in his bank account

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