DARPA Network Challenge | Hacker News Reader

DARPA Network Challenge

networkchallenge.darpa.mil

50 pointsjballanc26 comments

They has as well have called this "facebook vs. twitter".

For the former, start a group, and build awareness. Direct the money to a cause. Use the iphone app to post and get updates.

For twitter, post to and follow a hashtag. At least 50% of your human labor will need to be dedicated to filtering spam if the tag starts to trend.

Definitely search on either to get random people on board http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp=&q=red...

How big a fleet of drone aircraft would you need search the US in a couple hours? It'd be tens of thousands, but it might be doable for a few million bucks. I think you could fly pretty high and use large telephoto lenses and high-speed video cameras to see red dots while scanning quickly. That'd be a more interesting project than trying to enlist a lot of volunteer spotters with iPhone apps.

This sounds tailor-made for an iPhone app. Perhaps Foursquare could award a badge for finding one of the balloons.

I'm thinking the best approach might be an intelligent system to scape from Twitter/Facebook and correlate location words with "What the heck is that big balloon"-type phrases...would be difficult, but such a system could be really useful for the next major disaster.

Id just take the risk and watch for the relevant hash tags rather than filtering other keywords :)

Besides sounds like they want pretty specific lat/long.

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

That's hilarious :) YC asks applicants to describe a time they hacked something to their advantage.. wouldn't that be a great answer?

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).

Putting up another 89 red balloons would be nice anti-war protest. 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)

The fake balloons would be to trick your competitors into giving up early.

Deploy a few of your own, and burst a few of the original ones (after recoding the location!)

There are a variety of different ways to try to win this competition but I'm sure most of them leverage, in one way or another, having as many people as possible know about the competition. Everyone should help spread the word!

We're trying to do that on Facebook and on our website:

http://www.redballoonrace.com

Check us out and shoot me an email! Tell me what you think!

Here's a good interview question: The required accuracy is 1 arc minute, which is approximately 1.86 kms. The area of the continental United States is approximately 8080464 sq. km.

How many entries do you need to submit to guarantee one will contain the correct answer?

Supplementary question for extra credit: Let the correct answer above be X. Suggest a solution for finding the earliest correct answer from 10X entries.

a.k.a. the biggest prisoner's dilemma competition yet.

We've got a strong team that's going to give all the money to charity (Red Cross). If you'd like to help, report your balloon sightings to http://www.ispyaredballoon.com/ or at facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372

From the rules.

Eligibility: The DARPA Network Challenge is open to individuals of all ages irrespective of nationality or residency.

Prizes: The winner must provide a U.S. taxpayer identification number (e.g. a social security number) to receive the cash prize.

So you can participate no matter who or where you are, but you can only win the prize if you live(d) in the US?

Given that the balloons are in the US, I'm not sure that's much of a restriction.

Not necessary. If you assume that people is going to spread the news in twitter (or blogs, facebook, etc.) when they find a balloon, the locations is not a restriction. You just need a smart enough engine to search and find those tweets. Now, the "smart engine technology" is the difficult task (and for sure what DARPA is looking for).

Maybe that applies only if the winner is American. I bet they changed the eligibility requirements after that was written..

You can get an ITIN without being a citizen or resident of the US, it's just seldom necessary. The most common reason seems to be foreign nationals with American investments that are taxed by the IRS.

My team, DeciNena, will win because we have the best technology, the coolest name, and are cupcake-free.

We are even offering to share some of the prize money with participating team members who don't find a balloon themselves!

http://decinena.com

An HN team anyone? I'd be interested to see how far our skills could take us.

So, if it is known someone will pay $X per photo with embedded GPS coordinates taken from under the ballon, then aren't we talking about how close to $4,000 a central gatherer is willing to go?

I don't get it. Do you submit results once, or you can resubmit? Makes a lot of difference!

now THAT is a cool competition

Help the best-funded and least accountable military on the globe with some free intelligence work. How exciting.

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