Foreword. If you don’t know what lockerz is, my rant won’t help you here. go read somewhere else.
impression of lockerz
So there is this site lockerz, which some people call scam, and I cannot say I disagree. As I see it, their methods for giving away free prizes are completely disrespectful to their users. Partially because in case user wants to take prize for his honestly earned ptz (thru redemption or 24/7), he’s taken into arena to compete with bots.
If they catch bot users post-factum, after the prize has been claimed by the bot, well the question arises where that prize goes. And why they only allow to place bid with just 5ptz increment? Is there any human being out there who enjoys playing according to such ridiculous rules?
Anyway, that’s not my topic. The topic is that after I’ve realized I’m competing against bots in 24/7, being software engineer, I decided to dedicate one day to think of something that could even the chances to compete with bot. That is: create one on my own.
Recaptcha
Lockerz uses reCAPCHA capcha service in their 24/7. And so, user has to enter captcha provided by this service to increment bid by this measly amount of 5ptz, and therefore prove that he is no bot. And yet, the fastest one wins, and has his bid placed while the others are left with a message “you’ve been outbid” and their wasted efforts entering captcha.
We assume automatic recaptcha solver is intractable. Whas is left? Human. One may use human workforce, like decaptcher service. Or, can spend little of his effort and enter some captchas by himself. Captchas provided by reCaptcha have expiration time (usually a few minutes), and (of course) lockerz doesn’t track how many captchas to be solved user has requested. So it must be clear now. We can just “presolve” some captchas, say 10, few minutes before auction ends, and that’s it, we’re in a good position to compete against other bots.
who wins?
Noone, but atleast I no longer feel being treated like a fool. It’s always unpleasant to realize you were not fully aware of game rules. So know the rules, dear reader, before you start playing the game seriously, and evaluate your strengths over your opponents. I was lucky in this regard.
