Adafruit's Cheekmate gets to the bottom (ahem) of chess cheating controversy:
The Internet has been abuzz for weeks about a particularly juicy chess cheating controversy that erupted last month. The reigning chess world champion, Magnus Carlsen, lost in the third round to a 19-year-old upstart, Hans Niemann, in what was widely considered to be a shocking upset. Carlsen withdrew from the tournament the next day, and his cryptic comments on Twitter fueled rampant speculation that Niemann had cheated. The fact that Niemann admitted to cheating in online chess matches didn't help his case, but he steadfastly insisted he never cheated in over-the-board games.
The fierce debate eventually produced a bizarre viral conspiracy theory that Niemann had used anal beads to receive coded messages during the match. But would that even be possible? The folks at Adafruit Industries were sufficiently intrigued to put the theory to the test—you know, just to get to the bottom of the matter. The result is a prototype device called Cheekmate—because the Adafruit team rightfully loves their punny innuendoes—complete with a step-by-step guide for those who might want to build their own prototype.
This device, Adafruit insists, is not for actual cheating: "That would be asinine... in brief, a stain on the sport, but to record for posterior whether this sort of backdoor intrusion is even plausible or just an Internet myth." Lacking any willing human volunteers to test the prototype, they ended up embedding Cheekmate in a big, juicy slab of pork butt.
[...] Enter Adafruit, which naturally designed the Cheekmate prototype around the company's own products, assuming a one-way communication with an accomplice for testing the core idea. (The project also requires a soldering iron.) That includes an Adafruit QT Py ESP32-S2 with built-in Wi-Fi, capable of communicating with any mobile hotspot—like a cell phone with Wi-Fi tethering capability, presumably carried by the cheater's accomplice.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2022, @06:17PM
Somebody in Washington, D.C. now has a set of anal beads inserted? Biden? Pelosi? AOC? Probably AOC, all the rest of them are salted, dried, and dehydrated.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday October 08 2022, @06:47PM (1 child)
I suspect what they lacked is a human volunteer willing to openly report on the testing. They could have as many volunteers as they wanted by opening a Grindr account and sending a quick message way faster than it took them to pay the local butcher a visit.
(Score: 0, Troll) by wisnoskij on Saturday October 08 2022, @07:45PM
But the pork roast might be more expensive, but it will not give you monkey pox.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @08:06PM (2 children)
I suppose this is just related, not a complete duplicate: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/10/06/1225234 [soylentnews.org]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday October 08 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)
he was apparently detected cheating online, as his browser tab was not the only thing he was using on his screen
the adafruit device is for cheating at a face-to-face tournament.. or possibly for contacting someone in a noisy nightclub..they need to see if they can get someone who knows Morse code to test it.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 10 2022, @03:04PM
Most Hams have more brains than that.
https://strykerradios.com/why-amateur-radio-operators-are-also-called-hams/ [strykerradios.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 08 2022, @10:23PM (3 children)
The anal beads idea strikes me as impractically unworkable. It's the sort of suggestion that seems more intended to score points for bawdiness and grossness than seriousness.
If cheating occurred, what I think far more likely is a line of sight method. Have a camera view the playing board from some hidden location as far away as possible while still being able to make out the position, transmit this info to the chess engine of choice, then have it display suggestions in some way that only the cheater will be able to see it. Maybe some kind of IR or UV display positioned well behind the other player. The cheater then wears special glasses to see this display that no one else can. Heck, blue light blocking eyeglass lenses are hot right now, perhaps what could be used is an LED display using shades of blue too close to one another to be distinguished, unless wearing such a pair of glasses. It might be possible to rig everything up without any help, but a confederate sure would make all that a lot easier. Wouldn't have to risk being seen in odd places or doing odd looking things.
Many other methods are possible. To transmit the suggestions to the cheater, an audio method may work better. Maybe he has a filling that can receive radio transmissions. Or maybe just a plain old hearing aid (but this would look suspicious, why would a 19 year old need a hearing aid?) Or, maybe some innocent seeming sound, like tapping, in Morse code, heard by the whole room, but without anyone else realizing its significance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Saturday October 08 2022, @11:03PM
I needed a hearing aid since I was 5 - bad antibiotics shot. I never actually got it, but learned to read lips. Not perfectly and pure unconsciously. It became an issue for me only during covid when everybody were in masks.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 08 2022, @11:57PM
Years back someone made up a (fake) story about "toothing" using Bluetooth short range communication to hook up with nearby people with ... compatible interests. Of course the story centered on sex hookups, and it ran for many months before being widely denounced as fake, but of course by that time several people had actually written apps, making life imitate art.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @02:11AM
That's known as "doing the Houston [wikipedia.org]." Coincidentally, that same team also was under suspicion for using wireless buzzers under their jerseys [larrybrownsports.com] too. Maybe they didn't find them because the buzzers were actually located somewhere else . . .