Hasta La Gadget!

A group of MIT students won DARPA’s $40,000 Network Challenge by being the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, red, 8-foot weather balloons at 10 fixed locations across the continental U.S. The team accomplished the goal in just less than nine hours, sorting through tons of misinformation floating around the Internet on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

The Washington Post reports that the winning team, headed by post-doc Riley Crane, set up an information-gathering pyramid that assigned each balloon an award of $4,000, the first person to spot one $2,000, and less money to people who referred the various informants down the chain. The team will donate the rest of the award money to charity.