> This idea [buying all combinations] struck Nettles as immensely unfair.
I don't understand why it's seen as unfair, seems like fair game to me?
Edit: Reading further on, it seems this story is more about a person unhealthily obsessed by the Texas lottery than the lottery itself:
> In 2014, Nettles told the Texas Tribune that she was spending fourteen to sixteen hours a day keeping tabs on the lottery.
When I read the title, I thought this was about the Scheme programming language, and how maybe a bug in the garbage collector or something may have broken the lottery.
Damn, I need to get out more, guys.
Related:
Texas Lottery Director Resigns Amid Scrutiny of Rigged 2023 Draw - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43787172 - April 2025 (3 comments)
Texas Officials Invited the Rigging of the State Lottery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43743053 - April 2025 (18 comment)
A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texas Lottery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43670402 - April 2025 (12 comments)
There Was a Texas Lottery Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43269846 - Mar 2025 (273 comments)
Did someone win a $95M Texas Lottery jackpot by stacking the odds? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40135732 - April 2024 (3 comments)
> gamblers are mystics at heart
this is deeply offensive, to mystics!
> (The Houston Chronicle eventually reported that a London-based gambling syndicate had bankrolled the operation.)
> Two years later, it has become a full-blown scandal. The Texas Rangers have been called in to investigate what Dan Patrick, Texas’s lieutenant governor, has called “the biggest theft from the people of Texas in the history of Texas.”
Someone from London is robbing our taxpayers, that's not allowed. Only we should be able to rob them!
It's always interesting to read how some of these lotteries are sponsoring "math education". They officially acknowledge it's a tax on math illiteracy.