It has been an unfortunate turn in the software industry, one of many as of late, that gambling is once again one of its primary engines. With the rise of almost nationwide online sports betting, not to mention prediction markets, making odds on real-world events and extracting the money of suckers is no longer limited to island nations. It is a great American pursuit, or at least, that's what modern television sports coverage leads you to believe. There has always been an uncomfortable relationship between software and the manipulation of marks. Techniques developed by casinos became a fundamental part of consumer software, while the software industry wholeheartedly embraced "gaming" as a market (the older meaning of the term here, meaning gambling). We can readily point to a couple of reasons: first, gambling is profitable, and technology is first and foremost a means of accumulation. Second, gambling is mathematical, or at least arithmetical, in nature. Most forms of gambling…
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