Obviously, this guy has good taste. Here is a sample of the LinkedIn networking groups he belongs to:
Here are the links to the networking groups managed by Midas Oracle (“-PMs”- is the most popular, the others are to be developed):
Chris Masse is seeking business partners to create an Internet agency, an event business, and a popular news blog (fed by prediction markets, of course). If you are interested in becoming rich (or in losing your money), then hit the contact button.
Justin Wolfers has escaped the Overcoming Bias purge, it seems. Justin Wolfers’-s 4 posts (published in 2007) remain archived on what is now Robin Hanson’-s QUOTE personal blog UNQUOTE. By contrast, Eliezer Yudkowsky’-s posts written for Overcoming Bias now redirect to locations at Less Wrong.
Justin Wolfers now blogs at Freakonomics (which is under the New York Times umbrella). By comparison to Overcoming His Bias, Freakonomics is a real group blog success. Years later after his creation, Freaknomics has a high degree of participation by his co-bloggers, and some brand-new guest bloggers were recently invited. Freakonomics is a sustainable group blog which develops one unique thematic —-economics. Sorry to burst our Master Of All Universes’-s bubble, but Freakonomics is the case-in-point that debunks the hypothesis that says that “-blogs are best defined not by topic but by lead author personalities”-.
As for Midas Oracle, who cares about Chris Masse’-s personality, as long as one gets his/her prediction market dope on a daily basis?
UPDATE:
Chris, Eliezer was not “purged.” He requested to have his old posts moved to Less Wrong. No one else has made any similar request.
Eliezer was not “expelled”– he choose to move in order to build a community at Less Wrong using fancy comment karma software. The folks who wrote software for his new site also wrote the code at my new site.
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Paul Hewitt:
[…] In virtually every case, the prediction market forecast is closer to the official HP forecast than it is to the actual outcome. Perhaps these markets are better at forecasting the forecast than they are at forecasting the outcome! Looking further into the results, while most of the predictions have a smaller error than the HP official forecasts, the differences are, in most cases, quite small. For example, in Event 3, the HP forecast error was 59.549% vs. 53.333% for the prediction market. They’re both really poor forecasts. To the decision-maker, the difference between these forecasts is not material.
There were eight markets that had HP official forecasts. In four of these (50%), the forecast error was greater than 25%. Even though, only three of the prediction market forecast errors were greater than 25%, this can hardly be a ringing endorsement for the accuracy of prediction markets (at least in this study). […]
To the despair of the Nashville imbecile, Paul’-s analysis is quite similar to mine (circa February 14, 2009):
The prediction market technology is not a disruptive technology, and the social utility of the prediction markets is marginal. Number one, the aggregated information has value only for the totally uninformed people (a group that comprises those who overly obsess with prediction markets and have a narrow cultural universe). Number two, the added accuracy (if any) is minute, and, anyway, doesn’t fill up the gap between expectations and omniscience (which is how people judge forecasters). In our view, the social utility of the prediction markets lays in efficiency, not in accuracy. In complicated situations, the prediction markets integrate expectations (informed by facts and expertise) much faster than the mass media do. Their accuracy/efficiency is their uniqueness. It is their velocity that we should put to work.
Prediction markets are not a disruptive technology, but merely another means of forecasting.
Go reading Paul’-s analysis in full.
I would like to add 2 things to Paul’-s conclusion:
How To Become A Midas Oracle Author
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The Uniqueness Of Midas Oracle
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How To Join Us
#1. We are interested in recruiting you as a volunteer, if you have an interest in prediction markets (and collective intelligence). Be sure to read and understand (:-D ) the ABOUT, MISSION, CODE OF CONDUCT, and TERMS OF USE webpages. Guest blogging on Midas Oracle can help you get traffic to your website and increase its PageRank.
#2. You may either register yourself as a comment author, disclosing your full name (or not), or send your application (as a comment author or as a post/page author) to Chris Masse —-see our CONTACT page. When you register, do create your account using your first name and last name, such as “-john-doe”-. The login is at the bottom of the sidebar.
#3. Registered members of Midas Oracle will receive an e-mail newsletter once in a while —-only when important circumstances warrant. (There are e-mail options on your profile page, inside the Midas Oracle system, which allows you to opt out of mass e-mails, if you really need to.)
#4. To have your status upgraded from comment author to post/page author, contact Chris Masse.
#5. To have your name removed from Midas Oracle, send your resignation to the blog administrator (Chris Masse), and he will delete your profile from the blog database.
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How To Publish Your Ideas On Midas Oracle
– How To Publish
– How To Comment
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Today, we will look at an SEO strategy that Dee Barizo calls “indirect SEO“-.
Indirect SEO is leveraging sites that rank well on Google. Basically, you create content and optimize it for keywords. However, you don’-t place the content on your site. Instead, you find a site [Midas Oracle PR6] that ranks well on Google and have them publish it. You get traffic [and PageRank injection] by inserting a link that points back to your site in your content.
To see how this strategy works, do watch this video, which lasts only 5 minutes:
Come blogging with us on Midas Oracle.
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1. How To Join Us
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2. LinkedIn Network
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For your information, here is the listing of the co-managers of the Prediction Markets group at LinkedIn:
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– The ownership of the group could be transferred to the yet-to-be-created “-Prediction Market Institute”-, at one time in the distant future.
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Once you have joined our Prediction Markets group at LinkedIn, here’-s how to make its logo visible on your profile.
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– After you have joined our Prediction Markets group at LinkedIn, please make its logo visible on your profile. (In your listing of groups you belong to, you should read, near each one, “-change visibility”-. Click on that.)
– You are also invited to join Chris Masse’-s network at LinkedIn.
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Our Prediction Market People – (from the two networks listed just above)
– Bernd Ankenbrand (Gexid Manager)
– Paul Architzel (Counsel at Alston &- Bird)
– Maurice Balick (NewsFutures CTO)
– Pierluigi Buccioli (Entrepreneur and Betting Exchange Trader- Owner of Bookmakers Review)
– Jason Carver (Entrepreneur and Engineer)
– Yiling Chen (Professor at Harvard University)
– Jed Christiansen (Prediction Market Consultant)
– Tony Clare (Head of Strategic Initiatives at Betfair)
– Norris Clark (Vice-President of Sales at NewsFutures)
– Alexander Costakis (Managing Director of Hollywood Stock Exchange)
– Tyler Cowen (Economics Professor at George Mason University)
– Bo Cowgill (Quantitative Marketing Manager at Google)
– Eric Crampton (Senior Lecturer at University of Canterbury)
– Noam Danon (Qmarkets CEO and Founder)
– Pedro Da Cunha (Exago Markets CEO)
– John Delaney (InTrade CEO)
– Juan Manuel Ducler (Founder, BestChartsOnline.com / Trader &- Financial Consultant)
– Nigel Eccles (HudDub CEO)
– Leslie Fine (VP of Market Design at Xpree)
– Matthew Fogarty (Prediction Market Consultant – Xpree CEO and Founder)
– Lance Fortnow (Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University)
– Nick Garner (SEO / PPC / Search Manager at BetFair)
– Cedric Gaspoz (Research and Teaching Assistant at University of Lausanne)
– Michael Giberson (Energy Economist at Texas Tech University)
– Sean Glass (Founder, Chairman, Chief Strategy Officer at Pikum Holdings)
– Andrew Goldberg (Intern at Media Law Resource Center)
– Robin Hanson (Professor of Economics at George Mason University)
– Chris Hibbert (Software Architect, Project Lead at Zocalo)
– Donna Hoffman (Professor and Co-Director, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing)
– Panagiotis Ipeirotis (Assistant Professor at New York University)
– Max Keiser (Entrepreneur, Journalist, Co-Founder of the Hollywood Stock Exchange)
– Alex Kirtland (User Experience Consultant)
– Ken Kittlitz (Software Architect, Foresight Exchange, Consensus Point)
– Greg Knaddison (Developer and Sys Admin for PingVision)
– Nathan Kontny (Inkling Markets CTO)
– Kriss Monaco (Director of New Product Development at International Securities Exchange)
– Dean LeBaron (Independent Investment Management Professional)
– Heidi Levin (Director of Business Development at Inkling Markets)
– Mike Linksvayer (Vice-President of Creative Commons)
– Rory Mackay (PredictionsMarkets.com Co-Founder and Owner)
– Chris. F. Masse (Founder and President of Midas Oracle)
– Tracy Mullen (Penn State Professor of Information Technology)
– Jesper Muller-Krogstrup (Managing Director of Nosco)
– Sean Park (Founding Partner at Sixth Paradigm)
– David Pennock (Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo!)
– Daniel Reeves (Yahoo! Research Scientist)
– Michael Robb (Communications &- PR Executive at BetFair)
– Steve Roman (Financial Analyst at FXCM)
– Mark Rose (Ex-HedgeStreet Director of Product Development)
– Jason Ruspini (Financial Research Analyst, Vice President at Conquest Capital Group)
– Mike Sankowski (Product Development and Market Operations Manager at US Futures Exchange)
– Emile Servan-Schreiber (NewsFutures CEO and Co-Founder)
– Brian Shiau (The Sim Exchange CEO and Founder)
– Adam Siegel (Inkling Markets CEO and Co-Founder)
– Ashish Singal (Capital Markets Professional)
– Erik Snowberg (Assistant Professor of Economics and Political Science at California Institute of Technology)
– Brad Stewart (Reality Markets Founder)
– Brent Stinski (Media Predict CEO and Founder)
– Karim Tahawi (MyCurrency Founder)
– Jason Trost (Co-Founder of Smarkets)
– George Tziralis (Doctoral Researcher at National Technical University of Athens, Co-Founder of AskMarkets)
– Robert Wilburn (Rimdex CEO and Founder)
– Gerry Wilson (YooNew CEO and Co-Founder)
– Justin Wolfers (Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania)
– Matt Youill (Chief Technologist at Betfair)
– David Yu (BetFair CEO, Former CTO and COO of BetFair)
– Eric Zitzewitz (Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College)
– Plus, many, many more…-
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Other Prediction Market People At LinkedIn
– Russell Andersson (Chief Operating Officer, Third Ave Beach)
– Adrian Asher (Global Head of Security at BetFair)
– Henry Berg (Group Manager on Information Markets at Microsoft)
– Matt Carter (Director of the Advanced Technology Group at BetFair)
– Jonathan Cumberlege (Former Director of Registrations &- Payments at BetFair)
– Gerard Cunningham (President at BetFair USA)
– Mark Davies (Managing Director of Corporate Affairs of BetFair)
– Mike Dooley (Vice-President of Engineering at NewsFutures)
– Sean Dunbar (Former Head of Technology at Hollywood Stock Exchange)
– Mathias Entenmann (Exchange Managing Director of BetFair)
– Brian Galebach (Freelance Computer Programmer and Owner of Probability Sports)
– Carol Gebert (Former Founder at Incentive Markets)
– Christian Hellmers (Director of US Business Development of BetFair)
– David Jack (TradeFair Director)
– Richard Jaycobs (Cantor Exchange Project Leader)
– Nicholas Jenkins – Nick Jenkins – (Owner of Betcha.com)
– Ajit Kambil (Global Director at Deloitte Research)
– Alam Kasenally (Xpree CTO)
– Mike Knesevitch (Ex-InTrade Director)
– Dawn Tevekelian Keller (Director, Services Business Group &- Prediction Markets at Best Buy)
– Robin Marks (Head of Media at BetFair)
– Hunter Morris (Co-Founder of Smarkets)
– George Neumann (Professor of Economics And Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences at the University of Iowa, Co-Founder of the Iowa Electronic Markets)
– Scott Page (Professor at University of Michigan)
– Paul Pluschkell (Founder &- CEO at Spigit)
– Todd Proebsting (Director at Microsoft, Former Group Manager on Information Markets at Microsoft)
– Linda Rebrovick (Consensus Point CEO)
– Don Reynolds (Site Administrator at NewsFutures)
– Felix Salmon (Financial Journalist at Portfolio)
– Bimal Shah (Product Manager at TradeFair)
– Martin Spann (Professor at the University of Passau)
– Will Speck (Director Business Development &- Market Research at Financial Times &- FT.com)
– Martin Thompson (Engineering Director at TradeFair)
– Geoffrey Tso (Engineering Manager at Xpree)
– Andrew Twaits (Corporate and Business Affairs Director of BetFair Australia)
– Mark Wood (Head of Programme at TradeFair0
– Plus, many, many more…-
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Previously: The truth about prediction markets
Yesterday, I explained to you in great details how the attacker tried to incriminate NewsFutures by creating the illusion that the 2 websites denigrating me were webhosted by NewsFutures —-a forged Reverse IP Lookup gave this false impression. Today, I would like to investigate the hypothesis the IP addresses of the attacker.
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First ever comment from “-The Colonel”-:
Why are you so quick to assume that the sum total of that company’s employees is only those listed in the press release? Consensus Point is a vast and glowing network of neurons and axons, spanning a veritable galaxy of prediction market technology. Surely there must be artists, coders, schemers, evil geniuses, dolts, and assorted scribblers involved in such a breathtaking endeavor.
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/02/17/linda-rebrovick-consensus-point/#comment-23404
74.165.154.224
http://whois.domaintools.com/74.165.154.224
BellSouth – Nashville
Second comment from The Colonel (who, for the first time, uses the link to chrismasse.com under his byline):
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/04/google-inkling-markets-is-ranked-much-higher-than-consensus-point/#comment-23565
68.52.155.14
http://whois.domaintools.com/68.52.155.14
ComCast – Nashville
Defending the “-chief scientist”-:
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/04/the-prediction-market-consultants-who-matter-and-the-others-who-dont/#comment-23567
98.211.0.48
http://whois.domaintools.com/98.211.0.48
ComCast – Murfreesboro (a suburb of Nashville, Tennesse)
[UPDATE: The president of the company indeed lives in Murfreesboro, see the bottom of that page.]
Telling Chris Masse’-s opinion is worthless.
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/04/google-inkling-markets-is-ranked-much-higher-than-consensus-point/#comment-23583
68.52.155.14
http://whois.domaintools.com/68.52.155.14
ComCast – Nashville
His further comments (after that Niall O’-Connor has step up in the browl):
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/06/chris-f-masse-is-a-fraud/#comment-23623
67.207.137.220
http://whois.domaintools.com/67.207.137.220
BellSouth – San Diego
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NEXT: Dave, was it *you*?
NEXT: Who did it?
Dear readers,
Now is time to give you some background information about last week’-s incident. As you all know, somebody was irked by what I said about the EPM software vendors and set up, not one, but two websites denigrating moi.
#1. I don’-t care if someone makes a fool of moi. I am fair game. Plus, it gives a laughing opportunity to the Chief Economist of Midas Oracle, because it is revenge for my making fool of him when he is so wrong about the article in The Economist or else (follow the HubDub link given by Mike Linksvayer).
#2. My big concern with that attack is that it might well come from somebody I know —-and who has always had the kindest words for me (including last week). So, that person might well be a hypocrite, and my trust in him (and his prediction market company, if any) will be wiped out, if my suspicion is confirmed.
#3. My secondary concern is that that attacker (who might well be a prediction market software vendor or a disgruntled employee) tried to put the blame on NewsFutures (both a prediction market software vendor and a public prediction exchange) for the 2 websites (”-Chris F. Masse is a Fraud”-, and “-Overcoming Midas”-). Just after that the 2 websites were discovered (by one innocent reader, who simply followed the web link posted by a commenter, “-The Colonel”-), many people e-mailed me to tell that I should do a “-reverse IP lookup“- to find out who is behind…- I did…- The result was “-dev24.newsfutures.com”-. I was very surprised to see NewsFutures involved in this attack, and I sent the link to Emile Servan-Schreiber, who, first, expressed astonishment, and then forwarded the link to his CTO (Maurice Balick, some of you know him very well), who is a computer whiz and a master of “-The Internets”- —-as would say former president George W. Bush. 
It turned out that:
– NewsFutures sent a “-cease and desist”- letter to the webhost of these 2 websites. Here is a very short excerpt of the NewsFutures letter:
That IP address provides a Reverse-ARP record containing dev24.newsfutures.com. However, we own the domain newsfutures.com and we have never authorized anyone to setup this fake RARP record.
– In the meantime, following the brouhaha made on Midas Oracle when the IP address of The Colonel was revealed, the attacker cleared the RARP record during the night so that it no longer pointed to NewsFutures (the non-existent dev24.newsfutures.com address).
– There are other technical and legal developments to this case, but I am not at liberty to talk further.
– However, I would like to explain to you how it was possible to put the blame on NewsFutures…- even though Emile and his team had nothing to do with this attack.
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The Reverse IP Lookup is so easy to fudge that it’-s totally meaningless. It’-s something that prediction market people should know about, so that, in the future, they would not be fooled into drawing conclusions from this kind of “-evidence”-.
To understand how one could fraudulently make a reverse IP lookup point to a newsfutures.com domain, Emile and Maurice bought a $20 slice on the webhost where the chrismasse.com and overcomingmidas.com websites were hosted. The hosting service then lets you set the “-reverse DNS”- to any URL that you like, and within a few seconds the Reverse IP Lookup tool on iWebTools will point to the URL that you chose. As an example (and as a blink-blink sign to Mike Giberson and Mike Linksvayer), Emile and Maurice made the IP point to “-dev24.midasoracle.org”-.
Try it: http://www.iwebtool.com/reverse_ip?domain=67.23.8.251
CONCLUSION: Someone tried to incriminate NewsFutures (and fuck with our readers’- mind) by setting up these agressive websites and having the Reverse IP Lookup point to a fake NewsFutures URL.
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UPDATE:
Did the attacker try to pin it on, not just one, but *two* prediction market software vendors?
http://www.midasoracle.org/2009/03/13/did-the-attacker-try-to-pin-it-on-not-just-one-but-two-prediction-market-software-vendors/