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More details for Argument 1: The robots must be communicating and working together. It takes ArrowOutlet an average of 0.01 seconds before they report a new current bid winner. Let's say bidder B is the current bid winner and bidder C places a bid when 5.000 seconds remain. If, when 4.999 seconds remain, bidder D's computer asks ArrowOutlet who is the current winner, ArrowOutlet will respond B. Although ArrowOutlet has received bidder C's bid with a timestamp of 5.000 seconds, it won't be until 4.990 seconds remain before ArrowOutlet is ready to announce the new information (because computer processing takes time). If one user bids when less than 0.01 seconds remain on the clock, no other user will know about it before the clock reaches zero seconds. Everyone will see the time run out before the clock gets reset to 15 seconds with the name of the new bidder and the auction continues. If someone's computer asks ArrowOutlet at 0.005 seconds remaining, "Did anyone bid?", ArrowOutlet will respond "No, the auction is about to end.". Anyone who wants the auction to continue will need to place a bid in those final 0.01 seconds since they can not know someone else has and that the auction isn't actually going to end. In November 2011, robots placed 684,003 bids when less than 0.01 seconds remained on the clock (actually, less than 0.001 seconds remained!). In these 684,003 situations, if the robots weren't working together and communicating, they would be unaware that another robot placed a bid to prevent the auction from ending and they would want to place a bid themselves. At least 23% of the time (as demonstrated by their 2,958,519 bids) a robot will place a bid at zero seconds when an auction is about to end. But, the other robots did not place a bid in any of these 684,003 situations. This is impossible unless the robots are communicating and/or being controlled by one source.