The Hackaday Prize | Hacker News Reader

The Hackaday Prize

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58 pointsdbh93720 comments

A lot of people were afraid that HAD would go downhill after being taken over by SupplyFrame[0]. I find all the initiatives they've taken so far were pretty good and this space prize sums it up pretty well.

[0] http://hackaday.com/2013/07/25/hello-from-supplyframe/

I'm glad that this has become obvious. From my own experience, it is a wonderful fit. SupplyFrame doesn't shy away from Hacking (we're taking back that term to have a positive connotation). And they align with Hackaday's values of Open Hardware and Open Source Software.

The one thing that worries me about this is that since the prize is so amazing, it might encourage "cheating" if you will. If you remember the Salesforce hackathon controversy[1], the winner of the 1 million dollar prize received a good amount of criticism since the winner was a former Salesforce VP and some of the code existed before the hackathon took place.

Even if the Salesforce hackathon rules didn't strictly disallow pre-existing code, a lot of participants came away feeling bitter, as they had put a lot of effort into their code in the given timeframe and felt like they could never have won if their code was compared to code that might have existed for months or more.

I know they want to encourage people to hack on more things, and the prize should not be the goal -- it should be building cool shit and sharing/talking about it. But I know I'd be nervous investing so much energy into building something, documenting it, and polishing it if someone working on a project for a few years decides to submit it and blows everyone away. Hope that's not too negative -- I just want people to walk away from the event willing to build more cool stuff, not feeling bitter :)

[1]http://www.zdnet.com/salesforce-com-tries-to-clear-the-air-o...

I certainly understand the concern, but I think the timeframe of this contest will serve to mitigate the problem. Three months is, in my opinion, long enough for a motivated participant to come up with an entry that could easily compete with a multi-year project.

Additionally, the openness encouraged by the competition (as a judging criteria) will allow the community time to scrutinize entries and call out any that appear to be 'cheating'.

Interesting attempt to jump-start a social network. More tasteful than web ads. Good luck!

Jump start?

HaD recently launched hackaday.io, a place for people to document and discuss their hardware projects. One of the conditions of winning the prize is using hackaday.io to document everything.

Neat contest, but paying taxes on the top price (worth $200k) is going to be insane. You're looking at at least $50k in taxes, and more depending on state. I seriously doubt many people would be able to afford to win the prize.

From a YT comments: honestly, as cool as going to space sounds, id take the cash.

I don't know about that. I think I'd take the flight, then launch a kickstarter off the back of the publicity :-)

I don't understand how you could choose cash over space.

What is the space trip going to be? Sitting in a chair, looking out a porthole, seeing the sky darken to stars, maybe being allowed to get up and experience microgravity the same as various amusement park rides or the vomit commit wave flying plane, then sitting in your seat for the ride back down. Pretty worthless, honestly. About the same as a day at the amusement park with a higher chance of death. Money instead might let you start a business and change the world, or code your own thing instead of coding what a boss tells you for several years.

It's a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity though! (At least if you're not super-rich)

Same here. I don't really have enough money to be comfortable, and $200k would improve the quality of my life and allow me to do fun and interesting things for quite some time.

I don't think I'd want to be one of the first to use experimental vessels...

Haven't the carriers already been selling tickets for years? I would image you won't be the first to sit that seat. But you will still be considered an early adopter of civilian space travel!

Who's going to be first to enter and what are you going to build?

支持Hackaday！

SPACE!

Jupiter and Beyond !

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