As I’m sure many of you already now, today is January 7th. While that might not have any real significance normally, today this means that our favorite hobby supplier, SparkFun, is giving away up to $100,000 of electronic goodness. We know we have our shopping carts filled to the brim, and we’re sure that most of you do too. With the start of Free Day being roughly 10 minutes away, we recommend that everyone man their shopping carts…. This should be interesting…
I know people who are buying Arduinos, just to spite the normal commenters here.
That is, if the site stays up long enough for them to punch check-out.
cant even get onto the site… )o:
What the hell is wrong with you hack-a-day? Why on earth would you ruin free day at SparkFun by announcing it right before it happens?
What were you thinking? Every Joe Blow who doesn’t know an arduino from a lawn gnome will try to get on just because there is free stuff.
It seems the spark has gone out. What are the odds that nobody manages to buy anything today?
I haven’t been able to pull up the site for like 2 days now….
ahaha the sites already crashed
Site is down as of 5 minute prior to sale
I can’t even connect to the website (15 minutes before up to 5 minutes before go time). I really think it was great of sparkfun to do this, but since only 1000 people get in on the deal, most of us are spending today crying through our shattered free servo dreams.
Well I think Sparkfun is already down, lol. The site keeps timing out and not loading.
fuck everyone who comes just for free shit
I have been waiting patiently since the day they announced free day and gone through many different shopping cart combination. I got a good night sleep and set everything up at home so I could have all the bandwidth to visit sparkfun ninja style and instead I am at hackaday because they are down.
the site has been slow all morning, since like 0400 EST too… I haven’t been able to get to my shopping cart in hours.
For the last couple of hours their website is either down for upgrade or does not respond
Looks like their servers got hit way too hard…
The internet is going to blow up in one minute. there are 1864 people in the sparkfun irc channel.
@greensasquatch
hackaday did a post in november, before any other news site afaict. also, shut up :P
I guess no one gets the $200 for correctly guessing the time that it ended. Ended before it even started.
Hmm… T-1min and sites down maybe I dont need an arduino that bad :(
This SUX!
I’ve not been able to pull up the site for a half hour now. eventually the main page loaded, but no luck since.
hmm its like when theres a bag-o-crap on woot..
its all broke now
Their site is timing out as though they were being DDoS’d by half the world, simultaneously…
Here’s hoping hitting F5 enough will get me through…
I got in last night, but not today.
Oh well, I guess it makes the $100K more of a gamble … you’ve got to be on-line when the site comes back up!
(I won’t be greedy … ~70 for an Arduino starter kit.)
Maybe this was there plan, shut down the site till halfway through the day
Grid locked….Maybe if we all keep flooding the site long enough, no one will be able to buy anything. Then maybe they will reschedule the deal! Wishful thinking.
I got it to work 1 minute before starting, takes forever!!!!!! Only 1,000 people will get $100 of free stuff. I am guessing that there are more than 1,000 people logged into the site right now.
Good luck, looks like their new severs can’t take the heat.
Anyone who has been to the site, know the total by now?
Ive been on there since last night but i cant move back or forward lol.. i have 3 machines trying =/
I refreshed and got 2 :) Anybody want one?
Yes please
You should know what its like trying to access the spark from south africa! this site has been unreachable for me for over an hour.. I even filled my cart up ready to go 3 days ago! oh well.. I tried.
This is a GREAT hack. Ahem*cough*… How to DDOS a website. 1)Offer free shit at your selected time. 2)Sit back and laugh. 3)???? 4)PROFIT! Oh wait….nevermind, noone can get to your site, and that’s because you were giving it all away. Honestly , I just wanted to see how long it took.
For some reason I thought I’d actually get one. I’ll check back in an hour.
RE: nave.notnilc
And anyone who actually needed anything on the site would have written the date in their calendar and come back for it.
Posting right before the giveaway is just going to get a bunch of idiots who want free stuff.
Don’t be a hack-a-day apologist.
The Site was up one hour ago , that it vanished …
any one have the irc address off hand?
had it up and realised i hadnt updated my shipping info. D’oh.
the bar is at 80$
@greensasquatch
nobody who’s just trying to set up a cart now has a chance in hell of getting anything.
The site is in constant timeout. Sparkfail.
Got through, $180 given away so far.
Sparkfail LOL
http://webchat.freenode.net/
#sparkfun
So only 1000 people will be given free stuff, IF those 1000 people have their chopping carts filled to the brim/overfilled. Other wise they will give out 100,000$ worth of stuff.
$75.90 given away so far. someone got through.
my cart is working now, so I may get through… we’ll see.
Shows 175.90 given away, So im guessing 2 people have made it.
Yeah, what’s fascinating here is that it said only $175 had been claimed so far. I think nobody’s getting in, period. I suppose this means it’s going to be the incredibly diligent/determined people that stick around for a few hours who actually get the loot.
375.85 given away so far
Oop. Well, now it looks like that number is swiftly rising.
@nave.notnilc
It’s true, but they sure muck it up for the rest of us.