Astronaut Or Astronot: Nobody Won (This Week)

Another week, another round of Astronaut or Astronot, the little lottery thing where we try to give away some fairly expensive tools to a random person on hackaday.io if they have voted for The Hackaday Prize. You should vote. Go here and do that.

This week, the random hacker selected was [oscar6ojeda], but he did not vote. This means he doesn’t get a huge bench power supply. Oh well. I’ll send him a t-shirt and a few stickers. That’s fair compensation for doing nothing, right?

We’re doing the same thing next week, so go here and vote. Voting in previous rounds doesn’t count, so you’ll only win the supply if you vote for The Hackaday Prize project with the most outrageous component.

55 thoughts on “Astronaut Or Astronot: Nobody Won (This Week)

  1. I voted for the first time (I didn’t during the previous rounds). I was hoping to win something, even if it was just a t-shirt.. I truly am disappointed.

    Anyway, why not just select a winner from those who did vote? It’s like rewarding someone who took the time to vote… And now you are rewarding someone who didn’t do a thing. Absolutely nothing. Seems unfair. Perhaps this user was someone who made an account a long time ago.. Perhaps this user isn’t even an active HaD reader.

    Why not spent the money from that power supply on 60 HaD t-shirts or something?

    That being said: Congrats to those who didn’t win. Congrats to the one who didn’t do a thing and got rewarded.

    I might seem like a sourpuss here: I will never vote again.. Not because I’m sour for losing, just because this things is unfair.

    1. Salve your ill will towards the contest with the knowledge that however annoyed you may be at the unfairness of the selection process, you are not as annoyed as the HaD editors are at just how little the community cares about this contest. Great prizes, entries from the community, and repeated pleas, but it’ll always be difficult to make nerds give a shit about a popularity contest.

  2. I think the main point here is to make the contest fun and “enticing” rather than super fair.
    I like the idea of eventually getting a random user frustrated by being selected but NOT winning the prize because he/she hadn’t voted …:)

    Dan

    1. Some people never have luck. I have never won a thing.. Not even a lousy t-shirt. And I entered a lot of contests, lotteries, …. online and offline.

      Is there a difference between fair and “super fair”? Fair or not fair. That’s it.

        1. Lol give me some time to answer, I do live in another time zone. Thanks Brian (I really mean it) but I’ll pass.

          I thought about this before. Are there any HaD shirts for sale? Has that been done before? Perhaps a lot of people might buy them……..

      1. I once won a basketball from a box of Wheaties.
        I don’t play basketball.

        And I lived in a foreign country (APO) so it took like 3 months to show up.
        Bounced it around for a few minutes and then went back to LEGOs.

          1. @tekkineet: I doubt we will ever know the odds.
            I am curious to hear/read the number of people that actually voted.

            Anyway I will stop commenting now… I don’t want to be banned or anything. Peace out.

  3. I understand why they do this the odds of them having to actually provide the large prize goes down significantly. All the while they get the Marketing benefits of claiming that they have a large prize. It’s just house odds(of course voting is free) so who can really complain sucks and it’s super gimmicky but that’s what marketing is all about. Their corporate now gotta remember that :P

    1. In this case, I don’t even think the house pays out 100% from its own pockets outside of shipping etc. The sponsors are in for to get exposure for their products by giving them away.

      Page hits is all this is about.

  4. ehh it’s not a matter of fair. It’s marketing and you have to remember HaD is corporate now :P. When you get to claim a large prize but reduce your odds of actually paying out said prize then the house wins. I’m not faulting them for it because it’s not like voting costs us anything. Though I do feel it’s incredibly gimmicky and makes me less likely to participate based off their current marketing strategy. Keep you heads up guys it’s just free swag. I am sure there will be plenty more.

  5. The point of this contest stuff is to create page hits/traffic anyways…

    Like this they gegerate more hits, because ppls come back to vote, and maybe even save reward money if they select someone who did not vote.

    A very logic & very comercial contest setup.

    1. Yeah, that’s what i thought too.
      I mean, in every bigger online community where you can sign up to, there will be dead accounts. People sign up and loose interest, thats it.

      To be honest, i signed up because i was jonesing for that funky scope. Now, meh, its just a power supply, but i still try to vote. This round the question is quite strange, often enough i just refresh the vote page because they both have no fancy components at all. Now i’m just interested at the projects and i also posted a tiny bit of my hacks, just to show that i’m not a corpse, should i win something ;-)

      1. consider not just “fancy’ but unusual use of materials.. whatever. Hey you get like way more than 7 votes each round, so just blast a way.. if neither one is that interesting hit refresh.

        It is a bit like playing “hot or not” for hacks though.. kinda.. weird.

        “ohhh.. thats a sexy pcb.. yeah baby…”

    2. It wasn’t the ‘last couple times’ that I just kept doing it until I got someone who voted. I did that once, coincidently the time we gave away the scope. Then, a week later, we gave away a printer on the first try.

      I assure you, we’ll give away the supply before we’re done.

  6. The rules seem perfectly clear and fair to me. I voted but didn’t win. That’s how it goes.

    I even like the “nobody won” option rather than drawing only from eligible people. If sometimes you give away nothing then you can offer more each time. Plus as trandi said, it’s amusing to think that someone is kicking themselves right now.

    I don’t get how someone like Dave can enter a completely free competition, not win, complain, be given something anyway, complain some more, and then storm off in a huff. If it’s free and fair then what have you got to complain about?

    1. I’m with you, 0xfred… I don’t see how this is all so darn difficult to understand. The general RTFM principle applies to this contest and just about all of life. Some people have never noticed this, apparently.

    2. I wasn’t going to comment but here I go. It’s not because you think something is fair that I have to say/think it’s fair. I still think it’s not fair.

      Would you say the human race evolved from apes or that we were created by the hand of God. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong.

      You might think it’s fair, well I don’t. That’s part of a democracy: Freedom of speech. I respect your opinion, now please respect mine. Thank you.

      I think it’s not fair, even more now that I am reading that during a previous draw the mod kept click the random nr generator untill he found someone who voted. Why not this time?

      1. My definition of fairness is whether you treat one group of people the same way as the other.

        I see the rounds of audiences voting/draws as individual events. HaD is inconsistent on how they are handling the draw, but within each round at least for the audiences sort of treated similarly.

        Now on the other hand, I have said repeatedly that how HaD treat the contestants are unfair. They have selectively hand picked their favorites and show case them, but not for every contestants. Now this is treating one group differently than the other.

      2. “Why not this time?”

        hmmm let’s see. The original posting announcing the new round and the new price states; “We’re selecting a random person on hackaday.io, and if that person has voted, they win a pretty awesome bench power supply.”

        Says it all i think? Oh, and regarding that time they did go on; “Last week we tried that and no one won. This week we tried it and no one won. Then, because we’re awesome, we picked another person at random on Hackaday.io.”

        To clarify; Before they did go on until they had a winner was one week AFTER the first drawing. So maybe, perhaps, if the fairies are willing and you have voted and you recently pleased the god of Randomness then you might have a chance in the next drawing?

  7. As has been said, it’s free to vote and enter, a marketing ploy, and totally fair. also be sure to vote for TMNT(bald faced plug!!!!!)

    Really though, attitude for not winning a FREE contest…wow

  8. Brian, Your ‘so go here and vote’ link tells me that I have used up all my votes. When will they be reset?

    Also why is it assumed that I know your time zone when HAD writes things like ‘vote before 10 Am …’.

    1. > Brian, Your ‘so go here and vote’ link tells me that I have used up all my votes. When will they be reset?

      You have voted for this round. There’s nothing left to do. They’ll reset when start a new round of voting. Votes will not carry over.

      > Also why is it assumed that I know your time zone when HAD writes things like ‘vote before 10 Am …’.

      Huh? Here’s the announcement we did yesterday, and it says Eastern. The post above doesn’t even specify a time that I’ll do this again next week (which will also be 10AM Eastern).

      1. OK, now I get it. When I voted, I though I was voting for the last round but I had missed the deadline without realising.

        For ‘Eastern’ to mean something to me then I would need to know all the time zones by name rather than GMT. I am in Australia (GMT+10:00). We have an Eastern Standard Time zone. It’s actually Eastern Australian Standard Time (EAST) but it is commonly referred to as Eastern Time just as you do in the US.

        I could just look up US Eastern time. In fact everyone who visits your site could just look up Eastern time (won’t happen) OR you could just mention GMT. One of these two options is much easier than the other :p

        1. As a web developer I tried to do the IP => GMT thing. It goes like this.
          IP => Geolocation
          Geolocation => zig-zagged international border
          Geoloactaion => Named Time Zone
          Named Time Zone => annual offset
          Named Zone => another politicians decision to change it again
          Named Zone => disputed territorial ownership
          Named Zone => political border line disputes
          pick any of the above => GMT

          The answer was much simpler – use AJAX to grab the GMT offset from the local machine and throw it into a database. Manual database management Zero!

    1. +alot.

      I’m really getting fed up with this voting system. I think i understand how you would want to get the voter to choose between two entries but i’m getting the same bloody entries every single time. At one point i had a totally repeating pattern, a fivesome of entries were paired up in every possible combination, refresh after refresh. None of them deserved a vote in one way or the other.

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