So it's two days of work for a chance at two days of pay.
Eh, I think of this hobby more like a video game — fun to play, even if you don't win (but more fun if you do).
How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
181–190 of 229 posts
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#182Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#183What people don’t realise is that the true competition he was trying to enter, was to get on HN by following the correct formula of including the keywords AI, maths, an amount of money, and a novel item (WD-40).
There's no prize quite like internet points
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm somewhat skeptical of this amount of validation. There's a solid educational consensus on how to become the best at something: do it a lot. If your goal is to winning contests, you should really prioritize cranking through them: getting practice at getting better. Don't try to make a masterpiece. Instead focus on becoming fast at creating entries, doing them according to the rules, and sending them off. Like thos…
I got pretty good at "Makers Competitions" in my University years, to the point where my technical peak wasn't when winning a NASA competition, but ~2 years later when we released a technical product within a weekend in another competition. I remember wrapping up the competition, winning all the prices we could win except one (1st place, and "best of" for 3 out of 4 categories), and the feeling that we had demolished…
And this is, essentially, being a manager. And/or founder. Which is incredibly valuable, albeit often hated by many engineers.
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#185[flagged]
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#186Is it common for contests to post all the entries before the contest is over? Even if they do, why wouldn't smart competitors enter at the last minute in order to prevent their competitors from benefiting from their work?
The main point of this article is that most competitors are not that competitive (for some reason).
Or that artists aren’t very compliant with direction.
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, and this is probably the important bit, sometimes a poor lubricant is worse than no lubricant, and its really important to understand when something like WD-40 should be used and when it absolutely should not. Let me explain. I ride motorbikes. You don't want to be using WD-40 on the chain as it will strip it of any existing lubricant and dry it out, which as you can imagine, is bad. However, it's actually rea…
> You don't want to be using WD-40 on the chain as it will strip it of any existing lubricant and dry it out, which as you can imagine, is bad. However, it's actually really useful for cleaning parts of the bike that have been covered in gunk and grease. If you asked me to name the part of a bike most likely to be covered in gunk and grease, I'd say the chain. ;p
I think their point was ‘and then use a proper chain lube on the chain or you’ll regret it very quickly’.
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#188This is awesome!
Is there somewhere that contests like these are tracked?
Would be awesome to browse.
Re: How I won $2,750 using JavaScript, AI, and a can of WD-40
#189This is awesome! Is there somewhere that contests like these are tracked? Would be awesome to browse.
It's covered a bit at the bottom of the article.
Where do you find these exceedingly winnable contests?
Sorry, that’s a trade secret — but it’s not any of the standard various contest aggregators out there.