"Swoopo" or how to make money off stupid people *update*

I only came upon a discussion of this site today. What it does is it lets you bid (2c higher than previous bid) for the chance of buying an item (TV, digital camera etc.) for a low price. But you need to pay to get the opportunity to bid at all, unlike an ordinary auction site (like eBay). Every auction also has virtually unlimited time before it expires since every bid adds a few seconds to the total auction time, basically keeping people from just popping in with a few seconds left and then spam bids and whoever has the best internet connection wins.

And believe it or not, it is a brilliant way to make money.

I remember seeing this in a swedish version a few months back and thinking to myself "there's no way they're actually losing money on any of those items". And there isn't. Let's say a TV worth 500$ goes for 200$. To reach 200$ when every 2c bid costs 20c, Swoopo will make 10,000 dollars (plus winning offer of 200$). For a 500 dollar TV.

Since I've been studying some game theory lately, there is actually a perfect example of this, the dollar bill auction. Basically, you bid on whoever gets to buy a dollar. The difference is, second place has to pay whatever he bid as well. How much do you think a dollar would go for? Apparently 3-5$. So if one person bids 5, the other one stopped at 4.95, letting you get 9.95 for your single dollar bill.

As if this wasn't enough, Swoopo has additional ways of keeping the game interesting. For one, you even get to have your own bot, basically bidding for you while you go do other things, keeping things simple (I think eBay has this as well). There are also a bonus. If you don't win anything for a week or so (didn't read very carefully), you will get a day where if you don't win anything, you will get all your bids refunded. Basically Swoopo has people who are raising the prices of every auction, because if they don't win they will get their money back and if they win they got something cheap instead.

It doesn't surprise me that people fall for these things, people do stupid things all the time. What surprises me is that it's legal. Stealing cash from retarded people is wrong, why isn't stealing digital dollars from stupid people and where do you draw the line?

*update*

Now, I hear you saying "well you being such a smarty-pants man, why don't you make a system that beats this site?". The thing is that there are basically only three ways to come out ahead of this game.

1. Have another site, where members can contact eachother and agree on which items they are going to bid on. For this to work, everyone needs to also be a member on that other site and actually tell the truth as well. And when you gain benefit from betraying other members, it turns into a prisoner's dilemma, where the only correct strategy is to betray everyone else.

2. Find some way to track every auction going on and see what prices similar items go for. Then you only ever start to bid when the item gets close to the limit you think people are willing to offer for it. Once you start bidding, you should never back down, making people stop bidding against you. If you run into someone else with the same strategy, it turnsinto a game of chicken.

3. Simply don't play. When all the alternatives are bad, you still have the option of quitting.

Remember these wise words someone has probably said before: "If you can't instantly see how much the thing you want is going to cost, it will probably cost more than buying it off someone who shows his prices.".
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People say the darndest things

While having my lunch break at work this friday, I was trying to ignore all the nonsense going on around me (as usual) and eating my food. But some things can't be ignored.

There has (not unsurprisingly) been a lot of news about Michael Jackson lately. And apparently women are supersticious. When I was eating we were seven in the lunchroom, five of which were women. All of them agreed that it was likely that MJ had risen from his grave and had been watching (and enjoying) his own funeral.

I was dumbstruck. I wanted to stand up and shout at them for being silly but couldn't bring myself to saying anything at all. I can agree that one or two of the girls at work aren't quite the brightest apples of the bunch, but everyone agreeing that MJ was important enough to get to be a ghost or something?

Now this was not a statistically significant sample or anything but if this is how "normal" people view the world, I'd rather be a nerd sceptic any day. Read More...

Guilfest

Visited Guilfest yesterday and watched Motorhead which was pretty awesome.
What I found a bit weird was the stalls selling legal "drugs". It sure was legal, but I'm not sure if it was that much drugs. Didn't notice anything, but that might have been the alcohol working as an antidote.
Among all these people, alcohol and legal "drugs" there were children running around too, what can go wrong with mixing teenagers, alcohol, drugs and music? Presumably they check IDs or something, but never saw it myself. To be fair people seemed pretty sober as there were quite a bit of families there (i.e. old people, presumably parents and similar).
And with the above paragraph I'm officially old. Get of my lawn stupid kids! (The festival is in a park really close, so it's kinda my garden) Read More...

No quitting, just rage

So the one day this week I'm not working, I'm looking forward to a nice day by the computer maybe playing some poker, maybe some World of Warcraft. But was that meant to happen? Apparently not.

My desktop apparently committed suicide and after four or five different bluescreens it doesn't even go into Windows safe mode any more.

There are very few things as frustrating as things going boink and you have no idea where to start troubleshooting. Sure, I was on the lookout for a new CPU and GPU anyway and since I've been working so much money isn't really an issue. It's just the getting home after work on tuesday, putting everything together again, installing a million different things and then hoping it will work again that bugs me.

On a more positive note, I actually managed to backup all of my mapping and python projects to four different harddrives. If none of those ever work again, you will probably see me running down the street somewhere trying to bludgeon people to death with the blunt instrument that used to be a computer. Read More...

theWAREHOUSE is kind of awesome at times

Once every full moon a real goldie like this comes along.
theWAREHOUSE web comic Read More...

Mechwarrior series getting a reboot

So yeah, the stoneage series Mechwarrior is getting a reboot, IGN have a video and an interview, havent read the interview, why? Because the game looks fucking boring.

Just go watch the video and try to tell me you liked that.

There's a reason why I like power-armors like the ones in Section 8: The power of a tank combined with the mobility of a human = awesome. If Section 8 will be good or not I have no clue, depends on how fast players move. Read More...

Chocolate = honorable death?

I dont know, but drowning in a vat of chocolate is kind of degrading...
Tasty, but degrading.

Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate [PhillyD.tv] Read More...

Pirate Bay going legal

I doubt theres anyone that doesnt know about the acquisition of Pirate Bay. Today a bit more of it came up. But something that I missed last time (or didnt understand) was that the site will work as normal, except that the copyright holders will get payed for the downloads of their products.

Its an interesting way to "combat" piracy, while not stopping it, it ensures that the companies get their fair share of money, of course not as much as they would have gotten otherwise, but its at least something.

Two questions pop up from this:
First, how will they finance this? I'm just curious in how they will run the show and make money from the site, ads are one way, but not really that effective I think.

Second, wont people start downloading MORE because of this? While I think at least some people might stop and think once before they click the download button, I think that many will now start downloading more because "they get paid if I download". While the new owners of Pirate Bay aren't actively trying to stop illegal downloads, I suspect this might actually increase it, however only slightly.

Personally I will keep with my own model of downloading.

My Pirate, My Friend [Kotaku] Read More...

Rocktober indeed

It's no secret that Tim Schafer is a minor genius, which adds some hype to his upcoming title Brutal Legend. How awesome it would be I did not know, until I saw the first 17 minutes of it. It looks so good! I don't know what it is, if it's the humour, the presentation, the music, the balls-to-the-walls awesome world, or all of the above. The need for a console grows larger yet again...
Clip after jump.

Video Games | Brutal Legend | Tim Schafer Introductory Walkthrough

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

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Kara no Kyoukai...

Kara no Kyoukai 6 DVD Release Date: July 29th
Fuck yeah!


(ゃ'∀')ﾉ All Hail Schneizel! Read More...