
Show HN: Projects from “Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas” Hackathon - saaaam
http://lav.io/2014/11/stupid-projects-from-the-stupid-hackathon/
======
yogiHacks
I was at Stuipd Hackathon. I've never been to anything so unabashedly
motivated to be pointless and irreverent. Workshops included: "3d printed sex
toys", "how to be come alan ginsberg in 30 minutes", and "pissing off my
landlord".

All the projects there were so beautiful because they were liberated from the
whole motif in tech of products constantly "revolutionizing field-xyz and
solving 1000 major world problems".

If we are going to enter into a truly tech-literate, post-internet phase of
humanity, we gotta be making dumb, hilarious junk like this.

~~~
AlyssaRowan
For the uninitiated: 3D-printed sex toys actually do exist, yes. For example I
believe the infamous Dragon Dildos are 3D-printed? (I shan't link, for self-
explanatory reasons.)

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sbierwagen
The Bad Dragon sex toys I've handled aren't 3d printed. (You wouldn't expect
them to be, since 3d printer output is rigid plastic, which you don't want a
sex toy to be, and covered with fine ridges, which you really don't want a sex
toy to be.)

It's possible that the _molds_ are 3d printed, but if they are, it's using a
printer with amazing surface finish, and Bad Dragon's never said anything
about using 3d printing. Much more likely they're using conventional
manufacturing processes.

~~~
yogiHacks
I would also be concerned about the polymer used to print the toy. It would
have to be hypo-allergenic & non-toxic for sure.

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unclesaamm
This is incredible. I think a few things are worth noting:

1) these "terrible idea" hackathon projects were so much more _sexual_ than
your typical hackathon. This goes with the indications that the sex-tech space
is anathema more for market reasons (VCs want to stay family friendly) than
because sex-tech isn't fun or interesting to people. With the chance of
funding not on the table, a healthy mix of projects veered toward sex. Maybe
humor can actually be a way for a few sex-tech startups to take off. :)

2) the funniest projects all involved hardware. There's something extra-
ridiculous about juxtaposing our own bodies into these stupid projects. I
recommend anyone interested in a solid philosophical grounding in humor to
read Henri Bergson's early 20th century treatise on laughter
([http://www.templeofearth.com/books/laughter.pdf](http://www.templeofearth.com/books/laughter.pdf)).
He writes that we find use laughter as a way to draw attention to the rigid,
mortal, and physical in all of us. That is why impersonating someone's habits
is funny-- because the rigidity of their personality is made super clear. I
wonder what it says about us that strapping ipads onto people's faces makes me
laugh out loud.

~~~
anigbrowl
I found that interesting to, and straightaway noticed the high # of women
participants - in fact that made me guess it was based in NYC before reading
up on the background to the event and finding that it is indeed based there
(which I hadn't heard of before). I thought it was sexual in an assured self-
aware way rather than giggly or tacky.

I was especially struck by the egg-timer clock.

~~~
allisonburtch
It was held at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (started by Red
Burns), whose student body is 50/50 m/f, half international students and
grades are pass/fail. There's a really fun, collaborative, non-competitive
culture in the program.

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if_by_whisky
This is already over? DAMN. Now what am I going to do with my idea to build a
payment gateway on top of snapchat...

~~~
ultimatedelman
i really really hope that you didn't know what they just released today...

~~~
percentcer
What a coincidence!

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blhack
This is always my hacker's-block-breaker. If I'm stuck on something, and not
feeling particularly creative, I'll make something intentionally useless, and
funny, and it usually cheers me back up and gets me working again.

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andrewstuart
Aren't we all participating in this hackathon on a global scale except for a
very small number of us who build something people want?

~~~
paublyrne
You're saying that people's lives may not actually improved in any meaningful
way by the Tinder for flatmates mobile app I'm building?

Seriously, the science fiction world of William Gibson and so on where normal
people hack electronics for fun hasn't really emerged at all despite the tools
to do things having become cheaper and more accessible. It seems we've moved
away from that since the 1990s, as machines become more packaged and less
customisable.

Maybe we need a a new lean hack canvas that isn't focused on revenue.

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cheepin
I wish I knew about this. I wrote a file server that serves your webroot
directory over League of Legends chat. Any time you request a file that is
more than a few bytes, your chat gets flooded with base64 strings... The
extraslow web.

~~~
kybernetyk
Heh, I once wrote a piece of software that would read World of Warcraft's
memory space, scan for the chat circular buffer and then post new guild chat
messages to twitter.

At first my guild mates loved it - but then it created some guild internal
drama as some "officers" were having a rather not nice chat about other guild
members in the night and they thought they were alone.

Pretty much destroyed my guild. But at least I could finally say "What have I
done!" and mean it ;)

~~~
eat
Out of curiosity, were you an officer? The idea that private officer chat
might be sent to just any guild member's client is hilarious.

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StavrosK
Aw, I should have entered my rotary mobile phone...:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkdWQswpc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkdWQswpc8)

~~~
mitjak
That person in the video is utterly handsome. I'm sure you don't know them, so
I thought I'd point it out.

~~~
StavrosK
Haha, thanks! I mean, I'm sure they'd thank you.

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blairanderson
This looks rad.

A very similar hackathon I went to a few months back is
[http://www.comedyhackday.org/](http://www.comedyhackday.org/) They matchup
comedians and hackers to create beauty.

Easily the most fun hackathon i've ever been to/

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bbcbasic
The Stupid Font is actually very cool. I am going to use it for my blog title.
So sorry Stupid Font creator: You failed - I find your idea useful.

~~~
Bjartr
How does copyright handle a case like this?

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AlyssaRowan
Broadly: Typefaces are _not_ copyrightable. Font programs, however, are.

So that's in the clear, which may be the point of the art.

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JacobAldridge
I learnt some great definitions around creativity and innovation at a
conference I was involved with recently. To wit, "Creativity is the generation
of novel and useful ideas."

The speaker (Dr David Hall) recommended that the search for Creativity often
needs to start with generating something novel and _useless_ \- this can then
inspire the useful application to emerge. Only when we pursue the novel,
however useless, do we really open ourselves up to surprising creativity.

This Hackathon seems to fully embrace that principle, so I wouldn't be
surprised at all if many of those who participated take the germ of an idea
and develop it further into the _useful_ space.

[1] [http://jacobaldridge.com/business/3-blockages-to-
creativity-...](http://jacobaldridge.com/business/3-blockages-to-creativity-
shirlaws-conference-blog/)

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hiou
How is this different from every other Hackathon?

~~~
pconner
This one was honest

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tormeh
This is awesome. Especially the beautified intellectuals.

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softdev12
Wow. 100,000 projects submitted? With that many projects, you'd think the odds
would make it that one wasn't terrible.

~~~
cooper12
I think that was a joke. Judging from the rearview mirror video, the venue was
pretty small. The event was also hosted by a graduate program at NYU, which in
it's inception only had 20 members. While I'm sure NYC has a spare 100,000
people, I doubt such a high turnout for such a specific non-internet event.

~~~
wingerlang
It was definitely a joke.

~~~
Ichaleb
Yeah anyone who missed that.. reading between the lines it looks like a pretty
cosy event.

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dmix
Where is the "Intellectual Babes Calendar" I'd like to buy this...

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2511
Please note:This is NSFW

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dzhiurgis
This is incredibly funny.

Just today I was reading i am devloper tweets and just started wondering are
there communities for developer jokes? Reddit comes to mind, but it become too
mainstream. Anything else?

~~~
Houshalter
Well it is reddit but
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/)

~~~
dzhiurgis
How about more hacker?

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stockkid
The food bite tweet is my favorite.

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bonobo3000
Ahhhh this is beautiful :) Reminds of the days when blogs and websites were
creative absurdities and programming was a cool hobby.

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Dragonai
How regularly is the Stupid Hackathon held? Fall and spring? Georgia Tech
student here, I would seriously fly up to participate.

~~~
saaaam
We're doing it once a year in NY. We don't have a mailing list but you can
follow @stupidhackathon on Twitter for updates.

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mistercow
The rearview mirror one is actually a really cool experiment. I wonder if
eventually you'd just get used to it (although you probably wouldn't get used
to all of the neck and joint pain from trying to do things so awkwardly).

~~~
prawn
I agree.

Here's a clever promo showing people trying to live with a Rift showing them a
lagged version of reality. I laugh so hard when he tries to make a pancake.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fNp37zFn9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fNp37zFn9Q)

~~~
GrinningFool
That was funny, thanks for posting. Though I wonder what would happen for some
of the tasks (dance/exercise, for example) - if all participants had the same
lag.

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normloman
That "tweet from food" thing reminds me of Vessyl.
[https://www.myvessyl.com/](https://www.myvessyl.com/)

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mkhpalm
If they sold it, I might buy that thing that tweets my food bites. It would
also make twitter more useful / entertaining for me.

~~~
pawelk
As other commenters have expressed, even stupid ideas may lead to an actual
product: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitbite-track-and-
improve...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitbite-track-and-improve-your-
eating-habits--3)

I know this project is not related to the hackathon, but one can imagine how
it could develop from stupid idea to raising funds for a maybe-not-completely-
stupid product.

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jbaudanza
That "Focus Tools" chrome extension looks like it could potentially help me
from getting distracted. Disqualified!

~~~
cypher543
What exactly is the context of that GIF?

~~~
vbl
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8V74N64Q20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8V74N64Q20)

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sleepyhead
So it's like a normal hackathon?

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andyidsinga
kudos to the "Kim Kardashian On A Newton" team.

...thats some non-trivial archeology to get that running :)

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binarysolo
Any equivalent of this sort of a Hackathon in the SF Bay? If not, wanna
organize one together? :)

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sirances
Really hope this type of event spreads - looks like a lot of fun.

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boomlinde
A very honest hackathon!

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androidb
DO NOT click to watch the drone delivery video. Trust me.

~~~
publicfig
Could you explain why?

~~~
icebraining
I suppose it's because of the weird footage of a birth by the end. Can't
really tell what's going on there.

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rajacombinator
Ahh unintentional hipster self-parody at its finest.

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joshu
Can someone do this in the Bay Area? I'll help.

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askinakhan
Hahaha! The Focus Tools one is great! looool

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ddeger
This Hackathon should be international :)

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thebouv
We need more Hackathons like this.

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snarkyturtle
Yeah... might want to mark this NSFW

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thejaredhooper
anddddddddddd NSFW

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kenkam
can we please have a NSFW tag

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dschiptsov
This is about systemd, I suppose?

~~~
peterwwillis
you shouldn't have gotten downvoted, this was funny!

~~~
rspeer
It was low-effort and off-topic, and you need higher standards.

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tempodox
If no-one needs stupid shit, then what do we have Facebook for?

