Show HN: Projects from “Stupid Shit No One Needs and Terrible Ideas” Hackathon
lav.io
lav.io
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.
I shan't link
I am certainly not a HN 'veteran,' but I've never seen censorship on here. Is there some unspoken rule that these comments can't have sexual content?
Yes. Also, no jokes.
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.
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). 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.
I was especially struck by the egg-timer clock.
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.
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 ;)
A very similar hackathon I went to a few months back is http://www.comedyhackday.org/ They matchup comedians and hackers to create beauty.
Easily the most fun hackathon i've ever been to/
So that's in the clear, which may be the point of the art.
My understanding is that the written form of the font is copyrighted - a redrawn version would not typically be copyrighted.
It's complicated so please don't take this as legal advice.
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-...
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?
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.
Interestingly, the optics in our eyes provide an inverted image to our retinas, so our perception of the "inputs" is already using signal processing.
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.
...thats some non-trivial archeology to get that running :)