What the Hack!
Great engineering. Questionable intent.
A hackathon for engineers who want to spend a day building things that absolutely did not need to exist.
No problem statements. No pitch decks. No startup ideas. Just a simple challenge: build something deliberately useless, absurd, or spectacularly counterproductive and make it technically impressive.
The Idea
What The Hack is the next edition of Hack for Nothing, bringing back the same rule: there is no problem to solve.
The only valid reason to build something is:
\ “Technically, this is possible.”
What Counts?
The bar is simple: genuinely useless or actively counterproductive.
Build software that solves a problem nobody has. Make an easy task dramatically harder. Build absurd hardware. Create a robot that undoes its own work. Spend six hours engineering an elaborate solution to a joke that could have been solved in five minutes.
The more technically impressive the solution, the more questionable the decision to build it should be.
Practical utility is a disqualifier.
If a judge can imagine a real user, you may have accidentally built something useful.
Do’s
Build something you’d be slightly embarrassed to explain to your parents.
Over engineer freely.
Commit completely to the bit.
Spend an unreasonable amount of time solving an unreasonable problem.
Don’ts
Don’t sneak a real use case into your demo halfway through.
Don’t turn a startup idea into a joke just to qualify.
Don’t violate consent or privacy.
Don’t show up with something pre-built.
The Only Question
Can you build it? You probably shouldn’t.
Build it anyway.