​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.