I got there at two in the afternoon and left at two in the morning. I couldn't stay up and I was making simple mistakes that cost me an hour of work. Should have got more sleep the night before. But it was fun and I learned a lot. I saw my first 3D printer in person and was amazed.

While they hacked, I rested up for a day of real work.

I think what these people did all night was really cool; if I wasn't so busy I'd almost consider giving it a try myself sometime.

But please don't think that this was anything more than a publicity stunt and whatever you do, please don't call them "hacker gladiators".

You rested up for a day of real work on a Sunday, which starts off with hacker news?

What kind of day of real work doesn't start with hacker news :P

Eggs, toast, coffee, and HN. Just like my grandpa used to do.

:)

Why not? I wake up, make some breakfast, then check hacker news while I eat.

a publicity stunt isn't a bad thing, TechCrunch gives a lot of smart people building cool stuff exposure and this is free marketing for them. What's wrong with that?

I think it's the most fun way to do a short event like that, I don't think anyone assumes more would get done in 24 hours than in 4 6 hour sessions.

Haven't done one of these before but when I was doing uni programming project we would always end up having a lot more fun with it pulling a big night than just running normal uni hours.

you can watch the results here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/23/watch-the-tcdisrupt-hackers...

The common thread in most of these is Twitter, some decent ones though given the time restrictions.

It's fun when lawyers write about programmers. (Do I get bonus points for staying up late hacking almost every night, and doing the same all day at work? Oh no, I forgot, that's boring.)

Actually you can identify something with Google by just using a picture Mr. Hacker-in-the-video-who-said-you-couldn't guy:

http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text

"Capture the spirit"

"Gladiators"

"Absurd night"

Yep, that seems pretty accurate. How did we end up being caricatured and accepting this representation, and doing stupid, risky things to get into conferences for free?

That's all hot air (Techcrunch's main product). Outside of that it was actually a fun experience, and I got to meet some interesting people. I didn't accomplish much, nor did I really care about the prizes.

I was going to go (I was registered), but in the end, I preferred to spend half the day doodling around Madison Sq Park, and the rest of the day hacking on some new code for my startup.

At the end of the clip, I saw some hackers sleeping too ;-)

playing games with your voice-Awesome!!!

my team worked on that. here I am beating level one:

http://vimeo.com/11956359

we also hooked up blink detection (blink and mario jumps) and eye tracker (based on our open source eyetracker: eyewriter.org)

short video to our presentation which shows the other hacks -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMNtrLcbCNk

I know the term "hacker" has been brutally misused for years, but damn.