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by Charmunk 210 days ago
During Hack Club's IRL Hackathons, teens can get their parents to sign a "freedom waiver" to allow them to leave the hackathon venue and explore the city (they usually happen in high profile cities like NYC or Boston) without supervision. I assume what happened to them was they got lost during this optional exploration period
1 comments
linsomniac 210 days ago
No, that was not the situation, it happened at the event.
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embedding-shape 210 days ago
You don't have to share any specifics or details, but could you at least share how they could end up in a life threatening situation while attending a programming event?
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linsomniac 210 days ago
https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death#:~:t...
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embedding-shape 210 days ago
Do they let children sit and program for 3 days (without breaks?) at these events without a single person checking in on them?! That's absolutely bananas if true, how could something like that even happen, is it a sweatshop of programmers or what's going on?

Truly, if they're forcing children to sit and code for 3 days straight someone should call the police this moment.

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linsomniac 210 days ago
There was no forcing involved. Since there seems to be a lot of interest in this, I'll go into more details. As I said, this was discussed with organizers at the time, largely it was largely a matter of "the kids'll figure it out" failure. Some specifics will be vague due to time.

This event was a camp out. They had tents for the campers, but it was, in my kids view, a free-for-all. Like a "go figure out the tent situation", and my child couldn't figure out the tent situation, so decided to sleep outside. And woke up with a bunch of bugs (I don't remember exactly what, leaches sticks in my mind). So they decided they'd caffeinate the rest of the event and not sleep.

(edit: Typo fix)

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Charmunk 210 days ago
No one is forced to code, they have sleeping areas, and plenty of time for breaks, and no one will care if someone decides to take a break for a bit
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pupwithcomputer 208 days ago
Hey! You can probs recognize me by the username. Dunno anyone else who's open about being a fuckin dog on the slack.

During Scrapyard, Hackatime was mandatory, and was one of the biggest defining factors to HQ about the success of a satellite. So yeah, technically attendees aren't _forced_ to code, but getting the most weighted grants is still your biggest focus.

For those who don't know, HC uses a unit called "weighted grants" which supposedly equates to 10 hours of good quality work, in order to determine success. The issue is, the definition of good quality work is currently set as "most lines written", excluding R&D and the 20 other steps that it takes to design something.

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embedding-shape 210 days ago
The previous commentator said "could have very easily turned into life threatening" and when asked what that was about, they sent the link about that person dying after sitting playing games for 3 days.

Are you saying they're lying or are wrong about this? They seemed to have personal experience about it, and I'm assuming they're not outright lying, but I do think it sounds strange they would let children sit and code for 3 days straight.

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