Comment on They are evolving
carlisle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week agoWhat products are they supposedly promoting to kids? The link you gave for that doesn’t work. I’ve never seen them do that, and I’ve heard Hack Club staff specifically state that they do not do that, even if a corp sponsors them.
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
11 hour account hmmm…
Anyways, that is kind of the whole point of the sponsorship. Companies want AT MINIMUM a giant logo shining on some page if it looks like it’s for some cause (in this case kids education). Products related to sponsors are usually put up as prizes and/or have events built around them as constraint. Example quote from blueprint.hackclub.com/prototype :
carlisle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Also, how are they advertising through Slack? I’m active on there and I haven’t seen that. They have announcements about their own events, but they don’t advertise products at all.
And yes, it is unusual for Slack to be used as a non-formal space. They use it because most other options can’t handle such a huge amount of users. Not sure how that’s even relevant though?
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
It is flying over your head that you are on Slack in the first place while you otherwise wouldn’t.
carlisle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
I’m not sure what you mean. I joined so I can chat with other people who are interested in Open Source and coding. What’s your point?
carlisle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Yes, I just joined. So?
How do you expect them to get money without sponsorships? Yes, they accept donations from companies sometimes as prizes for events. So what? Is there something inherently wrong with that?
As you pointed out, Prototype is an exception. I had forgotten about that, but yeah they did have some AMD hardware at the Hackathon that you were expected to use. And I’m not a fan of that. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time they’ve ever done that though. Even things like GitHub is one of their biggest donors, yet they specfically make a point to allow you to use whatever code hosting server you want.
Donors benefit because resources going to help teens build technical projects benefits the industry as a whole, rather than the donor specifically.
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
Wrong. Most website YSWSes expect you to use something like bun.js and write so in the manual. Most tutorials expect you to use GitHub. Most 3D printing expects you to use Bambu Labs (and I would need an example where a 3D printer was offered from another brand). This event literally tells you that you will get less if you don’t use sponsored tools, instead of outright saying no or expecting otherwise. And as you may already note, they are normalizing Claude and gamifying it.
Diminishing effect.
carlisle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
No, most YSWSs don’t force you to use bun.js lmao.
Most tutorials assume you use github because it’s… What most people use. Just like how most tutorials about coding in general (not related to Hack Club) also assume you use GitHub. But Hack Club programs intentionally allow you to use any Git service, even your own self hosted one.
About forcing you into using Bambu, I haven’t seen or heard of that and can’t really comment since I don’t do much hardware stuff. All I can say is that is not a thing in the YSWSs I’ve participated in.
EasyEDA donated discounts to their services you mean? Oh No ThAt’S sO aWfUl TeEnS cAn GeT a DiScOuNt!! It’s just a discount to get your PCBs manufactured. It’s not like it’s encouraging people to buy in to some sort of closed ecosystem or anything, and you still can get stuff from other companies if you want. And from what I can tell, they didn’t raise prices for getting it from other companies.
What are you talking about?? One community member made a website that has statistics on how much people use Claude, and suddenly that means that Hack Club is gamifying Claude??
Look, it’s clear you know a lot about Hack Club, so I’m sure you know this, but it seems like you’re pretending it’s not the case, so let me state this: Hack Club is very loose about what tools you can use. Whether that’s what brands you pick, whether or not you can use AI (up to a certain point), etc. Each Hack Club program can have its own restrictions as they see fit (EG completely banning AI, or having a program about a certain type of software), but Hack Club is not forcing people to use certain brands or use AI, that would be individual YSWSs, which you can choose to participate in or not.