Fun facts for fun, giggles, and profit

General silly/interesting facts

Slack

Hack Club was almost forced to pay 200k a year to continue using Slack because of an oversight in the billing process source.

Slack bot

Slack bot will respond with a custom response depending on the users message. The following will be formatted with the the users message first and then the bots response.

:Example

fraud department -> You mean @fraudsquad

Mac and cheese -> https://youtu.be/HIOSHTpySM4

hack club bank -> It’s HCB, Didn’t you hear?

Hack Club

Hack Club partnered with Challenger Center source

Hack Club did an AMA with Elon Musk in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riru9OzScwk

Hack Club was founded by a highschool drop out!

Hack Club made an “Anti-Hack Club” site an April Fools joke. Site URL: https://anti.hackclub.com

Another silly version of the Hack Club site - this time its upside down! https://australia.hackclub.com/

Explanation of traceroute and BGP - https://how-did-i-get-here.net

Silly dancing Orpheus - https://dinosaurbbq.org/

There’s a random Scramjet web proxy on Hack Club - https://wow.hackclub.app/

All the buildings Hack Club owns except 1 - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1AhVTF0KQzIRKnPVFljvAwVlQyRNRF4Y&ll=44.38114171073496%2C-73.22785522802756&z=19

Why do all Hack Club stickers have the words ‘Hack Club’ on them?

i used to make all these hack club stickers and they didn’t always say “hack club” on them (like the “hack strikes back” stickers) and i had this sureal experience in SF where i started seeing my stickers on people’s laptops in the street. i’d go up and ask them about how they got them and they wouldn’t know about hack club or anything— just say stuff like “yeah, idk. the artist is really cool, you can probably buy them online or something” - msw (source)

Why is the Fire Department not named the “Police Department” instead?

the fire department often deals with conflict (or, fires - perhaps of the dumpser fire flavour)

police arrest bad guys and jail them. fd isn’t seeking to be punitive; we’re guided by preventing problematic behaviour. we don’t use bans unless necessary (i.e. the learning graph is looking like this*).

A big part of our role is using judgment to make a good decision in the moment. Ultimately, we want to help people and not be someone people hide and fear from (although that will always happen with any moderation group, we can’t always win)

*this took like half an hour my brain is so good at getting off topic doing random things

- Felix Gao source

Why does Hack Club Auth use TOTP codes sent to emails instead of a password?

this is actually a security design decision…..

credential stuffing/password reuse is a pretty bad threat vector and worse if you’re targeting the lowest common denominator of teenagers :-P - nora source

Shroud

Shroud is used to let Hack Clubbers report concerns anonymously (or not) to the Fire Department.

Shroud’s source code is open-source and on GitHub! (https://github.com/hackclub/shroud)

What is Shrould/being “Shrouded?”

Shroud is the bot thats used to submit anonymous reports about bad behavior from users. Being “Shrouded” is verb for when someone has been reported to the Fire Department!

Why is it called “Shroud?”

I created Shroud in August 2024 for Arcade. I called it Shroud because it’s a shroud for your identity, as in it hides it.

- Angad source