Winter WonderHacks, as you may know, is a hackathon here at Michigan Tech every … winter. Formerly known as TechHacks, it has brought joyful throngs to our winter paradise to stay inside for 36 hours and forsake sleep for some very unique projects. Throughout the past couple of years, a few projects at Winter Wonderhacks have stood out as special snowflakes. In this column we will show a few of these specimens of tenacity, whether they were made by Huskies or by less fortunate people.
2017: Safer Surfer
Are you tired of people saying all their goshdarn garbage, strong language and cuss words? Well, have a hearty darn welcome to this butt kicking project called Safer Surfer, which can get all the garbage you read on the web cleaner and even broadcast on television. It’s available in the Chrome store, but beware, it should not serve as a nanny for any suggestible youth as its swearing vocabulary is narrower than that of the internet.
2018: Writing History
Those of us, such as myself, who are handwriting-impaired might lament the fact that when something legible must be written, a printer is not always available. Enter the 2D printer: a marker mounted on a piece of foam, connected to two pulleys. It translates the text input into writing, which should not require the use of cryptanalysis to read.
The projects for 2019 are history yet to be made. Winter Wonderhack begins this Friday evening and takes place in the library. Registration is at winterwonderhack.com. Stay tuned next week for results.
