Proving that even in uselessness there can still be a great deal of creativity.
Hackathons are indeed stupid, and I 100% agree with elizabeth about the whole "hacking/startup" thing. My brother was there. He's 100% embraced the Silicon Valley mannerisms that come with these sorts of things. If it's not possible to hate him anymore, he's doing a DAMN good job of trying.
OH JUST WAIT UNTIL EVERY BIT OF NEWS BECOMES A TALE OF "DISRUPTION"
Technically there's a difference between a startup and a small business and that's rate of growth. I'd call foul on the startup pizza place unless they plan on opening up twice the number of sites every month.
There's a couple more good ones over at their site! Hacking can also mean using something for a different purpose than it was intended, often using technology. Other than that, it's just a hip word, so they'll get more people interested if they use those words.
I remember volunteering at a web conference thing and the guy on stage kept saying how they (the hackers) created this great app during the hackathon to help something something. They literally just coded an app. I don't know why it really got on my nerves but maybe that's just because he must have said they were hackers about 20 times in his 30 min presentation... I think we need a new word for actual hackers now. Any suggestions? People on the internet are not great at naming thing. Who the hell came up with the "black hat/ white hat" terminology? Am I the only one that finds that name funny/ridiculous? I wana work as a "top hat" SEO person when I grow up :P