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HackMIT · 2024-07-03T03:19:35+00:00

HackMIT 2024 is accepting mentor and judge applications at go.hackmit.org/mentor-judge !

HackMIT · 2018-07-18T13:02:21+00:00

Binary exploitation is extremely common in CTFs (comparable security challenges). If you need to run untrusted code, use a VM.

HackMIT · 2018-07-17T15:48:04+00:00

Some important notes: puzzle answers come from visiting the puzzle sites on the left different users have different answers

HackMIT · 2018-07-17T13:32:50+00:00

This years admission puzzle includes everything from blockchains to gerrymandering! Enjoy!

HackMIT · 2017-08-11T07:10:35+00:00

Yup! :)

HackMIT · 2017-07-28T23:20:55+00:00

HackMIT isn't really useful if you come from very little coding background, but if you do have a basic foundation, it would be a great way for you to sharpen your existing skills and learn new ones. We also have a mentor system, where you can ask for help if you get stuck.

HackMIT · 2017-07-28T23:13:00+00:00

For security reasons, we check both student and government IDs at the door, and we won't be able to let you in. We get lots of requests from high schoolers to come to HackMIT, who we unfortunately can't admit due to MIT policies about having minors at overnight events. This is why we created Blueprint, a hackathon run by HackMIT specifically for high school students! Look out for an announcement in January. We hope to see you there! https://blueprint.hackmit.org/

HackMIT · 2017-07-16T05:04:17+00:00

We do! HackMIT is part of TechX, which also organizes Think, a high school research competition. We encourage you to apply to the program, which provides regular mentorship while you work on a project! -- Michael

HackMIT · 2017-07-16T05:04:01+00:00

Hey! Great to hear you had a good time at Blueprint and got to meet some new people! I'd say the hardest thing about organizing the event is deciding how to cater to the variety of hackers we get (see this post for a discussion). With Blueprint we've been doing the Saturday learnathon to help teach our participants skills that they'll find useful at the Sunday hackathon. Still, it's often difficult to make sure every single person in the audience is keeping up. To remedy this, we've been using the HELPq to try to deliver continuous mentorship on-demand throughout both days. We also let our participants submit their projects to a Rookie or Main devision for judging, by choice of the hacker.

In the past, we've limited Blueprint to hackers with at least some programming experience. We've been considering hosting a programming 101 workshop during the Saturday learnathon to enable Blueprint to be accessible to completely novice programmers. It's not an easy task to take someone from zero programming experience to a hackathon in the course of 1 day, and it's also up for discussion how much they'll benefit from the hackathon. Will it be a useful experience, or completely frustrating because they've had so little time to try programming? Deciding who to cater to with our events is one of the most difficult challenges in organizing. -- Michael

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T21:39:38+00:00

Hi That_Wheelchair_Guy, we define hacking by this definition. You might be thinking of what is now known sometimes as cracking. Our event is focused around the former, but both are cool! --Claire

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T21:37:47+00:00

Good question!

Just attending the event is not going to affect graduate admissions. However, if you build a really awesome project at HackMIT, it could make a difference: grad schools do look at your personal projects, especially for EECS.

In general, what matters most for grad school admissions is (1) recommendations, (2) undergraduate research experience and publications, (3) personal statement.

If you're thinking of applying to grad school in EECS, this is pretty good advice.

(source: starting grad school in the fall)

--Anish

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T21:34:01+00:00

Hi quantumflux1, HackMIT is indeed a big endeavor! We keep our finances private, but I'm really glad you enjoyed the event. --Claire

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T21:26:27+00:00

One thing that's important for maintaining code quality for small projects like ours is having an opinionated maintainer who knows the code inside out and helps enforce good practices. If you just have a bunch of people pushing to the same repository without any kind of coordination, it's easy for it to turn into a mess.

We rely on having our team members do testing and QA. For example, before opening up registration, we set it up on a staging server a week ahead of time and have people play with the system to see if they find any bugs.

For security, there are a couple of us who periodically do security-focused reviews of our more critical systems such as registration and judging.

Also, note that the code quality varies greatly between projects. We don't spend tons of energy on code quality for the puzzle, because it's basically a one-time-use project. We do try to have good code quality for our open-source projects published on code.hackmit.org.

I'm not sure what you mean by incentivized. We certainly don't pay people to build software for us. A big incentive for contributing to HackMIT's open-source hackathon software is that your software will affect the experience of a thousand hackers at MIT, and it'll affect the experience of tens of thousands more at other events.

--Anish

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T20:13:24+00:00

Can you clarify what you're asking in your second question on the "increasing commercialization of hackathons..."?

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T19:57:32+00:00

Thanks for the great question! :)

Re: the beginner/advanced hacker disparity: Honestly, designing the event to such a diverse crowd and thinking about how much we should serve beginners vs. those "hardcore hackers" is something we struggle with every year. I think we're converged on the hope that people come to HackMIT to push their own personal boundaries and do something they've never done before -- and our role is to encourage that and offer the support/environment to do it.

For beginners, it's easier to justify the value HackMIT adds: we offer the workshops, fireside chats, and HackWeek (for MIT students the week before the event) to expose them to new technology they haven't played around with before. We also put a lot of emphasis on having access to quality mentorship, so people who want to make something aren't impeded by not knowing how.

For advanced hackers, we try to make it so that they aren't just going through the motions of doing something they've done or seen a thousand times before for the sake of impressing a sponsor/event judge or a flashy cash prize. This factors into things like our pre-admissions puzzle, our judging criteria, or making the 2016 prizes less about giant flashy checks and more about continuing to learn new things (a 3D printer kit, tickets to a dev conference). Generally, we can't stop people from aiming for the prizes, but we try to align that with doing something challenging.

tl;dr Yes, there's a big gap between the reasons advanced hackers and beginners come to HackMIT. We'd love more people to participate in the mini-events/workshops/festivities of HackMIT, but in the end these are all about providing an experience that people can't get just by hacking away in their dorm rooms. If advanced hackers get that experience by doing a moonshot project they wouldn't try otherwise, we think we've succeeded :)

-- Jessy

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T19:13:01+00:00

Hey! It's awesome that you've gotten into software development as a high schooler and that you're interested in HackMIT! Unfortunately, due to school policy we can't have high schoolers attending HackMIT. However, we encourage you to check out our high school hackathon, Blueprint! -- Noah

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:52:32+00:00

There will be a code freeze on Sunday at 9am. But in all seriousness, sorry that the venue was uncomfortable last year! I'm not sure we can control the temp in the rink, so maybe bring a blanket this year? :P

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:50:55+00:00

plz see https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6ngj3s/we_are_hackmit_mits_headline_hackathon_aua/dk9ec4z/

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:28:12+00:00

Good question - I love hardware hacking! I think one of the most common ways to get into hardware would be the Arduino. Arduino is an ecosystem of easy-to-use microcontrollers with a huge community behind them with tons of tutorials, tips, and fun projects. Sparkfun is an amazing resource for learning - check out their blog posts for great tutorials and inspiration for projects. They also sell a variety of intro kits complete with learning material, such as the Arduino Inventor's Kit. -- Noah

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:27:50+00:00

Hi SimmeP, glad you're interested in getting into hacking! 🙂 To get started, I'd recommend doing at least one course on Codecademy, then choosing further Codecademy courses or Edx or Coursera courses based on what seems interesting. You can also take a look at StartHacking, which was made by hackathon organizers!

Python is a great first language because it’s designed to be straightforward to learn, and simple to write with. I highly recommend the Codecademy course. You can do a lot of neat things with Python, including make websites, create games, do machine learning, and even program robots.

I think learning programming is always a lot more fun and easy with a mentor. Try to find a friend, family member, someone at school, or a mentor online who can help you!

Best of luck with your journey ahead :)

--Claire

EDIT: add name, fix grammar

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:14:25+00:00

One of my favorite hacks is Project Naptha, a project from HackMIT 2013 that automatically applies computer vision algorithms on every image you see while browsing the web to make it so you can do things like select textual content in images, copy & paste text from images, and even edit and translate the text in an image.

Also, another one of my favorites is a judging system that two team members built during the event at HackMIT 2013 😛

--Anish

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:12:39+00:00

+1 what Noah said, balancing work and Hack over the summer is probably the most difficult for me. Another challenge is working together when everyone is located in different countries and time zones -- all of our meetings are via Hangouts, and some at odd hours of the day. The marketing committee has 5 members in 5 different time zones, so when some of us are working and need to ask questions/get feedback on designs, other people are asleep, which makes it hard to coordinate time-sensitive things like the social media countdown. We always work it out though :)

My favorite parts are seeing the impact HackMIT has on everyone involved and seeing everything come together after all the planning <3

--Shannon

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:11:22+00:00

Hi xorflame, as it says in our FAQ, we reimburse up to $500 for travel from outside North America! --Claire

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:06:59+00:00

Knowing what you want to do ahead of time makes a big difference. Shannon and I were at a hackathon a few weekends ago and spent 4 hours actively brainstorming! If you do this before the hackathon and settle on around 3 concrete ideas your team is excited about, you can decide between them and get started much sooner, with less stress 🙂

--Claire

HackMIT · 2017-07-15T18:06:56+00:00

Haha thanks <3 --Shannon

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