Lifestyle App vs. Hardcore Hacker Energy
Posted by Holiday-Swordfish926@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 2 comments
Just saw rednote's official X account posting that their 2026 REDHackathon officially started in Shanghai.
Apparently they went from 1,500+ applicants down to around 200 finalists, and now it's basically a 48 hour build sprint across both software and hardware.
That part alone caught my attention because most hackathons I see online are usually way smaller or just local stuff.
Not gonna lie, I'm curious what actually comes out of this.
A lot of hackathons sound cool in the posts and then produce nothing memorable, but when the pool is this filtered down, sometimes you do get a few genuinely interesting teams or weirdly ambitious demos.
Also kind of interesting seeing rednote lean this hard into builders and hacker energy instead of just the lifestyle app thing.
anybody else following this one or seen any participant projects yet
According_Trip_5150@reddit
wait rednote is doing hardware now? that's actually wild considering how lifestyle-focused they usually are
been to couple hackathons before and yeah, most of them are just students making yet another todo app or food delivery clone. but 200 finalists from 1500+ applications is pretty serious filtering. usually means they're actually looking for people who can ship something real
curious what hardware track even looks like for them. are they trying to get into wearables or smart home stuff? or just letting people go crazy with whatever
might actually produce something interesting if they're putting real resources behind it instead of just pizza and energy drinks
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