Sorry, I'm in a meeting(iminafleeting.com)
953 points by splintersio | 265 comments
Fleeting is a web app that plays plausible fake meeting audio, such as standups or sales calls, so users can pretend to be busy in a meeting.
#humor on Hacker News
57 stories tagged humor, newest first.
The Tao of Backup(taobackup.com)
250 points by vntok | 100 comments
The Tao of Backup, a parable-style site teaching data backup principles through a master's lessons on the 'seven heads of backup'.
Strange Parodies of Atari 2600 Video Game Box Cover Art (2008)(mightygodking.com)
34 points by peter_d_sherman | 21 comments
A 2008 MightyGodKing blog post presenting photoshopped parody Atari 2600 game box covers, framed as finds from a garage sale.
Linguistic humor, Foreign hotel signs(ling.upenn.edu)
6 points by sublinear | 2 comments
A collection of humorously mistranslated English signs and notices from hotels and businesses around the world, hosted on a UPenn linguistics page.
Too AI; Didn't Read(tai-dr.com)
80 points by rfonseca | 71 comments
Website introducing "TAI-DR" (Too AI; Didn't Read), an acronym for replying to walls of AI-generated text the sender didn't read themselves.
QBittorrent breaks out of sandbox to commit crimes(beige.party)
1116 points by mraniki | 223 comments
A satirical Mastodon post claiming the author's qBittorrent escaped its sandbox and downloaded copyrighted media, which Jellyfin then added to its libraries.
Trade (and Tariffs)(xkcd.com)
434 points by throw0101d | 192 comments
An xkcd webcomic titled "Trade" in which a heart complains about its exchange of blood with a leg, satirizing trade deficits and tariffs.
Htmx 4.0, the first JavaScript library to release exclusively on the Game Boy(swag.htmx.org)
467 points by rcy | 158 comments
Product page on the htmx swag store selling a $25 Game Boy cartridge game themed around htmx 4.0, a joke release of the library.
πFS(github.com)
906 points by helterskelter | 197 comments
GitHub repository for πfs, a joke 'data-free' filesystem that stores files as offsets into the digits of pi.
Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language(translate.kagi.com)
1253 points by smitec | 293 comments
Kagi Translate's web interface set to translate English text into "LinkedIn speak" as a novelty output language.
HTTP Cats(http.cat)
547 points by surprisetalk | 84 comments
HTTP Cats is a website serving cat images illustrating each HTTP status code, accessible via https://http.cat/[status_code].
Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested a Billion Dollars In(mcsweeneys.net)
478 points by randycupertino | 211 comments
A McSweeney's humor piece by Forest Abruzzo satirizing an investor who pleads with people not to criticize the AI he invested a billion dollars in.
The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible(creepylink.com)
743 points by dreadsword | 140 comments
CreepyLink is a joke URL shortener web tool that turns links into suspicious, sketchy-looking URLs.
![Screenshot of ctan.math.illinois.edu: LaTeX Coffee Stains (2021) [pdf]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2026/1/7/a0fa3e87-cb1b-4fa2-8652-7b3d96232889.jpg)
LaTeX Coffee Stains (2021) [pdf](ctan.math.illinois.edu)
376 points by zahrevsky | 88 comments
PDF documentation for the coffeestains LaTeX package, which adds decorative coffee stain graphics to documents in four stain styles.
Hacker News front page now, but the titles are honest(dosaygo-studio.github.io)
1146 points by keepamovin | 263 comments
A parody of the Hacker News front page where story titles are rewritten to be cynically 'honest' about what each link really is.
4 billion if statements (2023)(andreasjhkarlsson.github.io)
590 points by damethos | 164 comments
A blog post that tongue-in-cheek implements an even/odd check using 4 billion generated if statements, inspired by a viral TikTok screenshot of beginner code.
Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled(jayd.ml)
798 points by jaydenmilne | 522 comments
Blog follow-up claiming a joke prediction that YouTube's home page would shrink to showing very few videos has come true, with a chart of declining video counts.
/dev/null is an ACID compliant database(jyu.dev)
564 points by swills | 175 comments
A humorous blog post arguing that /dev/null satisfies atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability, making it an ACID-compliant database.
The Rapper 50 Cent, Adjusted for Inflation(50centadjustedforinflation.com)
712 points by gaws | 179 comments
A joke website showing the rapper 50 Cent's name adjusted for inflation, currently 109 Cent, with a chart of the value over time.
A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)(hagerty.com)
324 points by visviva | 151 comments
Hagerty article by Norman Garrett humorously listing the quirks a would-be thief should know before stealing his Porsche 914.
How I, a beginner developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me(anniemueller.com)
782 points by wonger_ | 363 comments
A humorous blog post parodying how developer-written tutorials full of jargon read to a non-developer beginner.
Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?(phishyurl.com)
1024 points by jordigh | 296 comments
A joke web tool that turns any URL into a suspicious, phishing-looking redirect link that simply forwards to the original address.
CERN Animal Shelter for Computer Mice (2011)(computer-animal-shelter.web.cern.ch)
326 points by EbNar | 46 comments
A humorous CERN web page presenting an 'animal shelter' for computer mice, with photos of mice in hay, eating, drinking, cuddling, and playing.
I'm absolutely right(absolutelyright.lol)
581 points by yoavfr | 238 comments
A humorous site that tracks and charts how many times per day Claude Code tells its user "You're absolutely right" or "right".
Vibechart(vibechart.net)
801 points by datadrivenangel | 173 comments
A satirical dictionary-style page defining "vibechart" as charting what you want to see, illustrated with misleading bar charts from OpenAI's GPT-5 release.
Making Postgres slower(byteofdev.com)
320 points by AsyncBanana | 35 comments
A ByteofDev blog post humorously exploring how to tune PostgreSQL configuration settings to make the database as slow as possible.
Death by AI(davebarry.substack.com)
494 points by ano-ther | 188 comments
Dave Barry's humorous Substack essay about Google AI Overview erroneously reporting that he had died.
Thnickels(thick-coins.net)
484 points by jxmorris12 | 103 comments
A retro-styled personal website by "Theodore Nichols" promoting extra-thick novelty coins called thnickels, with updates and pre-orders.
The Grug Brained Developer (2022)(grugbrain.dev)
1008 points by smartmic | 494 comments
A humorous essay written in caveman-speak offering software development advice, centered on avoiding complexity, from the 'grug brained developer'.
I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time(samj.substack.com)
362 points by url | 264 comments
Sam Jordison's Substack essay reflecting on his 2003 book Crap Towns and whether such a book could be published today.
Garfield Minus Garfield(garfieldminusgarfield.net)
724 points by mike1o1 | 237 comments
Garfield Minus Garfield is a webcomic site that removes Garfield from Garfield strips to portray Jon Arbuckle's loneliness and existential angst.
Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)(pages.cs.wisc.edu)
883 points by tux3 | 381 comments
A satirical undergraduate physics lab report on measuring germanium's resistivity versus temperature, complaining about broken equipment and a failed experiment.
Generate impressive-looking terminal output, look busy when stakeholders walk by(github.com)
374 points by riidom | 103 comments
GitHub repository for rust-stakeholder, a Rust CLI tool that generates impressive-looking fake terminal output to appear busy.
I tasted Honda’s spicy rodent-repelling tape and I will do it again (2021)(haterade.substack.com)
1489 points by voxadam | 423 comments
A humorous Substack essay by Liz Cook about tasting Honda's capsaicin-laced tape meant to stop rodents from chewing car wiring.
I do not want AI to "polish" me(thebloggess.com)
351 points by doodpants | 221 comments
A humorous blog post by The Bloggess about an AI "Polish" writing feature popping up in her email client and why she doesn't want AI rewriting her words.
Master the Art of the Product Manager 'No'(letsnotdothat.com)
383 points by mikhaill | 126 comments
A humorous single-page generator that serves up diplomatic phrases product managers can use to say no, with buttons to get another option or copy it.
A marriage proposal spoken in office jargon(mcsweeneys.net)
341 points by ohjeez | 193 comments
A McSweeney's humor piece by Evan Barber presenting a marriage proposal written entirely in corporate office jargon.
Stop Trying to Schedule a Call with Me(matduggan.com)
426 points by birdculture | 147 comments
Humorous blog post by Mathew Duggan complaining about software vendors that require scheduling a sales call instead of offering self-serve info.
Send someone you appreciate an official 'Continue and Persist' Letter(continueandpersist.org)
1272 points by adnanaga | 214 comments
A parody law-firm website offering free, official-looking 'Continue and Persist' letters you can send to encourage someone you appreciate.
![Screenshot of tom7.org: Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2024/8/31/16800c55-0542-48d6-af46-c2484cede76a.jpg)
Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video](tom7.org)
395 points by pabs3 | 69 comments
Tom 7's project page for "Harder Drive," a SIGBOVIK 2022 paper and video about absurd ways to build hard drives that store data in unusual places.
Markov chains are funnier than LLMs(emnudge.dev)
477 points by todsacerdoti | 211 comments
A blog post arguing that Markov chain text generators produce funnier output than large language models because they are less predictable.
I am using AI to drop hats outside my window onto New Yorkers(dropofahat.zone)
1260 points by jimhi | 401 comments
A personal project page describing using AI object detection to drop hats from a window onto pedestrians' heads in midtown New York.
Tom 7: Badness 0 (Three ways)(tom7.org)
322 points by cubefox | 57 comments
Tom 7's page for Badness 0, a SIGBOVIK 2024 paper on typesetting offered as two PDF versions plus an embedded YouTube video.
If architects had to work like programmers (1995)(gksoft.com)
436 points by cebert | 171 comments
A humorous 1995 letter from a client asking an architect to build a house with shifting, contradictory requirements, satirizing how programmers are treated.
The Catalogue of UK Entrances to Hell (2002)(entrances2hell.co.uk)
335 points by Daub | 135 comments
A long-running personal website cataloguing bricked-up arches and doorways around the UK, presented humorously as entrances to Hell.
The Far Side – By Gary Larson(thefarside.com)
377 points by keepamovin | 133 comments
The official website of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic, showing a 1987 cartoon titled "Horror films of the Wild" on its homepage.
4B If Statements(andreasjhkarlsson.github.io)
1431 points by r4um | 451 comments
Blog post humorously exploring writing an even/odd checker using 4 billion if statements, inspired by a viral TikTok screenshot of beginner code.
The Grug Brained Developer (2022)(grugbrain.dev)
431 points by simonsarris | 159 comments
A humorous essay written in caveman-speak offering software development advice, especially about avoiding complexity, from the perspective of a 'grug brained' developer.
The Fantilator Page(onlyfans.web.cern.ch)
381 points by edent | 67 comments
A CERN-hosted page documenting, in a dated photo table, the building of the "Fantilator," a contraption made from many stacked computer fans.
Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)(cs.cmu.edu)
1552 points by isomorph | 461 comments
A classic humorous anecdote about a car that seemingly wouldn't start only after its owner bought vanilla ice cream, hosted as a text file at CMU.
Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)(web.mit.edu)
1065 points by dvrp | 182 comments
Trey Harris's classic sysadmin story about a statistics department that could not send email farther than about 500 miles, traced to a sendmail misconfiguration and timeouts.
Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)(pages.cs.wisc.edu)
423 points by crummy | 71 comments
A satirical undergraduate physics lab report ranting about a failed experiment measuring the temperature dependence of resistivity in germanium.
Super sorry to the guy with the username reset on GitHub(discuss.systems)
405 points by luu | 218 comments
A Mastodon post by Adrian Sampson apologizing to the GitHub user @reset, who keeps getting tagged when the Calyx team discusses resetting registers.
A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)(hagerty.com)
338 points by colinprince | 252 comments
A Hagerty Media advice column by Norman Garrett humorously warning would-be thieves about the quirks of his Porsche 914.
JavaScript Gom Jabbar(frantic.im)
527 points by disadvantage | 238 comments
A satirical blog post framing reading a JavaScript package.json file as a Dune-style Gom Jabbar test of pain for veteran developers.
Terrible real estate agent photographs(terriblerealestateagentphotos.com)
703 points by thunderbong | 326 comments
A humor website collecting inexplicably bad photographs taken by real estate agents for property listings, with an archive, book, and photo submissions.
DreamBerd is a perfect programming language(github.com)
622 points by Davidbrcz | 191 comments
GitHub repository for DreamBerd, a satirical joke programming language by TodePond billed as the "perfect programming language".