> Your real middle class refuses to show any but the most bland books and magazines on its coffee tables: otherwise, expressions of opinion, awkward questions, or even ideas might result. -Paul Fussell, Class
The greyification of our lives, the loss of whimsy and kitsch and being too afraid to be a little cringe, I get the sense that a lot of people associate "growing up" as the loss of any and all expression: we wake up in our grey beds in our millennial grey house, drive to work in our grey car to work in our grey cubical, etc, etc. If you want a gauche laptop covered in stickers, do it, embrace the gauche. Everyone sneering at you is more miserable than you.
A good portion of these stickers are to do with things that are political or quasi political. What tends to happen is that a lot if times people have been burned in someway for supporting an idea or a cause. This is often because people have been fooled by charlatan, or it was later revealed that things were more complicated or different than they were led to believe.
Cringe and why people hate it is best explained by watching the very first episode of the UK office.
Most people want to go to work, turn up and do their time and go home. People that are often top enthusiastic are difficult to deal with day to day. People that adorn their personal possessions with slogans are seen as a warning sign.
I think you might be romanticizing this, a bit. When you convince the public that not talking about something is the best course of action, they become a lot easier to control. We learned this during WWII with the propaganda machine that was fully employed on all fronts, and arguably before that with the work of Edward Bernays and people like him. If public discourse and debate could be quashed, then it was much, much easier to simply tell everyone what their opinions of a thing should be.
But why so many stickers? Why so many tattoos? Why not pick one you very much like and agree with? Less noise. More signal. Less is more.
I don't like many of the ones mentioned on this website but here are some minimalist examples [1] [2] [3] [4] and an exception I do like a bit because of the custom shape [5]. [1] is more like a skin.
My laptop hasn't had stickers since a CTO asked why mine didn't have any stickers like the ones on the laptops of his cool cloud team. Personally I've found laptop stickers bad taste since then.
My work laptop has a company sticker on it. If I'm at a customer's office I'd like everyone to know I don't work for them. TSA also has this really neat trick where my laptop has gotten "lost" several times going through security. I have to describe the laptop in order to get it back. If I don't have an identifying sticker it's basically impossbile to uniquely identify it
It has become less fun since it has become common. My most recent laptop doesn't have stickers but I might apply some from my sizable collection before it becomes secondary laptop in 1-2 years.
You can still "hipster it" and only use actually cool stickers. Community open source projects, hackerspaces, good conferences, EFF and similar organizations, weird funny stuff.
I try to avoid stickers from tech products which seem to be the common thing to do. Instead almost all of my stickers are from my friend's art projects.
The problem is that a lot of that has been ruined by corporate cringe and "weird funny stuff" is no longer weird and funny, especially when you have a bunch of influencers trying to either monetise it, sanitise it and/or attach their personal brand to it.
e.g. One of the biggest people that does Debian content, does a bunch of absolute cringe behaviour associated with them where I almost want to die of second hand embarrassment.
From my POV (old?, never on social mass media), you live in a strange world if some influencer has any... influence on your opinion of Debian. I see little to no monetization of "the good stuff".
They don't have any influence about what I think of Debian. What happens though is people outside will associate their (unbearably cringe in this case) behaviour with you, whether you like it or not.
I'm a long-time Debian user and I have no idea who you're talking about. How much weight do they actually carry? Who is this influencer you're talking about?
Cue the scene from Office Space where Jennifer Anniston's waitress character is required to have a minimum of 7 pieces of flair on her uniform, per corporate franchise policy. And that movie is from the 90s!
Our CTO: If you add stickers to your laptop you need to keep it for four years, rather than two.
We sell back our laptop to the company we get them from, they refurb them and give us a nice discount on the new model. Most vinyl stickers leave a mark on MacBooks that can't come off, hurting the resell value a lot. Some have protecting covers on their laptop and the stickers go on that instead.
To me stickers on laptops are as tasteless and kitschy as tattoos. I would never get a tattoo for the same reason I would never put a sticker on my laptop.
Besides nobody gives a shit about your stupid political opinions or the software stack you use.
Personally I keep one Linux sticker on my laptop, less about expression and more a conversation starter. It's something that 99% of people won't notice but for the 1% that notices it's a nice conversation starter when everyone is bored (ie waiting at the airport)
When I next have a working laptop (I currently use a desktop and a phone), I'll probably stick on a Linux sticker and something from Discworld (probably the "Anthill Inside" sticker, intended for that purpose).
When I next have a working laptop (I currently use a desktop and a phone), I'll probably stick on a Linux sticker and something from Discworld (probably the "Anthill Inside" sticker, made for that purpose).
I had equipped the family with identical corporate-refurb laptops - when you have any of 4 laptops in a family room, it was a way of not getting my laptop taken by my kids to school one day...
Back in the office days, it was also a way to identify a corporate laptop among a sea of identical models.
Also, like I don't wear branded clothing, I like to cover the device brand.
Back when I worked at Apple no one had stickers on their laptops (gasp, who would dare!). But everyone had identical MacBook Pros, and when we had meetings, they would go in the center of the table and then everyone would have trouble telling them apart. So I got a couple of gold star stickers like you give to children for my laptop.
I've always tried to apply "The Internet gives a fuck about what you don't like" when it comes to commenting, but it's also helpful to remember it's not just the Internet.
Well, nobody cares about you're views about stickers and tattoos, but you still commented. Compared to you though, nobody here called you a retard; maybe that says something about how people are here or how you tend to use inflammatory language when it's not needed.
I care! I dunno if I agree with him about all tattoos (surely some are tasteful even if it's a minority), but stickers are definitely all tasteless and kitschy.
Left of center types have worked for decades on being ignored while right of center types are going through something of a resurgance right now after being rightfully relegated to the thrash heap of history and tend to feel persecuted if someone disagrees with them. For those right of center types freedom of speech seems to cut only in one way and it, unsurprisingly, evokes more disagreement. It must suck to be right of center.
Of course, that's another thing. The site is full of "down with the system" types which are, for some reason, oblivious to the irony of their values being aligned with the corporate values of businesses that have a valuation of trillions.
These people aren't trying to "improve things somewhat" in spite of their corporate affiliation. It's that they are perfectly aligned with the corporate interests, with things like importing cheap labor and keeping women chained to their desks and away from children. It's cleverly concealed with slogans like "FCK AFD", or the glorification of every other sexual special interest except the productive one. But the purpose of the system is what it does.
Of course only a pedophile would even think of having intercourse with a woman who has not yet entered menopause.
I should probably also get the lethal injection for being a product of such a sick and depraved congress, because apparently a child is guilty of the crimes of the father.
Once either of you present an argument worthy of respect within a civil and democratic society, I will respond in kind. Until then, statements like "the glorification of every other sexual special interest except the productive one" will continue to get the responses they deserve.
I think It’s funny to see the political ones, because these stickers are often as incoherent as memorabilia you‘d expect to find in a teenagers room.
And even if they look colorful, they’re as diverse as the distinction between Trotzky and Stalin.
There are the endless hints at porn addiction, wrapped as ideology.
The Anti-Capitalism coming from an 3,000$++ MacBook Pro is also rich, especially if that evil capitalist gave it to him for free, plus an absurd monthly stipend.
There‘s the outspoken expression of peace, love and moral superiority - right next to „fck“ other people, „smash“ individuals with opposing views or downright „kill“ them.
And of course the old chestnut of caring about digital freedom, privacy but then low and behold people have a different opinion, to just „hack“ them anyways.
It’s hard to tell which of these invokes more Schadenfreue, if not its meta that the owners likely think of these stickers as giving away secret hints to the curious about their world views, while in practice you already know it when entering the room.
I love this... I haven't had the courage to "spend" my sticker collection on my current laptop, as they obviously don't last forever.
A solution could be to photograph the old cover, and print it as a full-size sticker as a starting point for the next laptop!
Keep it going!
I did that to my Facebook pfp (they also have stickers) - after a few years it became this abstract, glitchy work of art. I don’t use fb anymore but still remember that fondly
Some laptops clearly belong to the cheerful juniors celebrating their coding practices (git! npm! vim! Python!), and some are very political; once you filter those out, what remains are interesting examples of people expressing themselves.
I used to put stickers on my desktop PC and laptop when I was in my early 20s. Then I realised my laptop was kinda free advertising for whatever companies product I had stuck on the back.
Now it seems have come very "corporate cringe", similar to the 16 pieces of flair at Chotchkie's. It also looks a bit childish IMO.
The problem is that it isn't just stickers on a piece of equipment.
A lot of these laptop stickers are either tech stacks (which are usually a form of advertising for a corporation), quasi-political messaging or outward political messaging.
I've partially explain this in my OP and other replies under this subject, but I and many other see them as a warning sign of things that are much more worrisome. I am naturally suspicious of any "corporate fun stuff" which is what a lot of this has turned into. That was accurately portrayed for what it is in office space with the "16 pieces of flair". Anyone who calls this out as suspicious will have someone like yourself saying "what is the problem? just a sticker".
Nope. You asked the question, I gave you a pretty clear and polite answer, which in retrospect you didn't deserve. It is fine if you don't agree, being a dick about it isn't.
If you aren't interested in my (or anyone elses) POV, don't bother asking the question in future.
Are they really that funny though? While I appreciate that it is subjective, they are often only vaguely funny.
More often or not a lot of the supposed humour is a thin veneer over some sort of political or quasi-political messaging. You can even see in the screenshots that most of it is either political, product placement or their tech stack.
As a JS developer, I once had a sticker in the npm font, but it said "left-pad". I liked that one.
Just a pretty one is fine too though. I had a cool one at some point that was the logo of a small local meetup with friendly organisers, and the logo was essentially a drawing of a local landmark. It fit perfectly over the OEM logo. I miss that one.
> I wouldn't even put this in the "somewhat amusing" category. This is really in the 16 pieces of allowed flair category as far as I am concerned.
There you are, the perfect quote for you to print out and stick on your laptop!
Turns out you were just waiting for the right one all along. And you thought you just dropped in here to be grumpy. Oh, no, we have stickers here for everyone. =)
Political messaging I am completely fed up with and I am sure I am not the only person fed up with it. I go out of my way now to make sure that I see almost none of it.
When I see overt political messaging outside of someone that works for a particular organisation or political party, I steer clear.
I've found that most people (doesn't matter what political persuasion) have a very poor understanding of what they are actually supporting if they understand it at all. Often they simply parroting what they've elsewhere.
why is it surprising that people feel like showing their own politics with stickers when the government they live under currently deports random people, blows up boats based on vague accusations, tries to reform the country with Project2025, ..., do i have to go on?
nice for you that you're able to ignore politics - you should maybe be aware that this is a privilege. lots of people would probably want to ignore politics, but instead they have to fear for their existence, dignity or way of life.
"but not everyone on HN is american", well, other countries also have their fair share of political issues. and if you don't see them as issues, then again, you're just showing your own privilege.
high-wage, male, (often times white) tech-workers wonder why people are upset. "i'm fine, what's the problem?"
> why is it surprising that people feel like showing their own politics with stickers when the government they live under currently deports random people, blows up boats based on vague accusations, tries to reform the country with Project2025, ..., do i have to go on?
I am in my early-40s. I remember when Obama was droning people abroad based on iffy intel. I remember when George Bush/Dick Cheney started a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed possibly millions (I heard all sorts of different numbers).
If I put a sticker on my laptop, it doesn't stop any of that happening. It doesn't bring back the people that killed in those wars. All it is trying to do is signal to other people that you have the "right opinions". It is a form of slacktivism.
> nice for you that you're able to ignore politics - you should maybe be aware that this is a privilege. lots of people would probably want to ignore politics, but instead they have to fear for their existence, dignity or way of life.
I am mature enough to understand that in the vast majority of circumstances I cannot affect in the outcome in any meaningful way.
Whether I ignore politics or not will have no effect on the outcome. I suggest you go back and watch old TV programs and documentaries. People were having the same discussions 20, 30 and some 50 years ago on the exact topics and making the same arguments, often they were word for word the same.
> "but not everyone on HN is american", well, other countries also have their fair share of political issues. and if you don't see them as issues, then again, you're just showing your own ignorance, privilege or both.
I choose to ignore the political issues in my country (the UK) as well. I can't do anything to solve the problems in the country.
I've been putting stickers on all of my laptops for decades. I get all my laptop stickers from @HackerStick3rs mainly and then cybersec conferences (like DEF CON, BSides, Saintcon, Nolacon) are my other main source of them.
Stickers are kinda like currency at hacker conferences and a great way to meet new people.
I saw laptops like those on hackathons and always sort of assumed they were their personal machines. Kind of surprising to read here that some of those were apparently (company-owned) work laptops.
When everybody is issued with a dull grey laptop, putting a few stickers on it is a nice way to know which one is yours when there's ten laptops on a meeting table and it can help users feels more responsible of their laptop.
The nastiest/dirtiest laptops I saw were always sticker less.
I work at a large (>50k employees) company that is in every way the opposite of a start-up. Plenty of people cover their work laptops in stickers. The hardware group that handles replacing old machines has a wall of fame for all the lids with cool stickers.
I used to work for medium/big tech companies (8,000 - 70,000 employees.)
I always had a sticker on my laptop - everybody had the same laptop (or maybe one of two models.) It was a reliable way to quickly identify mine in a big group at a meeting or conference.
Not necessarily startup culture, my current assignment (energy company) has a number of teams that all want to do some kind of personal identity and self-promo, so they have stickers made on occasion.
Unfortunately a lot of them are AI generated, which is weird given we have a number of designers in the teams too.
Not necessarily startup. You can see some laptops with defcon stickers, it used to be very common for infosec auditors to have work laptops full of stickers not that long ago.
Although, it is bad practice for read team audits, and some large companies don't like this kind of shenanigans for internal audits, so that may explain why it is less frequent nowadays
Not really, I work at a big and older company and they will even have stickers around the office(we only need to go to the office 4 or 5 times per year, but can go whenever we please) to put in the laptops.
But you can also use them as a reminder of how you felt/who you were when you got them.
Even someone who get a very trendy tattoo should keep it: "look how I used to follow every trend and how I evolved because I would never do something like that now".
Biologically and philosophically, tattoos are scars.
> Getting scars on purpose is a quite questionable decision.
Interesting. Why?
Isn't it a common and longstanding cultural practice, even among indigenous peoples? Intuitively, I'd say body modification is based on the desire to shape one's own body, something we usually embrace in fitness culture and medicine, for example.
I don't have any tattoos or scars, but I can't think of anything that would make them questionable.
Perhaps some of the objection arises from a confusion between body modification and self-harm?
Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's good. We also shouldn't confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities like exercising simply because both "shape one's own body".
> Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's good.
This is true, although it is a good start, right? If a cultural practice has survived for many generations, this alone already indicates that the practice might be compatible with human society, morals, sustainability, etc.
> We also shouldn't confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities like exercising simply because both "shape one's own body".
True! We should indeed not confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities just because they share some similarities.
But would you classify scars or tattoos motivated by aesthetics as self-mutilation? What about piercings, such as holes for earrings or laser hair removal?
I believe that is an interesting and unusual position. Do you have an argument in favor of your (so far implicit) take?
I get this, but thankfully the regrettable tattoos I got back in the day were small/simple enough to hide under cover-ups. My former tattoos were drug-related, but these days, they're all themed with the retrovideo games I still love play, especially when I need a breather from everything else.
As a result, I am that guy that tells people a few rules about tattoos:
1. Don't get a tattoo of a band. They will eventually fall out of favor or do something stupid.
2. Don't get a tattoo of any person unless they've been dead for a long, long time. Like a band, a person will also eventually fall out of favor or do something stupid. Even after they're dead, it may still be uncovered that they did something stupid in secret.
3. Don't make your self-expression about other people. Rules 1 and 2 should have already put you on this path.
4. Consider time. So you like cars, especially the 1987 Pontiac Firebird you had in high school. Have you always liked cars? Will you always like cars? Have you and will you always like that car? If there is doubt, rule it out.
5. Are you drunk or high? Best sleep on it.
6. Can you be honest with yourself? This is the Catch 22 question, but an important one. We tend to have a few versions of ourselves to contend with; the one we want to be, the one others perceive us as, and the one we need to be. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don't, but self-expression hinges on understanding the difference and allowing that we might be deceiving ourselves about who we really are, sometimes.
Getting a tattoo is a remarkably difficult and personal thing that I see a lot of people not take seriously enough, then live to regret it, myself included. The artist who has now done all my visible work is an absolute master at getting people to slow down and think about what they want, which was a terrific boon in my life, because he probably did more for me as a person than my therapist did. His clients are life-long, one even having traveled from another country to get more work done by him. That's to say nothing of his absolutely radical art and style that always produces something unique and fit for the person to make part of their lives.
It's something I often think about when I look down at my arms, see those old game homages and realize, regardless of what else has happened in my life or whoever I thought I was at the time, they have been with me since the beginning and are still here, helping me through it.
If I carefully had a favorite thing of mine selected, and I woke up tomorrow with the tiniest tattoo of it, I would be so upset. I’d be bothered every time I saw it on my body, knowing it wouldn't rub off.
I bet your tattoo artist could help me learn something about myself there :)
There’s also the problem with both most tattoos and all the stickers in the article that there’s nothing left that’s counter-cultural about them, which defeats the entire purpose of doing something edgy as a statement.
I'm seeing a lot of cute animals, memes, video game stuff, what's with the fixation on being edgy. My gf has a bunch of animal tattoos, doesn't need to be complicated.
Because then it's just visual clutter, and in the case of tattoos, unnecessary pain, expense and health risk.
If I'm going to put a sticker on something it's going to read like a diff, what sets me apart from the mainstream culture, not all the different ways I conform to it.
My first tattoos were each done years apart. I printed a version out, put it in my wallet, and saw it every time I made a purchase. If I still loved it just as much a year later, I booked an appointment.
Later tattoos are essentially private works of art, put together collaboratively with an artist. These are for ME, and no one at work will ever see any of them (or any of my other tattoos).
Each tattoo has some significance for me, but I won't judge others who just like a thing and get a thing. Tattoos are as varied as the reasons people have for getting them. Mine aren't edgy, but they also aren't visible to strangers.
I made a kinky interpretation and apparently I'm wrong.
The white label with the "Haltungsform" is a standard label used in the German meat industry, showing under what conditions animal was kept before being slaughtered. 1 is the worst, and 5 is the best: https://haltungsform.de/en/
In this one, it says "Käfighaltung" under 2. Which means "caged keeping". So I assumed it's a kinky reference to a chastity cage. Maybe too much of a jump I know but I'm not a native German speaker and all the times I heard about a cage in German, it was in a kinky context.
Stickers are like statues of people, or streets named after people. They don't age well. Nothing and nobody is absolutely right, all the time or in hindsight.
I have one on my laptop that says "Fuck Your Algorithm." It's like a fine wine that gets more potent by the week, but it's about as political as my stickers get. The rest are just cool art I enjoy, usually from artists I meet at street fairs and whatnot, since it's an easy way to throw them a few supportive bucks without breaking my own wallet.
Saying they don't age well is pretty generalizing, given the variety of ways one can express themselves with stickers that aren't necessarily topical or political.
Theres better ways to choose stickers. Make them yourself and it's extremely unlikely you'll ever be at odds with that artist ;). Pretty art or ubiquitous fun phrases generally also don't really go bad, unless it's so tied to a specific artist that it represents them too.
I would like to know which stickers they were. Maybe I would recreate a few for irony. There are plenty of candidates for irony, from Enron to crypto. There are also those companies that it is hard to be excited about - I mean a Microsoft sticker would mark you out as a rebel.
Oddly, the only stickers I have on my computers are the Intel ones that come ready applied. Younger me would have gone in for stickers but younger me had pen and paper with no laptop. That said, back then it was school bags that got decorated, albeit with fabric patches and badges rather than stickers. Here was how you showed allegiance to music bands and football teams. I didn't do that though since I was not one of the cool kids.
One sticker set I would like consists of morally dubious companies such as defence corporations and failed companies from things such as crypto, mixed up with USAID psyops such as 'Free Tibet'. However I can't be bothered to put in the work. That is why stickers that are ready made succeed, it is minimal effort.
Younger me was surprised at how much stickers cost. When I was working in a bicycle shop we had Oakley sunglasses for sale, and the product was cool. In period people would buy Oakley stickers from us to put them in the back of their car. I expected these to be freebie promotional items but no, they cost a fortune and could not be just given away.
I once (legally) bought a second hand laptop with a big anti-theft sticker on it. The sticker warned that removing it would leave a big "STOLEN!" mark, which it did. I covered it up with a new sticker.
There's a big difference between the materials that's used for the sticker itself (paper, plastic) and the glue they used.
By now I have a good feeling about the "removability" of a sticker once i have it in my hand.
I sandwich them between my phone and a clear case now. Don't even have to take the stickum protector part off, so when you get a new phone, you can take your favorite stickers easily. Disadvantage: you get like 2 stickers total.
For me it was having to replace my MacBook's screen and loosing all the stickers in the process that made me realize I would loose any sticker used on a Laptop eventually.
One time when I left a job and had some really rare stickers I bought an identical ThinkPad and swapped the entire upper half of the machines with each other.
I basically never applied a sticker to any laptop I owned until I got a Framework. Just hoarded them like a dragon sitting on his pile of sticker-gold.
Finally figured hey, I might have this laptop more than a single upgrade cycle... it's worth burning a weird sticker or two.
I still try and buck the trend a little--instead of advertising technologies or something, my general goal is that, at first glance, nobody would question anything or think it looks unlike any other developer laptop, but that anyone paying attention will instead be met with a fractal of confusion. E.g., one on there is a "STOP, DROP, AND ROLL" fire safety sticker. In Quebecois French. From a small town volunteer fire department.
I consider it sort of a personal art project and have fun trying to collect up the most "wait, what?" stickers I can.
Framework is the only laptop regarding which I've had someone ask "what brand is this?".
There's genuine interest (well, at least until they hear about the price) and I guess people intuitively understand that laptops don't really have to be replaced every now and then, it's just that mainstream offerings are built this way.
The other day I wrote a lengthy essay about all the pros and cons of the device from my perspective for one 18yo son of a friend, who insisted this would be his college laptop, because he's seen some YouTuber present it. I think he's decided already, so I focused on managing expectations.
On the topic of stickers--bought an iPad for an elderly relative and it came with some Apple logo stickers. I snagged them, figured it was a fair price to charge.
One currently sits on my Framework over the Framework logo. The edge of the Framework gear sticks out in the bite in the apple and the sticker is thin enough the black framework logo shows clearly through the white of the apple.
On first glance, it looks like "trying to make a cheap laptop look expensive". On second it's looks like doing a really bad job of it. Anyone who actually knows the brand at all or asked about it will know the truth... it's making an expensive laptop look like a different expensive laptop.
So I guess it's not just the absurdity of the sticker, but how you use 'em.
I haven't tried putting any on my Framework 12 yet, because the ABS has this sort of rough texture that's very soft and pleasant to touch but seems like it wouldn't hold stickers well long-term. I've been putting mine on retro machines instead, like on my 900MHz HITACHI (actually Acer OEM) PⅢ: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/GWgVHXHaoAIPiB...
These days I also flatbed-scan any rare stickers before using them, to slake that FOMO “what if something better comes along and I regret using it now?” feeling.
You could also put a layer of vinyl on the laptop and then put the stickers on that. That way you can peel the whole thing off when you upgrade. I remembered reading about it on dev.to a few years back.
On a previous HN (I think) discussion about stickers, one person scanned the lid of their old laptop, printed the whole thing as a sticker, applied it to their new laptop and then continued to put more stickers on top of that.
I regularly see pallets of laptops turned in (either due to refreshes or end-of-employment stuff) for a major manufacturing / engineering (car) company. They are just as stickered, but with automotive nerdery. It's pretty neat.
And seeing just /how/ many laptops are that way it made me feel a lot less weird about putting stickers on "my" work laptop.
That work-related aspect is what I was thinking about too. I’m not sure what it looks like in various workplaces, but I’m always a bit curious around the policies they might have around putting lots of them on employer-owned laptops. I think in tough times when maybe it’s not easy to replace hardware, it can be annoying for an IT person to receive some where they have to peel them off and use Goo Gone on them.
I think of stickers as partly a theft deterrence mechanism. I expect a thief is more likely to steal a laptop with no stickers, because naively I assume the resale value is higher (no idea if that's actually true).
Losing developer productivity for a few days because a new laptop has to be provisioned, shipped and set up is also not cheap, so I feel there is some value to your employer in you making it slightly less likely for your laptop to be stolen at a conference or coffee shop.
That's why I always have a clear case on my Macbook I cover with stickers. That way, I can take them with me when I leave, or take them off if I have a big meeting/presentation!
I have this recollection of some framed / shadowboxed clear case covers that were covered in stickers. Either the laptop was replaced and the new model didn't fit... or the cover was filled up and a new one was used.
A way to keep the memories of that the stickers represent.
I always put stickers on work laptops specifically, in order to make mine recognizable among other identically looking laptops in the office.
But my stickers were always small, and usually lonely. A purple Emacs logo, a red Debian twirl, an orange lambda, stuff like that. Still was often enough to strike a conversation.
This is why I've always wanted some sort of removable skin I can put my stickers on and be able to take them with me when I need to depart with my device
Wouldn't a piece of vinyl, of the type used for wrapping cars, or similar, work for this purpose?
I've typically put dbrand skins on my laptops just to protect them from scuffs, I hand my work ones back with the skin on and no one has ever cared, or perhaps even noticed; I choose subtle ones like the hex or Carbon patterns that look like they could just be the actual lid from the manufacturer.
I don't sticker up my laptops (as much as I've always wanted to), but if it was done on top of one of these vinyl skins, it should be relatively easy to remove (never tried).
Ever since Framework laptops arrived on the scene, I've been waiting for someone to create thicker bezels that piggyback onto the webcams' USB 2.0 interface via a USB 2.0 hub, to integrate a color eInk display facing outwards. Just for the infinite stickers.
Bonus points for integrating an outward-facing webcam dedicated to a continous background facial recognition daemon to change the stickers on the fly depending upon who is approaching while the laptop is running.
Stickers on the laptop was such a small, wonderful part of college for me. Very minor, but the strategically perfectly imperfect placement of a sticker on my laptop when it was deemed to be worthy was so much fun. My favorite was a sticker meant for a hot beverage carafe to label it with the contents that I took that just read "HOT WATER".
I have a Framework now and haven't adding anything to it (because it's easier to clean), but maybe I'm missing out.
I think the most interesting aspect of this is how divisive something as innocuous as putting stickers on a thing is. What causes people to have a strong opinion on this one way or another?
Personally I don't find it hard to put stickers on things because I am worried about being silly, but I find defacing an otherwise clean object difficult. Like getting a brand new car or phone and trying very hard not to get a scratch. Once the first scratch is there you stop worrying about it.
Once you put down the first sticker I imagine that worry goes away. I think getting a tattoo is still an insurmountable problem for me personally, but I get it.
I would never put stickers on my laptop, or my car, and I certainly wouldn't get a tattoo. But that's just who I am. I definitely don't understand getting upset at others doing these things. If it makes them happy, who cares?
I think I still have a ThinkPad around somewhere with that SSD sticker on it. Upgrading from a spinning drive to the X25-M is still to this day the most effective upgrade I've ever had in a system, more effective than any 2-3 generations of laptop upgrades combined.
I definitely got one or more of those stickers with some Intel SATA SSDs... sadly those I think have been the ones I had the worst luck with. I think they were one of those series that had some really bad write amplification problem or something like that, due to I think some issue with their power-saving implementation.
I was so curious to see how the payment would work...I'm curious is there any way to make payment work without a browser? Is it impossible for any reason or just complex?
Well, it's certainly possible, as the guys over at terminal.shop let you enter payment information via SSH. :)
But on the one hand we don't want to handle credit card information _at all_. And then, stripe does not let you give them credit card data directly – at least in the default workflow.
(And we can offer alternative payment methods offered by stripe (e.g. Apple Pay, SEPA direct debit, …) much more naturally than what would be possible in the terminal.)
same here. newer saw such a fleshed-out ssh thingy. i just HAD to buy it. a bit weird to see this story on the frontpage now, just ordered tons of techy stickers from AliExpress two days ago...
i must say that the shopping experience on stickr.shop is way better than Ali, haha.
I would actually consider sticking the opposite "Nuclear power? Yes, please!" (Same for solar, wind, geothermal of course). Is there a sticker for pro-nuclear power movement?
P.S. There's a nice recent video to have a glimpse into nuclear power plant safety in action: https://youtu.be/v0afQ6w3Bjw
There's also one with Fernfusion (as a reference to the sun, made clear with a depiction) but I don't remember if it continues as "yes please" or "no thanks". I guess the former for solar power fans and the latter for vampires and night owls / hackers. Something for everyone ^^
What I think would be ideal with current tech is non-backlit e-ink color. Maybe displaying a static image that usually doesn't change while at a location.
You could use e-ink display changes when switching between modes, for example:
* corporate in-office staid, or internal team flair;
* trade conference switch to promoting company brands, rather than internal flairs;
* corporate in-office using it to indicate when you're in focus mode or on a call and less interruptible (actually, you could maybe use the LEDs for on-call mode, a rare instance when you might want the more attention than e-ink);
* traveling with work laptop, but at a cafe or lounge, and want to signal social sensibilities for meeting people personally.
E-ink is getting affordable. A 7.5" display for stickers would probably add under $100 to the price of a laptop.[1] Not many colors, but supposedly good saturation.
Not the OP, but I have heard something similar from a sec conf before. Gist being if a laptop has stickers like this, then the chances of the owner being an engineer is significantly higher, so pentest teams / malicious actors can better focus their efforts on those individuals, and have a higher chance of gaining access to internal systems than if they targeted random folks in public.
Doesn't help as well that arguably the kind of stickers a laptop displays tends to hint at who's a sysadmin or not, etc.
You're missing something, but that's sorta the point. The idea of what a full-stack developer or back-end engineer or hacker (or whatever term we want to bandy about) looks like is largely based on stereotyping and a bit of myth. You can't tell what someone does for a living just by looking at them all of the time, but you can some of the time, so it's easy to play on that by dressing the part because we humans can be easily tricked into trusting our own information by default. If you cosplay as a network engineer, it's pretty likely that's what most people will think you do.
Say you're red teaming, and you are on-site looking to gain access to the server closet of a business. Some initial setup about you being there comes into play, but once there, it's up to you to look like you belong there, when some unwitting person with access to the server closet will lead you to it, then leave you to do your thing on the pleasant notion that you'll have the "problem" fixed by the end of the day. This is an ultra-simple scenario used as an example, but looking the part sometimes means having some stickers on your laptop that tell people you're really into a specific language or tool chain, or that you've been in the SOC trenches long enough to know what a lot of those inside jokes mean. Details often sell the lie.
Well, the _corporate_ stickers are a major giveaway, of course; if you have 15 AWS-related stickers it is highly likely that you work at Amazon, say, and it may not necessarily be wise to make it clear that your laptop is an Amazon corporate laptop, in public.
Beyond that, you could _maybe_ use it to identify a person's interests for social engineering purposes, but that feels a lot more tenuous.
I've done this on my current laptop, and when it eventually stops serving me I will frame the lid as a humble piece of art for my office. (7 year old HP running linux, need to replace the battery soon but otherwise still perfectly serviceable)
I had a load of stickers on my old machine. I kept the laptop but felt the need to remove the stickers. I think part of me had moved on from what they represented - mostly past interests. Another part of me never liked how they overlapped, I tried but it didn't really work for me. It raises the question: are stickers randomly placed or is there some deliberate pattern to them that I just can't see? Do you just slap them on, or precision place them to look random?
That's gunna depend on the person, of course. Some people slap em on without any worry, some people make sure they're just not massively overlapping, and some people space them out nicely. Here's one that walks the line between order and chaos! https://devlids.com/media/pages/lids/shiro/bee7bec396-175127...
It's all fun until you want to sell the machine and the stickers discolored the case. Some stickers adhesive seem to react with the coating on MacBooks and permanently discolor them.
When I'm driving around town and I see that soooo many vehicles have a sticker on the back, or a license plate frame, or something that advertises for the place that they bought the car at. I do not understand this at all.
I owned a car for a decade that I bought from the dealer that had one of those frames and I never bothered taking it off. The power of defaults are strong.
Such a bunch of negative folks in here. I personally stickerbomb every company laptop I get knowing full well some poor guy in IT is going to have to scrape it all off.
I once had a loaner thinkpad for two days whilst my MacBook was bricked by Jamf - best believe they got that thing back covered.
His face when I handed it back to him, priceless.
Side note: What is that massive yellow CYBER sticker that seems to be on 80% of them? Feel like I’ve missed some kind of political movement.
> Side note: What is that massive yellow CYBER sticker that seems to be on 80% of them? Feel like I’ve missed some kind of political movement.
I'm a little bit unsure about the origins of the sticker. But in the european hacker community the "CYBER" sticker is used for a bunch of things. Package tape, stickers and security lines.
A lot of German users. I guess they have a much active hackerscene. Which is true because I literally got my laptop sticker cut out with a cricut cut at a Berlin computer club.
Inspired by Talia Smiley, I’ve started wearing a roll of dinosaur stickers on my belt and offering them to random strangers and at networking events.
“Hi I’m Kimberly, can I tell you about my startup” lands way worse than “Hi I’m Kimberly, would you like a dinosaur sticker for your coffee / MacBook?” Sometimes they even stick around for the pitch, but it’s nice to be able to instantly make someone smile in three-second interactions
My stickers are totally awesome but I could probably be deanonymized by sharing them (since they are so unique and special) so you all will not be graced by their beauty and artistry.
It's a classic at security conferences: people who put a lot of effort into opsec make their laptops uniquely identifiable using stickers. Cracks me up
My friend bought a bunch of generic kids' stickers with flowers, kitties, cars, Minions and such, and plastered his laptop with them to make fun of this trend. It looks great! Tons of glitter
It's moistly about being able to recognize your laptop from others when the company has standardized on as sdinglke model. I have an Epson ColorWorkjs C4000e label printer and design and print my own, but some my 13 year old daughter designed for me and are extra special.
I chuckled seeing the one with stickers taken off of fresh produce. My SO bought me a whiteboard so that I would stop placing such stickers on random surfaces.
I like to look at stuff personalized like that, but I would never settle on any design for longer, so I don't do it myself.
There used to be a startup
that sold ads on laptops. You got sent a sticker, had to put it on your laptop and take photos with the laptop and varying sets of people in them to get paid.
Wonder what happened to them.
I slapped a nice sticker of a boat anchor on my work laptop. Seemed fitting. Slow (thanks to 4 separate malware/virus scanners), weighs a ton, lasts for an hour on battery.
Being childlike is what makes us able to live in a society. We explore new things, don't stop learning, and forgive mistakes made along the way. Like wolves, who started being more like how they are in their puppy phase (playful, friendly, exploratory), thereby being possible to domesticate and now called dogs, we've domesticated ourselves (from the common ancestor we had with great apes) in that there was apparently an evolutionary advantage to be less physically imposing and more like, well, as we are today
(Based on what I remember from a books called Tamed by Alice Roberts)
Don’t know about the story telling as in a story about the past of the laptop. I have a lot of colleagues who come back with a full plastered laptop the second day they receive a new machine. I think that there is a culture of either leave you machines pristine or show you don’t give a f… how expensive it is. Sure the world is not black and white here so.
On that particular day I was going through a bunch of different books, trying to work out what my plan was going to be for the next little while. Of those ones, I wound up finishing A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and the Sensation and Perception one. I also knocked out a pretty good chunk of the one titled just Memory. The rest got bumped down the stack a bit.
I kinda getting back to the place now where I want to revisit The Organization of Behavior. That's the seminal work by Hebb that introduced Hebbian Learning and I'm on this big quest now to revisit a lot of old school approaches to learning & neural networks (in something at least approximating chronological order, although I won't be super strict about it) and code up implementations of each. So basically, some sort of Hebbian Learning system, a "McCulloch & Pitts Neuron", a Perceptron with the Perceptron Convergence Algorithm, Selfridge's Pandemonium Architecture, and so on, gradually working my way up to the current SOTA.
I'm about to finish up the Minsky & Papert Perceptrons book, and once I finish that I will probably read Volume 2 of the Parallel Distributed Processing series, then go back to Hebb.
FWIW, that Memory book was pretty fascinating. The general subject of human memory is, both simply taken for its own sake, and taken as inspiration for approaches to AI. I'm slightly more interested in AI than human memory qua human memory, but in either case it's fascinating material.
I'm not really here to defend OR condemn Mitnick. I was just always fascinated with his story, from the first time I read that Hafner & Markoff book Cyberpunk back in the early 1990's. Anyway, one of the notable aspects of his story was the way he was held for a rather long time without even so much as a bail hearing... something many people believed (and still believe) was blatantly unconstitutional. That was, as I recall, the motivation for a fair amount of the "Free Kevin" rabble-rousing, even among people who acknowledged that he had broken the law and deserved some sort of punishment.
By the time I bought that particular laptop and put that sticker on it, (about 3 years ago now, I guess) Kevin had long since been out of jail, had gone legal and was running his own security consulting company. I put one of those one mostly out of nostalgia and as a conversation starter. Perhaps surprisingly, I've had a modest number of people approach me when I was out in public and ask "Who's Kevin?" or say "Kevin Mitnick, right? Yeah, I remember that guy... I was at DEFCON this one year and ... <conversation ensues>".
Somewhere I have a "RUN GCC" sticker from the Free Software Foundation that I was given by Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) at some meetup here in Stockholm.
That would actually be kind of cool, I always end up not being able to make up my mind about what would be worthy.
When I got an internship at Amazon, I (ironically) plastered my cubicle with all the leadership principles ("LP's"), in over-happy fonts. But the leadership did not realize I was being tongue-in-cheek, and I suspect my cubicle decorations had a significant positive impact on my success there, lol. In the end I even started to believe the LP's, so maybe they knew something I didn't.
It's interesting that these are labelled 'creative'. They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
I was at SIGGRAPH many years ago in a line behind some artists. They were talking about how all the engineers dressed the same. This is true. But was also true was that you easily tell the artists as well, they all dressed carefully and differently, within the bounds of their style and were just as easily distinguished.
Definitely a lot of cybersecurity stickers, but that aside, I see many, many different opinions, positions, and preferences represented in those stickers.
There's a laptop with multiple Amazon stickers, a laptop with Google Cloud stickers, and another laptop with a "There is no cloud, only other people's computers" sticker, and various self-hosters. There are people with local stickers from many different countries. There are people who care about repairability, people who care about reproducibility, people who have nostalgia for specific technologies, people who would love less of specific technologies, Windows fans, Apple fans, Linux fans, Intel fans, IPv6 fans, heavy metal fans, Pokemon fans, Simpsons fans, television fans, Vim users, tabletop gamers, cycling fans, shoe fans, coffee fans, tea fans, anti-AI people, pro-AI people, anti-blockchain people, pro-blockchain people, people who like to layer stickers, people who like to carefully arrange stickers.
Among the politics alone, there are many many opinions expressed, and I'd bet the owners of those laptops could have vigorous political arguments about the right way to do things.
If anything all the transgender/pride and left-wing political cases just make me notice the more "original" ones more. It's like Where's Waldo. I still find stickers tacky though.
> They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
If one of the laptops had a libertarian flag added, suddenly it would become "creative"? All these photos⁰¹²³⁴ are aesthetically distinct. Sure, you can see trends in the website but that's always a thing, specially considering nobody there is designing stickers.
I also find it curious that you conflate social signaling with lack of (true) creativity. If all you ate was bacon, would you sneer at the foodies for making homemade pesto and not unleashing their free will by adding strawberry jam to it?
Fair point. I didn't mean to imply people's politics means they are creative or not.
But surely the bar to being creative is higher than putting stickers on your laptop. No doubt many of the people here are creative and code creatively, write creatively, draw creatively or make music.
If you said to someone who is a comedian or a writer that you were 'creative too' because of your laptop stickers. Well. C'mon.
The politics shown is interestingly similar. No doubt many and probably most lean left. But not all. I've been worked with many people who code and a significant number are conservative. But I've never seen anyone with a right leaning laptop sticker. Tattoos you see exhibit more variety than these laptop stickers.
I should have added that I have stickers on my laptop. But that is orthogonal to whether I'm creative or not.
Well, the subtitle is "a unique collection of laptops adorned with creative stickers from around the world". Meaning that the sticker themselves are creative, not necessarily the collage, which it also can be art by itself (I wouldn't say it fits here)
>But surely the bar to being creative is higher than putting stickers on your laptop. No doubt many of the people here are creative and code creatively, write creatively, draw creatively or make music.
I think a certain selection and positioning can be creative.
>If you said to someone who is a comedian or a writer that you were 'creative too' because of your laptop stickers. Well. C'mon.
Depends, is the comedian Jerry Seinfeld?
I'm kidding (kinda). I personally understand creativity as something very much lower stakes, but that might be my ESL showing.
You might find that a lack of right wing stickers has to do do with the fact that most educated people today, such as hackers, who also historically deal with otherness and thus form protective communities, have zero interest in supporting fascist, hateful ideals nor their institutions.
It is positively ridiculous to ridicule a group of people for being "samey" while also lamenting that they do not support policies which historically aim to keep things the same and assimilate/homogenize those who do not fit into perceived societal norms.
Equating right-wing ideas to fascism and hate is not a healthy or realistic mindset. One might say that left-wing ideas are hateful and fascist because of deaths under the Soviet Union.
> lamenting that they do not support policies which historically aim to keep things the same and assimilate/homogenize those who do not fit into perceived societal norms.
Are you familiar with Libertarianism? Conservatism is not the only right-wing ideology.
This is whataboutism. The Sovient Union does not represent all left-wing thought. Politics are more complicated than "left" and "right", and thus all manner of ideologies exist on the left. You could argue that many far-left people and organizations display extremist tendencies, but that is true of the far-right as well, and is not the topic of discussion.
> Are you familiar with Libertarianism? Conservatism is not the only right-wing ideology.
I am obviously familiar with libertarianism. You're implying that it is a right-wing ideology, which is incorrect. The umbrella of libertarianism contains both left and right wing political philosophies. You can be libertarian and anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian. You can also be libertarian and think you don't support fascism, even though it supports you.
In most of Europe, libertarianism manifests as a left-wing ideology. The idea that it is fundamentally a right-wing ideology is a distinctly American perspective.
Stickers themselves can be fun and quirky, but I for the life of me can't figure out why people would put such extremely divisive and workplace-unnecessary messaging on their MAIN WORK DEVICE as many of these have.
The kind of lack to integrate to a team having your pride flags, literal death threats to perceived enemies, furries, loli anime, etc on a thing you intend to bring to the workplace to do all your work on isn't good for your career and sure as hell won't not be noticed by people whose responsibility is to judge risk and liabilities for example.
Well, for a start, you don't know that these are MAIN WORK DEVICEs. Some of them may be personal devices seen at cons and so on.
That said, I'm not _that_ worried about people noticing that the scary gay has a rainbow sticker on his laptop. If someone at work has an issue with me being gay, well, they'll probably have that issue with me regardless of what is on my laptop, and that is very much their problem. You can't spend your whole life pandering to bigots.
Thanks for the reminder to put a pride flag on my new work computer. Can't for the life of me figure out why it'd be divisive though.
Also, why do you assume these aren't people's personal computers? Many people surely own computers personally, and of course people can express themselves on personal property.
I struggle to believe you don't understand what they mean. There is many a homophobe in the world. GP isn't saying homophobia is good, simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people. Maybe they deserve to be upset, but that doesn't change that it may become your problem.
> simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people.
Y'know, I'm pretty much fine with upsetting bigots. I'd assume that people inclined to be upset by a scary pride flag are also upset by my _existence_, so, y'know, I don't see a strong reason to moderate my stickers to protect the delicate feelings of idiots. If they're a homophobe they'll have a problem with me _anyway_.
People can become upset for a great variety of reasons. I think it's better to accept to some extent that it happens than to design your life around not upsetting anyone.
What's wrong with a pride flag? People commonly display their hetero marriages etc. at workplaces too. If either of those cause division in a workplace, that's a matter for HR or legal to resolve (if it is indeed a disruption).
Anyway it's unclear which of these are brought into offices.
>People commonly display their hetero marriages etc. at workplaces too
what :D Don't see a single sticker about those and no people don't go out of their way to flaunt their marriages at the workplace. There is a place that is flaunted though, and that is on the behind of their car. "Just Married". How those are used is at the right scope and visibility too.
>If either of those cause division in a workplace, that's a matter for HR or legal to resolve.
If you immediately go to HR (and expect there to be a HR, and for them to take you seriously for minor things) to balance interpersonal issues at work that might just be a sign those issues wouldn't be there without you. Just don't bring your issues to work, be a human.
>it's unclear which of these are brought into offices.
Well I hope for the sake of the users they don't. Sowing discord doesn't reduce just personal success but can soil any project.
Showing a pride flag at work isn't bringing an issue (just like having a photo of a husband and wife on a desk is not). Someone else having a problem with that and causing a disruption over it, is sowing discord and bringing an issue to work.
Thank you so much.
I had to dig out my old laptop from computer science college.
I remember that I love doing this and that it changed appearance over nearly 5 years.
It brings back good memories.
It was really a cool idea.
Looks like many people here in the comments don't hang out at hacking events that are not purely tech-focused. In European hacker camps these kinds of stickers are the norm, especially the political ones that, because of the very nature of those camps, lean heavily progressive if not anti-capitalist/anarchist.
I'm from europe, and the political ones are very, very rare... at least not in the tech world (macbooks of HR departments might be different though).
Mostly zero stickers, here and there you find some progamming language ones, a tux here and there, kali, anonymous masks, "my other computer is your computer" etc. on security events, i've even seen a phpBB one this year on a relatively new computer, but no trump, lgbt flags and anything anti/nazi related.
I like stickers from conferences but I also love my notebook clean, and if I ever do it, my brain won't let me do it wrong, I will put them well and organized. There has been some times that I saw people receive stickers and immediately put them in their notebook lid like, however their hand lands on the notebook, crooked, overlapping other stickers and I'm like "holy crap no please don't".
The thing is, once you add a sticker, it becomes visually distinguishable. If you're the teacher handing out thirty of the same exact thing for a workshop, an incoming class, whatever. We give out a notebook/laptop/piece of paper to each student. The first instruction is to write your name at the top of the page/book or otherwise somehow make it distinguishable. Because the problem is inevitably someone will lose theirs and the teacher just has this notebook with no name on it.
For laptops at work, everyone has the same IT issued laptop. You go to anything where there's more than one of you, go for a coffee break that runs long, the class does a standing exercise, whatever, the point is the laptops get mixed up. Now there are 29 indistinguishably the same laptop, and one with a sticker on it.
This. My personal daily driver of a laptop has a collage on it. My work-issued laptop is a lot cleaner but it has a small red sticker declaring it to be "Editor's Choice Bestseller of the Month".
Several years ago, it was new laptop day at the startup I worked for. We didn't have an office as much as a coworking space. When people went to lunch, they just left their new MBAs on this big communal table. Some shut the lid, some didn't even lock the screen but those would've been taken care of in ~5min.
Anyway, I may or may not have switched some laptops around but the point is someone definitely did. Half an hour later people returned. Some of them were instantly confused. Some of them entered a wrong password a couple of times. Some of them were greeted by an unfamiliar Google Chrome window.
I may or may not have wasted a collective forty or so man-minutes in the span of five but I definitely enjoyed watching the confusion unfold.
I mean, if a Lamborghini was designed to be as boring-looking as possible. Modern laptops are, generally, a metal or plastic rectangle, sometimes slightly curved. They are the most generic-looking objects imaginable; it's not surprising that they attract a certain amount of this.
Where do people buy laptop stickers these days? My wife got a new computer a few months and couldn't find anything cute and tasteful. Everything was brands and anger. The places she used to use are gone, and Amazon proved useless.
Most of the stickers I've got have just been given to me. At house parties or conventions or with clothes I bought. I've then commissioned an artist to draw my own stickers which I got printed and hand out.
Stickers get handed around like business cards so the stickers on your laptop/fridge are almost like a record of the people you met.
I don't really have any public share links for them, but the last one I got was my fursona as an Among Us character. I've wanted to get another set drawn up for a bit but the artists I was interested in either had really long wait times (1 year) or were quite expensive. I might just draw some myself when I get some time.
I haven't really bought stickers off the internet, but I'm guessing t-shirt or art stores might have some, or your favorite brand of thing might have some.
If you keep your eye out for stickers, you'll start to notice them at many types of smaller establishments like cafes, book stores, boutiques, breweries, music venues, galleries, etc... they're often by the register, and sometimes free!
As a long time sticker collector, I love how the stickers found at random places have some memories attached to them. Finding them, especially when traveling, sometimes feels like finding treasure!
I am a bit curious about the amount of politically progressive stickers however. Like, is sticker-ing your laptop just more of a 'progressive' thing to do? Do political conservatives not sticker their laptops in the same way that they generally do with their bumper stickers?
I think there's just a link between sticking stickers on things and being somewhat expressive, artistic, willing to stand out. While leaving the laptop blank is more likely someone more dry, reserved, etc. There's also a link between stickers and graffiti culture which I wouldn't describe as progressive but more just unconventional/rebellious.
I've never seen a conservative sticker on a laptop before. Then again, stickers, tags, etc. are more of an anti establishment thing. Those things don't mesh well with conservative views.
In general I agree, left-leaning ones are way more common. Maybe you are correct regarding the reasons. But I've definitely seen conservative ones too, with libertarian ones being more common among those (e.g., saw a number of "Who is John Galt?" stickers some years ago).
A rule of thumb among your friends: those who don’t talk politics are the conservative ones. Similarly, I’d wager most of the examples here without overtly progressive stickers are conservative.
Depends on where you live. Around me the conservatives are more than willing to offer their political opinions even when the context doesn't fit. Progressive/Liberal folks tend to be less vocal because we already know where we stand with each other and don't want to invite the loudmouth to go off.
From the top post on the creator's Mastodon account (see the 'socials' link on the site):
"I’ve had a long-standing love of stickers on laptops. I know a lot of you do too! So I built a site to highlight them. At Hope next week I’ll take as many pics (with permission) of the best stickered laptops I can find and post them.
It’s always sad when a laptop gets upgraded, the old one tossed, and that sticker canvas is lost. I’m trying to preserve it.
Please submit pics of your laptops so I can “seed the tip jar,” as it were."
I'm sure there's people out there with laptops blaring their right-wing opinions but I doubt many of them were at a hacker con like HOPE.
Do you have examples? If anything there have been cases of left aligned activist employees being fired from companies like Google not too long ago. Or cases like Basecamp where they asked people to avoid politics at work or leave the company.
Well he wrote a memo saying the women at Google were "neurotic" and that's why women biologically are predisposed to not be software engineers.
If that's conservative ideology, then I guess it is fair to say such ideology might not be appropriate for a workplace. In reality, he just said stupid stuff to be provocative, and tried to post-hoc justify it as vilifying conservatives instead.
Sometime around 2015 American political conservatism abandoned a substantive policy identity for demagoguery and nihilism, and while electorally successful to an extent, it's socially unpopular among the general population that's of working/laptop-using age.
That's an interesting point, but I've never really seen the cross as a conservative symbol. I probably know about as many progressive christians as I do conservative ones (mind you I'm not in the US).
Political bumper stickers are also a thing up here in Canada, but probably like 1-5% as common. I'm often shocked to see how common they are when I'm down in the US. Like I find it weird that so many people are eager to passive agressively advertise their political views to the public (and usually the more polarizing views).
The most common sticker we've got is the infamous "F--- Trudeau" sticker. And I'm even seeing fewer of those these days since he's no longer PM.
Every American conservative knows the feeling of being at work and your liberal coworkers, not knowing you're conservative, start going on a rant about how terrible Republicans are and how stupid they are and how they all deserve jail etc.
In America today, liberals feel very comfortable speaking about their views in public. Conservatives don't.
"liberals feel very comfortable speaking about their views in public. Conservatives don't."
Maybe conservative folks aren't comfortable speaking about their views in public because they know the Christo-fascist undertones of their core values are abrasive to non conservatives?
I’ve seen it fairly commonly for people to have company stickers on their laptop and have worked places that distribute these stickers. I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
Self expression is fine, I personally want the most boring looking computer possible
At a prior job, employees wearing the logo started getting a lot of unexpected targeted attention outside the office. This ranged from lots of questions from randos about future products, to desperate passers-by handing off resumes on the sidewalk and begging for jobs, to even stalking and targeted theft. OPSEC culture wasn't something practiced there, and it was quite the rude awakening for some.
I do sticker the everloving snot out of my (removable) laptop cover with memes vaguely opposing or otherwise orthogonal to the local culture. No references to my job or place of work. Any interactions have generally been amusing to all parties involved.
Every laptop has encrypted storage and most of them are MDM locked to the company so you can't even reformat and use them. Stealing a corporate laptop would basically just be for the parts you can resell like the display and such.
> I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
One day the company was giving employees some swag, little retractable lanyard-things, branded with the company name and logo, for each of our anonymous white RFID keycards.
I, uh, escalated my concerns that this meant anyone who stole/found a keycard would also know where they could go use it. For whatever reason, that particular swag stopped being available.
I was hoping for a link to a series of stickers such as "spit", "gum", "string", "paperclips", with graphics including a band-aid and a pair of tin cans.
It seems to me that about 10-15 years ago, laptop stickers were a little more like patches on a punk jacket; that is, they were meant to show something about the cons or competitions you have participated in. A few such places would give out stickers.
At some point, people saw the cool-looking stickered-up laptops and thought they would also look cool and put fun stickers on their laptops to show that they also can google things. This diluted the original social signal value until it was completely ubiquitous, kind of like if everyone started putting whatever patches appeal to them on whatever jacket they wear without any thought to the idea of their origin. By that time, the original sticker-signalers had all moved on to other signals.
Nowadays, when I see someone with two dozen stickers on their laptop or pins on their lanyard, I see someone with two dozen hot button issues on which they’ll try to ruin your life over a differing opinion.
If I ever have money to risk on an order from something like StickerApp, I'll sell them at bulk discounts for people to hand out at conventions or give to friends. Each sheet has three, so people gift most of them.
I sold the same amount at a lower price, but then I was looking at one payout minimum ($25) a year.
In my professional experience the number of stickers on a laptop is generally inversely proportional to the owner’s ability to write software, or even use said computer for that matter.
Worth noting is that there is a non-zero number of political stickers on these laptops, and they seem to all tend towards the far-Left. It could make one wonder about the general political leanings of hackers and open source contributors.
Why is it important? A lot of projects took a stance on Russia-Ukraine [1], GitHub blocked the entirety of Iran [2] and I don't doubt that codebases now take a stance on Gaza-Israel.
The top-middle says "NAZI HACKERS FUCK OFF" [3]. They likely mean a new definition of "Nazi", and that could include you. Why point out this sticker particularly? Because it is directly aggressive towards a hacker they perceive to hold that label, and that they have labelled that group with one of the worst possible labels. By doing so, they can justify pretty much any level of aggression through the use of dehumanisation (ironically, a method employed by the Nazis).
The Python Software Foundation refused $1.5mn in funding [5] because they could not agree to be non-political. They would not agree to act without favour. Maybe today this doesn't concern you, but look more closely at the stickers of the people that have infiltrated these institutions. Do you think that you will indefinitely remain on the "good side"?
The Linux Kernel's previous Code of Conflict [6] was quite a rational approach, it was a market place of ideas (contributions) where they did battle. There was no barrier to entry and everybody would be critiqued equally, in the single objective of creating the best possible kernel. Diff this with the current Code of Conduct [7] where there is a barrier to entry, and the focus is on the feelings of the people and not on the quality of the kernel.
We should keep politics out of code entirely, and the quality of the code should speak for itself.
My hot take: laptops with stickers are simply mini-billboards and I resent that they are a thing. The owner doesn't even make money from it!
I'm fine with self-expression (like with tattoos, which can be super interesting and creative) but am broadly against people shoving their likes/dislikes on everyone's face. I don't have any laptop stickers or bumper stickers and don't wear branded clothing.
Am I the only one that finds sticker bombed laptops cringe ?
The vast majority of people with stickerbombed laptops are either extremists (either side, equally bad in my view), or wanna be techies who are rarely competent.
It's funny, I am in cybersecurity but I have always liked keeping my laptop free of stickers. Always seemed like "trying too hard" to me. And as much as I love my laptop, much like my Fluke 87V, I value it as a tool, not a means of self-expression.
Maybe I am just boring, lol. I did use an original copy of the PGP source code book as a monitor stand though!
I used to keep my laptop sticker free. I changed that once I discovered how much easier it makes it to recognize which laptop is mine. This was really driven home when one year everyone at work was gifted the same macBook Air as a holiday gift by the company.
Our cyber security team told people not to put stickers on the laptop as it can be used to spear phish the owner, can open to industrial espionage.
They even showed us this cheesy video showing.
1. A woman chatting up a developer based on their stickers on the laptop they saw earlier.
2. Someone targeting the laptop for theft because of the stickers.
People still do it, but I've only seen it on the junior people trying to express who they are.
Wow most of these are quite the contrast to what I used to see back in the day. At least in my circles it was just a collection of the technologies you’ve learned and enjoy. These are more like bumper stickers on the back of car. To each their own I suppose.
When I was going to conferences, my laptop stickers were a public display of "these are technologies that I use and you can strike up a conversation with me about them." To an extent, a resume that you can glance at from across the room.
It's a bit of a statement for what you're trying to communicate with that lid - professional experience, political statements, personal "this is neat"...
And part of this is a for me the lid of the laptop is something that I'd need to be able to be comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry about if they may be offended or not (though perl might be offensive to some).
I've got stickers on my laptops. None of them are political, but I've got various indie fashion brands, music related, furry stickers, etc. If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine. I can go work anywhere and have enough savings that it would be no inconvenience to me. I wouldn't want to work with someone who couldn't handle some trivial self expression on the back of a laptop.
So far no one has ever been offended by this though. HN is far more sensitive than the average CTO.
> If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine.
That can be a healthy attitude outside of work. People love personality.
But at work, that's not a healthy attitude. You're there to work together, not to be uncompromising in expressing yourself. Your stickers are probably fine, but I can also imagine plenty of musical artists that would certainly be offensive (and rightly so) to some people, whether for their lyrics or for their criminal behavior -- and then the attitude of "that's more your problem than mine" is not gonna fly.
Sure there is some content that is obviously not appropriate, but I'm not seeing it in the OP link. Meanwhile the comments here are filled with a thinly veiled anger over seeing rainbow flag stickers. These are the people I'd be quite happy to self filter themselves out in the workplace. Though I've never met someone like this in the office. Or at least they keep their thoughts to themselves offline.
> These are the people I'd be quite happy to self filter themselves out in the workplace.
Same. If my stickers serve as a self-filter away from companies I'd rather not work at, or people I'd rather not work with, then that's a positive thing for me.
If someone's offended by, for example, a rainbow sticker on my laptop, well I'd rather not work with them, or for that company. I'll look elsewhere.
You've never seen anyone get outwardly offended but I'm sure there have been a few. It's just a statistical probability. I fully support the cause and would not be offended but I encounter people everyday who most certainly are.
Just tell those people you're a big fan of Noah and the Old Testament. Then ask them about why they are wearing a cotton blend shirt.
I'm annoyed by the political stuff. I haven't always worked at 100% left leaning companies and I find it really uncomfortable when someone e.g. calls the centre-left party I voted for a pack of communists. I don't like encouraging a norm of political self-expression because I have direct experience being on the other side of it and feel that it leads to both a less effective workplace and a more polarised society.
I've met people like them in the office. My first job, people were deadnaming Chelsea Manning in the internal chat. One time I got stuck in a lift with two other people and they assumed I was a guy, and started talking about which of the HR reps they wanted to fuck. It was tedious and stressful, and the company did have an anonymous reporting system, sure; but fuck, there were only three people in the lift, anonymity goes to shit when there's only three total people present and two of them are in on it.
My work quality tanked shortly after because, a) I have ADHD so I was putting 200% into my job to tread water, b) the rampant misogyny and transphobia within the workplace was just suffocating, and c) I dared to use the anonymous reporting system to report people for being shitheads, and I stupidly admitted that to HR. I am 70% sure it was the last point there that got me fired lmao
This kind of shit is why I am no longer aiming to work in tech.
Considering how many of these stickers are about being gay or trans, compromising about expressing yourself sounds pretty grim. I wouldn't want to put that aside to get on with my co-workers.
Like I said in another comment, other coworkers of mine have tried to express themselves through misogynistic or sexually suggestive stickers. I wouldn't suggest having a Diddy sticker or anything right now.
My only point is that the "if someone is offended, that's their problem" attitude is not so black and white. People often use it to justify being an a**hole too. Obviously, gay or trans stickers are not in the category of offensive things. There are things that are appropriate to express, and things that are not. So yeah, sometimes you need to compromise on your self-expression at work because not all of it is appropriate for everyone, you know?
> Obviously, gay or trans stickers are not in the category of offensive things.
It's at least plausible to taxonomize them under either politics or sexuality. Either of which larger categories some might consider categorically offensive or inappropriate.
Yes, I'm also saying that "vote for $PARTY" (categorically; regardless of which party) and anime catgirls are both potentially offensive or inappropriate. Depending on how much of a stick-in-the-mud people in your local environs are.
Most other industries are very exposed to external clients or customers. Software developers who sit in an office and only see other internal employees have no reason cover up their personality like that.
Just about every enterprise has tech, and there are many, many sectors. There's also far more "tech folks" than developers at most companies, nor do all companies have devs on staff.
> comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry
In today's timeline, you'd need to be concerned about what some random TSA agent felt about your stickers and if that might get you pulled aside for additional screening.
You joke, but I had someone tell me they were taken for questioning on entry to the US because their laptop had EFF stickers with some slightly edgy hacker culture phrases on them.
I'm sorry, but what makes you think I was joking? I have seen a co-worker get pulled aside for additional screening because he wore a t-shirt that had the words of the second amendment or some such printed in a way of looking like a pair of pistols. On the same flight, we sat with another individual who got himself arrested, missed his flight, and was eventually released to sit on our flight because he wore a belt adorned with bullet shells cut in half.
I'm not saying either one of them were the deepest of thinkers when choosing the garments for the day, but TSA also isn't employing the deepest of thinkers either, so why poke the hornets' nest
> On the same flight, we sat with another individual who got himself arrested, missed his flight, and was eventually released to sit on our flight because he wore a belt adorned with bullet shells cut in half.
I've heard of similar things before, and had the sense that this was less screeners being dumb and more legislators not fuzz-testing their work.
That's why even though I like the weird and esoteric stickers you see here, I myself prefer the `unixstickers` style I think you're talking about. Debian, Arch, GNU, Python, bash, Ruby, Git, Vim, fork bomb, Tux, DEFCON, 127.0.0.1, &c. These are great for starting conversations, even in cafes. And you end up meeting some interesting people with shared culture.
It is about advertising one's (possible) shared culture. For me, my laptop is part of my professional culture and thus I try to keep it as crisp and professional in appearance as one's resume since its a bit... difficult to laptop lids in certain cases.
For my personal shared culture, that is the sort of thing that can be exposed (or hidden) on a case by case basis. My choice of t-shirt where I can button up or down depending on the context says a lot more about me than the lid of my laptop. Granted, it' one message at a time - but there are things that I've had on t-shirts that I made sure to button up before going into the office and seeing the boss (old school, and I still have it - those were durable shirts - https://www.flickr.com/photos/strihs/8536766235/ ). On the other hand, I wouldn't put https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop/design/let+me+work+on+your+... on my laptop no matter how much I agree with it.
I would be amendable to putting a square of #22b7f2 on my laptop, and that opens up an entire discussion if recognized (I'm not quite ambitious or passionate enough to color the entire laptop that color).
My work computer is spotless. My personal conference (and work appropriate - security wouldn't find anything unprofessional or untoward on it) laptop is the one with some stickers that are technologies that I want to put on there. My personal computer at home is desktop... so no stickers there.
Even crossing company culture borders could be problematic if one is a consultant or sales engineer or professional services... This is one of those "in the wrong environment, something could scupper a deal - and you don't want that to be pinned on you."
During undergrad/grad school it was always whatever free stickers were available at hackathons. Now I usually just put 1 or 2 unique stickers to distinguish my MBP from others. Currently rocking one that's an illustration that my friend made of their dog with its tongue out.
Seems to be in line with those I've seen for the past, oh, twenty years. Nerdy media (lots of Star Trek, video games), tech stickers, Linux users of course, a lot of political ones (oft left-leaning and lots of tech-related causes and groups like the EFF), some just plain silly/funny. Generally I see laptops with stickers in larger urban areas or university towns. Though honestly even ones I've seen in very small rural areas are generally similar, but maybe that just reflects the culture of those who tend to go to coffee shops and libraries and also wants to adorn their laptop.
I wonder if stickers in general are more common in the US just like bumper stickers are.
As someone based outside of the US, I rarely see people with stickers on their laptop.
The very vast majority of cars also do not have bumper stickers here (and those that do might have one at most).
I agree, in Australia you see plenty of them on laptops, water bottles and just out in the street like you said.
We do have a lot of stickers on cars too but it's more common to see them on windows of the car not the car body, and I think in general they're socially quite different to what you'd see in America. More like brand stickers and hobby stuff, or jokes, not so much politics or religion.
I ended up having a work laptop that looks exactly like my personal laptop. After making an embarrassing mistake once, I picked up some stickers and stuck them on my office laptop.
Now, my work laptop looks clearly distinct, not just from my own personal laptop, but also from all the identical laptops other people at work bring to meeting rooms.
It depends on what parties you go to :). Business events are where you get logos of programming languages and various technologies; hacker events are where you get the more opinionated and artsy ones.
The first soft-politico stickers I saw all over cons in the 90s/00s were their 'FUCK MICROSOFT' and 'FUCK GATES' stickers that exploded after the MS/Linux/SCO conflicts.
Before the MS debacles (was there a before?) it was mostly FREE KEVIN everywhere.
..which for reasons lead to 'this machine hacks oligarchies', and 'piss: it's whats for dinner' stickers shown in the link.
Speaking on that : Woodie Guthrie was better at marketing slogans than himself -- kind of interesting to consider how many more people are familiar with the 'This machine...' than his music.
When I was going to these things I tended to avoid 'extreme' ones -- I was often job hunting and didn't need to project an image that may hinder that effort.
At defcon, laptop stickers have imo always been vibrantly political. What you saw on laptops may be more a sign of the crowds you ran with than the times!
It's a good observation, I certainly don't see much of it in agency meetings. I meet with a lot of different industries too and it's pretty rare, I imagine they all have company laptops.
A lot of these seem to be from the German left-wing hacker culture (e.g. the recurring yellow CYBER-Stickers are a dead giveaway) from about 5 years ago (considering the mix of stickers presented). Think ccc-adjacent.
Considering that background, expect them to look more like a random Berlin lightpost than a conversation piece.
These comments are rough. Some weird hostility to self-expression in here.
"Back in my day, laptops were about TECHNOLOGY! Where's the conservative stickers!?" Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.
I was born in early 90s; all laptops in my memory have weird, silly stickers on them.
I don't see much hostility at all. A few people don't like them. That's not weird hostility, isn't it just self-expression? Like the stickers that oppose or express a dislike of something, which presumably aren't weird hostility either. People are allowed to dislike or disagree or make not entirely positive comments. Sure some would just scroll on, arguably that's the better thing to do, but commenting in self-expression is really fine too. It seems like a strange kind of fragility and inability to tolerate or understand that people don't all think alike which would jump to thinking that is "hostility".
Yeah, even in those. There was like one low effort obvious troll, others are just self-expressing their dislike, pretty similar to many others here expressing their like of the stickers or the website with similar kind of quips.
I tend to just scroll on if I don't like something, rather than commenting about it. But I would be lying if I said I've never done it. It's a very human thing, on a forum like this that invites open discussion about things it is fine, and pretty obviously if the pictures have a bunch of political messages on them you would not be flabbergasted to see a some political comments. Maybe the comments are cringy, silly, wrong, not aligned with your beliefs, or unnecessary, but seeing hostility in disagreement or dislike is a pretty bad place to be.
Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?
People self-expressing dislike for some content under a link on public forum that explicitly invites comment is not hostility. Making comments and disagreement about politics is not hostility (particularly in response to political content being posted). It just isn't.
If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.
Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.
> Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?
It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example. It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.
> If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.
Sure, these are obviously the same...
> Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.
Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.
> It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example.
Semantics. You invented a scenario and you attempted to make some point that presumably you were unable to make with the situation at hand.
> It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.
I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.
> Sure, these are obviously the same...
Now you don't like "comparisons"? It's more similar than your one.
> Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.
Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.
> I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.
Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.
> Now you don't like "comparisons"?
Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers
> Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.
Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.
> Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.
The comparison was a bad-faith strawman that did not reflect the conversation here. In that situation a person might be an asshole, possibly even hostile. That does not automatically make these commenters hostile assholes, that's just the height of intellectual laziness.
> Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers
No I didn't make that comparison, and you're a nasty and intellectually dishonest person for trying to say I did.
> Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.
No that's not hostile. Somebody submitted this content inviting the HN community to comment on it and oh my god not everybody loves it. Some even hate it and are blunt about it. That's not weird hostility, it's people self-expressing their dislike of things in not always polite terms. Like some of these laptop stickers are doing.
"People expressing their hatred for art in impolite terms" is not hostile to you? What exactly would hostility in this context look like to you? Or is it just not possible to be hostile about this?
Agreed. Some forget that the US has this beautiful great thing called freedom of speech, meaning that some can express to like things, as well as dislike things! It's not uncommon to find stickers among laptops where some are excited for environmental safety and conservationism, and some are for Tesla / Palantir and the values and ethos that they want to perpetuate across the globe.
Agreed, some weird hostility. I have laptops going back to the 90s all slapped up!
BTW I've been following LK for quite a while now and hope to use it sometime in the future. My regular DM is committed to a different platform, but I have a story that might turn into a campaign and I'd sub to LK to run it. Keep up the great work!
> Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.
I didn't see any Java or COBOL or even .NET stickers, but there was at least a fairly clean one with a Sun sticker. And some Debian stickers, but those were a bit more cluttered. And maybe even that one with the cat around the Apple logo.
It's annoying to me that you're not allowed to even slightly critique things anymore without people blurting out the thought-terminating cliché "Let people enjoy things!", which attempts to do nothing more than shut down interesting conversation because somebody doesn't like said conversation. (Let people enjoy critiquing?) It's behaviour like this that makes me dread the inevitable Reddit exodus.
Well, if we want to be pedantic, and of course we do, I'd say the stickers are a form of self-expression and the comments are a form of expression, some of which seemed cynical and/or biased due to most of those laptop lids featuring a high proportion of innocuous logos, video games, ironic meme culture stuff, cute animals, some flags, and if I really look for it, some resembling vaguely anti-authoritarian themes
Any group that gets its kicks out of pretending to be fools will soon find itself filled with fools who think themselves in good company - Abraham Lincoln
Yeah, that was the big takeaway from the social experiment that was 4chan. If you ironically pretend too long to be trash, you will gradually become trash.
Socialist Alternative is an Australian political org. They're one of the tiny Trotskyist factions that always seem to form any time two or more Trotskyists work together. That's why it's on a laptop next to a bunch of other far left political stuff. They're pretty much the opposite of "Yay Nazism!"
Or were you drawing an equivalence between the two?
There will be a time when people putting svastikas will be considered brave heroes. And then it'll be banned again. And then it'll resurface again. Turns out, "things that are obviously morally right" radically chances over time and across cultures.
... and a duality within the present forms of society in which either expression is interesting enough or leads up to a significant event such that we will remember it in the future. No time has been one-sided as in the way you put it.
Several other European countries imitated German fascism in the 1930s (e.g. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia). This is well known in Eastern Europe because that brief period has cast long shadows to this day. Even in relatively faraway South America, Germany and Italy inspired several political movements.
Sure, not everyone thought Naziism was good, because you can’t find any political philosophy in human history that everyone has the same opinion about. But it was still seen as a model by millions of people outside Germany until Germany started obviously losing the war.
This isn't some kind of "oh morality is relative and somethings are cultural", it's just objectively wrong, regardless of who or how many people claim to like it.
> Some people like naziism. Those people were wrong.
In your individual opinion. In mine, too, and hopefully everyone else’s here. But the OP was clearly talking about what views are presented as “morally right” by normative social forces, and those clearly differ across time and place, often as political power waxes and wanes.
No but that's my point, the nazis had to march entire classes of people to death camps at gun point to be considered "normative," and even then there was a resistance movement not only in every occupied country but also Germany itself. The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.
And even now we see that the normalization of naziism is apparently impossible - I was incredibly cynical about the American right wing happily embracing naziism, but I guess I was partially wrong: there's a schism this week over popular American right wing media figures platforming the nazi Nick Fuentes.
By the time the "death camps" started, Nazism’s takeover of Germany’s society was complete; peer pressure was now doing the work that initially thugs had to do. Yes, there was a resistance because there will always be people who disagree with whomever is in power, but those people where acting against the norm. Only with Germany losing the war were they rehabilitated in the eyes of Germany society at large, and initially with some grudging resistance here and there.
This is why posting about how “Nazism is objectively immoral, m’kay?" misses the point and can be counterproductive. The whole reason that fascism is a continual spectre is that, it turns out, by appealing to people’s base instincts and cracking heads, a malevolent political form can completely sidestep morality and institute the society it wants to see.
> The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.
Before modernity, extraordinary violence and propaganda were, well, ordinary. Hitler just made that work on industrial scale, but the underlying moral ideas weren't anything new. During antiquity, people didn't mind slaughtering entire cities. Even more modern history is full shit like that, look up Mongol invasions.
BTW don't you think that it's a little awkward that in modern times "pirates", which were people that'd literally kill seamen for profit, are considered a fun Halloween theme for children? I can imagine that in 500 years Nazi costumes will be similarly normalized.
I suspect it's a little like bumper stickers, in that people with conservative opinions might be less likely to want to put stickers on their laptop. With bumper stickers (at least in the US), the rule of thumb I've seen is that the more bumper stickers adorning a car, the more likely they are to espouse leftist opinions. One or two bumper stickers: a tossup between whether it's "Elect the liberal politician running for President this year" or whether it's "Elect the conservative politician running for President this year". More than ten bumper stickers? 99% of the time they're liberal. Only once in my life do I remember seeing a car with more than ten bumper stickers which expressed politically-conservative opinions.
I suspect, but would have a hard time proving, that the same dynamic that leads liberal people to want to cover their car in opinionated stickers but conservative people not to do so... would apply in a similar way to laptops as it does to cars.
All the cars with political stickers I see are conservative ones. I live in Texas, in a blue city too but still its all punisher stickers and other wannabee-badass-signalling, or pro trump / liberal tears type stuff. Never anything pro liberal
There was some paper that associated number of stickers on a car with extremety of their tribal group beliefs and more aggressive driving. I don't think it transfers to laptops
Correction: very often it's "elect the (whichever) politician running for President two or three years ago", because people rarely remove the bumper stickers they've applied. Once the next Presidential election starts up they'll slap the new sticker on top of the old one, but in 2006 you were still likely to see "Vote for Bush" or "Vote for Kerry" stickers, despite the fact that Bush was ineligible to run in 2008 (having served two terms) and Kerry was unlikely to run in 2008 (failed candidates rarely get nominated again by their party — not never, obviously, but rarely). By 2008 the Bush stickers had been mostly replaced by McCain stickers and the Kerry ones by Obama stickers, but in 2006 you would still see plenty of bumper stickers from the 2004 elections.
Don’t put stickers on your car. Despite what you think they say, know they read, “I’m poor.” No one cares who you cheer for or what you believe in. Just drive a little faster.
It entirely, entirely depends on what part of the country you live in. Near me a car with a lot of stickers usually indicates Q anon/Trump/Lets go Brandon etc.
Come to the south, I see more "Don't tread on me" snakes, there was a lot of FJB and other Biden hate, "Come and take them" stickers, "Charlie Kirk American Patriot" stickers, all sorts of heavily religious stuff like "One nation under GOD", etc. Liberals around here will have small lgbtq/ally stickers and pro evolution/science stickers but it's not like liberal enclaves where you'll see plastered subarus.
I have had the opposite experience living in the south. The cars with the most bumper sticks around here are owned by conservatives. Today I saw a truck with a US flag in place of its tailgate, "I back the blue" painted on the rear windshield, a Trump sticker, a sticker that said "Don't steal! The government hates competition." and more.
Hmm... Does the current crop of Apple laptops have a glowing Apple logo?
... and is there a HAL sticker that has a red lens in the middle that would glow red if I put it over the Apple logo?
When Apple was making a comeback from being all but dead, the logo was a quick way to identify other members of your tribe. And you could walk into a coffee shop and get an instant tally of how Apple was doing. It was really precarious for a time, and then after some months it became reassuring and then some more months and you could stop worrying altogether.
My fun fact on the laptop logos is that the PowerBook G4 is when they flipped it to being right-side-up for other people looking at the computer while you're using it.
On the PowerBook G3 and prior, the logo was facing toward you when you're looking at your own computer closed on the desk. Once you open it, it was upside down for anyone else looking at you.
“We’re all unique and special, just like everyone else”
(Some of the stickers are kind of cool, but I just can’t understand the logic behind thinking your MacBook #12,372 with a Python sticker on the back is worth flaunting online)
A political speech to address constituents is public, and is not the same importance as a random posting online.
Also, I’m under no illusion that my comments are anything but digital detritus, but at least comments here have the potential to be valuable (to me), I’m not sure about laptop stickers.
I mean, why do people like doing those wine and painting evenings, even if they’re all going home with similar paintings? Why do people perform at recitals when they’re performing music that already exists? Why do people share any art, even if it’s not guaranteed to be the most original, profound, or technically proficient expression of creative intent?
Sometimes it’s fun to just enjoy something, and to share that you enjoyed it. These pictures aren’t here to impress anyone, they’re here because each one is a record of someone who had a bit of fun decorating their laptop, and an invitation to share in the fun. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
I've had my eye on this pack of stickers for my next laptop upgrade: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1133836260/cursed-programming-s...
(the joke here is that all of the tech has the wrong logo, ie the javascript sticker has a java logo, the vscode sticker has a vim logo, etc)
It's actually kind of concerning how these just look normal at first glance
This is awesome
I feel like the GitHub one needs an inverse GitLab one. Otherwise it might look like you just have a GitLab logo and GitHub text logo separately.
This is incredible
> Your real middle class refuses to show any but the most bland books and magazines on its coffee tables: otherwise, expressions of opinion, awkward questions, or even ideas might result. -Paul Fussell, Class
The greyification of our lives, the loss of whimsy and kitsch and being too afraid to be a little cringe, I get the sense that a lot of people associate "growing up" as the loss of any and all expression: we wake up in our grey beds in our millennial grey house, drive to work in our grey car to work in our grey cubical, etc, etc. If you want a gauche laptop covered in stickers, do it, embrace the gauche. Everyone sneering at you is more miserable than you.
It has nothing to do with that.
A good portion of these stickers are to do with things that are political or quasi political. What tends to happen is that a lot if times people have been burned in someway for supporting an idea or a cause. This is often because people have been fooled by charlatan, or it was later revealed that things were more complicated or different than they were led to believe.
Cringe and why people hate it is best explained by watching the very first episode of the UK office.
Most people want to go to work, turn up and do their time and go home. People that are often top enthusiastic are difficult to deal with day to day. People that adorn their personal possessions with slogans are seen as a warning sign.
Politics (and sexuality) used to be taboo subjects discussed between trusted friends. I wouldn't mind going back to that.
Remember when who you voted for was sacred knowledge?
> sacred knowledge?
I think you might be romanticizing this, a bit. When you convince the public that not talking about something is the best course of action, they become a lot easier to control. We learned this during WWII with the propaganda machine that was fully employed on all fronts, and arguably before that with the work of Edward Bernays and people like him. If public discourse and debate could be quashed, then it was much, much easier to simply tell everyone what their opinions of a thing should be.
Prior to secret ballots being a thing you would have voted "viva voce" by saying your preference aloud. Violence and intimidation were common.
There's no problem with publicly engaging in politics. In fact, it's a great thing to do.
What is a problem is doing it on an environment where participation is mandatory or required for basic survival.
I think generally people are I'll equipped to engage publicly in politics. Politics is an extremely dirty game and can be extremely divisive.
My friends are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. Strangers usually only offer shallow ridicule and trolling- especially online.
But why so many stickers? Why so many tattoos? Why not pick one you very much like and agree with? Less noise. More signal. Less is more.
I don't like many of the ones mentioned on this website but here are some minimalist examples [1] [2] [3] [4] and an exception I do like a bit because of the custom shape [5]. [1] is more like a skin.
[1] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_00333...
[2] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/laptop_cover.j...
[3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_1259.jpg
[4] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_5753.JPG
[5] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/54917193947_1f...
> But why so many stickers?
I 'unno, it's fun I guess?
I see a sticker I like somewhere, brain goes 'heh, neat' and so I put it on my laptop with the other stickers. There's not much more to it.
Why? Because your aesthetic taste is not universal.
I happen to heartily agree with you but now we're talking taste and... yeah.
its cringe because its not an original expression, its overdone and heavily political and obnouxious.
Thank you. I have tried to raise my daughters that way despite, potentially, (occasionally) embarrassing myself or the family.
God, I can't stand living in an artless world.
"Go ahead on Mr. Businessman You can't dress like me"
Jimmy Hendrix, If 6 was 9.
Has another relevant spoken word bit about waving his freak flag :)
Living out your individuality through stickers on your laptop is absolutely pathetic. It screams of a person with nothing else going on in their life.
My laptop hasn't had stickers since a CTO asked why mine didn't have any stickers like the ones on the laptops of his cool cloud team. Personally I've found laptop stickers bad taste since then.
My work laptop has a company sticker on it. If I'm at a customer's office I'd like everyone to know I don't work for them. TSA also has this really neat trick where my laptop has gotten "lost" several times going through security. I have to describe the laptop in order to get it back. If I don't have an identifying sticker it's basically impossbile to uniquely identify it
It has become less fun since it has become common. My most recent laptop doesn't have stickers but I might apply some from my sizable collection before it becomes secondary laptop in 1-2 years.
You can still "hipster it" and only use actually cool stickers. Community open source projects, hackerspaces, good conferences, EFF and similar organizations, weird funny stuff.
Good:
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/1762135251053-...
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_9222-1.jpe...
"Employee of the month":
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_20200717_2...
I try to avoid stickers from tech products which seem to be the common thing to do. Instead almost all of my stickers are from my friend's art projects.
The problem is that a lot of that has been ruined by corporate cringe and "weird funny stuff" is no longer weird and funny, especially when you have a bunch of influencers trying to either monetise it, sanitise it and/or attach their personal brand to it.
e.g. One of the biggest people that does Debian content, does a bunch of absolute cringe behaviour associated with them where I almost want to die of second hand embarrassment.
From my POV (old?, never on social mass media), you live in a strange world if some influencer has any... influence on your opinion of Debian. I see little to no monetization of "the good stuff".
They don't have any influence about what I think of Debian. What happens though is people outside will associate their (unbearably cringe in this case) behaviour with you, whether you like it or not.
I'm a long-time Debian user and I have no idea who you're talking about. How much weight do they actually carry? Who is this influencer you're talking about?
Go on YouTube, Mastodon or any sort of social media that is bit techy orientated and you will find it easily.
Right, which tells us that what was fun about it was feeling cool for doing something unusual.
Cue the scene from Office Space where Jennifer Anniston's waitress character is required to have a minimum of 7 pieces of flair on her uniform, per corporate franchise policy. And that movie is from the 90s!
Big "needs more flair" vibes.
Our CTO: If you add stickers to your laptop you need to keep it for four years, rather than two.
We sell back our laptop to the company we get them from, they refurb them and give us a nice discount on the new model. Most vinyl stickers leave a mark on MacBooks that can't come off, hurting the resell value a lot. Some have protecting covers on their laptop and the stickers go on that instead.
“We need to talk about your flair.”
Actual LOL for that comment. Thank you.
To me stickers on laptops are as tasteless and kitschy as tattoos. I would never get a tattoo for the same reason I would never put a sticker on my laptop.
Besides nobody gives a shit about your stupid political opinions or the software stack you use.
Personally I keep one Linux sticker on my laptop, less about expression and more a conversation starter. It's something that 99% of people won't notice but for the 1% that notices it's a nice conversation starter when everyone is bored (ie waiting at the airport)
When I next have a working laptop (I currently use a desktop and a phone), I'll probably stick on a Linux sticker and something from Discworld (probably the "Anthill Inside" sticker, intended for that purpose).
When I next have a working laptop (I currently use a desktop and a phone), I'll probably stick on a Linux sticker and something from Discworld (probably the "Anthill Inside" sticker, made for that purpose).
Need them to tell apart my work laptop from my home laptop as they look identical
I had equipped the family with identical corporate-refurb laptops - when you have any of 4 laptops in a family room, it was a way of not getting my laptop taken by my kids to school one day...
Back in the office days, it was also a way to identify a corporate laptop among a sea of identical models.
Also, like I don't wear branded clothing, I like to cover the device brand.
Back when I worked at Apple no one had stickers on their laptops (gasp, who would dare!). But everyone had identical MacBook Pros, and when we had meetings, they would go in the center of the table and then everyone would have trouble telling them apart. So I got a couple of gold star stickers like you give to children for my laptop.
"Besides nobody gives a shit about your stupid political opinions or the software stack you use."
But sure, tell everyone about your feelings on tattoos and stickers
I've always tried to apply "The Internet gives a fuck about what you don't like" when it comes to commenting, but it's also helpful to remember it's not just the Internet.
Well, nobody cares about you're views about stickers and tattoos, but you still commented. Compared to you though, nobody here called you a retard; maybe that says something about how people are here or how you tend to use inflammatory language when it's not needed.
I care! I dunno if I agree with him about all tattoos (surely some are tasteful even if it's a minority), but stickers are definitely all tasteless and kitschy.
Hi! I find your opinion tasteless and kitschy.
They won't give a shit about your political opinions as long as it's one of those in the linked gallery of corporate-friendly pre-approved ones.
Anything right of center and suddenly people start caring very much.
Left of center types have worked for decades on being ignored while right of center types are going through something of a resurgance right now after being rightfully relegated to the thrash heap of history and tend to feel persecuted if someone disagrees with them. For those right of center types freedom of speech seems to cut only in one way and it, unsurprisingly, evokes more disagreement. It must suck to be right of center.
Of course, that's another thing. The site is full of "down with the system" types which are, for some reason, oblivious to the irony of their values being aligned with the corporate values of businesses that have a valuation of trillions.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
I don't think this meme is applicable here.
These people aren't trying to "improve things somewhat" in spite of their corporate affiliation. It's that they are perfectly aligned with the corporate interests, with things like importing cheap labor and keeping women chained to their desks and away from children. It's cleverly concealed with slogans like "FCK AFD", or the glorification of every other sexual special interest except the productive one. But the purpose of the system is what it does.
> keeping women chained to their desks and away from children
> glorification of every other sexual special interest except the productive one
Yikes, someone should check your harddrives
Those are your arguments, a stupid fucking comic and calling someone a paedophile.
Of course only a pedophile would even think of having intercourse with a woman who has not yet entered menopause.
I should probably also get the lethal injection for being a product of such a sick and depraved congress, because apparently a child is guilty of the crimes of the father.
Once either of you present an argument worthy of respect within a civil and democratic society, I will respond in kind. Until then, statements like "the glorification of every other sexual special interest except the productive one" will continue to get the responses they deserve.
What do you think I have on my hard drives? I'm genuinely confused by that comment.
I think It’s funny to see the political ones, because these stickers are often as incoherent as memorabilia you‘d expect to find in a teenagers room.
And even if they look colorful, they’re as diverse as the distinction between Trotzky and Stalin.
There are the endless hints at porn addiction, wrapped as ideology.
The Anti-Capitalism coming from an 3,000$++ MacBook Pro is also rich, especially if that evil capitalist gave it to him for free, plus an absurd monthly stipend.
There‘s the outspoken expression of peace, love and moral superiority - right next to „fck“ other people, „smash“ individuals with opposing views or downright „kill“ them.
And of course the old chestnut of caring about digital freedom, privacy but then low and behold people have a different opinion, to just „hack“ them anyways.
It’s hard to tell which of these invokes more Schadenfreue, if not its meta that the owners likely think of these stickers as giving away secret hints to the curious about their world views, while in practice you already know it when entering the room.
> gave it to him for free,
It's neither a gift nor free.
Damn, you must be so incredibly miserable. I hope you find some happiness in your life at some point.
> There are the endless hints at porn addiction, wrapped as ideology.
... Eh? You presumably have _extremely_ weird tastes in porn. Like, this sounds more like projection on your part than a real thing, tbh.
My laptop has stickers, one of which is a photo of my previous laptop and its stickers. One of those is a photo of the laptop before that…
That's how git commits work.
Current laptop stickers: current state.
Photo of the previous laptop: reference to previous commit.
I love this... I haven't had the courage to "spend" my sticker collection on my current laptop, as they obviously don't last forever. A solution could be to photograph the old cover, and print it as a full-size sticker as a starting point for the next laptop!
Like my primary storage, with the old storage in a sub folder.
There's still a WP51 folder in there somewhere...
I didn't go that far, but I did take the back cover from my old (stickered) laptop and hang it on the wall.
stickerception
Stickers all the way down.
Keep it going! I did that to my Facebook pfp (they also have stickers) - after a few years it became this abstract, glitchy work of art. I don’t use fb anymore but still remember that fondly
Ripoff of https://devlids.com
Choose taste, choose the original!
Some laptops clearly belong to the cheerful juniors celebrating their coding practices (git! npm! vim! Python!), and some are very political; once you filter those out, what remains are interesting examples of people expressing themselves.
I used to put stickers on my desktop PC and laptop when I was in my early 20s. Then I realised my laptop was kinda free advertising for whatever companies product I had stuck on the back.
Now it seems have come very "corporate cringe", similar to the 16 pieces of flair at Chotchkie's. It also looks a bit childish IMO.
Back in the day, a coworker would replace the "Intel Inside" on his computer with a sticker using a similar style that read "Evil Inside".
> It also looks a bit childish IMO.
God forbid people have a bit of fun in their lives.
If someone's idea "fun" is putting a sticker on your laptop, then they really need to get out of the house more often.
Don’t be a square
Ok I will be a Rhombus instead.
It's just some stickers on a piece of equipment, why are you making this so complicated?
The problem is that it isn't just stickers on a piece of equipment.
A lot of these laptop stickers are either tech stacks (which are usually a form of advertising for a corporation), quasi-political messaging or outward political messaging.
I've partially explain this in my OP and other replies under this subject, but I and many other see them as a warning sign of things that are much more worrisome. I am naturally suspicious of any "corporate fun stuff" which is what a lot of this has turned into. That was accurately portrayed for what it is in office space with the "16 pieces of flair". Anyone who calls this out as suspicious will have someone like yourself saying "what is the problem? just a sticker".
> The problem is that it isn't just stickers on a piece of equipment.
Ok, so you just want to make this complicated for no reason, gotcha.
Nope. You asked the question, I gave you a pretty clear and polite answer, which in retrospect you didn't deserve. It is fine if you don't agree, being a dick about it isn't.
If you aren't interested in my (or anyone elses) POV, don't bother asking the question in future.
I just want a funny sticker to cover the logo of my laptop's producer.
Are they really that funny though? While I appreciate that it is subjective, they are often only vaguely funny.
More often or not a lot of the supposed humour is a thin veneer over some sort of political or quasi-political messaging. You can even see in the screenshots that most of it is either political, product placement or their tech stack.
As a JS developer, I once had a sticker in the npm font, but it said "left-pad". I liked that one.
Just a pretty one is fine too though. I had a cool one at some point that was the logo of a small local meetup with friendly organisers, and the logo was essentially a drawing of a local landmark. It fit perfectly over the OEM logo. I miss that one.
> As a JS developer, I once had a sticker in the npm font, but it said "left-pad". I liked that one.
I wouldn't even put this in the "somewhat amusing" category. This is really in the 16 pieces of allowed flair category as far as I am concerned.
> I wouldn't even put this in the "somewhat amusing" category. This is really in the 16 pieces of allowed flair category as far as I am concerned.
There you are, the perfect quote for you to print out and stick on your laptop!
Turns out you were just waiting for the right one all along. And you thought you just dropped in here to be grumpy. Oh, no, we have stickers here for everyone. =)
Political messaging is good and important especially nowadays
Political messaging I am completely fed up with and I am sure I am not the only person fed up with it. I go out of my way now to make sure that I see almost none of it.
When I see overt political messaging outside of someone that works for a particular organisation or political party, I steer clear.
I've found that most people (doesn't matter what political persuasion) have a very poor understanding of what they are actually supporting if they understand it at all. Often they simply parroting what they've elsewhere.
Oddly enough I have a pretty good guess of your political affiliations from these comments.
How so? I agree with them. Political messaging is incredibly annoying, no matter which "side" is doing it.
why is it surprising that people feel like showing their own politics with stickers when the government they live under currently deports random people, blows up boats based on vague accusations, tries to reform the country with Project2025, ..., do i have to go on?
nice for you that you're able to ignore politics - you should maybe be aware that this is a privilege. lots of people would probably want to ignore politics, but instead they have to fear for their existence, dignity or way of life.
"but not everyone on HN is american", well, other countries also have their fair share of political issues. and if you don't see them as issues, then again, you're just showing your own privilege.
high-wage, male, (often times white) tech-workers wonder why people are upset. "i'm fine, what's the problem?"
> why is it surprising that people feel like showing their own politics with stickers when the government they live under currently deports random people, blows up boats based on vague accusations, tries to reform the country with Project2025, ..., do i have to go on?
I am in my early-40s. I remember when Obama was droning people abroad based on iffy intel. I remember when George Bush/Dick Cheney started a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed possibly millions (I heard all sorts of different numbers).
If I put a sticker on my laptop, it doesn't stop any of that happening. It doesn't bring back the people that killed in those wars. All it is trying to do is signal to other people that you have the "right opinions". It is a form of slacktivism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
> nice for you that you're able to ignore politics - you should maybe be aware that this is a privilege. lots of people would probably want to ignore politics, but instead they have to fear for their existence, dignity or way of life.
I am mature enough to understand that in the vast majority of circumstances I cannot affect in the outcome in any meaningful way.
Whether I ignore politics or not will have no effect on the outcome. I suggest you go back and watch old TV programs and documentaries. People were having the same discussions 20, 30 and some 50 years ago on the exact topics and making the same arguments, often they were word for word the same.
> "but not everyone on HN is american", well, other countries also have their fair share of political issues. and if you don't see them as issues, then again, you're just showing your own ignorance, privilege or both.
I choose to ignore the political issues in my country (the UK) as well. I can't do anything to solve the problems in the country.
Go on then, What are they? Since you can read my mind.
cHiLdIsH
I absolutely love this website.
I've been putting stickers on all of my laptops for decades. I get all my laptop stickers from @HackerStick3rs mainly and then cybersec conferences (like DEF CON, BSides, Saintcon, Nolacon) are my other main source of them.
Stickers are kinda like currency at hacker conferences and a great way to meet new people.
I saw laptops like those on hackathons and always sort of assumed they were their personal machines. Kind of surprising to read here that some of those were apparently (company-owned) work laptops.
Startup culture?
When everybody is issued with a dull grey laptop, putting a few stickers on it is a nice way to know which one is yours when there's ten laptops on a meeting table and it can help users feels more responsible of their laptop.
The nastiest/dirtiest laptops I saw were always sticker less.
I work at a large (>50k employees) company that is in every way the opposite of a start-up. Plenty of people cover their work laptops in stickers. The hardware group that handles replacing old machines has a wall of fame for all the lids with cool stickers.
I used to work for medium/big tech companies (8,000 - 70,000 employees.)
I always had a sticker on my laptop - everybody had the same laptop (or maybe one of two models.) It was a reliable way to quickly identify mine in a big group at a meeting or conference.
Funnily enough, not having stickers for me was an equally (if not more) reliable way to identify my laptop at those types of companies.
Not necessarily startup culture, my current assignment (energy company) has a number of teams that all want to do some kind of personal identity and self-promo, so they have stickers made on occasion.
Unfortunately a lot of them are AI generated, which is weird given we have a number of designers in the teams too.
Not necessarily startup. You can see some laptops with defcon stickers, it used to be very common for infosec auditors to have work laptops full of stickers not that long ago. Although, it is bad practice for read team audits, and some large companies don't like this kind of shenanigans for internal audits, so that may explain why it is less frequent nowadays
My laptop at Amazon was also covered in stickers, although I shied away from the more politically charged ones.
You see this at quite large companies. FAANGs and such.
Not really, I work at a big and older company and they will even have stickers around the office(we only need to go to the office 4 or 5 times per year, but can go whenever we please) to put in the laptops.
I got rid of all mine after getting disillusioned with every one of the causes they represented.
This is the main reason I've never gotten a tattoo - how I feel about whatever it is will almost certainly change.
But you can also use them as a reminder of how you felt/who you were when you got them.
Even someone who get a very trendy tattoo should keep it: "look how I used to follow every trend and how I evolved because I would never do something like that now".
Biologically and philosophically, tattoos are scars.
Getting scars on purpose is a quite questionable decision.
Avoid making memories. Keep your brain pristine.
You're right, you just can't make memories without injecting ink into your skin.
Your brain should be smooth and round like a polished marble
Wait until you hear about intentional scarification
> Getting scars on purpose is a quite questionable decision.
Interesting. Why?
Isn't it a common and longstanding cultural practice, even among indigenous peoples? Intuitively, I'd say body modification is based on the desire to shape one's own body, something we usually embrace in fitness culture and medicine, for example.
I don't have any tattoos or scars, but I can't think of anything that would make them questionable.
Perhaps some of the objection arises from a confusion between body modification and self-harm?
Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's good. We also shouldn't confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities like exercising simply because both "shape one's own body".
> Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's good.
This is true, although it is a good start, right? If a cultural practice has survived for many generations, this alone already indicates that the practice might be compatible with human society, morals, sustainability, etc.
> We also shouldn't confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities like exercising simply because both "shape one's own body".
True! We should indeed not confuse self-mutilation with healthy activities just because they share some similarities.
But would you classify scars or tattoos motivated by aesthetics as self-mutilation? What about piercings, such as holes for earrings or laser hair removal?
I believe that is an interesting and unusual position. Do you have an argument in favor of your (so far implicit) take?
Or you could just keep a journal and not, literally, wear your past on your sleeve.
Why not both?
A journal can be lost and/or destroyed quite easily.
Whereas you skin is always there. And if it's not, then you have much bigger scars.
I get this, but thankfully the regrettable tattoos I got back in the day were small/simple enough to hide under cover-ups. My former tattoos were drug-related, but these days, they're all themed with the retrovideo games I still love play, especially when I need a breather from everything else.
As a result, I am that guy that tells people a few rules about tattoos:
1. Don't get a tattoo of a band. They will eventually fall out of favor or do something stupid.
2. Don't get a tattoo of any person unless they've been dead for a long, long time. Like a band, a person will also eventually fall out of favor or do something stupid. Even after they're dead, it may still be uncovered that they did something stupid in secret.
3. Don't make your self-expression about other people. Rules 1 and 2 should have already put you on this path.
4. Consider time. So you like cars, especially the 1987 Pontiac Firebird you had in high school. Have you always liked cars? Will you always like cars? Have you and will you always like that car? If there is doubt, rule it out.
5. Are you drunk or high? Best sleep on it.
6. Can you be honest with yourself? This is the Catch 22 question, but an important one. We tend to have a few versions of ourselves to contend with; the one we want to be, the one others perceive us as, and the one we need to be. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don't, but self-expression hinges on understanding the difference and allowing that we might be deceiving ourselves about who we really are, sometimes.
Getting a tattoo is a remarkably difficult and personal thing that I see a lot of people not take seriously enough, then live to regret it, myself included. The artist who has now done all my visible work is an absolute master at getting people to slow down and think about what they want, which was a terrific boon in my life, because he probably did more for me as a person than my therapist did. His clients are life-long, one even having traveled from another country to get more work done by him. That's to say nothing of his absolutely radical art and style that always produces something unique and fit for the person to make part of their lives.
It's something I often think about when I look down at my arms, see those old game homages and realize, regardless of what else has happened in my life or whoever I thought I was at the time, they have been with me since the beginning and are still here, helping me through it.
Great rules, & appreciate your perspective.
I wonder what makes me so different:
If I carefully had a favorite thing of mine selected, and I woke up tomorrow with the tiniest tattoo of it, I would be so upset. I’d be bothered every time I saw it on my body, knowing it wouldn't rub off.
I bet your tattoo artist could help me learn something about myself there :)
Well, looking back on what I wrote, I should have also said this:
7. It's also okay to not have or want any tattoos
Self-expression can take many forms :)
Often the laptop is replaced before the feelings change. Each laptop lid becomes a time machine showing who you were at the time.
There’s also the problem with both most tattoos and all the stickers in the article that there’s nothing left that’s counter-cultural about them, which defeats the entire purpose of doing something edgy as a statement.
I'm seeing a lot of cute animals, memes, video game stuff, what's with the fixation on being edgy. My gf has a bunch of animal tattoos, doesn't need to be complicated.
Do they _need_ to be edgy? They can just be fun, happy, or a representation/proxy of the person behind the computer
The edginess was, at the core of it, what made them fun in the first place
Because then it's just visual clutter, and in the case of tattoos, unnecessary pain, expense and health risk.
If I'm going to put a sticker on something it's going to read like a diff, what sets me apart from the mainstream culture, not all the different ways I conform to it.
>what sets me apart
Interesting. I’m happy with a fun niche, myself.
(But generally happier without stickers on expensive things.)
Tattoos, though—hard to imagine being THAT confident in anything ever.
My first tattoos were each done years apart. I printed a version out, put it in my wallet, and saw it every time I made a purchase. If I still loved it just as much a year later, I booked an appointment.
Later tattoos are essentially private works of art, put together collaboratively with an artist. These are for ME, and no one at work will ever see any of them (or any of my other tattoos).
Each tattoo has some significance for me, but I won't judge others who just like a thing and get a thing. Tattoos are as varied as the reasons people have for getting them. Mine aren't edgy, but they also aren't visible to strangers.
Removing a sticker is easier than getting rid of a tattoo. Some people on this website even declare that they wear a chastity device on their laptop stickers: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_9217-2.jpe...
> Some people on this website even declare that they wear a chastity device on their laptop stickers:
Where do you see that on this photo?
I made a kinky interpretation and apparently I'm wrong.
The white label with the "Haltungsform" is a standard label used in the German meat industry, showing under what conditions animal was kept before being slaughtered. 1 is the worst, and 5 is the best: https://haltungsform.de/en/
In this one, it says "Käfighaltung" under 2. Which means "caged keeping". So I assumed it's a kinky reference to a chastity cage. Maybe too much of a jump I know but I'm not a native German speaker and all the times I heard about a cage in German, it was in a kinky context.
Now that you asked and I looked at the source, apparently it's part of a working environment themed sticker set: https://www.threads.com/@unterwegselektrisch/post/DD34uR6uJG...
It's embarrassingly wrong but very funny too :)
Freud would have a field day with you.
The stickers are the chastity device.
I'm not sure that's a sticker.
What about the appreciation of nature?
What stickers did you used to have? I'm always fascinated with how people change their mind.
I used to have Pokemon stickers on my laptop.
I still do, but I used to, too.
Stickers are like statues of people, or streets named after people. They don't age well. Nothing and nobody is absolutely right, all the time or in hindsight.
I have one on my laptop that says "Fuck Your Algorithm." It's like a fine wine that gets more potent by the week, but it's about as political as my stickers get. The rest are just cool art I enjoy, usually from artists I meet at street fairs and whatnot, since it's an easy way to throw them a few supportive bucks without breaking my own wallet.
Saying they don't age well is pretty generalizing, given the variety of ways one can express themselves with stickers that aren't necessarily topical or political.
Theres better ways to choose stickers. Make them yourself and it's extremely unlikely you'll ever be at odds with that artist ;). Pretty art or ubiquitous fun phrases generally also don't really go bad, unless it's so tied to a specific artist that it represents them too.
True. Make a unique design, not a mashup of 25 JS frameworks and a corporate-sponsored programming language.
I would like to know which stickers they were. Maybe I would recreate a few for irony. There are plenty of candidates for irony, from Enron to crypto. There are also those companies that it is hard to be excited about - I mean a Microsoft sticker would mark you out as a rebel.
Oddly, the only stickers I have on my computers are the Intel ones that come ready applied. Younger me would have gone in for stickers but younger me had pen and paper with no laptop. That said, back then it was school bags that got decorated, albeit with fabric patches and badges rather than stickers. Here was how you showed allegiance to music bands and football teams. I didn't do that though since I was not one of the cool kids.
One sticker set I would like consists of morally dubious companies such as defence corporations and failed companies from things such as crypto, mixed up with USAID psyops such as 'Free Tibet'. However I can't be bothered to put in the work. That is why stickers that are ready made succeed, it is minimal effort.
Younger me was surprised at how much stickers cost. When I was working in a bicycle shop we had Oakley sunglasses for sale, and the product was cool. In period people would buy Oakley stickers from us to put them in the back of their car. I expected these to be freebie promotional items but no, they cost a fortune and could not be just given away.
I once (legally) bought a second hand laptop with a big anti-theft sticker on it. The sticker warned that removing it would leave a big "STOLEN!" mark, which it did. I covered it up with a new sticker.
Love this!
Many of my favorite stickers come from here: https://github.com/mkrl/misbrands (and some of it's forks).
Vim/Vscode still gets the best reactions.
I used to put stickers on my work laptop. Then one day I upgraded my laptop, which meant handing over my old one with stickers.
Which meant scrubbing it (there's no reason I'll let whoever receives it to scrub it for me)
Which was an absolute pain.
I don't put stickers on my laptops anymore.
I had good success using isopropyl alcohol as a solvent and a drill with a plastic brush attachment, using less than 300 rpm.
There's a big difference between the materials that's used for the sticker itself (paper, plastic) and the glue they used. By now I have a good feeling about the "removability" of a sticker once i have it in my hand.
I never put on stickers (except the Stain Javelin) on my laptop. It may be just me, but if feels messy to me.
Some choice stickers (McMurdo Station and South Pole Station stickers) have inhabited 3 of my laptops already.
Same (French polar institute and Kerguelen in my case) and I use double-sided tape to place them so I can remove them in the future.
A real McMurdo sticker does seem incredibly cool!
Are those heat insulating by chance?
did you manage to clean it up? Sometimes stickers leave permanent discoloration of the case, especially on aluminium Macbooks
I sandwich them between my phone and a clear case now. Don't even have to take the stickum protector part off, so when you get a new phone, you can take your favorite stickers easily. Disadvantage: you get like 2 stickers total.
For me it was having to replace my MacBook's screen and loosing all the stickers in the process that made me realize I would loose any sticker used on a Laptop eventually.
It's funny awkward when you get fired and your laptop is covered in stickers
I'll submit mine later today to this comment, I'm a poser lol eg. I don't daily drive Rust but I like the crab and the Gopher
Kinkpad lol that's good
One time when I left a job and had some really rare stickers I bought an identical ThinkPad and swapped the entire upper half of the machines with each other.
I basically never applied a sticker to any laptop I owned until I got a Framework. Just hoarded them like a dragon sitting on his pile of sticker-gold.
Finally figured hey, I might have this laptop more than a single upgrade cycle... it's worth burning a weird sticker or two.
I still try and buck the trend a little--instead of advertising technologies or something, my general goal is that, at first glance, nobody would question anything or think it looks unlike any other developer laptop, but that anyone paying attention will instead be met with a fractal of confusion. E.g., one on there is a "STOP, DROP, AND ROLL" fire safety sticker. In Quebecois French. From a small town volunteer fire department.
I consider it sort of a personal art project and have fun trying to collect up the most "wait, what?" stickers I can.
Framework is the only laptop regarding which I've had someone ask "what brand is this?".
There's genuine interest (well, at least until they hear about the price) and I guess people intuitively understand that laptops don't really have to be replaced every now and then, it's just that mainstream offerings are built this way.
The other day I wrote a lengthy essay about all the pros and cons of the device from my perspective for one 18yo son of a friend, who insisted this would be his college laptop, because he's seen some YouTuber present it. I think he's decided already, so I focused on managing expectations.
On the topic of stickers--bought an iPad for an elderly relative and it came with some Apple logo stickers. I snagged them, figured it was a fair price to charge.
One currently sits on my Framework over the Framework logo. The edge of the Framework gear sticks out in the bite in the apple and the sticker is thin enough the black framework logo shows clearly through the white of the apple.
On first glance, it looks like "trying to make a cheap laptop look expensive". On second it's looks like doing a really bad job of it. Anyone who actually knows the brand at all or asked about it will know the truth... it's making an expensive laptop look like a different expensive laptop.
So I guess it's not just the absurdity of the sticker, but how you use 'em.
I haven't tried putting any on my Framework 12 yet, because the ABS has this sort of rough texture that's very soft and pleasant to touch but seems like it wouldn't hold stickers well long-term. I've been putting mine on retro machines instead, like on my 900MHz HITACHI (actually Acer OEM) PⅢ: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/GWgVHXHaoAIPiB...
These days I also flatbed-scan any rare stickers before using them, to slake that FOMO “what if something better comes along and I regret using it now?” feeling.
You could also put a layer of vinyl on the laptop and then put the stickers on that. That way you can peel the whole thing off when you upgrade. I remembered reading about it on dev.to a few years back.
https://dev.to/graystevens/preserving-laptop-stickers-on-mac...
I really really like the feel of the textured ABS though :)
Would love to see them!
On a previous HN (I think) discussion about stickers, one person scanned the lid of their old laptop, printed the whole thing as a sticker, applied it to their new laptop and then continued to put more stickers on top of that.
Leave the backing on the sticker, put it on the laptop with rubber cement.
The team who handles hardware generally loves seeing the stickers people put on them.
I regularly see pallets of laptops turned in (either due to refreshes or end-of-employment stuff) for a major manufacturing / engineering (car) company. They are just as stickered, but with automotive nerdery. It's pretty neat.
And seeing just /how/ many laptops are that way it made me feel a lot less weird about putting stickers on "my" work laptop.
how many people do you think have both a SAAB SCANIA and VIM logo on their laptop. odds are i am 1 of 1
I have Alpina stickers on my monitor stand. I treat laptops like 1 an done for travel.
That work-related aspect is what I was thinking about too. I’m not sure what it looks like in various workplaces, but I’m always a bit curious around the policies they might have around putting lots of them on employer-owned laptops. I think in tough times when maybe it’s not easy to replace hardware, it can be annoying for an IT person to receive some where they have to peel them off and use Goo Gone on them.
I think of stickers as partly a theft deterrence mechanism. I expect a thief is more likely to steal a laptop with no stickers, because naively I assume the resale value is higher (no idea if that's actually true).
Losing developer productivity for a few days because a new laptop has to be provisioned, shipped and set up is also not cheap, so I feel there is some value to your employer in you making it slightly less likely for your laptop to be stolen at a conference or coffee shop.
I think of it as optimism/a power move, I'm here for the long run.
That's why I always have a clear case on my Macbook I cover with stickers. That way, I can take them with me when I leave, or take them off if I have a big meeting/presentation!
I have this recollection of some framed / shadowboxed clear case covers that were covered in stickers. Either the laptop was replaced and the new model didn't fit... or the cover was filled up and a new one was used.
A way to keep the memories of that the stickers represent.
You can heat most of them and take off easily. If the IT transfers laptops to other people, they surely have a system for cleaning already.
A system for cleaning!
"You might want to give that a wipe."
Or a policy forbidding stickers.
If they’re turning the laptop in due to end-of-employment, what’s IT gonna do?
Dock some arbitrary cleaning fee from your final paycheque?
I always put stickers on work laptops specifically, in order to make mine recognizable among other identically looking laptops in the office.
But my stickers were always small, and usually lonely. A purple Emacs logo, a red Debian twirl, an orange lambda, stuff like that. Still was often enough to strike a conversation.
This is why I've always wanted some sort of removable skin I can put my stickers on and be able to take them with me when I need to depart with my device
Wouldn't a piece of vinyl, of the type used for wrapping cars, or similar, work for this purpose?
I've typically put dbrand skins on my laptops just to protect them from scuffs, I hand my work ones back with the skin on and no one has ever cared, or perhaps even noticed; I choose subtle ones like the hex or Carbon patterns that look like they could just be the actual lid from the manufacturer.
I don't sticker up my laptops (as much as I've always wanted to), but if it was done on top of one of these vinyl skins, it should be relatively easy to remove (never tried).
There are clear cases for that exact use.
I too have wanted this. There are now laptop skin products that they claim are removable and re-attachable.
this one's mine https://i.imgur.com/22gSTuB.jpeg plenty of real estate left
Ever since Framework laptops arrived on the scene, I've been waiting for someone to create thicker bezels that piggyback onto the webcams' USB 2.0 interface via a USB 2.0 hub, to integrate a color eInk display facing outwards. Just for the infinite stickers.
Bonus points for integrating an outward-facing webcam dedicated to a continous background facial recognition daemon to change the stickers on the fly depending upon who is approaching while the laptop is running.
Here's a good talk that gives some advice on how to make good stickers yourself:
https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57194-from_c3stoc_with_love_...
Stickers on the laptop was such a small, wonderful part of college for me. Very minor, but the strategically perfectly imperfect placement of a sticker on my laptop when it was deemed to be worthy was so much fun. My favorite was a sticker meant for a hot beverage carafe to label it with the contents that I took that just read "HOT WATER".
I have a Framework now and haven't adding anything to it (because it's easier to clean), but maybe I'm missing out.
I think the most interesting aspect of this is how divisive something as innocuous as putting stickers on a thing is. What causes people to have a strong opinion on this one way or another?
Personally I don't find it hard to put stickers on things because I am worried about being silly, but I find defacing an otherwise clean object difficult. Like getting a brand new car or phone and trying very hard not to get a scratch. Once the first scratch is there you stop worrying about it.
Once you put down the first sticker I imagine that worry goes away. I think getting a tattoo is still an insurmountable problem for me personally, but I get it.
I would never put stickers on my laptop, or my car, and I certainly wouldn't get a tattoo. But that's just who I am. I definitely don't understand getting upset at others doing these things. If it makes them happy, who cares?
Ha, what a throwback!
I remember this one with the Intel SSD sticker:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-320-ssd-300-gb/imag...
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_6571.JPEG
"The Intel SSD 320 is the much anticipated follow-up to the Intel X25-M, easily the most popular consumer SSD to date."
https://www.storagereview.com/review/intel-ssd-320-review-30...
Time flies, such a nice upgrade back in the day; now we take these things for granted.
[EDIT]
I just saw the fon.com sticker too… nostalgia hits hard.
I used that on a vacation in Madrid back when Starbucks was filled with people on their laptops, mostly white MacBooks.
I think I still have a ThinkPad around somewhere with that SSD sticker on it. Upgrading from a spinning drive to the X25-M is still to this day the most effective upgrade I've ever had in a system, more effective than any 2-3 generations of laptop upgrades combined.
I definitely got one or more of those stickers with some Intel SATA SSDs... sadly those I think have been the ones I had the worst luck with. I think they were one of those series that had some really bad write amplification problem or something like that, due to I think some issue with their power-saving implementation.
I was just telling my buddy the same thing. It was our first SSD in HS. Mine eventually died with double the guaranteed TBW.
Shameless plug for those who still need more stickers for their laptop:
What happens when my email address contains the letter q?
Only one way to find out, mate
Do you publish the SSH key? Feels odd to order if I can't authenticate the connection.
We do: https://stickr.shop/sshkey
But of course we should also link there from the homepage! Thanks for the hint!
Uses colours I can't read (even with `env TERM=dumb …`)
Ordering is really tempting just because its so fun lol. Great idea and execution.
I was so curious to see how the payment would work...I'm curious is there any way to make payment work without a browser? Is it impossible for any reason or just complex?
Well, it's certainly possible, as the guys over at terminal.shop let you enter payment information via SSH. :)
But on the one hand we don't want to handle credit card information _at all_. And then, stripe does not let you give them credit card data directly – at least in the default workflow.
(And we can offer alternative payment methods offered by stripe (e.g. Apple Pay, SEPA direct debit, …) much more naturally than what would be possible in the terminal.)
big fan of the windows pack
just ordered because it's via ssh. great work!
same here. newer saw such a fleshed-out ssh thingy. i just HAD to buy it. a bit weird to see this story on the frontpage now, just ordered tons of techy stickers from AliExpress two days ago...
i must say that the shopping experience on stickr.shop is way better than Ali, haha.
This is fucking awesome. I just ordered a pack, keep it up!
OK, that is awesome.
thats very cool
I've just covered mine with furry trash stickers.
My favourite sticker is a play on „Atomkraft? Nein danke!“ [0] (nuclear power? No thanks!) and says: „Atomzeit? Nein danke!“ (Atomic time? No thanks!)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power%3F_No_Thanks
I would actually consider sticking the opposite "Nuclear power? Yes, please!" (Same for solar, wind, geothermal of course). Is there a sticker for pro-nuclear power movement?
P.S. There's a nice recent video to have a glimpse into nuclear power plant safety in action: https://youtu.be/v0afQ6w3Bjw
Yes it exist: https://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/
There's also one with Fernfusion (as a reference to the sun, made clear with a depiction) but I don't remember if it continues as "yes please" or "no thanks". I guess the former for solar power fans and the latter for vampires and night owls / hackers. Something for everyone ^^
I don't get it
There are laptops with a display on the outside to display stickers.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrINRHeNDQA
This tech looks like it would be annoying to other people in a cafe/workplace/etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drVhn0hLiI&t=40s
What I think would be ideal with current tech is non-backlit e-ink color. Maybe displaying a static image that usually doesn't change while at a location.
You could use e-ink display changes when switching between modes, for example:
* corporate in-office staid, or internal team flair;
* trade conference switch to promoting company brands, rather than internal flairs;
* corporate in-office using it to indicate when you're in focus mode or on a call and less interruptible (actually, you could maybe use the LEDs for on-call mode, a rare instance when you might want the more attention than e-ink);
* traveling with work laptop, but at a cafe or lounge, and want to signal social sensibilities for meeting people personally.
> could use e-ink
E-ink is getting affordable. A 7.5" display for stickers would probably add under $100 to the price of a laptop.[1] Not many colors, but supposedly good saturation.
[1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807067268678.html
Some pen test teams use laptop stickers as an excellent resource for proper social engineering.
Some cyber companies explicitly prohibit stickers on company laptops.
>Some pen test teams use laptop stickers as an excellent resource for proper social engineering.
How?
Not the OP, but I have heard something similar from a sec conf before. Gist being if a laptop has stickers like this, then the chances of the owner being an engineer is significantly higher, so pentest teams / malicious actors can better focus their efforts on those individuals, and have a higher chance of gaining access to internal systems than if they targeted random folks in public.
Doesn't help as well that arguably the kind of stickers a laptop displays tends to hint at who's a sysadmin or not, etc.
That sounds like info you would already have by taking a look at LinkedIn or am I missing something?
You're missing something, but that's sorta the point. The idea of what a full-stack developer or back-end engineer or hacker (or whatever term we want to bandy about) looks like is largely based on stereotyping and a bit of myth. You can't tell what someone does for a living just by looking at them all of the time, but you can some of the time, so it's easy to play on that by dressing the part because we humans can be easily tricked into trusting our own information by default. If you cosplay as a network engineer, it's pretty likely that's what most people will think you do.
Say you're red teaming, and you are on-site looking to gain access to the server closet of a business. Some initial setup about you being there comes into play, but once there, it's up to you to look like you belong there, when some unwitting person with access to the server closet will lead you to it, then leave you to do your thing on the pleasant notion that you'll have the "problem" fixed by the end of the day. This is an ultra-simple scenario used as an example, but looking the part sometimes means having some stickers on your laptop that tell people you're really into a specific language or tool chain, or that you've been in the SOC trenches long enough to know what a lot of those inside jokes mean. Details often sell the lie.
Well, the _corporate_ stickers are a major giveaway, of course; if you have 15 AWS-related stickers it is highly likely that you work at Amazon, say, and it may not necessarily be wise to make it clear that your laptop is an Amazon corporate laptop, in public.
Beyond that, you could _maybe_ use it to identify a person's interests for social engineering purposes, but that feels a lot more tenuous.
Many of the stickers display political affiliation.
How would pen testers leverage this?
See here for some archives:
https://hacker-archive.org/s/Start/item-set/6601
https://github.com/mwarning/chaos-sticker-collection
I've done this on my current laptop, and when it eventually stops serving me I will frame the lid as a humble piece of art for my office. (7 year old HP running linux, need to replace the battery soon but otherwise still perfectly serviceable)
I love this idea actually. Might have to do the same thing
I had a load of stickers on my old machine. I kept the laptop but felt the need to remove the stickers. I think part of me had moved on from what they represented - mostly past interests. Another part of me never liked how they overlapped, I tried but it didn't really work for me. It raises the question: are stickers randomly placed or is there some deliberate pattern to them that I just can't see? Do you just slap them on, or precision place them to look random?
That's gunna depend on the person, of course. Some people slap em on without any worry, some people make sure they're just not massively overlapping, and some people space them out nicely. Here's one that walks the line between order and chaos! https://devlids.com/media/pages/lids/shiro/bee7bec396-175127...
I see what you mean, that one really is ordered chaos.
When humans are lost into the screens, the screen-backs make a desperate attempt to talk to other humans.
It's all fun until you want to sell the machine and the stickers discolored the case. Some stickers adhesive seem to react with the coating on MacBooks and permanently discolor them.
Just be aware of that :)
If you're selling it after 10 or so years, the value of the machine has already tanked and some stickers won't impact the value any further.
The whole MacBook lid fades from UV over time, and underneath any stickers will be darker.
Need same with zero stickers.
When I'm driving around town and I see that soooo many vehicles have a sticker on the back, or a license plate frame, or something that advertises for the place that they bought the car at. I do not understand this at all.
I owned a car for a decade that I bought from the dealer that had one of those frames and I never bothered taking it off. The power of defaults are strong.
Such a bunch of negative folks in here. I personally stickerbomb every company laptop I get knowing full well some poor guy in IT is going to have to scrape it all off.
I once had a loaner thinkpad for two days whilst my MacBook was bricked by Jamf - best believe they got that thing back covered.
His face when I handed it back to him, priceless.
Side note: What is that massive yellow CYBER sticker that seems to be on 80% of them? Feel like I’ve missed some kind of political movement.
> Side note: What is that massive yellow CYBER sticker that seems to be on 80% of them? Feel like I’ve missed some kind of political movement.
I'm a little bit unsure about the origins of the sticker. But in the european hacker community the "CYBER" sticker is used for a bunch of things. Package tape, stickers and security lines.
There is one webshop selling them: https://cyber.equipment/
> I once had a loaner thinkpad for two days whilst my MacBook was bricked by Jamf - best believe they got that thing back covered.
I just have to believe that you know better than I do what was appropriate at your workplace.
Hmm... I wonder how many of these are ThinkPads.
I found this site a few days ago and uploaded my laptop, which just so happens to be a ThinkPad X270.
Mine: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/1000008753-1.j...
A lot of German users. I guess they have a much active hackerscene. Which is true because I literally got my laptop sticker cut out with a cricut cut at a Berlin computer club.
I can only show my laptop without stickers:
https://i.ibb.co/TDmXWBpc/Whats-App-Image-2025-11-12-at-11-3...
Never seen such well visible scars! Mine are only faint contours... https://i.imgur.com/Y4Q1uzC.jpeg
I was too thorough with the isopropyl alcohol.
I always thought stickers were mega-cringe, like saying ”look at me, I went to all these conferences, I’m such a hacker nerd, I use linux BTW”
Inspired by Talia Smiley, I’ve started wearing a roll of dinosaur stickers on my belt and offering them to random strangers and at networking events.
“Hi I’m Kimberly, can I tell you about my startup” lands way worse than “Hi I’m Kimberly, would you like a dinosaur sticker for your coffee / MacBook?” Sometimes they even stick around for the pitch, but it’s nice to be able to instantly make someone smile in three-second interactions
Ha! That's great. I have a little box of small Japanese train headmarks I offer. They're like little raised button stickers.
It's a great way to filter for the fun and curious people.
My stickers are totally awesome but I could probably be deanonymized by sharing them (since they are so unique and special) so you all will not be graced by their beauty and artistry.
It's a classic at security conferences: people who put a lot of effort into opsec make their laptops uniquely identifiable using stickers. Cracks me up
What's the best way to reproduce some of these stickers at the highest possible quality?
My friend bought a bunch of generic kids' stickers with flowers, kitties, cars, Minions and such, and plastered his laptop with them to make fun of this trend. It looks great! Tons of glitter
In case you’re wondering, this is 我 (me).
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpe...
Looks like 武 ("bu", warrior).
https://www.japandict.com/kanji/武
Agreed, wu3 in Mandarin Chinese.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A6
The kanji on your laptop is not the same as 我. Idk if intentional or not
It's moistly about being able to recognize your laptop from others when the company has standardized on as sdinglke model. I have an Epson ColorWorkjs C4000e label printer and design and print my own, but some my 13 year old daughter designed for me and are extra special.
I chuckled seeing the one with stickers taken off of fresh produce. My SO bought me a whiteboard so that I would stop placing such stickers on random surfaces.
I like to look at stuff personalized like that, but I would never settle on any design for longer, so I don't do it myself.
Same thing as devlids:
https://devlids.com/
Thanks for the link. I like how devlids links to the user's socials.
Good lord, what a load of curmudgeons some of you are.
Decorating things makes them look pretty and covers up the corporate free advertising. It's not any more complicated than that.
The hate on political stickers I get though.
There used to be a startup that sold ads on laptops. You got sent a sticker, had to put it on your laptop and take photos with the laptop and varying sets of people in them to get paid. Wonder what happened to them.
I slapped a nice sticker of a boat anchor on my work laptop. Seemed fitting. Slow (thanks to 4 separate malware/virus scanners), weighs a ton, lasts for an hour on battery.
I used to like stickers too when I was a child.
Being childlike is what makes us able to live in a society. We explore new things, don't stop learning, and forgive mistakes made along the way. Like wolves, who started being more like how they are in their puppy phase (playful, friendly, exploratory), thereby being possible to domesticate and now called dogs, we've domesticated ourselves (from the common ancestor we had with great apes) in that there was apparently an evolutionary advantage to be less physically imposing and more like, well, as we are today
(Based on what I remember from a books called Tamed by Alice Roberts)
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” -CS Lewis
My condolences, hope you will recover soon
Don’t know about the story telling as in a story about the past of the laptop. I have a lot of colleagues who come back with a full plastered laptop the second day they receive a new machine. I think that there is a culture of either leave you machines pristine or show you don’t give a f… how expensive it is. Sure the world is not black and white here so.
you can tell who's old... i see 6 cDc stickers, 3 L0pht stickers, 1 HNN, 1 attrition. i see SUN and 3dfx, that's pretty tight. i lol'd at "libc.so.6"
You can tell who's really old when they have a CDC sticker…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CDC-Logo.svg
(Now I want one.)
Haven't heard about cDc in about 20 years. Are they still active as a collective in any way?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veilid
I wish I could buy the Aaron Swartz sticker
I love this. Will submit a few of mine soon.
I think it is a wonderful pop-art exhibit!
This makes me wanna go buy some stickers...
I don't have a great picture of mine that isn't obscured by other "stuff" in frame, but for an idea of what my laptop looks like, see:
https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg
Some of those books seem interesting, how were the memory, attention, behaviour ones?
On that particular day I was going through a bunch of different books, trying to work out what my plan was going to be for the next little while. Of those ones, I wound up finishing A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance and the Sensation and Perception one. I also knocked out a pretty good chunk of the one titled just Memory. The rest got bumped down the stack a bit.
I kinda getting back to the place now where I want to revisit The Organization of Behavior. That's the seminal work by Hebb that introduced Hebbian Learning and I'm on this big quest now to revisit a lot of old school approaches to learning & neural networks (in something at least approximating chronological order, although I won't be super strict about it) and code up implementations of each. So basically, some sort of Hebbian Learning system, a "McCulloch & Pitts Neuron", a Perceptron with the Perceptron Convergence Algorithm, Selfridge's Pandemonium Architecture, and so on, gradually working my way up to the current SOTA.
I'm about to finish up the Minsky & Papert Perceptrons book, and once I finish that I will probably read Volume 2 of the Parallel Distributed Processing series, then go back to Hebb.
FWIW, that Memory book was pretty fascinating. The general subject of human memory is, both simply taken for its own sake, and taken as inspiration for approaches to AI. I'm slightly more interested in AI than human memory qua human memory, but in either case it's fascinating material.
I never understood people siding with Kevin. He always struck me as a fraud/pseudo-hacker and never did anything technical or substantial.
Once you understand that everything in this world is a system, then you'll see how he was a true hacker.
I'm not really here to defend OR condemn Mitnick. I was just always fascinated with his story, from the first time I read that Hafner & Markoff book Cyberpunk back in the early 1990's. Anyway, one of the notable aspects of his story was the way he was held for a rather long time without even so much as a bail hearing... something many people believed (and still believe) was blatantly unconstitutional. That was, as I recall, the motivation for a fair amount of the "Free Kevin" rabble-rousing, even among people who acknowledged that he had broken the law and deserved some sort of punishment.
By the time I bought that particular laptop and put that sticker on it, (about 3 years ago now, I guess) Kevin had long since been out of jail, had gone legal and was running his own security consulting company. I put one of those one mostly out of nostalgia and as a conversation starter. Perhaps surprisingly, I've had a modest number of people approach me when I was out in public and ask "Who's Kevin?" or say "Kevin Mitnick, right? Yeah, I remember that guy... I was at DEFCON this one year and ... <conversation ensues>".
Somewhere I have a "RUN GCC" sticker from the Free Software Foundation that I was given by Daniel Stenberg (author of curl) at some meetup here in Stockholm.
That would actually be kind of cool, I always end up not being able to make up my mind about what would be worthy.
Unfortunately, my company asked me to remove the stickers, as they don’t reflect the company…
When I got an internship at Amazon, I (ironically) plastered my cubicle with all the leadership principles ("LP's"), in over-happy fonts. But the leadership did not realize I was being tongue-in-cheek, and I suspect my cubicle decorations had a significant positive impact on my success there, lol. In the end I even started to believe the LP's, so maybe they knew something I didn't.
Hilarious! You faked it and then you made it! Love it.
The company I work at has a strict no stickers policy, that's why each and every one of my laptops is covered in them.
get a mirror sricker
You can put them on your car, bike or rucksack
Drink bottle is a good one. Large stickerable canvas that sits on your desk and is your own property.
I started putting them on the covers of my notebooks instead. Gives me a brand new canvas to besmirch every few months.
Plenty of room on my forehead.
OMG, I hate stickers on laptops so much...
It's interesting that these are labelled 'creative'. They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
I was at SIGGRAPH many years ago in a line behind some artists. They were talking about how all the engineers dressed the same. This is true. But was also true was that you easily tell the artists as well, they all dressed carefully and differently, within the bounds of their style and were just as easily distinguished.
Definitely a lot of cybersecurity stickers, but that aside, I see many, many different opinions, positions, and preferences represented in those stickers.
There's a laptop with multiple Amazon stickers, a laptop with Google Cloud stickers, and another laptop with a "There is no cloud, only other people's computers" sticker, and various self-hosters. There are people with local stickers from many different countries. There are people who care about repairability, people who care about reproducibility, people who have nostalgia for specific technologies, people who would love less of specific technologies, Windows fans, Apple fans, Linux fans, Intel fans, IPv6 fans, heavy metal fans, Pokemon fans, Simpsons fans, television fans, Vim users, tabletop gamers, cycling fans, shoe fans, coffee fans, tea fans, anti-AI people, pro-AI people, anti-blockchain people, pro-blockchain people, people who like to layer stickers, people who like to carefully arrange stickers.
Among the politics alone, there are many many opinions expressed, and I'd bet the owners of those laptops could have vigorous political arguments about the right way to do things.
If anything all the transgender/pride and left-wing political cases just make me notice the more "original" ones more. It's like Where's Waldo. I still find stickers tacky though.
> They all look the same. They all reflect similar taste. Quite a bit of politics, but is there a single right wing sticker? I couldn't find one.
If one of the laptops had a libertarian flag added, suddenly it would become "creative"? All these photos⁰¹²³⁴ are aesthetically distinct. Sure, you can see trends in the website but that's always a thing, specially considering nobody there is designing stickers.
I also find it curious that you conflate social signaling with lack of (true) creativity. If all you ate was bacon, would you sneer at the foodies for making homemade pesto and not unleashing their free will by adding strawberry jam to it?
[0] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/image-5.jpg
[1] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/cyberpunkd-chr...
[2] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4174.jpg
[3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/PXL_20251111_2...
[4] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpe...
Fair point. I didn't mean to imply people's politics means they are creative or not.
But surely the bar to being creative is higher than putting stickers on your laptop. No doubt many of the people here are creative and code creatively, write creatively, draw creatively or make music.
If you said to someone who is a comedian or a writer that you were 'creative too' because of your laptop stickers. Well. C'mon.
The politics shown is interestingly similar. No doubt many and probably most lean left. But not all. I've been worked with many people who code and a significant number are conservative. But I've never seen anyone with a right leaning laptop sticker. Tattoos you see exhibit more variety than these laptop stickers.
I should have added that I have stickers on my laptop. But that is orthogonal to whether I'm creative or not.
(I misunderstood you then, sorry!)
Well, the subtitle is "a unique collection of laptops adorned with creative stickers from around the world". Meaning that the sticker themselves are creative, not necessarily the collage, which it also can be art by itself (I wouldn't say it fits here)
>But surely the bar to being creative is higher than putting stickers on your laptop. No doubt many of the people here are creative and code creatively, write creatively, draw creatively or make music.
I think a certain selection and positioning can be creative.
>If you said to someone who is a comedian or a writer that you were 'creative too' because of your laptop stickers. Well. C'mon.
Depends, is the comedian Jerry Seinfeld?
I'm kidding (kinda). I personally understand creativity as something very much lower stakes, but that might be my ESL showing.
>one of the laptops had a libertarian flag added
That's the wildcard card option, you never know what you'll get.
You might find that a lack of right wing stickers has to do do with the fact that most educated people today, such as hackers, who also historically deal with otherness and thus form protective communities, have zero interest in supporting fascist, hateful ideals nor their institutions.
It is positively ridiculous to ridicule a group of people for being "samey" while also lamenting that they do not support policies which historically aim to keep things the same and assimilate/homogenize those who do not fit into perceived societal norms.
Equating right-wing ideas to fascism and hate is not a healthy or realistic mindset. One might say that left-wing ideas are hateful and fascist because of deaths under the Soviet Union.
> lamenting that they do not support policies which historically aim to keep things the same and assimilate/homogenize those who do not fit into perceived societal norms.
Are you familiar with Libertarianism? Conservatism is not the only right-wing ideology.
This is whataboutism. The Sovient Union does not represent all left-wing thought. Politics are more complicated than "left" and "right", and thus all manner of ideologies exist on the left. You could argue that many far-left people and organizations display extremist tendencies, but that is true of the far-right as well, and is not the topic of discussion.
> Are you familiar with Libertarianism? Conservatism is not the only right-wing ideology.
I am obviously familiar with libertarianism. You're implying that it is a right-wing ideology, which is incorrect. The umbrella of libertarianism contains both left and right wing political philosophies. You can be libertarian and anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian. You can also be libertarian and think you don't support fascism, even though it supports you.
In most of Europe, libertarianism manifests as a left-wing ideology. The idea that it is fundamentally a right-wing ideology is a distinctly American perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism
That DS9 "in the pale moonlight" sticker is awesome.
It's a Faaaaake!
The one with velcro tape, allowing to put patches on the laptop is clever!
It results in a bulgier laptop, but still, clever!
Stickers themselves can be fun and quirky, but I for the life of me can't figure out why people would put such extremely divisive and workplace-unnecessary messaging on their MAIN WORK DEVICE as many of these have.
The kind of lack to integrate to a team having your pride flags, literal death threats to perceived enemies, furries, loli anime, etc on a thing you intend to bring to the workplace to do all your work on isn't good for your career and sure as hell won't not be noticed by people whose responsibility is to judge risk and liabilities for example.
Tech stacks, not party flags.
Well, for a start, you don't know that these are MAIN WORK DEVICEs. Some of them may be personal devices seen at cons and so on.
That said, I'm not _that_ worried about people noticing that the scary gay has a rainbow sticker on his laptop. If someone at work has an issue with me being gay, well, they'll probably have that issue with me regardless of what is on my laptop, and that is very much their problem. You can't spend your whole life pandering to bigots.
Thanks for the reminder to put a pride flag on my new work computer. Can't for the life of me figure out why it'd be divisive though.
Also, why do you assume these aren't people's personal computers? Many people surely own computers personally, and of course people can express themselves on personal property.
Your sex life shouldn't be intertwined with your work life.
They're talking about having a pride flag on their laptop, not having sex at work.
I’m struggling to understand how you’ve put pride flags and death threats in the same category of “extremely divisive”.
I see others have asked the same question, but you don’t seem to have the courage to respond.
What’s divisive about a pride flag?
I struggle to believe you don't understand what they mean. There is many a homophobe in the world. GP isn't saying homophobia is good, simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people. Maybe they deserve to be upset, but that doesn't change that it may become your problem.
> simply that espousing a pro-LGBT viewpoint may upset people.
Y'know, I'm pretty much fine with upsetting bigots. I'd assume that people inclined to be upset by a scary pride flag are also upset by my _existence_, so, y'know, I don't see a strong reason to moderate my stickers to protect the delicate feelings of idiots. If they're a homophobe they'll have a problem with me _anyway_.
I think that normalising LGBT and its symbols was a necessary step towards acceptance. If it's still a controversial idea to some, it's on them.
People can become upset for a great variety of reasons. I think it's better to accept to some extent that it happens than to design your life around not upsetting anyone.
In the same breath/sentence as “death threats”? You think that’s remotely the same?
What's wrong with a pride flag? People commonly display their hetero marriages etc. at workplaces too. If either of those cause division in a workplace, that's a matter for HR or legal to resolve (if it is indeed a disruption).
Anyway it's unclear which of these are brought into offices.
>People commonly display their hetero marriages etc. at workplaces too
what :D Don't see a single sticker about those and no people don't go out of their way to flaunt their marriages at the workplace. There is a place that is flaunted though, and that is on the behind of their car. "Just Married". How those are used is at the right scope and visibility too.
>If either of those cause division in a workplace, that's a matter for HR or legal to resolve.
If you immediately go to HR (and expect there to be a HR, and for them to take you seriously for minor things) to balance interpersonal issues at work that might just be a sign those issues wouldn't be there without you. Just don't bring your issues to work, be a human.
>it's unclear which of these are brought into offices.
Well I hope for the sake of the users they don't. Sowing discord doesn't reduce just personal success but can soil any project.
Showing a pride flag at work isn't bringing an issue (just like having a photo of a husband and wife on a desk is not). Someone else having a problem with that and causing a disruption over it, is sowing discord and bringing an issue to work.
I for the life of me can’t figure out why anyone would post such an extremely divisive comment.
Because on HN, people are allowed to express things you disagree with.
I've never been able to bring myself to put stickers on my laptop - not since the Titanium PowerBook came out.
Everything else in my life? Covered in them. But my laptops are always pristine. This has always made me faintly sad.
You know what to do!
Love it! I'll showcase my sticker collection on my laptop as soon as I come up with a way to make them reusable.
But what about the resale value??
This one is really cool.
https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_00333...
I love the sticker bomb aesthetic on the others, but there needs to be more like this. Anyone got any other examples?
Is this one actually a sticker at all, or some sort of etching?
I had the same thought. Zooming in, it sort of looks like ink to me, so I lean toward sticker or at least drawing, but not entirely sure.
An etching would be seriously cool but I'd be super worried about breaking something
I would be interested in seeing images of "anti-stickers"
I've seen a few movies where apple laptops are show with a clear apple logi...
But I've also seen movies where the logos are removed or altered. It would be interesting to see images like that.
Thank you so much. I had to dig out my old laptop from computer science college. I remember that I love doing this and that it changed appearance over nearly 5 years.
It brings back good memories. It was really a cool idea.
My fave sticker:
"Data In the Streets"
"Riker In the Sheets"
lol.
I didn't do stickers for a long time. Then I did.
I like them. The ones on my machine are mostly from small, local businesses I enjoy.
Looks like many people here in the comments don't hang out at hacking events that are not purely tech-focused. In European hacker camps these kinds of stickers are the norm, especially the political ones that, because of the very nature of those camps, lean heavily progressive if not anti-capitalist/anarchist.
I'm from europe, and the political ones are very, very rare... at least not in the tech world (macbooks of HR departments might be different though).
Mostly zero stickers, here and there you find some progamming language ones, a tux here and there, kali, anonymous masks, "my other computer is your computer" etc. on security events, i've even seen a phpBB one this year on a relatively new computer, but no trump, lgbt flags and anything anti/nazi related.
> and the political ones are very, very rare... at least not in the tech world
That's what I said: events (especially hacking camps) that are not purely tech-focused. We're just going to different kinds of events :)
Wow. Impressive collection!
kinda funny that I recognize a bunch of those laptops from people I know
I like stickers from conferences but I also love my notebook clean, and if I ever do it, my brain won't let me do it wrong, I will put them well and organized. There has been some times that I saw people receive stickers and immediately put them in their notebook lid like, however their hand lands on the notebook, crooked, overlapping other stickers and I'm like "holy crap no please don't".
The thing is, once you add a sticker, it becomes visually distinguishable. If you're the teacher handing out thirty of the same exact thing for a workshop, an incoming class, whatever. We give out a notebook/laptop/piece of paper to each student. The first instruction is to write your name at the top of the page/book or otherwise somehow make it distinguishable. Because the problem is inevitably someone will lose theirs and the teacher just has this notebook with no name on it.
For laptops at work, everyone has the same IT issued laptop. You go to anything where there's more than one of you, go for a coffee break that runs long, the class does a standing exercise, whatever, the point is the laptops get mixed up. Now there are 29 indistinguishably the same laptop, and one with a sticker on it.
Guess who's getting their laptop back first?
This. My personal daily driver of a laptop has a collage on it. My work-issued laptop is a lot cleaner but it has a small red sticker declaring it to be "Editor's Choice Bestseller of the Month".
Several years ago, it was new laptop day at the startup I worked for. We didn't have an office as much as a coworking space. When people went to lunch, they just left their new MBAs on this big communal table. Some shut the lid, some didn't even lock the screen but those would've been taken care of in ~5min.
Anyway, I may or may not have switched some laptops around but the point is someone definitely did. Half an hour later people returned. Some of them were instantly confused. Some of them entered a wrong password a couple of times. Some of them were greeted by an unfamiliar Google Chrome window.
I may or may not have wasted a collective forty or so man-minutes in the span of five but I definitely enjoyed watching the confusion unfold.
i was honestly expecting an articule about how cringe putting stickers is but ok.
Like covering a Lamborghini with cheap bumper stickers.
It's like people want to show what they care about rather than how much they spent on the hardware... There may be a reason.
I mean, if a Lamborghini was designed to be as boring-looking as possible. Modern laptops are, generally, a metal or plastic rectangle, sometimes slightly curved. They are the most generic-looking objects imaginable; it's not surprising that they attract a certain amount of this.
yeah, its exactly like that. if that is something you want to do, you should do it.
True. At my workplace, every engineer gets a Lamborghini and many people do, in fact, cover them with stickers.
Where do people buy laptop stickers these days? My wife got a new computer a few months and couldn't find anything cute and tasteful. Everything was brands and anger. The places she used to use are gone, and Amazon proved useless.
Most of the stickers I've got have just been given to me. At house parties or conventions or with clothes I bought. I've then commissioned an artist to draw my own stickers which I got printed and hand out.
Stickers get handed around like business cards so the stickers on your laptop/fridge are almost like a record of the people you met.
Would love to see your commissioned stickers, if you were inclined to share.
I don't really have any public share links for them, but the last one I got was my fursona as an Among Us character. I've wanted to get another set drawn up for a bit but the artists I was interested in either had really long wait times (1 year) or were quite expensive. I might just draw some myself when I get some time.
All good, thanks for the description!
I agree, I much prefer to just use stickers of random stuff I get
If you need to buy laptop stickers you're doing it wrong.
(I'm not talking about ordering a batch of your own design here to share it with friends and at events)
I haven't really bought stickers off the internet, but I'm guessing t-shirt or art stores might have some, or your favorite brand of thing might have some.
If you keep your eye out for stickers, you'll start to notice them at many types of smaller establishments like cafes, book stores, boutiques, breweries, music venues, galleries, etc... they're often by the register, and sometimes free!
As a long time sticker collector, I love how the stickers found at random places have some memories attached to them. Finding them, especially when traveling, sometimes feels like finding treasure!
Etsy
just search for like "hacker stickers" or "cybersecurity stickers" or whatever you are looking for
Etsy has some, but you can also print your own for not much.
Try redbubble, I have a lot leftover stickers, because I got too excited ordering
I buy mine at redbubble.com
Only one simple non-computer related sticker to: - hide the logo of the laptop company - recognize my work laptop at airports security checks
Simply because i do not what to exchange my work laptop, with another traveler by mistake.
Avery 03383
My friend sells cute stickers she designs herself on Etsy.
This was super fun to browse!
I am a bit curious about the amount of politically progressive stickers however. Like, is sticker-ing your laptop just more of a 'progressive' thing to do? Do political conservatives not sticker their laptops in the same way that they generally do with their bumper stickers?
I think there's just a link between sticking stickers on things and being somewhat expressive, artistic, willing to stand out. While leaving the laptop blank is more likely someone more dry, reserved, etc. There's also a link between stickers and graffiti culture which I wouldn't describe as progressive but more just unconventional/rebellious.
I've never seen a conservative sticker on a laptop before. Then again, stickers, tags, etc. are more of an anti establishment thing. Those things don't mesh well with conservative views.
Hasn't the establishment been non-conservatuve at least half of the time for the past 20 years?
In which countries? Most have major parties that are conservative and conservative-light.
I've occasionally seen right-libertarian ones (I think historically this has been the most common form of right-wing-ism in hacker-y spaces).
As they mentioned, though, right-wing bumper stickers absolutely are a thing in some places.
In general I agree, left-leaning ones are way more common. Maybe you are correct regarding the reasons. But I've definitely seen conservative ones too, with libertarian ones being more common among those (e.g., saw a number of "Who is John Galt?" stickers some years ago).
"Libertarian" and "Conservative" are not inherently linked, even though sadly they're often associated. There are many left-libertarians.
Wasn't long ago that opposition to fascism was the conservative position. Why is a sticker expressing the same considered "progressive"?
Semantic drift.
Why indeed? Why is this something people now have to care about again? https://www.realtimefascism.com/
Because of that keyword, "was." The conservative stance has shifted to become more aligned with fascism.
A rule of thumb among your friends: those who don’t talk politics are the conservative ones. Similarly, I’d wager most of the examples here without overtly progressive stickers are conservative.
Depends on where you live. Around me the conservatives are more than willing to offer their political opinions even when the context doesn't fit. Progressive/Liberal folks tend to be less vocal because we already know where we stand with each other and don't want to invite the loudmouth to go off.
From the top post on the creator's Mastodon account (see the 'socials' link on the site):
"I’ve had a long-standing love of stickers on laptops. I know a lot of you do too! So I built a site to highlight them. At Hope next week I’ll take as many pics (with permission) of the best stickered laptops I can find and post them.
It’s always sad when a laptop gets upgraded, the old one tossed, and that sticker canvas is lost. I’m trying to preserve it.
Please submit pics of your laptops so I can “seed the tip jar,” as it were."
I'm sure there's people out there with laptops blaring their right-wing opinions but I doubt many of them were at a hacker con like HOPE.
I guess it makes you more fireable...
Do you have examples? If anything there have been cases of left aligned activist employees being fired from companies like Google not too long ago. Or cases like Basecamp where they asked people to avoid politics at work or leave the company.
Google (sorry) for "James Damore".
Well he wrote a memo saying the women at Google were "neurotic" and that's why women biologically are predisposed to not be software engineers.
If that's conservative ideology, then I guess it is fair to say such ideology might not be appropriate for a workplace. In reality, he just said stupid stuff to be provocative, and tried to post-hoc justify it as vilifying conservatives instead.
Sometime around 2015 American political conservatism abandoned a substantive policy identity for demagoguery and nihilism, and while electorally successful to an extent, it's socially unpopular among the general population that's of working/laptop-using age.
I'd suggest political conservatives are more likely to enjoy an undecorated laptop. There are a few Libertarian ones though.
Its signalling. Instead of stickers on their laptop, conservatives have crosses (the thing jesus got nailed on) on their neck and cars.
That's an interesting point, but I've never really seen the cross as a conservative symbol. I probably know about as many progressive christians as I do conservative ones (mind you I'm not in the US).
The US also has progressive Christians, but they're usually less... performative about the Christianity than the right wing ones are.
I believe bumper stickers are only really a thing in the US.
I think the only stickers I saw on cars in France and Switzerland are the "baby one board" and "<stick figures of the members of a family>".
Political bumper stickers are also a thing up here in Canada, but probably like 1-5% as common. I'm often shocked to see how common they are when I'm down in the US. Like I find it weird that so many people are eager to passive agressively advertise their political views to the public (and usually the more polarizing views).
The most common sticker we've got is the infamous "F--- Trudeau" sticker. And I'm even seeing fewer of those these days since he's no longer PM.
We like to exercise the 1st Amendment.
Every American conservative knows the feeling of being at work and your liberal coworkers, not knowing you're conservative, start going on a rant about how terrible Republicans are and how stupid they are and how they all deserve jail etc.
In America today, liberals feel very comfortable speaking about their views in public. Conservatives don't.
"liberals feel very comfortable speaking about their views in public. Conservatives don't."
Maybe conservative folks aren't comfortable speaking about their views in public because they know the Christo-fascist undertones of their core values are abrasive to non conservatives?
Thank you for proving my point.
Political conservatives run a huge American flag off the back of their pickup. Same motivations. Different venue.
I’ve seen it fairly commonly for people to have company stickers on their laptop and have worked places that distribute these stickers. I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
Self expression is fine, I personally want the most boring looking computer possible
At a prior job, employees wearing the logo started getting a lot of unexpected targeted attention outside the office. This ranged from lots of questions from randos about future products, to desperate passers-by handing off resumes on the sidewalk and begging for jobs, to even stalking and targeted theft. OPSEC culture wasn't something practiced there, and it was quite the rude awakening for some.
I do sticker the everloving snot out of my (removable) laptop cover with memes vaguely opposing or otherwise orthogonal to the local culture. No references to my job or place of work. Any interactions have generally been amusing to all parties involved.
Every laptop has encrypted storage and most of them are MDM locked to the company so you can't even reformat and use them. Stealing a corporate laptop would basically just be for the parts you can resell like the display and such.
> I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
One day the company was giving employees some swag, little retractable lanyard-things, branded with the company name and logo, for each of our anonymous white RFID keycards.
I, uh, escalated my concerns that this meant anyone who stole/found a keycard would also know where they could go use it. For whatever reason, that particular swag stopped being available.
Good catch. Like the reason that house key ring lost&found tags have an intermediary's address on them, rather than identify the other directly.
> I always found it terrible security, it’s basically advertising what someone would get if they stole your laptop.
My work laptop has a hard-to-damage sticker on the bottom with inventory control information. Company name, serial number, hostname suffix, etc
I think some people would be very interested in similar satirical stickers.Unfortunately, this link is sold out.
https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005005801847872.html
In case you want to make these stickers yourself: https://cursed-logos.dev/
I was hoping for a link to a series of stickers such as "spit", "gum", "string", "paperclips", with graphics including a band-aid and a pair of tin cans.
It seems to me that about 10-15 years ago, laptop stickers were a little more like patches on a punk jacket; that is, they were meant to show something about the cons or competitions you have participated in. A few such places would give out stickers.
At some point, people saw the cool-looking stickered-up laptops and thought they would also look cool and put fun stickers on their laptops to show that they also can google things. This diluted the original social signal value until it was completely ubiquitous, kind of like if everyone started putting whatever patches appeal to them on whatever jacket they wear without any thought to the idea of their origin. By that time, the original sticker-signalers had all moved on to other signals.
Nowadays, when I see someone with two dozen stickers on their laptop or pins on their lanyard, I see someone with two dozen hot button issues on which they’ll try to ruin your life over a differing opinion.
Same is true of tattoos. Having a tattoo at all used to be a signal of it's own somewhat regardless of what that tattoo was - not so much anymore
they need to make laptops with a color e-ink lid so you can easily create and update your
I had a great stickered laptop for a few years, lots of valuable stickers I'd collected at various hackathons and such, but .. Apple stole it!
I had to get the screen replaced, and no matter how hard I pleaded, Apple refused to give me the old screen back to hang on my nerd wall.
I remain convinced that some Apple tech has a collection of these screens, somewhere, on their own nerd wall.
Grrr...
miss my first laptop I had while interning in SF. Each sticker was its own memory
-> bad OPSEC ;-)
One of mine is on quite a few laptops and at least one server: https://shop.kyefox.com/products/were-here-were-queer-connec...
I was hoping, though not expecting, to spot it in here.
Okay, that one's quite good. I'm quite tempted, though I assume shipping stickers to Europe is a pain/expensive.
$4.59 to Europe for one: https://help.fourthwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/14509196645531...
The platform I use uses Printful for stickers. They seem to be big enough that they just print it in the facility closest to the customer.
This one is hilarious
but damn $14
If I ever have money to risk on an order from something like StickerApp, I'll sell them at bulk discounts for people to hand out at conventions or give to friends. Each sheet has three, so people gift most of them.
I sold the same amount at a lower price, but then I was looking at one payout minimum ($25) a year.
I wouldn’t wanna be caught on the US border with some of these!
Crazy that this is one of the first things that came to my mind
Wireshark, doo doo doo doo doo doo.
Very thankful for these laptops stickers, it makes it extremely easy to identify freaks and losers in tech.
Yeah sure, your laptop is "killing fascists", by you seething on Mastodon or blue sky and writing corporate SaaS slopware.
Wow, absolutely alternative.
I'm not a fan of laptops having stickers unless it blend well with the design/color of the laptop. Too much stickers will make it look messy.
In my professional experience the number of stickers on a laptop is generally inversely proportional to the owner’s ability to write software, or even use said computer for that matter.
In my personal experience the number of stickers on a laptop is directly proportional to the owner's ability to have fun, or even get a joke.
Hey i like it , but i can see most of them appear to have original filenames on them when i mouse over them.
On my M2 Air I've got In-N-Out, Python, the little flame from my solo stove, and the entire bottom of the chassis is an enormous tux penguin.
My favorite laptop anti-sticker https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Stickers-are-Prohibited-...
Would fit well here judging from some of the sentiments expressed.
i need more stickers
Gives me the same ick as tattoos.
Worth noting is that there is a non-zero number of political stickers on these laptops, and they seem to all tend towards the far-Left. It could make one wonder about the general political leanings of hackers and open source contributors.
Why is it important? A lot of projects took a stance on Russia-Ukraine [1], GitHub blocked the entirety of Iran [2] and I don't doubt that codebases now take a stance on Gaza-Israel.
The top-middle says "NAZI HACKERS FUCK OFF" [3]. They likely mean a new definition of "Nazi", and that could include you. Why point out this sticker particularly? Because it is directly aggressive towards a hacker they perceive to hold that label, and that they have labelled that group with one of the worst possible labels. By doing so, they can justify pretty much any level of aggression through the use of dehumanisation (ironically, a method employed by the Nazis).
The Python Software Foundation refused $1.5mn in funding [5] because they could not agree to be non-political. They would not agree to act without favour. Maybe today this doesn't concern you, but look more closely at the stickers of the people that have infiltrated these institutions. Do you think that you will indefinitely remain on the "good side"?
The Linux Kernel's previous Code of Conflict [6] was quite a rational approach, it was a market place of ideas (contributions) where they did battle. There was no barrier to entry and everybody would be critiqued equally, in the single objective of creating the best possible kernel. Diff this with the current Code of Conduct [7] where there is a barrier to entry, and the focus is on the feelings of the people and not on the quality of the kernel.
We should keep politics out of code entirely, and the quality of the code should speak for itself.
[1] https://github.com/petrussola/help-ukraine-open-source
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ci6ydi/github_banned_a...
[3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4529-2.jpe...
[5] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/python-reject...
[6] https://lwn.net/Articles/635999/
[7] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu...
My hot take: laptops with stickers are simply mini-billboards and I resent that they are a thing. The owner doesn't even make money from it!
I'm fine with self-expression (like with tattoos, which can be super interesting and creative) but am broadly against people shoving their likes/dislikes on everyone's face. I don't have any laptop stickers or bumper stickers and don't wear branded clothing.
I think that this kind of thing reduces the individual to a list of group affiliations. It’s the opposite of self-expression really.
"Do Not Crush", "BASH".
I really like the massive Beagle Bros Software sticker. Someone has good taste.
Likewise, that one really stood out!
Beagle Bros!!! <much respect>
Am I the only one that finds sticker bombed laptops cringe ?
The vast majority of people with stickerbombed laptops are either extremists (either side, equally bad in my view), or wanna be techies who are rarely competent.
I get the feeling about 90% of those laptops belong to either cyber security folks or rust developers. Just a gut feeling.
It's funny, I am in cybersecurity but I have always liked keeping my laptop free of stickers. Always seemed like "trying too hard" to me. And as much as I love my laptop, much like my Fluke 87V, I value it as a tool, not a means of self-expression.
Maybe I am just boring, lol. I did use an original copy of the PGP source code book as a monitor stand though!
I used to keep my laptop sticker free. I changed that once I discovered how much easier it makes it to recognize which laptop is mine. This was really driven home when one year everyone at work was gifted the same macBook Air as a holiday gift by the company.
> Always seemed like "trying too hard" to me.
My thoughts exactly. It feels very much like they're roleplaying as an ordinary person's idea of a "hacker".
Sticker of a Fluke 87V for the laptop?
I always associated these battle-jacketed MacBooks with Ruby developers. But Ruby developers were the Rust developers of their day.
Our cyber security team told people not to put stickers on the laptop as it can be used to spear phish the owner, can open to industrial espionage.
They even showed us this cheesy video showing.
1. A woman chatting up a developer based on their stickers on the laptop they saw earlier. 2. Someone targeting the laptop for theft because of the stickers.
People still do it, but I've only seen it on the junior people trying to express who they are.
Wow most of these are quite the contrast to what I used to see back in the day. At least in my circles it was just a collection of the technologies you’ve learned and enjoy. These are more like bumper stickers on the back of car. To each their own I suppose.
When I was going to conferences, my laptop stickers were a public display of "these are technologies that I use and you can strike up a conversation with me about them." To an extent, a resume that you can glance at from across the room.
It's a bit of a statement for what you're trying to communicate with that lid - professional experience, political statements, personal "this is neat"...
And part of this is a for me the lid of the laptop is something that I'd need to be able to be comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry about if they may be offended or not (though perl might be offensive to some).
I've got stickers on my laptops. None of them are political, but I've got various indie fashion brands, music related, furry stickers, etc. If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine. I can go work anywhere and have enough savings that it would be no inconvenience to me. I wouldn't want to work with someone who couldn't handle some trivial self expression on the back of a laptop.
So far no one has ever been offended by this though. HN is far more sensitive than the average CTO.
> If someone managed to be offended by them that's more their problem than mine.
That can be a healthy attitude outside of work. People love personality.
But at work, that's not a healthy attitude. You're there to work together, not to be uncompromising in expressing yourself. Your stickers are probably fine, but I can also imagine plenty of musical artists that would certainly be offensive (and rightly so) to some people, whether for their lyrics or for their criminal behavior -- and then the attitude of "that's more your problem than mine" is not gonna fly.
Sure there is some content that is obviously not appropriate, but I'm not seeing it in the OP link. Meanwhile the comments here are filled with a thinly veiled anger over seeing rainbow flag stickers. These are the people I'd be quite happy to self filter themselves out in the workplace. Though I've never met someone like this in the office. Or at least they keep their thoughts to themselves offline.
> These are the people I'd be quite happy to self filter themselves out in the workplace.
Same. If my stickers serve as a self-filter away from companies I'd rather not work at, or people I'd rather not work with, then that's a positive thing for me.
If someone's offended by, for example, a rainbow sticker on my laptop, well I'd rather not work with them, or for that company. I'll look elsewhere.
I've never seen anyone get offended by a rainbow sticker at work, at least not anywhere I've ever worked.
I have seen things that came across as misogynistic or very sexually suggestive, however, and the employee had to be asked to remove them.
There are plenty of cases where the problem really is with the employee and the sticker, not the people taking offense.
You've never seen anyone get outwardly offended but I'm sure there have been a few. It's just a statistical probability. I fully support the cause and would not be offended but I encounter people everyday who most certainly are.
Just tell those people you're a big fan of Noah and the Old Testament. Then ask them about why they are wearing a cotton blend shirt.
I'm annoyed by the political stuff. I haven't always worked at 100% left leaning companies and I find it really uncomfortable when someone e.g. calls the centre-left party I voted for a pack of communists. I don't like encouraging a norm of political self-expression because I have direct experience being on the other side of it and feel that it leads to both a less effective workplace and a more polarised society.
I've met people like them in the office. My first job, people were deadnaming Chelsea Manning in the internal chat. One time I got stuck in a lift with two other people and they assumed I was a guy, and started talking about which of the HR reps they wanted to fuck. It was tedious and stressful, and the company did have an anonymous reporting system, sure; but fuck, there were only three people in the lift, anonymity goes to shit when there's only three total people present and two of them are in on it.
My work quality tanked shortly after because, a) I have ADHD so I was putting 200% into my job to tread water, b) the rampant misogyny and transphobia within the workplace was just suffocating, and c) I dared to use the anonymous reporting system to report people for being shitheads, and I stupidly admitted that to HR. I am 70% sure it was the last point there that got me fired lmao
This kind of shit is why I am no longer aiming to work in tech.
Considering how many of these stickers are about being gay or trans, compromising about expressing yourself sounds pretty grim. I wouldn't want to put that aside to get on with my co-workers.
Like I said in another comment, other coworkers of mine have tried to express themselves through misogynistic or sexually suggestive stickers. I wouldn't suggest having a Diddy sticker or anything right now.
My only point is that the "if someone is offended, that's their problem" attitude is not so black and white. People often use it to justify being an a**hole too. Obviously, gay or trans stickers are not in the category of offensive things. There are things that are appropriate to express, and things that are not. So yeah, sometimes you need to compromise on your self-expression at work because not all of it is appropriate for everyone, you know?
> Obviously, gay or trans stickers are not in the category of offensive things.
It's at least plausible to taxonomize them under either politics or sexuality. Either of which larger categories some might consider categorically offensive or inappropriate.
Yes, I'm also saying that "vote for $PARTY" (categorically; regardless of which party) and anime catgirls are both potentially offensive or inappropriate. Depending on how much of a stick-in-the-mud people in your local environs are.
> But at work, that's not a healthy attitude. You're there to work together, not to be uncompromising in expressing yourself.
Well there was that corporate-approved "bring your whole self to work" thing in recent years.
HN is still not a quarter as sensitive as most corporations that aren't tech.
Most other industries are very exposed to external clients or customers. Software developers who sit in an office and only see other internal employees have no reason cover up their personality like that.
Just about every enterprise has tech, and there are many, many sectors. There's also far more "tech folks" than developers at most companies, nor do all companies have devs on staff.
rofl. It goes full circle. You should see the shit that b2b sales and support reps say.
> though perl might be offensive to some
Now I'm tempted to make a set of: Perl, COBOL, Java Beans, Java EE, ActiveX, Silverlight, VB.Net, ActiveDirectory, Kerberos, ...
> Silverlight
You absolute monster. I'd managed to forget that that had existed.
You forgot to add Flash ;)
Whoa, a little too edgy there, I’m calling HR
> comfortable with displaying in front of a CxO without worry
In today's timeline, you'd need to be concerned about what some random TSA agent felt about your stickers and if that might get you pulled aside for additional screening.
You joke, but I had someone tell me they were taken for questioning on entry to the US because their laptop had EFF stickers with some slightly edgy hacker culture phrases on them.
I'm sorry, but what makes you think I was joking? I have seen a co-worker get pulled aside for additional screening because he wore a t-shirt that had the words of the second amendment or some such printed in a way of looking like a pair of pistols. On the same flight, we sat with another individual who got himself arrested, missed his flight, and was eventually released to sit on our flight because he wore a belt adorned with bullet shells cut in half.
I'm not saying either one of them were the deepest of thinkers when choosing the garments for the day, but TSA also isn't employing the deepest of thinkers either, so why poke the hornets' nest
> On the same flight, we sat with another individual who got himself arrested, missed his flight, and was eventually released to sit on our flight because he wore a belt adorned with bullet shells cut in half.
I've heard of similar things before, and had the sense that this was less screeners being dumb and more legislators not fuzz-testing their work.
That's why even though I like the weird and esoteric stickers you see here, I myself prefer the `unixstickers` style I think you're talking about. Debian, Arch, GNU, Python, bash, Ruby, Git, Vim, fork bomb, Tux, DEFCON, 127.0.0.1, &c. These are great for starting conversations, even in cafes. And you end up meeting some interesting people with shared culture.
It is about advertising one's (possible) shared culture. For me, my laptop is part of my professional culture and thus I try to keep it as crisp and professional in appearance as one's resume since its a bit... difficult to laptop lids in certain cases.
For my personal shared culture, that is the sort of thing that can be exposed (or hidden) on a case by case basis. My choice of t-shirt where I can button up or down depending on the context says a lot more about me than the lid of my laptop. Granted, it' one message at a time - but there are things that I've had on t-shirts that I made sure to button up before going into the office and seeing the boss (old school, and I still have it - those were durable shirts - https://www.flickr.com/photos/strihs/8536766235/ ). On the other hand, I wouldn't put https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop/design/let+me+work+on+your+... on my laptop no matter how much I agree with it.
I would be amendable to putting a square of #22b7f2 on my laptop, and that opens up an entire discussion if recognized (I'm not quite ambitious or passionate enough to color the entire laptop that color).
In another comment I linked https://imgur.com/a/jWhyBmI as my laptop lid.
I keep my travel laptop clean of any outward expression. Saves a lot of potential grief crossing borders or cultures.
My at home and around town laptop can be my canvas.
My work computer is spotless. My personal conference (and work appropriate - security wouldn't find anything unprofessional or untoward on it) laptop is the one with some stickers that are technologies that I want to put on there. My personal computer at home is desktop... so no stickers there.
Even crossing company culture borders could be problematic if one is a consultant or sales engineer or professional services... This is one of those "in the wrong environment, something could scupper a deal - and you don't want that to be pinned on you."
Safe to have a perl sticker as while it’s easy enough to put it on, nobody (including yourself) be able to read it.
It's fairly readable. https://imgur.com/a/jWhyBmI
I've never understood why people were so proud to brag that they can't understand a relatively simple language like perl.
I have a bunch of stickers from hobbies like bikes and sim racing. I guess it serves a similar purpose!
During undergrad/grad school it was always whatever free stickers were available at hackathons. Now I usually just put 1 or 2 unique stickers to distinguish my MBP from others. Currently rocking one that's an illustration that my friend made of their dog with its tongue out.
Seems to be in line with those I've seen for the past, oh, twenty years. Nerdy media (lots of Star Trek, video games), tech stickers, Linux users of course, a lot of political ones (oft left-leaning and lots of tech-related causes and groups like the EFF), some just plain silly/funny. Generally I see laptops with stickers in larger urban areas or university towns. Though honestly even ones I've seen in very small rural areas are generally similar, but maybe that just reflects the culture of those who tend to go to coffee shops and libraries and also wants to adorn their laptop.
I wonder if stickers in general are more common in the US just like bumper stickers are.
As someone based outside of the US, I rarely see people with stickers on their laptop. The very vast majority of cars also do not have bumper stickers here (and those that do might have one at most).
Maybe. When I was in Uni (3 years ago), everyone had stickers on their laptops and water bottles. Generally related to ones interests and hobbies.
> As someone based outside of the US, I rarely see people with stickers on their laptop.
I see them at technical conferences in many different parts of the world, with people from many different parts of the world. It's not a US thing.
And many of the sticker pictures on this site appear to be from European countries, including at least Finland and Germany.
Stickers are popular in loads of places. They are all over the street in Australia. While I was in Italy and the UK they seemed even more common.
I agree, in Australia you see plenty of them on laptops, water bottles and just out in the street like you said.
We do have a lot of stickers on cars too but it's more common to see them on windows of the car not the car body, and I think in general they're socially quite different to what you'd see in America. More like brand stickers and hobby stuff, or jokes, not so much politics or religion.
I ended up having a work laptop that looks exactly like my personal laptop. After making an embarrassing mistake once, I picked up some stickers and stuck them on my office laptop.
Now, my work laptop looks clearly distinct, not just from my own personal laptop, but also from all the identical laptops other people at work bring to meeting rooms.
It depends on what parties you go to :). Business events are where you get logos of programming languages and various technologies; hacker events are where you get the more opinionated and artsy ones.
I blame the EFF a bit for that.
The first soft-politico stickers I saw all over cons in the 90s/00s were their 'FUCK MICROSOFT' and 'FUCK GATES' stickers that exploded after the MS/Linux/SCO conflicts.
Before the MS debacles (was there a before?) it was mostly FREE KEVIN everywhere.
..which for reasons lead to 'this machine hacks oligarchies', and 'piss: it's whats for dinner' stickers shown in the link.
Speaking on that : Woodie Guthrie was better at marketing slogans than himself -- kind of interesting to consider how many more people are familiar with the 'This machine...' than his music.
When I was going to these things I tended to avoid 'extreme' ones -- I was often job hunting and didn't need to project an image that may hinder that effort.
How long ago is back in the day? I’ve seen stickers like this for 20 years in SF/NYC.
At defcon, laptop stickers have imo always been vibrantly political. What you saw on laptops may be more a sign of the crowds you ran with than the times!
It's a good observation, I certainly don't see much of it in agency meetings. I meet with a lot of different industries too and it's pretty rare, I imagine they all have company laptops.
A lot of these seem to be from the German left-wing hacker culture (e.g. the recurring yellow CYBER-Stickers are a dead giveaway) from about 5 years ago (considering the mix of stickers presented). Think ccc-adjacent.
Considering that background, expect them to look more like a random Berlin lightpost than a conversation piece.
These comments are rough. Some weird hostility to self-expression in here.
"Back in my day, laptops were about TECHNOLOGY! Where's the conservative stickers!?" Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.
I was born in early 90s; all laptops in my memory have weird, silly stickers on them.
I don't see much hostility at all. A few people don't like them. That's not weird hostility, isn't it just self-expression? Like the stickers that oppose or express a dislike of something, which presumably aren't weird hostility either. People are allowed to dislike or disagree or make not entirely positive comments. Sure some would just scroll on, arguably that's the better thing to do, but commenting in self-expression is really fine too. It seems like a strange kind of fragility and inability to tolerate or understand that people don't all think alike which would jump to thinking that is "hostility".
There are a lot of flagged comments at the bottom
Yeah, even in those. There was like one low effort obvious troll, others are just self-expressing their dislike, pretty similar to many others here expressing their like of the stickers or the website with similar kind of quips.
I tend to just scroll on if I don't like something, rather than commenting about it. But I would be lying if I said I've never done it. It's a very human thing, on a forum like this that invites open discussion about things it is fine, and pretty obviously if the pictures have a bunch of political messages on them you would not be flabbergasted to see a some political comments. Maybe the comments are cringy, silly, wrong, not aligned with your beliefs, or unnecessary, but seeing hostility in disagreement or dislike is a pretty bad place to be.
Ah, yes, downvoted and flagged comments is how I know someone is wrong and not worth reading.
I was simply pointing out that most people cannot even see the content of those messages so they might have just missed them.
I'm not sure why you interpreted my comment in the way that you did.
Do you see me petitioning the site to remove their comment? They are welcome to have bad taste and a bad attitude.
Non sequitur. I was addressing what I did see in your comment, and nothing I wrote suggested or implied that you did or even thought any such thing.
If you go to an art show and are like, "Wow, these all suck! Why didn't any of you artists do art the way I think it should be done?!"
That's not self-expression. That's being an asshole.
Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?
People self-expressing dislike for some content under a link on public forum that explicitly invites comment is not hostility. Making comments and disagreement about politics is not hostility (particularly in response to political content being posted). It just isn't.
If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.
Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.
Thank you for being a voice of reason within the hive mind.
> Okay. Were you hoping I would address this scenario of your own fabrication, or are you able to make your point using this actual situation right in front of us that we are discussing?
It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example. It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.
> If you posted up a page of pictures of "Lifted trucks of West Virginia adorned with creative bumper stickers" here you would get a lot of negative opinions and politcial commentary. That also would not be "weird hostility", it would be completely obvious and understandable preferences and opinions ranging from people who don't like the trucks or covering them with stickers, to those who feel strongly about politics.
Sure, these are obviously the same...
> Again, you're allowed to discuss things and disagree with them. People aren't assholes or hostile for doing it. Learn to live and let live, no need to try to guilt people about it.
Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.
> It's not a "scenario" - it's a comparison, an example.
Semantics. You invented a scenario and you attempted to make some point that presumably you were unable to make with the situation at hand.
> It's no different to this forum - people choose to come here. Someone chose to share TFA. People chose to enter these comments and shit on people's design choices and take weird stands about political balance.
I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.
> Sure, these are obviously the same...
Now you don't like "comparisons"? It's more similar than your one.
> Those people could "learn to live and let live" with regards to people harmlessly putting stickers on their laptops.
Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.
> I think it is different. If it were not different you would not have been compelled to think of it.
Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.
> Now you don't like "comparisons"?
Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers
> Expressing a dislike for something is not incompatible with live and let live. It is participating in a conversation. It's not hostile, it doesn't need to be guilted or suppressed or name-called.
Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.
> Not actually responding to the essence of the comparison.
The comparison was a bad-faith strawman that did not reflect the conversation here. In that situation a person might be an asshole, possibly even hostile. That does not automatically make these commenters hostile assholes, that's just the height of intellectual laziness.
> Just bad-faith comparisons that equate "Just Be Yourself" stickers with "I hate fags" stickers
No I didn't make that comparison, and you're a nasty and intellectually dishonest person for trying to say I did.
> Again, if you consider a group of people sharing their art between each other and having a conversation about it, and someone comes in and is like "This art is stupid." that is hostile. That is exactly what is happening here.
No that's not hostile. Somebody submitted this content inviting the HN community to comment on it and oh my god not everybody loves it. Some even hate it and are blunt about it. That's not weird hostility, it's people self-expressing their dislike of things in not always polite terms. Like some of these laptop stickers are doing.
"People expressing their hatred for art in impolite terms" is not hostile to you? What exactly would hostility in this context look like to you? Or is it just not possible to be hostile about this?
Agreed. Some forget that the US has this beautiful great thing called freedom of speech, meaning that some can express to like things, as well as dislike things! It's not uncommon to find stickers among laptops where some are excited for environmental safety and conservationism, and some are for Tesla / Palantir and the values and ethos that they want to perpetuate across the globe.
Agreed, some weird hostility. I have laptops going back to the 90s all slapped up!
BTW I've been following LK for quite a while now and hope to use it sometime in the future. My regular DM is committed to a different platform, but I have a story that might turn into a campaign and I'd sub to LK to run it. Keep up the great work!
I'm glad to hear it; thank you! Reach out if you have any questions or recs. :D
> Ok, put some "conservative stickers" on your laptop and submit a pic to the site-- no one's stopping you.
I didn't see any Java or COBOL or even .NET stickers, but there was at least a fairly clean one with a Sun sticker. And some Debian stickers, but those were a bit more cluttered. And maybe even that one with the cat around the Apple logo.
For 15 years I have seen only one laptop sith sticker. Its unprofessional for most corporations...
You're not a real programmer if you don't have a "I vibe code AI slop in NextJS" sticker on your MacBook
It's annoying to me that you're not allowed to even slightly critique things anymore without people blurting out the thought-terminating cliché "Let people enjoy things!", which attempts to do nothing more than shut down interesting conversation because somebody doesn't like said conversation. (Let people enjoy critiquing?) It's behaviour like this that makes me dread the inevitable Reddit exodus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
It's hilarious how ready to be angry people are, these are mosaics and all we have if pro laptops are destined to be grey or less grey
I mean, some of these stickers could just represent self expression of anger.
It’s interesting the top comment is a self expression against people’s self expression against the self expression of the stickers.
Everything here seems to boil down to self expression. Even the flags and downvotes of the content at the bottom is a form of self expression.
This comment is my self expression about all the inception of self expression.
And now my brain hurts.
Well, if we want to be pedantic, and of course we do, I'd say the stickers are a form of self-expression and the comments are a form of expression, some of which seemed cynical and/or biased due to most of those laptop lids featuring a high proportion of innocuous logos, video games, ironic meme culture stuff, cute animals, some flags, and if I really look for it, some resembling vaguely anti-authoritarian themes
To be fair, I bet pictures with "Yay Facism!" stickers are probably taken down, as they should be.
In the early to mid 90's, geek culture had a thing for ironic agitprop. Great stuff... deeply cynical and very Gen X.
Any group that gets its kicks out of pretending to be fools will soon find itself filled with fools who think themselves in good company - Abraham Lincoln
I'm taking up vampire hunting - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Yeah, that was the big takeaway from the social experiment that was 4chan. If you ironically pretend too long to be trash, you will gradually become trash.
"You know who else made laptops wear pieces of flair?"
Where do you draw the line? One of them says "Socialist alternative".
Socialist Alternative is an Australian political org. They're one of the tiny Trotskyist factions that always seem to form any time two or more Trotskyists work together. That's why it's on a laptop next to a bunch of other far left political stuff. They're pretty much the opposite of "Yay Nazism!"
Or were you drawing an equivalence between the two?
There will be a time when people putting svastikas will be considered brave heroes. And then it'll be banned again. And then it'll resurface again. Turns out, "things that are obviously morally right" radically chances over time and across cultures.
> a time
... and a duality within the present forms of society in which either expression is interesting enough or leads up to a significant event such that we will remember it in the future. No time has been one-sided as in the way you put it.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that everyone thought Naziism was morally right at its peak?
Several other European countries imitated German fascism in the 1930s (e.g. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia). This is well known in Eastern Europe because that brief period has cast long shadows to this day. Even in relatively faraway South America, Germany and Italy inspired several political movements.
Sure, not everyone thought Naziism was good, because you can’t find any political philosophy in human history that everyone has the same opinion about. But it was still seen as a model by millions of people outside Germany until Germany started obviously losing the war.
Some people like naziism.
Those people were wrong.
This isn't some kind of "oh morality is relative and somethings are cultural", it's just objectively wrong, regardless of who or how many people claim to like it.
> Some people like naziism. Those people were wrong.
In your individual opinion. In mine, too, and hopefully everyone else’s here. But the OP was clearly talking about what views are presented as “morally right” by normative social forces, and those clearly differ across time and place, often as political power waxes and wanes.
No but that's my point, the nazis had to march entire classes of people to death camps at gun point to be considered "normative," and even then there was a resistance movement not only in every occupied country but also Germany itself. The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.
And even now we see that the normalization of naziism is apparently impossible - I was incredibly cynical about the American right wing happily embracing naziism, but I guess I was partially wrong: there's a schism this week over popular American right wing media figures platforming the nazi Nick Fuentes.
By the time the "death camps" started, Nazism’s takeover of Germany’s society was complete; peer pressure was now doing the work that initially thugs had to do. Yes, there was a resistance because there will always be people who disagree with whomever is in power, but those people where acting against the norm. Only with Germany losing the war were they rehabilitated in the eyes of Germany society at large, and initially with some grudging resistance here and there.
This is why posting about how “Nazism is objectively immoral, m’kay?" misses the point and can be counterproductive. The whole reason that fascism is a continual spectre is that, it turns out, by appealing to people’s base instincts and cracking heads, a malevolent political form can completely sidestep morality and institute the society it wants to see.
> The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.
Before modernity, extraordinary violence and propaganda were, well, ordinary. Hitler just made that work on industrial scale, but the underlying moral ideas weren't anything new. During antiquity, people didn't mind slaughtering entire cities. Even more modern history is full shit like that, look up Mongol invasions.
BTW don't you think that it's a little awkward that in modern times "pirates", which were people that'd literally kill seamen for profit, are considered a fun Halloween theme for children? I can imagine that in 500 years Nazi costumes will be similarly normalized.
I suspect it's a little like bumper stickers, in that people with conservative opinions might be less likely to want to put stickers on their laptop. With bumper stickers (at least in the US), the rule of thumb I've seen is that the more bumper stickers adorning a car, the more likely they are to espouse leftist opinions. One or two bumper stickers: a tossup between whether it's "Elect the liberal politician running for President this year" or whether it's "Elect the conservative politician running for President this year". More than ten bumper stickers? 99% of the time they're liberal. Only once in my life do I remember seeing a car with more than ten bumper stickers which expressed politically-conservative opinions.
I suspect, but would have a hard time proving, that the same dynamic that leads liberal people to want to cover their car in opinionated stickers but conservative people not to do so... would apply in a similar way to laptops as it does to cars.
All the cars with political stickers I see are conservative ones. I live in Texas, in a blue city too but still its all punisher stickers and other wannabee-badass-signalling, or pro trump / liberal tears type stuff. Never anything pro liberal
There was some paper that associated number of stickers on a car with extremety of their tribal group beliefs and more aggressive driving. I don't think it transfers to laptops
Considering where most of the pictured laptops (likely) originate from, I would beg to differ.
Correction: very often it's "elect the (whichever) politician running for President two or three years ago", because people rarely remove the bumper stickers they've applied. Once the next Presidential election starts up they'll slap the new sticker on top of the old one, but in 2006 you were still likely to see "Vote for Bush" or "Vote for Kerry" stickers, despite the fact that Bush was ineligible to run in 2008 (having served two terms) and Kerry was unlikely to run in 2008 (failed candidates rarely get nominated again by their party — not never, obviously, but rarely). By 2008 the Bush stickers had been mostly replaced by McCain stickers and the Kerry ones by Obama stickers, but in 2006 you would still see plenty of bumper stickers from the 2004 elections.
Daniel Tosh said the best:
Don’t put stickers on your car. Despite what you think they say, know they read, “I’m poor.” No one cares who you cheer for or what you believe in. Just drive a little faster.
It entirely, entirely depends on what part of the country you live in. Near me a car with a lot of stickers usually indicates Q anon/Trump/Lets go Brandon etc.
Come to the south, I see more "Don't tread on me" snakes, there was a lot of FJB and other Biden hate, "Come and take them" stickers, "Charlie Kirk American Patriot" stickers, all sorts of heavily religious stuff like "One nation under GOD", etc. Liberals around here will have small lgbtq/ally stickers and pro evolution/science stickers but it's not like liberal enclaves where you'll see plastered subarus.
I have had the opposite experience living in the south. The cars with the most bumper sticks around here are owned by conservatives. Today I saw a truck with a US flag in place of its tailgate, "I back the blue" painted on the rear windshield, a Trump sticker, a sticker that said "Don't steal! The government hates competition." and more.
I think it's cool, but I could never see myself doing it, because I used to go through a new laptop every couple of years.
In any case, the point is moot, now. I switched to using a desktop, in my last upgrade since retiring.
Implies that the stickers are more precious than the hardware, which is an attitude I love.
This is definitely the case!
They would be, for me.
Covers are a possibility, but Apple always used to make minor changes to the laptop layout, so you could seldom reuse a cover.
For the precious stickers, I stick them on magnetic sheet and then cut the sheet to shape, turning the stickers in to fridge magnets.
The only one I liked is the HAL sticker.
Hmm... Does the current crop of Apple laptops have a glowing Apple logo? ... and is there a HAL sticker that has a red lens in the middle that would glow red if I put it over the Apple logo?
No glowing logo since before the USB-C/touchbar generation, about 10 years ago
When Apple was making a comeback from being all but dead, the logo was a quick way to identify other members of your tribe. And you could walk into a coffee shop and get an instant tally of how Apple was doing. It was really precarious for a time, and then after some months it became reassuring and then some more months and you could stop worrying altogether.
Hard to believe that was ever the case!
Iconic photo from 2007: https://macdailynews.com/2007/10/02/lecture_hall_photo_shows...
My fun fact on the laptop logos is that the PowerBook G4 is when they flipped it to being right-side-up for other people looking at the computer while you're using it.
On the PowerBook G3 and prior, the logo was facing toward you when you're looking at your own computer closed on the desk. Once you open it, it was upside down for anyone else looking at you.
I remember seeing this photo all over the internet, usually with “Think different” caption. Thanks for the reminder!
“We’re all unique and special, just like everyone else”
(Some of the stickers are kind of cool, but I just can’t understand the logic behind thinking your MacBook #12,372 with a Python sticker on the back is worth flaunting online)
The same logic applies to commenting on forums. Or doing anything publicly really.
A political speech to address constituents is public, and is not the same importance as a random posting online.
Also, I’m under no illusion that my comments are anything but digital detritus, but at least comments here have the potential to be valuable (to me), I’m not sure about laptop stickers.
I mean, why do people like doing those wine and painting evenings, even if they’re all going home with similar paintings? Why do people perform at recitals when they’re performing music that already exists? Why do people share any art, even if it’s not guaranteed to be the most original, profound, or technically proficient expression of creative intent?
Sometimes it’s fun to just enjoy something, and to share that you enjoyed it. These pictures aren’t here to impress anyone, they’re here because each one is a record of someone who had a bit of fun decorating their laptop, and an invitation to share in the fun. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
I'm getting soyjak vibes
"STOP HAVING FUN, SELF-EXPRESSION IS CRINGE"
Ok, chudjak.
Self-expression is cool, do your thing.