Oh. My. God. Geenstijl (the green crown icon, http://www.geenstijl.nl is the main site, http://www.dumpert.nl is the video site) on HAD. It’s like a weird merger of absolute internet-crap combined with internet-awesomeness, HAD being the latter, obviously.

Oh and the currently most useless machine in my posession would be my cassette-tape player.

Posted at 12:09 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Reinier

The Arduino?

Posted at 12:15 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by thethirdmoose

Those machines are wonderful. I am going to build one soon.

Thanks Hackaday.

Posted at 12:21 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Spork

I see what you did here. “Useless Machine” … “Hack a Day”…. Just saying…..

Posted at 12:27 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by vonskippy

i don’t know what is this about, i read something about showing your most useless hack….
so here goes one of my hacks: the infrared hand flashlight
nice huh?
i’m about to take pics and a description of another of my hacks to post it here, but nothing yet..
see ya!

Posted at 12:36 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Azur

That is totally awesome

Posted at 12:39 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Satiagraha

Well actually an infrared hand flashlight would be useful if you have a black & white camera or night vision use…

Posted at 12:43 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Bryan

I like the part where it turns itself off :P

Posted at 12:46 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by -Q

Amazing!
The blossom of stupidity…

Posted at 12:46 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Petyo123

terrific!

Posted at 12:49 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by _die

The first “Leave me alone box” was built by Claude Shannon, based on one of Marvin Minsky’s ideas. It’s simple to build, really fun, and you fell compelled to have your own.

My most useless creation was a graphical LCD screen from a Nokia phone showing views of the mandelbrot set while LED flowers flashed all around … When I showed it to my friends they asked “what’s it for ?”. Doing electronics for fun or making stuff without purposes seems hard to understand for some people. I like to call it “art”.

Posted at 12:51 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by vic

The most useless machine in the world: A unpatched Microsoft Windows Computer.

Posted at 12:51 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Funny69

“show us your most useless machine”

Dude, there is no way we can compete with a pro – how are we supposed to top the stuff Caleb Kraft comes up with?

Posted at 1:19 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by stunmonkey

hahahaha

This one got me giggling even more because, well, look at what the ‘hand’ looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_BKe-XWo4

I’d love to embed one of these useless machines into the desk of a receptionist with a little sign in front of the switch saying “Push switch forward for service.” :D

Posted at 1:26 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Haku

“The most useless machine in the world: Any Microsoft Windows Computer.”

/fixed

Posted at 1:30 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Zymastorik

Zymastorik wins! Unanimous. DAmn

Posted at 1:32 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Mic

Thats Great! Nice conversational piece.

Posted at 1:35 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by xGROMx

I nominate this: http://i37.tinypic.com/rjmb77.jpg
It is a pneumatically-driven robotic chair-sitting machine, that is broken.

Posted at 1:40 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Jleop

A can opener which can only open, open cans.

Posted at 3:37 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by agallop

I could have sworn that this has already been covered on hack a day.

Posted at 4:02 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Michael Wheeler

http://hackaday.com/2009/09/19/web-controlled-dark-crystal/

Posted at 4:18 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Spadefinger

relying on my pot head this post already was here

Posted at 4:39 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by therian

@stunmonkey

Well technically the human body is a biological machine, so wouldn’t Caleb take the top honors himself.

Posted at 4:46 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by thedudefrommiamivice

This is an old idea — the “Do Nothing Box”. I had one when I was a kid back in the ’50s, and it was of course all mechanical — AND WE LIKED IT! :-)

Posted at 5:05 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by LeftyX

Funny, but I think MS might have a patent because it’s a know issue with windows that it can get in a state where it shuts itself off after boot :)

Posted at 5:46 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by Wwhat

Wwhat:

Its not an issue, its a feature.

Posted at 6:16 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by thedudefrommiamivice

I think most of the whiners here have a blue-veined junket pump that is useless…

Posted at 10:46 pm on Sep 19th, 2009 by TJ

i think the iphone/app store
appel make a greed phone but forget it need a good accu that work loger than 5 a 6 ouhr

Posted at 3:28 am on Sep 20th, 2009 by ferdie

http://www.flabber.nl/linkdump/video/blinde-stuitermachine-2955

Posted at 4:06 am on Sep 20th, 2009 by ferdie

Not my own, but the Robotic Bagpipe Player otherwise fully qualifies for this discussion:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/mcblare/

Posted at 7:49 pm on Sep 20th, 2009 by Phil Burgess

http://www.nycresistor.com/2009/01/20/mp3-grnade/

That’d be my most useless machine to date.

Posted at 8:08 pm on Sep 20th, 2009 by Matt Joyce

Arthur Ganson’s artwork may fall into this category…

http://www.arthurganson.com/

Posted at 5:10 am on Sep 21st, 2009 by Agent420

I once put a lightswitch on a box.
It wasn’t attached to anything. It was just a lightswitch.
I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to be.

Posted at 1:36 pm on Sep 21st, 2009 by SheeEttin

@Wwhat LOLZ. Ahahaha.

Posted at 7:51 pm on Sep 21st, 2009 by SuperNIC

Thats what i need! :D

Posted at 2:26 pm on Sep 23rd, 2009 by BUNCH

in a different point of view “The Most Beautiful Machine” like the idea of Claude E. Shannon

http://www.kugelbahn.ch/sesam_e.htm

Posted at 11:30 am on Sep 27th, 2009 by someone

Ugh, geenstijl. They’re the dutch ebaums

Posted at 12:30 pm on Sep 27th, 2009 by Henk de Vries

You know, this might be useful as a doorbell.

Posted at 5:25 pm on Nov 10th, 2009 by Ronald Raygun

would this be considered self-preservation? lol

Posted at 10:44 pm on Nov 10th, 2009 by Nash Brown