I think of GitHub more with the octo cat logo (couldn't find a good link for it, and didn't want to hug anyone too hard, so no link), or their current logo: https://github.githubassets.com/assets/GitHub-Mark-ea2971cee... and not so much the stylized words GitHub.
I certainly do like being able to quickly categorize people into groups of those who can find humor in such stickers, and those who will get angry over them. Seems pretty useful in determining whether or not I would want to continue engaging with them :)
> 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 it's more a very lame flex. Macbooks were expensive and if you were walking around the office with a Macbook it was because you were important enough to convince management to buy you one instead of some crappy Dell. Eventually enough people get Macbooks that you need another way to stand out so you slap a bunch of cheap stickers all over it to show everyone, "See, you coddle your trophies. I beat mine up because it's just a tool and I don't care. I'm too busy gettin' it done!"
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 stickers will one day have layers as I stack them again and again. Anthropologists of the future will be able to trace my beliefs, humor, and tech stack from my laptop lid alone, adding to the corpus of knowlege for tech workers in the late american period.
I feel like this direction of thinking is also a bit reductionist: there are plenty of reasons not to want to put stickers on a laptop. For me, personally, I don't like stickers because a year or two later, they don't represent how I think anymore. It's not an expression I would make today, it's a ghost of my old expressions.
And I feel like this greyification is only true in theory from the perspective of the manufacturers. I still run into plenty of people that are not afraid to decorate their space, laptop, or whatever else.
Greyification actually makes sense precisely because everyone has a different way of expression. That's why canvases are still white; you just have to find a different primer.
I don't judge people who put stickers on their laptop, but for me I don't simply because it brings me no pleasure or joy. I have never really understood decorative things in general. It is probably part of my neurodivergence, but I just don't get value from decorative things.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
You are hanging out with the wrong crowd, if you can't get stickers the CTO would disapprove of. Visit a local squat, there are probably some which directly address the CTO job title. X-lube comes with collectible stickers too.
Yeah, that's the one problem I'd have with stickers.
I'm personally not interested, but I also would never make fun of people expressing themselves.
On the other hand... mandatory fun, mandatory self-expression, any anything that takes something very personal and turns it into official or unofficial company policy makes me sick. I'm glad it's not too common here in Germany.
It's like HR forcing you to listen to punk songs because the company wants to promote a rebellious spirit as long as it's compatible with "disruption". It's also a bit like being asked "why are you so quiet" by someone who said everything worthwhile 5 minutes after getting out of bed but never stopped yapping.
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)
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.
that's fine, I like putting things on my laptop that I'm enthusiastic about like earth day or zig or whatever. People can like it or not. I suppose of my CEO told me to rip them off I would, otherwise it's harmless. I won't put political stickers on though. I keep religion and politics strictly away from my work life, and walk away if that's the direction a conversation turns. I'm sure there are people at the office who think I'm a die hard conservative, and other that are 100% sure I'm a far left commie, because I simply peace out on political discussions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Readit News
(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)
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.
Dead Comment
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...
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.
God, I can't stand living in an artless world.
And I feel like this greyification is only true in theory from the perspective of the manufacturers. I still run into plenty of people that are not afraid to decorate their space, laptop, or whatever else.
Greyification actually makes sense precisely because everyone has a different way of expression. That's why canvases are still white; you just have to find a different primer.
Jimmy Hendrix, If 6 was 9.
Has another relevant spoken word bit about waving his freak flag :)
Dead Comment
Current laptop stickers: current state.
Photo of the previous laptop: reference to previous commit.
There's still a WP51 folder in there somewhere...
https://xkcd.com/1360/
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...
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChQK8j6so8
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.
Doesn't sound like a problem acetone/isoprop can't solve, especially on anodized aluminium.
I'm personally not interested, but I also would never make fun of people expressing themselves.
On the other hand... mandatory fun, mandatory self-expression, any anything that takes something very personal and turns it into official or unofficial company policy makes me sick. I'm glad it's not too common here in Germany.
It's like HR forcing you to listen to punk songs because the company wants to promote a rebellious spirit as long as it's compatible with "disruption". It's also a bit like being asked "why are you so quiet" by someone who said everything worthwhile 5 minutes after getting out of bed but never stopped yapping.
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
Anything right of center and suddenly people start caring very much.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
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.
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.
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.
God forbid people have a bit of fun in their lives.
Dead Comment
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
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.
Deleted Comment
And seeing just /how/ many laptops are that way it made me feel a lot less weird about putting stickers on "my" work laptop.
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.
A way to keep the memories of that the stickers represent.
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.
"You might want to give that a wipe."
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.
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).