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Laptops with Stickers
- nathanmills 11mo agoGives me the same ick as tattoos.
- crtasm 11mo agoI love this. Will submit a few of mine soon.
- aaaja 11mo ago[flagged]
- teejmya 11mo agoGood thing they're not yours, then
- navbaker 11mo agoCan you point us to a resource that would layout guidelines for placing laptop stickers in an aesthetically pleasing manner?
- wiseowise 11mo agoapple.com
- elzbardico 11mo agoI absolutely hate stickers too. You're not alone.
- aaaja 11mo agoYes it's all so tawdry. Even the one that isn't stickers but an etching, and looks somewhat visually pleasing compared to the others, has a cringe message.
- noisem4ker 11mo agoNot mentioned: overtly vulgar in language.
- esseph 11mo agoMost of the owners probably feel the same way about you :-)
- bitbasher 11mo agoI get the feeling about 90% of those laptops belong to either cyber security folks or rust developers. Just a gut feeling.
- twic 11mo agoI always associated these battle-jacketed MacBooks with Ruby developers. But Ruby developers were the Rust developers of their day.
- arcfour 11mo agoIt'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!
- ajmurmann 11mo agoI 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.
- flir 11mo agoSticker of a Fluke 87V for the laptop?
- GaryBluto 11mo ago> 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".
- EagnaIonat 11mo agoOur 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.
- ge96 11mo agoIt'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
- layman51 11mo agoThat 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.
- ge96 11mo agoI think of it as optimism/a power move, I'm here for the long run.
- warp 11mo agoI 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.
- viraptor 11mo agoYou 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.
- masfuerte 11mo agoA system for cleaning! "You might want to give that a wipe."
- b_e_n_t_o_n 11mo agoThis makes me wanna go buy some stickers...
- weinzierl 11mo agoThere 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.
- xoxxala 11mo agoI really like the massive Beagle Bros Software sticker. Someone has good taste.
- jszymborski 11mo agoLikewise, that one really stood out!
- tanseydavid 11mo agoBeagle Bros!!! <much respect>
- olirex99 11mo agoUnfortunately, my company asked me to remove the stickers, as they don’t reflect the company…
- mc32 11mo agoYou can put them on your car, bike or rucksack
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoDrink bottle is a good one. Large stickerable canvas that sits on your desk and is your own property.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11mo agoPlenty of room on my forehead.
- netule 11mo agoI started putting them on the covers of my notebooks instead. Gives me a brand new canvas to besmirch every few months.
- Etheryte 11mo agoThe company I work at has a strict no stickers policy, that's why each and every one of my laptops is covered in them.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoWhen 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.
- renewiltord 11mo agoHilarious! You faked it and then you made it! Love it.
- dinkleberg 11mo agoWow 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.
- shagie 11mo agoWhen 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).
- viraptor 11mo ago> 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, ...
- SchemaLoad 11mo ago
- jebronie 11mo ago[flagged]
- cringemaester 11mo ago[flagged]
- wiseowise 11mo agoCivics are more based, though.
- cringemaester 11mo agoBased. Right from the 4chan cringepool.
- SiempreViernes 11mo agoThe above is a self-referencing comment.
- noisem4ker 11mo agoAt least those cars exhibited some kind of aesthetic merit, albeit of opinable taste. Most of these pileups of stickers are just an incoherent mishmash of corporate trademarks and political orientation signals. They only share the attention grabbing attitude. I expected better from the title.
- joshdavham 11mo agoThis 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?
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoI 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.
- viraptor 11mo agoI'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.
- garciansmith 11mo agoIn 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).
- JoshTriplett 11mo ago"Libertarian" and "Conservative" are not inherently linked, even though sadly they're often associated. There are many left-libertarians.
- rchaud 11mo agoWasn't long ago that opposition to fascism was the conservative position. Why is a sticker expressing the same considered "progressive"?
- Animats 11mo agoThere are laptops with a display on the outside to display stickers.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrINRHeNDQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrINRHeNDQA
- neilv 11mo agoThis tech looks like it would be annoying to other people in a cafe/workplace/etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drVhn0hLiI&t=40s 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.
- Animats 11mo ago> 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 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807067268678.html
- sien 11mo agoIt'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.
- JoshTriplett 11mo agoDefinitely 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.
- soulofmischief 11mo agoYou 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.
- d_silin 11mo agoI think it is a wonderful pop-art exhibit!
- reaperducer 11mo agoWhere 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.
- Lunatic666 11mo agoTry redbubble, I have a lot leftover stickers, because I got too excited ordering
- viraptor 11mo agoEtsy has some, but you can also print your own for not much.
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoMost 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.
- beeflet 11mo agoI agree, I much prefer to just use stickers of random stuff I get
- chickensong 11mo agoWould love to see your commissioned stickers, if you were inclined to share.
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoI 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.
- nntwozz 11mo agoHa, what a throwback! I remember this one with the Intel SSD sticker: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-320-ssd-300-gb/images/contents.jpg https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-320-ssd-300-gb/imag... https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_6571.JPEG 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-300gb 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.
- JoshTriplett 11mo agoI 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.
- zerocrates 11mo agoI 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.
- doublepg23 11mo agoI was just telling my buddy the same thing. It was our first SSD in HS. Mine eventually died with double the guaranteed TBW.
- ecliptik 11mo agoAnd a Gunship sticker. After looking at some of these I wish there was an optional field people could add so others with overlapping interests could follow a blog/socialmedia/etc.
- braden-lk 11mo agoThese 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.
- enlyth 11mo agoYou're not a real programmer if you don't have a "I vibe code AI slop in NextJS" sticker on your MacBook
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoTo be fair, I bet pictures with "Yay Facism!" stickers are probably taken down, as they should be.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- FuriouslyAdrift 11mo agoIn the early to mid 90's, geek culture had a thing for ironic agitprop. Great stuff... deeply cynical and very Gen X.
- klez 11mo agoLooks 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.
- ajsnigrutin 11mo agoI'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.
- klez 11mo ago> 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 :)
- Findecanor 11mo agoThe 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?
- wlesieutre 11mo agoNo glowing logo since before the USB-C/touchbar generation, about 10 years ago
- JSR_FDED 11mo agoWhen 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_widespread_mac_use/ https://macdailynews.com/2007/10/02/lecture_hall_photo_shows...
- shantara 11mo agoI remember seeing this photo all over the internet, usually with “Think different” caption. Thanks for the reminder!
- wlesieutre 11mo agoMy 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.
- ninetyninenine 11mo agoLike covering a Lamborghini with cheap bumper stickers.
- viraptor 11mo agoIt's like people want to show what they care about rather than how much they spent on the hardware... There may be a reason.
- ninetyninenine 11mo agoAnother analogy: it’s like painting a gold toilet your favorite color of hot pink. You’re not exactly trying to show off a toilet right?
- edm0nd 11mo agoyeah, its exactly like that. if that is something you want to do, you should do it.
- khazhoux 11mo agoTrue. At my workplace, every engineer gets a Lamborghini and many people do, in fact, cover them with stickers.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 11mo agoI 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.
- edm0nd 11mo agoI 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.
- squigz 11mo agoThis one is really cool. https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/20250221_003331-1.jpg 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?
- rsynnott 11mo agoIs this one actually a sticker at all, or some sort of etching?
- squigz 11mo agoI 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
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Night_Thastus 11mo agoThat DS9 "in the pale moonlight" sticker is awesome.
- fnord77 11mo agoIt's a Faaaaake!
- imiric 11mo ago[flagged]
- tihi 11mo agoThats a weird takeaway, why can't you let people enjoy things that don't affect you?
- imiric 11mo agoHow am I stopping anyone's enjoyment? Why can't you let me voice my opinion?
- speff 11mo agoIt's got the same vibe as going into a circle of people having fun and telling them they're trying too hard. What's the effect you're going for? You're not being stopped from having an opinion - your comment is visible - but sharing one that'll only serve to bring down people's moods makes everything a little bit worse I think.
- rc5150 11mo agoIf you're in a circle of people whose moods can be brought down because of a shared opinion, you're in a circle of prepubescent children who haven't learned to regulate their emotions like a grown up.
- imiric 11mo ago> It's got the same vibe as going into a circle of people having fun and telling them they're trying too hard. Strange analogy, considering this is a public forum, and I'm expressing my opinion about the shared link. If you don't like it, you're free to engage or ignore it. The idea that only positive opinions should be expressed is infantile.
- beeflet 11mo agoIt does effect me. If it didn't effect anyone, no one would do it. Tattoos, stickers, etc. are a form of social signalling. Maybe they disagree with what's being signalled, or the act of signalling itself.
- tihi 11mo agoSame thing as devlids: https://devlids.com/ https://devlids.com/
- chickensong 11mo agoThanks for the link. I like how devlids links to the user's socials.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- whalesalad 11mo agoOn 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.
- reimertz 11mo agomiss my first laptop I had while interning in SF. Each sticker was its own memory
- pico303 11mo agoI 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.
- mindcrime 11mo agoI 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 https://fogbeam.com/free-kevin.jpg
- bitbasher 11mo agoI never understood people siding with Kevin. He always struck me as a fraud/pseudo-hacker and never did anything technical or substantial.
- mindcrime 11mo agoI'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>".
- INTPenis 11mo agoOnce you understand that everything in this world is a system, then you'll see how he was a true hacker.
- brailsafe 11mo agoSome of those books seem interesting, how were the memory, attention, behaviour ones?
- andy99 11mo agoI’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
- Terr_ 11mo ago> 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.
- neilv 11mo agoGood catch. Like the reason that house key ring lost&found tags have an intermediary's address on them, rather than identify the other directly.
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoEvery 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.
- snerbles 11mo agoAt 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.
- Kye 11mo agoOne of mine is on quite a few laptops and at least one server: https://shop.kyefox.com/products/were-here-were-queer-connection-reset-by-peer-holo-sticker https://shop.kyefox.com/products/were-here-were-queer-connec... I was hoping, though not expecting, to spot it in here.
- beeflet 11mo agobut damn $14
- Kye 11mo agoIf 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.
- nicbou 11mo agoThis one is hilarious
- rsynnott 11mo agoOkay, that one's quite good. I'm quite tempted, though I assume shipping stickers to Europe is a pain/expensive.
- Kye 11mo ago$4.59 to Europe for one: https://help.fourthwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/14509196645531-How-much-will-shipping-cost-for-my-supporters 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.
- intalentive 11mo ago[flagged]
- lisdexan 11mo ago"STOP HAVING FUN, SELF-EXPRESSION IS CRINGE" Ok, chudjak.
- beeflet 11mo ago[flagged]
- lisdexan 11mo agoI'm sure buying cute cat stickers is the one thing stopping the downfall of the capitalist machine.
- beeflet 11mo agoit is the general lifestyle of self-expression which does. The kind of person who expresses themself through "be gay and do crime" stickers does not seriously threaten the system through crime. Totally individualistic self-expression acts as a release valve for frustrations against the system. It attracts narcissists, who counteract any meaningful goals. In the old world, when you got a tattoo or something it showed you were a member of a community of people who knew each other. A society of people who were organized and could precipitate some change. In the new world, you get a tattoo or something to signal you are a member of a demographic.
- totallymike 11mo agoAll people who make lazy and baseless generalizations are boring and a waste of time to listen to. This is fun, we should do it more often
- lisdexan 11mo agoI like Curtis work but I still find the whole theory kinda weak-sauce. Correct, the revolution can be repackaged and sold to you via hip marketing. So what? What's the counterfactual? If someone was an entirely superficial anti-system person and you retroactively deleted all shiny trinkets would they become the perfect freedom fighter? John Q. Left is just one step away from doing effective change because his water bottle has "Punch Fascists" sticker or his hobby is cosplay. Not the captured media landscape, the digital panopticon, the razing of public space or the destruction of most grassroots political organization in the workplace or education. They weren't exactly giving out stickers in Kent State. >Totally individualistic self-expression acts as a release valve for frustrations against the system. It attracts narcissists, who counteract any meaningful goals. In the good old times the release valve for frustrations against the system was getting shitfaced on the cheapest alcohol. Narcissistic power struggles also predate all this shit. >In the old world, when you got a tattoo or something it showed you were a member of a community of people who knew each other. A society of people who were organized and could precipitate some change. In the new world, you get a tattoo or something to signal you are a member of a demographic. Sailor tattoos are exactly the type stuff you are decrying. People precipitating change in the past didn't tattoo themselves like Bond villains to identify each other. >The kind of person who expresses themself through "be gay and do crime" stickers does not seriously threaten the system through crime. If we go by threatening the system I find it highly likely that Maia Crimew⁰ has done more of that than both of us, and they are the most "be gay and do crime" sticker human ever. [0] https://maia.crimew.gay/ https://maia.crimew.gay/
- zygentoma 11mo agoShameless plug for those who still need more stickers for their laptop: ssh stickr.shop
- 8organicbits 11mo agoDo you publish the SSH key? Feels odd to order if I can't authenticate the connection.
- zygentoma 11mo agoWe do: https://stickr.shop/sshkey https://stickr.shop/sshkey But of course we should also link there from the homepage! Thanks for the hint!
- joncrane 11mo agoOK, that is awesome.
- gregjw 11mo agothats very cool
- poolnoodle 11mo agoOrdering is really tempting just because its so fun lol. Great idea and execution.
- CptKriechstrom 11mo agojust ordered because it's via ssh. great work!
- 4ggr0 11mo agosame 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.
- 11mo ago
- WaitWaitWha 11mo agoSome pen test teams use laptop stickers as an excellent resource for proper social engineering. Some cyber companies explicitly prohibit stickers on company laptops.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 11mo ago>Some pen test teams use laptop stickers as an excellent resource for proper social engineering. How?
- omeletdufromage 11mo agoNot 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.
- FinnKuhn 11mo agoThat sounds like info you would already have by taking a look at LinkedIn or am I missing something?
- fleroviumna 11mo ago[dead]
- benchly 11mo agoYou'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.
- lawlessone 11mo agoHey i like it , but i can see most of them appear to have original filenames on them when i mouse over them.
- binary132 11mo agoIt 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.
- altshiftprtscrn 11mo agoSame 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
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- YurgenJurgensen 11mo agoNowadays, 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.
- NamlchakKhandro 11mo ago[flagged]
- periodjet 11mo ago[flagged]
- lisdexan 11mo ago[flagged]
- mberning 11mo agoIn 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.
- INTPenis 11mo agoIn 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.
- mberning 11mo agoIt is a hilarious joke when you see all the stickers covering the laptop of the person asking you a basic git or sql question. Superstar.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gcr 11mo agoInspired 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
- ehnto 11mo agoHa! 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.
- markstos 11mo ago"Do Not Crush", "BASH".
- t1234s 11mo agothey need to make laptops with a color e-ink lid so you can easily create and update your
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo agoI 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.
- flir 11mo agoImplies that the stickers are more precious than the hardware, which is an attitude I love.
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo agoThey 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.
- chickensong 11mo agoThis is definitely the case!
- SchemaLoad 11mo agoFor the precious stickers, I stick them on magnetic sheet and then cut the sheet to shape, turning the stickers in to fridge magnets.
- 0xbadcafebee 11mo agoyou 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"
- vvpan 11mo agoHaven't heard about cDc in about 20 years. Are they still active as a collective in any way?
- ThePowerOfFuet 11mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veilid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veilid
- kps 11mo agoYou can tell who's really old when they have a CDC sticker… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CDC-Logo.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CDC-Logo.svg (Now I want one.)
- Traubenfuchs 11mo ago[flagged]
- subjectsigma 11mo ago“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)
- lisdexan 11mo agoThe same logic applies to commenting on forums. Or doing anything publicly really.
- subjectsigma 11mo agoA 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.
- totallymike 11mo agoI 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.
- AbraKdabra 11mo agoI 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".
- fragmede 11mo agoThe 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?
- yallpendantools 11mo agoThis. 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.
- m463 11mo agoI 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.
- Reason077 11mo agoWow. Impressive collection!
- stuffn 11mo ago[flagged]
- totallymike 11mo ago[flagged]
- tectonic 11mo agoMy 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…
- lIl-IIIl 11mo agoThat's how git commits work. Current laptop stickers: current state. Photo of the previous laptop: reference to previous commit.
- ostwilkens 11mo agoI 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!
- poulpy123 11mo agostickerception
- drob518 11mo agoStickers all the way down.
- nticompass 11mo agoI didn't go that far, but I did take the back cover from my old (stickered) laptop and hang it on the wall.
- portaouflop 11mo agoKeep 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
- raudette 11mo agoLike my primary storage, with the old storage in a sub folder. There's still a WP51 folder in there somewhere...
- b8 11mo agoI wish I could buy the Aaron Swartz sticker
- thecoon 11mo agoThank 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.
- ehnto 11mo agoI'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)
- nullwarp 11mo agoI love this idea actually. Might have to do the same thing
- litbear2022 11mo agoI think some people would be very interested in similar satirical stickers.Unfortunately, this link is sold out. https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005005801847872.html https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005005801847872.html
- defrost 11mo agoI 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.
- nticompass 11mo agoIn case you want to make these stickers yourself: https://cursed-logos.dev/ https://cursed-logos.dev/
- ungreased0675 11mo agoMy favorite laptop anti-sticker https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Stickers-are-Prohibited-by-UnaPatches/ https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Stickers-are-Prohibited-... Would fit well here judging from some of the sentiments expressed.
- Fomite 11mo agoI'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.
- chickensong 11mo agoYou know what to do!
- gregjw 11mo agoi need more stickers
- MemesAndBooze 11mo agoWow, absolutely alternative.
- vachina 11mo agoA 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.
- maxlin 11mo agoStickers 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.
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoWhat'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.
- maxlin 11mo ago[flagged]
- wahnfrieden 11mo agoShowing 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.
- tryauuum 11mo agoI'm stealing this thread because I wanted to describe my feelings, it's not related to laptops or work When I lived in Russia I respected the rare people I saw wearing lgbt flags/pins. Because it's really a statement, it's a middle finger to the government. People knew the police can waste their time or even jail them. Now that I live in a european country and I see more people wearing lgbt stuff, I don't feel such respect. I'm a little puzzled what's the point, you are wearing it in a country where you can hold hands, where government protects people from discrimination... It's not that you shouldn't do it, I just don't understand. Is it like a friend-or-foe id system? Worst of all (now I'm switching from people to companies) when a company post a pride flag it feels 100% insincere. Because I know companies are motivated by profit so they only do things which don't hurt profit, they don't hold any principles.
- leipert 11mo agoMy 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power%3F_No_Thanks
- nuccy 11mo agoI 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 https://youtu.be/v0afQ6w3Bjw
- tokai 11mo agoYes it exist: https://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/ https://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/
- kurtis_reed 11mo agoI don't get it
- Aachen 11mo agoThere'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 ^^
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- unwind 11mo agoSomewhere 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.
- fmajid 11mo agoIt'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.
- squigz 11mo agoThat's cute. You should share them.
- fmajid 11mo agohttps://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4835.jpeg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4835.jpeg
- fmajid 11mo agoGods, GrapheneOS’s predictive keyboard and spelling checker is so much worse than iOS’, it’s not even funny
- zkmon 11mo agoWhen humans are lost into the screens, the screen-backs make a desperate attempt to talk to other humans.
- widforss 11mo agoWireshark, doo doo doo doo doo doo.
- alex_duf 11mo agoI 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.
- FinnKuhn 11mo agoFor 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.
- jrockway 11mo agoI 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.
- cozzyd 11mo agoSome choice stickers (McMurdo Station and South Pole Station stickers) have inhabited 3 of my laptops already.
- SiempreViernes 11mo agoA real McMurdo sticker does seem incredibly cool!
- cozzyd 11mo agoThe funny thing is I'm at McMurdo now but they don't seem to have any at the store at the moment
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoAre those heat insulating by chance?
- seszett 11mo ago
- Fokamul 11mo ago-> bad OPSEC ;-)
- kaptain 11mo agoIn case you’re wondering, this is 我 (me). https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpeg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4148-1.jpe...
- lioeters 11mo agoLooks like 武 ("bu", warrior). https://www.japandict.com/kanji/武 https://www.japandict.com/kanji/武
- 71153750 11mo agoAgreed, wu3 in Mandarin Chinese. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A6 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A6
- hyperfuturism 11mo agoThe kanji on your laptop is not the same as 我. Idk if intentional or not
- enraged_camel 11mo agoMy 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.
- YurgenJurgensen 11mo agoI think that this kind of thing reduces the individual to a list of group affiliations. It’s the opposite of self-expression really.
- ostwilkens 11mo agoLove it! I'll showcase my sticker collection on my laptop as soon as I come up with a way to make them reusable.
- Tabular-Iceberg 11mo agoI got rid of all mine after getting disillusioned with every one of the causes they represented.
- magarnicle 11mo agoThis is the main reason I've never gotten a tattoo - how I feel about whatever it is will almost certainly change.
- Tabular-Iceberg 11mo agoThere’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.
- brailsafe 11mo agoI'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.
- cobertos 11mo agoDo they _need_ to be edgy? They can just be fun, happy, or a representation/proxy of the person behind the computer
- Tabular-Iceberg 11mo agoBecause 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.
- Barbing 11mo ago
- antonyh 11mo agoI 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?
- squigz 11mo agoThat'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/bee7bec396-1751274234/mk2.jpg https://devlids.com/media/pages/lids/shiro/bee7bec396-175127...
- antonyh 11mo agoI see what you mean, that one really is ordered chaos.
- 4gotunameagain 11mo agoAm 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.
- aa-jv 11mo agoI 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...
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- larusso 11mo agoDon’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.
- mariani 11mo agoI used to like stickers too when I was a child.
- Aachen 11mo agoBeing 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)
- nticompass 11mo ago"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
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- tiagod 11mo agoMy condolences, hope you will recover soon
- mechazawa 11mo agokinda funny that I recognize a bunch of those laptops from people I know
- xg15 11mo agoI 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?
- simsla 11mo agoMy laptop at Amazon was also covered in stickers, although I shied away from the more politically charged ones.
- vshade 11mo agoNot 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.
- _notreallyme_ 11mo agoNot 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
- wiether 11mo agoWhen 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.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoNot 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.
- Antibabelic 11mo agoMy 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
- grafelic 11mo agoMy 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.
- ahartmetz 11mo agoIt 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/2025/11/1762135251053-2.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/1762135251053-... https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_9222-1.jpeg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_9222-1.jpe... "Employee of the month": https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_20200717_203521-1.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_20200717_2...
- SparkBomb 11mo agoThe 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.
- ahartmetz 11mo agoFrom 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".
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- wiether 11mo agoThe one with velcro tape, allowing to put patches on the laptop is clever! It results in a bulgier laptop, but still, clever!
- billpg 11mo agoI 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.
- z02d 11mo agoI can only show my laptop without stickers: https://i.ibb.co/TDmXWBpc/Whats-App-Image-2025-11-12-at-11-36-52.jpg https://i.ibb.co/TDmXWBpc/Whats-App-Image-2025-11-12-at-11-3...
- blueflow 11mo agoNever seen such well visible scars! Mine are only faint contours... https://i.imgur.com/Y4Q1uzC.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/Y4Q1uzC.jpeg I was too thorough with the isopropyl alcohol.
- smikhanov 11mo agoSome 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.
- fennecbutt 11mo agoI've just covered mine with furry trash stickers.
- Kye 11mo agoThis is the way.
- some_furry 11mo agoSo, too, did many of the laptops on that website.
- jones89176 11mo agoHere'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_3 https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2023-57194-from_c3stoc_with_love_...
- jones89176 11mo agoSee here for some archives: https://hacker-archive.org/s/Start/item-set/6601 https://hacker-archive.org/s/Start/item-set/6601 https://github.com/mwarning/chaos-sticker-collection https://github.com/mwarning/chaos-sticker-collection
- SparkBomb 11mo agoI 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.
- Vinnl 11mo agoI just want a funny sticker to cover the logo of my laptop's producer.
- SparkBomb 11mo agoAre 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.
- portaouflop 11mo agoPolitical messaging is good and important especially nowadays
- SparkBomb 11mo agoPolitical 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.
- neoromantique 11mo ago
- Tade0 11mo agoI 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.
- oldestofsports 11mo agoI 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”
- LinuxAmbulance 11mo agoAnother way of looking at it would be adding some personality to the corporate drone existence.
- oldestofsports 11mo agoThat’s true, and if it makes you happy then that is all that matters.
- bargainbin 11mo agoSuch 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.
- Foxboron 11mo ago> 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/ https://cyber.equipment/
- RestartKernel 11mo ago> 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.
- martin_a 11mo agoI think the CYBER thing is a joke from the German part of the internet. Our government (and companies alike), liked to cyber-everything. Cyber as a word alone or prefix became a joke and that might be the origin. Have a look at this cybervideo for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY6KkRsS26M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY6KkRsS26M
- doppelgunner 11mo agoI'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.
- Defletter 11mo ago> 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.
- JKCalhoun 11mo agoThank 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.
- fipar 11mo ago"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 :)
- SparkBomb 11mo agoIt 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.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago[flagged]
- nticompass 11mo agoHmm... 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.jpg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/1000008753-1.j...
- amelius 11mo agoWhat's the best way to reproduce some of these stickers at the highest possible quality?
- redhale 11mo agoLove this! Many of my favorite stickers come from here: https://github.com/mkrl/misbrands https://github.com/mkrl/misbrands (and some of it's forks). Vim/Vscode still gets the best reactions.
- portaouflop 11mo agoI 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
- tacker2000 11mo agoBut what about the resale value??
- constantcrying 11mo agoVery 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.
- symbogra 11mo agoMy 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.
- sva_ 11mo agoIt'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
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ubermonkey 11mo agoI 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.
- sfortis 11mo agoOMG, I hate stickers on laptops so much...
- lunias 11mo agoWhen 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.
- symbogra 11mo agoI 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.
- tlavoie 11mo agoSome are even more obnoxious. My wife bought a car once, where the dealer had their logo added to the inside of the middle brake light panel. This did not fly well at all.
- jjice 11mo agoStickers 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.
- ingomaro 11mo agoRipoff of https://devlids.com https://devlids.com Choose taste, choose the original!
- bojle 11mo agoThis one [1] is quite tasteful. I looked at it for a good minute. [1] https://devlids.com/lids/the-binh https://devlids.com/lids/the-binh
- Kye 11mo agoRipoff is a strong accusation. You can't own ideas. I do think devlids has better execution, but it has more time (revisions) behind it. Personally, I think "devlids" limits the concept too much. I want to see lids from writers, artists, musicians, etc. Categorized so I can see how different kinds of creatives flair their laptops.
- niorad 11mo agoDevlids-creator here. I'm happy that there are more like these! The focus was intentional when I created the project, otherwise there would have been just too much material for me to sift thru. I mainly used Twitter back then, and I wanted to "curate" it all myself. What I really love about the Stickertop-Page is the self-upload-feature, which I never had the time/motivation to do. And it being open to all stickered machines, not only tech-based.
- niorad 11mo agothanks for the shoutout ingomaro :3 I don't mind, I think folks should send it to both sites!
- ctm92 11mo agoIt'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 :)
- jack_tripper 11mo agoIf 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.
- johnwalkr 11mo agoThe whole MacBook lid fades from UV over time, and underneath any stickers will be darker.
- ebarila 11mo agoi was honestly expecting an articule about how cringe putting stickers is but ok.
- izzydata 11mo agoI 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.
- technothrasher 11mo agoI 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?
- squigz 11mo ago> 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? Seriously. When I saw this initially posted I was like "Huh, this is cool. I bet HN will share some really neat ones, too!" and then we got... this. People more worried about the type of stickers and whether it's wholly unprofessional to dare to put a harmless sticker on a professional work device than anything else. It's tiring, sometimes, how ready to be angry about something people seem to be.
- izzylan 11mo agoNah, this is just HackerNews. We're Redditors who think we're better than Redditors. Most people don't care.
- Octoth0rpe 11mo agoI've had my eye on this pack of stickers for my next laptop upgrade: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1133836260/cursed-programming-sticker-sheet?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=bad+programming+stickers&ref=sr_gallery-1-4&frs=1&bes=1&sts=1&content_source=126f22dcdacef0bd877b5a9f659ce60cba94b2bb%253A1133836260&organic_search_click=1 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)
- Dragonai 11mo agoThis is incredible
- dvtkrlbs 11mo agoThis is awesome
- tgtweak 11mo agoIt's actually kind of concerning how these just look normal at first glance
- Hamuko 11mo agoI 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.
- timeinput 11mo agoI 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-ea2971cee799.png https://github.githubassets.com/assets/GitHub-Mark-ea2971cee... and not so much the stylized words GitHub.
- toobulkeh 11mo agoI would get these if they were all OSS alternative logos with the paid names.
- ghusto 11mo agoGood 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.
- bArray 11mo agoWorth 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 https://github.com/petrussola/help-ukraine-open-source [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ci6ydi/github_banned_all_iranian_users_our_accounts_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ci6ydi/github_banned_a... [3] https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4529-2.jpeg https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/IMG_4529-2.jpe... [5] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/python-rejects-15m-grant-from-us-govt-fearing-ethical-compromise/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/python-reject... [6] https://lwn.net/Articles/635999/ https://lwn.net/Articles/635999/ [7] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-conduct.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu...
- racl101 11mo agoMy fave sticker: "Data In the Streets" "Riker In the Sheets" lol.
- hk1337 11mo agoI don't really get the language or tool stickers but stickers of places you've been like city specific or conferences makes sense to display.
- nfriedly 11mo agoI like having at least one or two stickers on my laptop, just so that I can easily tell which one is mine.
- voganmother42 11mo agoThe lego laptop cases are fun, or I would love one sticker I could doodle or draw on
- tlavoie 11mo agoYou can buy some that are a sort of chalkboard texture, so you can literally chalk on them. I think there are similar spray paint coatings too.
- MDGeist 11mo agoI used to add stickers obtained from visiting my company's clients/partners to my laptop. After 5 years the laptop was basically advertising a bunch of dead brands (either through acquisition or lack of VC funding).
- pragma_x 11mo agoI used to not be on "team sticker". My wife, however, loves to customize her stuff. Fast-forward a few years of that and her laptop breaks down. We drop it off at a local repair place, only to have the business itself fold up with everyone's gear inside it. Former staff then went to great lengths to find customers and return equipment. We were able to recover the machine from a box of co-mingled broken laptops, mostly because it was visually customized. Not everyone else was so lucky. Point being: the experience was just like having unique looking luggage, and just as useful and important to do. You don't know when you'll need this, but when you do, you'll be thankful.
- smallmouth 11mo agoThe only sticker I've ever put on one of my laptops was an Apple sticker. The laptop was a Dell.