DEV Community: Major League Hacking (MLH)

Prompt Pad: What Are Tokens?

MLH Team — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 20:34:29 +0000

Your AI doesn't read your prompt word for word. It reads tokens.

In this episode of Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili explains tokens, the atomic units of text that an AI actually reads and calculates.

The tip in a nutshell

Before an AI reads your prompt, your text is converted into numbers using a process called tokenization. Each token becomes a number, and those numbers are what the model actually calculates with to generate a response.

Everything we've covered in Prompt Pad so far, from framing a persona to few-shot examples, reaches the model as tokens. Understanding them gives you a clearer picture of what happens between hitting enter and getting an answer.

Try it yourself

Take a prompt you use often and think about how it might be split into tokens. Share your guesses (or any surprises) in the comments 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone curious about how AI really works? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad tip:

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Can you merge at agent speed?

MLH Team — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 17:40:59 +0000

Major League Hacking and Entire are teaming up for a year of hackathons, DEV Challenges, and a new prize that puts the first Git forge for agent-human collaboration in hackers’ hands

Picture this: you’re 14 hours into a hackathon. You’ve got multiple agents running, you’ve tried three different approaches, and somewhere between your fifth coffee and your tenth prompt, you finally crack it. You’re ready to ship something you’re proud of and you hit your Git platform.

Your code goes through pull requests designed for humans reviewing human-generated code. And when your session ends, everything your agent learned about the project ends with it. The next prompt starts from scratch. Today’s Git forges were built for a human-paced loop, not for developers collaborating with agents.

That's why we're partnering with Entire, the Git forge for agent-human collaboration, founded by former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. Our partnership will help developers across the MLH and DEV community to merge changes as fast as their coding agents create them, and to capture, share, and learn from how they build with AI.

Where AI habits get formed

There's no shortage of predictions about how AI will change software development. We don't pretend to have all the answers, but we have a pretty good idea of where some of them will come from.

Every weekend at hackathons around the world, hackers show up with technologies they've never used and ideas they're not sure how to execute. They try things, break things, learn from each other, and sometimes find approaches that surprise the people who built the tools.

Developers are still figuring out how to work effectively with AI agents. The habits they develop today, the tools they adopt, and the lessons they share will influence how software gets built in the years ahead. We want our community to have a hand in shaping that future, not just adapting to it.

Meet Entire

On October 26, Entire launched the first Git forge built specifically for agent-human collaboration. Here are the highlights:

Trails. Unlike the classic pull request model of reviewing code changes with a diff, Trails offers developers a heads-up display similar to an airline pilot, with automated customizable evals that are scored by agents on every code push.
Distributed Git hosting. Entire is built on a new source control server compatible with Git, which pushes up to 89x faster than GitHub and 6x faster than Cursor Origin. You can host your repo and replicate it in multiple regions around the world, offering data residency and scale for agentic traffic.
Continuous Memory, a new approach for agents and developer teams that sync sessions and prompts into the Git repository, and makes that data constantly available and searchable to coding agents. It includes Graph, which maps how your codebase fits together, and Brain, which turns past sessions into memories your agents can query.

And then there’s Sessions: the open-source Entire CLI saves your agent sessions as checkpoints linked to your commits, so your team can see the prompts and reasoning behind each change. Put together, it’s a Git forge built for the way developers collaborate with agents today.

For a hackathon team racing the clock, that means the ability to reason over the code your agents create so you can merge as fast as they write it, less time re-explaining context to your agents, fewer burned tokens, and a way to show something that’s always been hard to demo: the thinking behind the project.

What MLH and Entire are doing together

Over the next 12 months, Entire will show up across MLH and DEV through hackathon prizes, DEV Challenges, and direct feedback.

A new prize: Best Use of Entire. At 150 MLH hackathons across North America, Europe, and Asia, teams can compete for a prize that rewards smarter AI workflows. Use as much of Entire as you can: Sessions to hand off context to teammates and agents, Graph to map your codebase and cut token usage, Brain so your agents remember past decisions, and Trails to assign and review agent work. Judges are looking for seamless human-AI collaboration, clean code history, and measurable token efficiency. Winners take home a mini portable projector, and MLH staff on-site will help you get set up.

Two DEV Challenges. Not every idea fits in a 36-hour weekend. Entire will sponsor two DEV Challenges where you can explore its tooling at your own pace, build something, and write about what you learned. And unlike a weekend demo, those posts stick around for the next developer to learn from. Themes, dates, and prizes coming soon.

A direct line to the team building the tools. Hackathons are a great stress test. When you've got a weekend to build, you find out fast whether a tool is helping or getting in your way. MLH will work with community members to test Entire's tools and docs, flag friction, and bring that feedback straight to Entire's team. If a tool is supposed to make developers' lives better, developers should have a say in how it works.

None of this starts from scratch. Thomas kicked things off with a keynote at HackGT in September, and Entire joined us for Hacktoberfest 2026, where their team went live on DEV with the community and hackers took home Entire prizes in our Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI DEV Challenges. Now we’re taking it on the road.

Mike Swift, CEO & Co-Founder, Major League Hacking

“When Thomas started Entire, we knew it was a natural fit for our community. At a hackathon you have one weekend to turn an idea into something real, and your agents have to keep up with you. Entire is built for that kind of speed, and it keeps the reasoning behind the code instead of losing it. Hackers are already building on top of it: Abdul Wasih built Viva, a mock interview tool that reads your Entire sessions to find the code an AI wrote, then quizzes you on it. That’s what happens when you put new tools in front of this community. This is a dream partnership for us, and we think capturing how software gets built, not just what ships, will be table stakes for AI coding.”

“Many developers make their start at hackathons, and MLH is among the very best, giving them a third space beyond the classroom or office where they can find community, get hands-on with the latest technologies, and build at the pace of the industry,” said Thomas Dohmke, Entire CEO. “We’re proud to partner with the MLH team to bring our Git forge to the next generation of developers. Many are already agent natives with a new kind of technical leverage. They’ll set the standard for how humans and agents create software together. We built Entire for this new world, and we can’t wait to see what they ship.”

We can’t wait to see what you build. And this time, we might get to see a little more of how you got there.

Prompt Pad: Show Your AI How to Respond with Few-Shot Examples

MLH Team — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Want AI to answer in a specific way? Don't just tell it. Show it.

In this episode of Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili explores few-shot prompting: giving your model a few examples so it knows exactly how you want it to respond.

The tip in a nutshell

Describing the output you want only goes so far. When you include a handful of example inputs and responses in your prompt, the model picks up on the pattern and follows it, whether that's a specific format, tone, or style. Instead of guessing what "good" looks like, it has a model answer to work from.

Try it yourself

Pick a task where the AI's responses keep missing the mark. Add two or three examples of what a great answer looks like, then run your prompt again and compare. Share your before-and-after in the comments 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone who's tired of explaining what they want to AI over and over? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad tip:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Prompt Pad: What Are Open-Weight Models?

MLH Team — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 21:00:19 +0000

When people call an AI model "open," they don't always mean the same thing.

On this week's Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili breaks down open-weight models using Google's Gemma as an example.

The difference

An open-weight model gives you the trained model itself. You can download it, run it on your own machine, and fine-tune it for your project.

Open-source asks for more. It means the full recipe is available to study, change, and share: the code, and for AI, details like the training data and process.

Your Turn

What would you build with a model that never has to leave your laptop? 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone who thinks "open" always means open source? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad episode:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Prompt Pad: What Is Open Source?

MLH Team — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Chances are you're already using open-source software without realizing it.

In this episode of Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili steps back from prompting to explain what open source is and why you should care.

Why it matters

Open source runs much of the world's software, including many of the AI tools and models people use every day. Anyone can read the code, learn from it, and help make it better. That includes you, whether you write code or not.

Your Turn

Tell us in the comments: what's an open-source project you rely on without thinking about it? 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone who's curious about open source? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad episode:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Prompt Pad: Lock Your AI's Output Schema in Google AI Studio

MLH Team — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 14:00:00 +0000

If you've ever tried to parse an LLM response in code, you know the pain: the format changes slightly from one run to the next and your parser breaks.

In this episode of Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili shows how to lock your model's output schema in Google AI Studio so that every response follows the format you define. 🔒

Why it matters

Asking for JSON in your prompt is a request. A structured output schema is a guarantee. Once the schema is locked, your app gets clean, predictable responses it can rely on, and you no longer need regex workarounds to clean them up.

Try it yourself

Open Google AI Studio, define a schema for something you're building, and see how much simpler the code that consumes the output becomes. Let us know what you build in the comments 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone fighting with messy AI output? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad tip:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Prompt Pad: Frame Your Persona for Better AI Answers

MLH Team — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 20:09:37 +0000

Want better answers from AI? Start by telling it who to be.

In this episode of Prompt Pad, @rosendo_pili shows how setting your model's persona in the system prompt immediately improves the quality of its answers.

The tip in a nutshell

Before you ask the question, give the model a role. "You are a senior backend engineer reviewing a pull request" gets you a very different answer than a bare "review this code." A persona tells the model what expertise to draw on, what tone to use, and what a good answer looks like.

Try it yourself

Pick a prompt you use often and add a one-line persona to the top. Compare the two answers side by side. Then share your best persona in the comments 👇

📣 Help us spread the word

Know someone whose AI answers could use an upgrade? Send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss the next Prompt Pad tip:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Welcome to the Prompt Pad: AI Tips & Tricks with Rosendo Pili

MLH Team — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:07:55 +0000

Keeping up with AI is a full-time job. Prompt Pad is here to help you keep up a little at a time.

Prompt Pad is a new short-form video series, hosted by @rosendo_pili. Each episode covers one practical tip you can use right away. It doesn't matter whether you're brand new to AI or have been shipping LLM features for years.

What to expect

Short and to-the-point. Every episode is under a minute.
Practical. One technique per episode, shown in a real tool.
For everyone. No PhD or prior coding experience needed.

We'll post every episode here on DEV as part of this series, so follow along and drop your questions in the comments. Ro might answer them in a future episode.

📣 Help us spread the word

If you know someone who's trying to get better at AI, send them this video. And subscribe so you don't miss an episode:

▶️ YouTube: @MajorLeagueHacking
📸 Instagram: @mlhacks
🐦 X: @mlhacks
💼 LinkedIn: Major League Hacking
💬 Discord: Join the MLH community

Everything You Need To Know About Hacktoberfest 2026: AI Belongs to Everyone 🎃

Jess Lee — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:19:06 +0000

It's October 1st, which means Hacktoberfest 2026 is officially live! 🎉

This year looks a little different. Hacktoberfest is now powered by Major League Hacking (MLH) and DEV, presented by DigitalOcean, and it's built around one idea:

AI belongs to everyone.

For the entire month, people around the world are coming together, online and in person, to discover, learn about, and build with open-source AI. Maybe you'll finally figure out what an "open-weight model" actually is. Maybe you'll catch your first livestream, try an AI tool you can run and inspect yourself, or build something with a friend at a local Fest.

Maybe you'll write your first skills.md, build an open-source agent, or fine-tune a model. Wherever you're starting from, there's a place for you this month.

Totally new to "Open-Source AI"? Here's what you need to know:

You don't need to be a developer, or to have ever touched open source, to take part in Hacktoberfest. A few quick definitions to get you going:

Open source means the code is public. Anyone can look at how a project is made, learn from it, use it, and help improve it.
Open-weight models are AI models whose "weights" (the learned knowledge that makes the model work) are publicly released, so anyone can download, run, study, and adapt them, rather than only accessing them through a company's app. Open-weight is not the same as open source.
Open-source AI tools are the building blocks around those models (agents, frameworks, and utilities) that are shared openly for anyone to use and improve.

Why does this matter? When AI is open, more people get to understand it, access it, and shape how it's used. That's what "AI belongs to everyone" is all about, and Hacktoberfest is a month-long invitation to come see for yourself.

A quick note on what's changed

When DigitalOcean launched Hacktoberfest in 2014, the formula was simple: open four pull requests, earn a t-shirt. That idea helped bring a whole generation of people into open source. 💜

But AI tools now make low-effort pull requests trivial to generate, and open-source maintainers have been paying the price. So this year, pull requests and merge requests no longer count toward Hacktoberfest rewards. Instead, the focus is on learning and building together, and on open source as a philosophy of transparency and collective ownership, not a PR count.

You can read more about the thinking behind this change on the Hacktoberfest Mission page.

📒 Start your sticker book

Everything you do this month, in person or online, earns virtual stickers in your Hacktoberfest sticker book. Collect enough virtual stickers, and real ones show up in your mailbox:

Stickers collected	Reward
3	A physical Hacktoberfest sticker pack, mailed to you
10	A bonus holographic sticker added to your pack
17	You're a Hacktoberfest Completionist, with an automatic raffle entry for a Hacktoberfest t-shirt or an Arduino Uno Q board

You can earn stickers by attending a Fest, checking into livestreams, joining Global Hack Week, submitting to DEV Challenges, joining the MLH Discord, taking the pre- and post-event surveys, and more. If you use an AI coding assistant, you can also earn one by installing and logging in to DevRelay, a tool that connects DEV and MLH right inside your agent session. The full list is on the Hacktoberfest Activities page.

Start your sticker book

Once you sign in with a free MyMLH account to start your sticker book, connect your DEV account to earn your first sticker!

🏙️ Join a Fest near you

This year there are 300+ community-hosted, one-day Fests happening in 60+ countries around the world. We can't recommend going in person enough, especially if you're just getting started. There's nothing like learning alongside people who are figuring it out with you. Here's what you get when you show up:

Hacktoberfest 2026 t-shirts, stickers, and swag, available in person while supplies last.
An official participation certificate and an "Attend a Fest" virtual sticker for your sticker book.
Your people. Meet others in your community who are curious about open-source AI.
Hands-on building with real hardware. Select Hack Days have Arduinos on hand, so you can take an open-source AI project off the screen and into the physical world.

Fests come in two flavors:

Meetups: talks, workshops, panels, and time to connect with others. No project or team required, which makes them a great first step if you're new.
Hack Days: mini-hackathons where you build with open-weight models or open-source AI tools, demo at the end of the day, and compete for prizes. Come solo or bring a team.

Find a Fest

🌐 Join online

Global Hack Week: Hacktoberfest

Can't make it to a Fest? Global Hack Week: Hacktoberfest brings the energy online from Friday, October 9 (12:00 PM EDT) through Thursday, October 15 (1:00 PM EDT).

It's a free, week-long virtual hacker festival, and a welcoming place to learn at your own pace:

Daily livestreamed workshops, with recordings on YouTube if you can't catch them live
Challenges of all kinds, from social and design challenges to technical ones that earn you points
Mini-events and community hangouts in the MLH Discord

Global Hack Week counts toward your sticker book too: you can earn stickers for completing the registration challenges, checking into a livestream, and more.

DEV Challenges

We're running five challenges throughout Hacktoberfest, all with cash prizes, and each submission earns you a virtual sticker. They're a great excuse to try something new and share what you learned along the way.

Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge

We're kicking things off with a short-form weekend challenge. The prompt drops in just a few hours, and you'll have the weekend to build and submit.

Timezone	Launch Time (Local)	Submissions Due (Local)
PDT	Thursday, Oct 1 at 7:00 PM	Sunday, Oct 4 at 11:59 PM
EDT	Thursday, Oct 1 at 10:00 PM	Monday, Oct 5 at 2:59 AM
GMT	Friday, Oct 2 at 2:00 AM	Monday, Oct 5 at 6:59 AM
CEST	Friday, Oct 2 at 4:00 AM	Monday, Oct 5 at 8:59 AM
IST	Friday, Oct 2 at 7:30 AM	Monday, Oct 5 at 12:29 PM
JST	Friday, Oct 2 at 11:00 AM	Monday, Oct 5 at 3:59 PM
AEST	Friday, Oct 2 at 12:00 PM	Monday, Oct 5 at 4:59 PM

Open-Source AI Challenges: Weeks 1–4

After the weekend, we're inviting you to explore and build with open-source AI every week. Each week has its own theme:

Round	Dates
Week 1	October 5–11
Week 2	October 12–18
Week 3	October 19–25
Week 4	October 26–31

Pro tip: Week 1 wraps up right as Global Hack Week gets going, so the workshops you catch at GHW are perfect fuel for your Week 2 submission. 😉

Follow the #hf26challenge tag to see what everyone's making, and register early for each challenge so you don't miss any announcements.

DevRelay

We just launched something cool.

If you build with an AI coding agent, DevRelay connects it to DEV and MLH. Your agent knows which challenge or hackathon you've entered, helps you build for it, and lets you submit without leaving your session.

It can also get you partner coupons from MLH while you build, and we're adding more partners over time, so you can often deploy for free. Install it and log in to earn a sticker for your sticker book. 🎃

Get DevRelay

💜 Thank you to our sponsors

Hacktoberfest 2026 is presented by DigitalOcean and made possible by our sponsors: Tiger Data, Snowflake, MongoDB, Gauge, Solana, Render, GitHub, Sentry, Backboard.io, IBM, ElevenLabs, Paper Compute, Entire, Prior Labs, Google Cloud, Gemma, Qualcomm, Arduino, Mastra, Temporal, TLDR, and Thinking Machines.

Questions?

Check out the Hacktoberfest FAQ or reach out to hacktoberfest@mlh.io. For questions about a specific Fest, use the "Contact Host" button on its event page.

However you show up this month, whether you're curious, brand new, or a seasoned open-source contributor, we're so glad you're here. AI belongs to everyone. Let's explore it together. 🎃

Happy Hacktoberfest!

Midnight Rescue: The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Hackathon Revival Guide 🚀

Maria Dunning — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 02:40:42 +0000

Howdy Hackers!
I'm assuming you are here because your Raspberry Pi is acting up. Going to do a small intro here before jumping to the recipe for this cookbook but going to keep it short so you can get back to hacking :)

My name is Maria, I work for Major League Hacking, and we bring hardware to many of the events we support including Raspberry Pis! I get lots of questions asking about debugging, and our documentation has 3 different resources we point to for Raspberry Pis. We wanted to consolidate here, but as a full disclaimer, we used AI to help us with the merge. If you see something wonky, just comment so that I and others can see what is off.

Now to the meat and potatos you are here for.

Midnight Rescue: The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Hackathon Revival Guide 🚀

Welcome, midnight builder! It’s late, your code is almost there, but your Raspberry Pi is throwing a full-blown tantrum. Don't panic! Hackathon hardware gets heavily used, and SD cards often carry ghost settings or corruption from previous events. You didn't break anything—this is just a right of passage.

We’ve provided a Troubleshooting Kit in the Hardware Lab specifically to handle this exact moment. Grab your kit, take a breath, and let’s get your hardware back on track step by step! Please note that this kit must stay at the Hardware Lab table so that others can use it during the event as needed. Feel free to pull up a chair as you debug!

🧰 Meet Your Troubleshooting Toolkit

Before diving in, make sure you’ve grabbed the Hardware Lab’s Troubleshooting Kit. Inside your toolkit, you’ll find:

Tool	What It Does
7-Inch Portable Screen & HDMI Cable	Gives you direct visual access to the Pi’s terminal—no network magic needed!
Mini Bluetooth/Wireless Keyboard	Allows you to type commands directly into the Pi setup screen.
USB MicroSD Card Reader/Writer	Lets you plug SD cards into your laptop to wipe or re-flash them.
Fresh Spare MicroSD Cards	Clean, blank slates ready for a brand-new OS installation.

We’ll use these tools in two main phases: Direct Hardware Diagnostics (seeing what’s wrong) and SD Card Re-Flashing (resetting to a squeaky-clean state).

Phase 1: Direct Visual Diagnostics (Using the Kit)

Instead of guessing why you can’t SSH into your Pi, let's look directly at what it's doing on boot!

Plug in the HDMI Cable: Connect the Micro-HDMI end to your Raspberry Pi 4 (use HDMI 0, the port closest to the USB-C power port) and the standard HDMI end to the 7-inch screen.
Power the Screen & Keyboard: Turn on the 7-inch screen and plug in the mini keyboard's USB dongle into one of the Pi’s USB slots.
Power Up the Pi: Plug in the USB-C power cord. Watch the screen!

What are you seeing on screen?

Rainbow Screen / Red LED only: The Pi can’t read the SD card at all. Move straight to Phase 2 below!
Kernel Panic / Endless Errors scrolling past: The OS on the SD card is corrupted from a previous team. Head to Phase 2 to re-flash it!
Asks for Login: The OS is alive! Try default credentials (pi / raspberry). If that fails, someone changed the password—time for a quick re-flash in Phase 2.

Phase 2: Nuclear Option—Wiping & Re-Flashing the MicroSD Card

If the SD card is corrupted or locked, re-flashing gives you a 100% clean OS in just a few minutes. Grab a spare MicroSD card from the kit or use your current one.

Step 1: Format & Wipe the Card

Insert the MicroSD card into the USB Reader/Writer and plug it into your laptop.

Windows: Download and open SD Formatter or Raspberry Pi Imager. Select your SD card drive, select Quick Format, and click Format.
Mac / Linux: You can use Raspberry Pi Imager or Disk Utility to format the card to FAT32.

Step 2: Flash the Operating System

We recommend using Raspberry Pi Imager (or Win32 Disk Imager / BalenaEtcher):

Download the latest Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS Lite (or full desktop version) zip/img.
Open your imaging software and select the downloaded .img or .zip file.
Select your USB SD Card Reader as the target device.
Click Write / Flash! (This takes about 5 to 10 minutes—great time to grab a snack!).

Important Note: Windows might pop up messages after flashing saying "You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it." Ignore and close these pop-ups! Windows just doesn't natively read Linux partitions.

Step 3: Enable Headless SSH Access

Want to control your Pi from your laptop terminal without keeping the 7-inch screen attached forever?

Keep the SD card plugged into your laptop. Open your file explorer.
Look for the drive partition named boot.
Inside the boot directory, create a brand-new empty file and name it simply ssh (make sure there is no file extension like .txt or .docx!). # On Mac/Linux terminal, you can just run: touch /Volumes/boot/ssh
Eject the SD card safely and insert it into your Pi.

Phase 3: Connecting to Your Pi via Ethernet or SSH

Now that your Pi has a fresh OS and SSH enabled, let’s get you connected!

Option A: Direct Screen & Mini Keyboard (Fastest!)

Just leave the 7-inch screen and mini keyboard plugged into the Pi. Boot it up, log in with default credentials (username: pi, password: raspberry), and start coding!

Option B: Ethernet / Network SSH Connection

Connect an Ethernet cable from the Pi into your computer (use a USB Ethernet adapter if needed).
Power up the Pi. Give it about 60 seconds to complete its initial boot routines.
Open your laptop's terminal (or PuTTY on Windows) and run: ssh pi@raspberrypi.local
When prompted, enter the default password: raspberry
Test your connection by running a quick ping test: ping -c 4 google.com

🎉 You're Back in Business!

If you see ping responses coming back, congratulations—you have successfully brought your Raspberry Pi back from the dead at 12:30 AM! You are now ready to build your awesome hackathon project.

Still stuck or getting unexpected error messages? Don't hesitate to flag down an MLH Coach! We are here to help you. Happy hacking!

We're expanding the MLH Asia-Pacific League

Sanidhya Goel — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:36:05 +0000

Hey Everyone!

At Major League Hacking (MLH), our mission is to empower student developers worldwide by providing organizers and hackers with the resources, mentorship, and support they need to build incredible tech communities. We partner directly with hackathons to guide organizers through the planning process, while connecting hackers with our partners like GitHub, Google, MongoDB, ElevenLabs, Vultr, Snowflake, and many more, to provide cutting-edge software tools, hardware, exclusive prizes, and a ton of iconic swag to take home.

We’re growing the APAC League

Over the years, we have seen some of the most innovative projects and passionate hackers emerge from the Asia Pacific (APAC). We have always loved working with our APAC events. The energy, the projects, and the sheer dedication of this region are completely unmatched. Because of that, we are incredibly excited to announce a massive update: we are officially scaling up our Asia Pacific League to support 3x our previous capacity of events in the upcoming season and beyond!

As someone who used to organize hackathons in this very region, I know exactly what goes into making these events a reality. To make sure you get in on this expansion and get the most out of an MLH partnership, I want to share one crucial piece of advice:

Plan Your Event Early & Apply for MLH Membership 3-4 Months Prior

In the APAC region, we frequently see organizers waiting until the last month to reach out. When you plan at the last minute, it limits the resources we can provide. It causes you to miss out on a huge margin of support and causes us to miss out on supporting some truly incredible events. Reaching out 3-4 months before your actual dates ensures we can build the best possible event together without the last-minute stress!

If you are ready to bring an unforgettable experience to your local hacker community, we want to hear from you. Apply to become a member event:

MLH Event Membership Application

Looking for other ways to get involved with the global hacker community?

Whether you're interested in running smaller-scale events or diving into open-source, check out Hack Days or join us during Hacktoberfest to start building with the community.

We can't wait to work with all of you and see what we build together this season. Follow us on DEV: @mlhacks + connect with us on socials :

And feel free to reach out to us anytime at league@mlh.io.

Happy Hacking!

Hey Everyone! I’m Sanidhya from MLH

Sanidhya Goel — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 03:04:14 +0000

MLH AI Roadshow Bengaluru

Hey Everyone! I am Sanidhya Goel, a new MLH Hackathon Community Manager (HCM) for Asia Pacific, and I couldn’t be more excited to expand my role on the MLH team and community!

My journey into the hacker community didn't start with me being a hacker, as it is for most people; it started with me wearing a volunteer badge.

During my second year of college, I volunteered for my campus's first-ever hackathon, Code Kshetra, organized via Geek Room. I went in just checking it out on a senior's recommendation, but I ended up witnessing something great. Beyond the impressive development work, I saw people genuinely connecting, playing games, and jamming in music sessions. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time.

That energy pushed me to jump in as a hacker. I teamed up with three classmates for Techminds Hackathon, where we built an IoT project and ended up winning! From that moment, I was completely hooked on both attending and organizing hackathons.

Interestingly, my next hackathon (Vihaan 007) was my first encounter with MLH. I saw the MLH booth, but I was so hyper-focused on building my project that I didn't even question what it was; I just grabbed my swag and went back to coding!

My perspective shifted when I became the lead of Geek Room and organized Code Kshetra 2.0. We officially registered as an MLH member event. For context, becoming an MLH Member Event means partnering directly with Major League Hacking, through which the organizers get hands-on support throughout the entire planning process, while the hackers get access to mentorship, software, prizes, swag, and exclusive event resources from our partners. I had the chance to work with Siddharth Shivkumar (my HCM at the time) and Vinayak (our MLH Coach for the event). Working with them for months to curate the best possible event made me realize the sheer potential of an MLH partnership. It opened my eyes to the fact that the hacker community is a massive, globally connected network far beyond my local well.

I knew I wanted to be part of it. I applied to be a Coach, but the timing wasn't right as MLH wasn't hiring. I spent the next year organizing over five amazing hackathons throughout 2025. Then, in November, I finally got an email from Ryan asking if I was still interested. Hell yeah, I was!

After an amazing set of interviews, where Ryan and Siddharth came to Delhi and met my incredible fellow Coaches Harshita, Romanch, Toukir, and Anjana, I officially started staffing events.

Hack Byte 4.0 with Coach Toukir and Coach Anjana

Usually, new MLH Coaches are paired with experienced staff for their first few events to learn the ropes. I had 2 events where I was paired with Siddharth to experience and learn the ropes of being an MLH Coach. And then came Electrothon 8.0; I was paired with a senior Coach who unfortunately fell ill at the last minute, making me the sudden event lead.

I won't lie, I was overwhelmed and a little hesitant. But handling the full event, running workshops, and connecting with so many passionate people all in one place, and working with the help of Paul (my Coach on call) and Alex (my MLHer on call), this ended up being the best experience of my life. It was a massive investment of time and energy, but it made me realize this is what I wanted to do.

Electrothon 8.0 (PS: The dog was a paid actor)

Up until March 2026, I had been working as a full-time software engineer at an amazing AI startup, tackling complex problems and building applications for the country's largest financial players. But in April, I just had the instinct and pulled the trigger, texted Ryan to ask about more opportunities on the team, and here I am! I officially joined the team in July after another round of interviews.

Electrothon 8.0

I can't wait to work with you all and see what we build together this season. Follow me on DEV + connect with me on LinkedIn and feel free to reach out to us anytime at league@mlh.io.

Happy Hacking!