I was initially confused since the term "Chindogu" isn't actually that common in Japan, but it turns out it was an artistic movement led by Kenji Kawakami.
While they are humorous, it's a serious artistic endeavor at its core, so it's not exactly "laugh-out-loud" funny. I feel like there are much crazier inventions in Japan—I wish I could think of some specific examples to share right now, but nothing is coming to mind at the moment.
One "interesting" invention (that might have seemed a bit silly at first) is fan-cooled workwear. With Japan’s summer temperatures now constantly hitting 35°C (95°F), what started as a quirky idea has become an absolute necessity.
The CPU was conceived by Hudson engineers who, despite their success in the NES business, felt they had hit the hardware's limits. Interestingly, they initially had no business plan. They were simply "chasing a dream" and supposedly had "no real intention of selling it," which led most semiconductor manufacturers to reject their pitch.
They managed to scrape together a few thousand samples, and by pure chance, NEC—a dominant PC manufacturer in Japan at the time—was looking to enter the console market. This lucky alignment of interests is what gave birth to the PC Engine.
While this story sounds reckless, it was only possible because Japan was in the midst of the real estate bubble, and capital was overflowing.
Once the bubble burst in the 90s, Japan entered a long recession. After a few major bank failures, Hudson’s funding dried up. They were eventually absorbed by Konami, and today, even the Hudson name is gone. It’s a real shame.
According to Wikipedia, Hudson originally approached Sharp before pitching the idea to NEC. While Sharp was enthusiastic and agreed that it had great commercial potential, the deal ultimately fell through.
The deal-breaker was Sharp’s deep relationship with Nintendo at the time. Apparently, developing a console with Hudson’s CPU was seen as something that would have jeopardized their partnership with Nintendo.
What Sharp was working on back then was the "C1 NES TV"—basically a NES-integrated television. You could think of it as the NES era's version of the iMac. It has a bit of a comical look that always makes me smile.
The Japanese version of that TV used an internal RGB connection with an RGB PPU, making it as clear and sharp as Nintendo's Famicom-based arcade hardware.
The US version of that TV used composite internally
Personally, I believe that a programmer's true skill today lies in how effectively they can leverage AI, and I’m all-in on vibe coding myself. But seeing the reaction here, I’m starting to think I should have thought twice before sharing my app on HN.
Even this post was translated by AI... I guess that’s probably a strike three, isn't it?
Everybody is AI coding these days, and if you're not, you may find yourself out of a job soon.
You still need skilled engineers to "operate" the AIs and to verify the results, but why on earth would you spend 3 weeks coding something by hand that Codex or Claude can spit out in a couple of hours.
For reference, at my employer we have so far in 2026 (1500+ developers) created 75% more code by AI this year compared to all of last year. Features are being delivered faster than ever, in a quality as good or better than before. As another advantage, we can now use skills to guarantee that the code that is created follows best practices, architecture patters, local governance and compliance. The "big thing" right now for us is providing guardrails and governance for agentic AI.
In a software house with 1000+ developer, we're using AI everywhere. We have plenty of skilled engineers to validate the output of LLMs, but instead of spending 3 weeks developing a new feature, they can now spend a couple of hours or days.
We absolutely still need skill engineers for keeping track of what goes on, but their productivity has skyrocketed when they no longer have to obsess over details for a long time.
Is it possible that the users who used to find us through Google are now satisfied with AI chat summaries and no longer feel the need to click through to the actual page?
Meanwhile, the long-time users who subscribed via RSS are still showing up like they always have. If this is the case, it’s a bit of a sad reality for content creators.
Yes. It caused a major drop in CTR for search. Google Zero is the term for it. It’s murderous for information websites. On my side, traffic is down roughly 70% on the website I live from.
It’s still part of the training data though. Not that I consented to this.
Very rarely. AI traffic is a tiny tiny fraction of total traffic. ChatGPT and Gemini mostly spit out unattributed information, except when queries trigger a web search.
I notice many 404s from ChatGPT to hallucinated URLs on my website. Sometimes it hallucinates guides about topics I never covered. So I'm getting cited for things I didn't even say!
I also notice that for other topics, the cited sources are crap. The best shaver is a Braun shaver according to Braun.com, and two comments on a 6 years old reddit thread about a different topic.
As a die-hard Schumacher fan, I really wanted to see Massa take the title that year, so it was heartbreaking. And yet, I can't help but laugh every time I see the Ferrari crew looking so dejected, carrying that fuel hose back to the garage like a defeated army.
I suppose we shouldn't apply this "Ferrari system" to medical surgery—unless the patient is prepared to have their aorta dragged out along with the equipment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu
While they are humorous, it's a serious artistic endeavor at its core, so it's not exactly "laugh-out-loud" funny. I feel like there are much crazier inventions in Japan—I wish I could think of some specific examples to share right now, but nothing is coming to mind at the moment.
One "interesting" invention (that might have seemed a bit silly at first) is fan-cooled workwear. With Japan’s summer temperatures now constantly hitting 35°C (95°F), what started as a quirky idea has become an absolute necessity.
https://kuchoufuku.com/
There’s something inherently funny about the models in the link posing so seriously while wearing clothes that are completely puffed up with air.