Editor's take: The tech industry has become enamored with April Fool's Day as of late. By that, I mean we are increasingly seeing more and more gags being developed into actual products. The latest example comes courtesy of programming website Stack Overflow. It's not all that practical, but neat nevertheless.
This past spring, Stack Overflow ran a gag in which every time a user entered the keyboard command to copy characters from the site, they'd get a pop-up notifying them that they were almost out of free copies.
"If they wanted unlimited access to copy and paste from Stack Overflow, all they needed to do was purchase The Key," said Ben Popper, director of content for Stack Overflow.
Lots of folks loved the gag, but several others also expressed interest in actually purchasing The Key. In response, the team set about quietly developing the product, which just went up for pre-order.
Stack Overflow teamed up with mechanical keyboard enthusiast Cassidy Williams and together, they took their idea to Drop to develop a finalized product. The result is the $29 macropad you see above.
The Key features three programmable keys outfitted with Kailh Box Black switches and comes with custom Stack Overflow-branded XDA profile keycaps.
The first batch of minimalist keyboards have already been spoken for, but Drop is still accepting pre-orders for a second wave that should be ready by December. Notably, Stack Overflow is donating its portion of the proceeds to Digital Undivided, a nonprofit that supports economic growth among black and Latinx women entrepreneurs. Drop is also donating five percent of its proceeds to the cause.