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BlogsTags > hacksFour short links: 11 April 2013By Nat TorkingtonApril 11, 2013 A General Technique for Automating NES Games — software that learns how to play NES games and plays them automatically, using an aesthetically pleasing technique. With video, research paper, and code. rietveld — open source tool like Mondrian, Google’s code … Four short links: 10 April 2013By Nat TorkingtonApril 10, 2013 HyperLapse — this won the Internet for April. Everyone else can go home. Check out this unbelievable video and source is available. Housing Simulator — NZ’s largest city is consulting on its growth plan, and includes a simulator so you … Six lifestyle hacks for this yearBy Alistair CrollApril 4, 2013 The last three years haven’t been very healthy. In addition to raising a new daughter, I’ve been launching Strata and Startupfest and working with Ben Yoskovitz on Lean Analytics. It’s been rewarding, and fun, but it hasn’t been good for my … Four short links: 13 March 2013By Nat TorkingtonMarch 13, 2013 What Tim Berners-Lee Doesn’t Know About HTML DRM (Guardian) — Cory Doctorow lays it out straight. HTML DRM is a bad idea, no two ways. The future of the Web is the future of the world, because everything we do … Four short links: 24 January 2013By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 24, 2013 Google’s Driverless Car is Worth Trillions (Forbes) — Much of the reporting about Google’s driverless car has mistakenly focused on its science-fiction feel. [...] In fact, the driverless car has broad implications for society, for the economy and for individual … Four short links: 31 October 2012By Nat TorkingtonOctober 31, 2012 Turing Complete User — General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without … Four short links: 30 July 2012
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 30, 2012 pathod — A pathological HTTP daemon for testing and torturing client software. (via Hacker News) A Walk Through Twitter’s Walled Garden (The Realtime Report) — nice breakdown of Twitter’s business model choice and consequences. Twitter wants you to be able … Four short links: 28 February 2012
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 28, 2012 Designing RESTful Interfaces (Slideshare) -- extremely good presentation on how to build HTTP APIs. Manipulating History for Fun and Profit -- if you want to make websites that are AJAX-responsive but without breaking the back button or preventing links, read this. Why Textbooks Are So Broken (Salon) -- Let's say a publisher hires a developer for a certain low-bid... Four short links: 24 January 2012
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 24, 2012 fbootstrap (GitHub) -- HTML, CSS, and JS toolkit for Facebook apps based on Twitter's popular Bootstrap library. Focus on the User -- adds a bookmarklet "Don't Be Evil" which shows your Google search as it would have been before Google+ began artificially inserting itself into Google search results. Written by Facebook engineer and Firefox co-creator Blake Ross, this is... The Transportation Security Administration's QR code flub January 3, 2012 Fred Trotter discovers that a QR code embedded in a TSA poster at the Orlando airport links to justinsomnia.org, which is about as far as you can get from a government website. Four short links: 25 November 2011
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 25, 2011 Continuous Three-Dimensional Control of a Virtual Helicopter Using a Motor Imagery Based Brain-Computer Interface (PLOSone) -- direct brain control is becoming a reality, tiny step by tiny step. Also: HELICOPTERS! Forward Secrecy for HTTPS -- Google contributed a better HTTPS cipher suite to OpenSSL, one that doesn't share keys between conversations. Yay the Goog for giving back. Ratings Systems... Four short links: 4 November 2011
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 4, 2011 Beethoven's Open Repository of Research (RocketHub) -- open repository funded in a Kickstarter-type way. First crowdfunding project I've given $$$ to. KeepOff (GitHub) -- open source project built around hacking KeepOn Interactive Dancing Robots. (via Chris Spurgeon) Steve Jobs One-on-One (ComputerWorld) -- interesting glimpse of the man himself in an oral history project recording made during the NeXT years.... Four short links: 25 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 25, 2011 Nest Learning Thermostat -- learns how long it takes your house to adjust temperature, so can tell you not just "it's 55 now" but "it'll be 65 in 16 minutes". Looks gorgeous as well as being a good example of embedded intelligence. Data really does make everything better. lamernews (Github) -- an implementation of a Reddit / Hacker News... Four short links: 14 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 14, 2011 Theory of Relativity in Words of Four Letters or Less -- this does just what it says, and well too. I like it, as you may too. At the end, you may even know more than you do now. Effective Set Reconciliation Without Prior Context (PDF) -- paper on using Bloom filters to do set union (deduplication) efficiently. Useful... Four short links: 5 October 2011
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 5, 2011 Ghostery -- a browser plugin to block trackers, web bugs, dodgy scripts, ads, and anything else you care to remove from your browsing experience. It looks like a very well done adblocker, but it's done (a) closed-source and (b) for-profit. Blocking trackers is something every browser *should* do, but because browser makers make (or hope to make) money from... Four short links: 14 September 2011
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 14, 2011 StackParts -- catalogue of different parts of the open source web stack, from Joshua Schachter. He's looking for helpers. DIY Microsocopes -- Keeling’s lowfi contraption, featured in MAKE magazine and virally spreading across science classrooms the country over, is bringing microscopes not just to eye level, but street level. Blowtorch and pipette glass makes for a Leeuwenhoek microscope. The... Four short links: 30 August 2011
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 30, 2011 Data Monday: From PC to Tablet (Luke Wroblewski) -- some great stats here. Sales of Apple's iPad pulled in 30% more than all of Dell's consumer PC business in just the first half of the year. Munki -- munki is a set of tools that, used together with a webserver-based repository of packages and package metadata, can be used... Four short links: 17 August 2011
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 17, 2011 Tablib -- MIT-licensed open source library for manipulating tabular data. Reputed to have a great API. (via Tim McNamara) Stanford Education Everywhere -- courses in CS, machine learning, math, and engineering that are open for all to take. Over 58,000 have already signed up for the introduction to machine learning taught by Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research. Wearable... Four short links: 29 July 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 29, 2011 SQL Injection Pocket Reference (Google Docs) -- just what it sounds like. (via ModSecurity SQL Injection Challenge: Lessons Learned) isostick: The Optical Drive in a Stick (KickStarter) -- clever! A USB memory stick with drivers that emulate optical drives so you can boot off .iso files you've put on the memory stick. (via Extreme Tech) CrowdDB: Answering Queries with... Four short links: 20 June 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJune 20, 2011 HD Video Recording Glasses (Kickstarter) -- as Bryce says, "wearable computing is on the rise. As the price for enabling components drops, always on connectivity in our pockets and purses increases, and access to low cost manufacturing resources and know-how rises we’ll see innovation continue to push into these most personal forms of computing." (via Bryce Roberts) Sketching in... Four short links: 16 June 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJune 16, 2011 Solar Powered Wireless Sensor Network -- Chris is building wireless sensor networks using open source software and hardware that could be used in a variety of applications like air quality or home energy monitoring. It looks like he was inspired by Tweetawatt and is using xBee and ASUS wifi for communication in conjunction with Pachube for data display. (via... Four short links: 14 June 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJune 14, 2011 ASCII Flow -- create ASCII diagrams. Awesome. (via Hacker News) Principles of Uncertainty -- probability and statistics textbook, for maths students to build up to understanding Bayesian reasoning. Playable Archaeology: An Interview with the Telehacks Anonymous Creator (Andy Baio) -- The inspiration was my son. I had shown him the old movies Hackers, Wargames, and Colossus: The Forbin Project... Four short links: 13 June 2011
By Nat TorkingtonJune 13, 2011 AIRPrint -- prototype box scans a fingerprint from six feet away. (via Greg Linden) Squishy Circuits -- teaching electronic circuits with conductive and insulating playdough. (via Hacker News) GraphLab -- alternative take on Map-Reduce, called Update-Sync, where tasks run on connected sets of nodes rather than on one node at a time. Tower Bridge Closed -- the @towerbridge account... Four short links: 19 April 2011
By Nat TorkingtonApril 19, 2011 Lines (Mark Jason Dominus) -- If you wanted to hear more about phylogeny, Java programming, or tree algorithms, you are about to be disappointed. The subject of my article today is those fat black lines. Anatomy of a clever piece of everyday programming. There is no part of this program of which I am proud. Rather, I am proud... Four short links: 12 April 2011
By Nat TorkingtonApril 12, 2011 The Email Game -- game mechanics to get you answering email more efficiently. Can't wait to hear that conversation with corporate IT. "You want us to install what on the Exchange server?" (via Demo Day Wrapup) Stratified B-trees and versioning dictionaries -- A classic versioned data structure in storage and computer science is the copy-on-write (CoW) B-tree -- it... Four Short Links: 16 March 2011
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 16, 2011 JS Fiddle -- an online editor for snippets build from HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The code can then be shared with others, embedded on a blog, etc. (via Darren Wood) SideStep -- Mac OS X program that automatically routes connections through a secure proxy when you're on an unsecured wifi network. (via Gina Trapani) Junkyard Jumbotron (MIT) -- lets... Four short links: 2 March 2011
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 2, 2011 Unicode in Python, Completely Demystified -- a good introduction to Unicode in Python, which helped me with some code. (via Hacker News) A Ban on Brain-Boosting Drugs (Chronicle of Higher Education) -- Simply calling the use of study drugs "unfair" tells us nothing about why colleges should ban them. If such drugs really do improve academic performance among healthy... Four short links: 22 February 2011
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 22, 2011 Cluster (github) -- Node.JS multi-core server manager with plugins support. Hot restarts, and other goodness. (via The Change Log via Javascript Weekly) Nokia Culture Will Out (Adam Greenfield) -- Except that, as realized by Nokia, this is precisely what failed to happen. I experienced, in fact, neither a frisson of elegant futurism nor a blasé presentiment of everyday life... Four short links: 14 February 2011
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 14, 2011 Stephen Elop is a Flight Risk (Silicon Beat) -- a foresight-filled 2008 article that doesn't make Nokia's new CEO look good. A reminder to boards and CEOs that option vesting schedules matter. (via Hacker News) CHDK -- Canon Hack Development Kit gives point-and-shoot Canon digital camera new features like RAW images, motion detection, a USB remote, full control over... Four short links: 3 January 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 3, 2011 RSS is Dying and You Should Be Worried -- If RSS dies, we lose the ability to read in private. What Could Have Been Entering The Public Domain on January 1, 2011? -- a list of the works that won't be entering the public domain in the US because the copyright term was extended in 1976. Think of the... Four short links: 8 December 2010
By Nat TorkingtonDecember 8, 2010 Send Us Your Thoughts (YouTube) -- from the excellent British comedians Mitchell and Webb comes this take on viewer comments in the news. (via Steve Buttry's News Foo writeup) Amazon proves that REST doesn’t matter for Cloud APIs -- with the death of WS-* and their prolix overbearing complexity, the difference between REST and basic XML RPC is almost... Four short links: 1 December 2010
By Nat TorkingtonDecember 1, 2010 2 Kinects 1 Box (YouTube) -- merging data from two Kinects in real time, to get astonishing 3D information. (via Chelfyn Baxter) Crowdsource is not Open Source (Simon Phipps) -- there are some businesses that don't understand this, and exploit community for their sole benefit in the name of open source. Ignorance of the four freedoms is dangerous. We... Four short links: 15 November 2010
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 15, 2010 Between the Bars -- snail-mail-to-blogs transcription service for prisoners, to make visible stories that would otherwise be missed. there is a religous program here called Kairo's in the program inmates are given letters and drawings made by small children not one in that program did not cry, after reading the words of incouragement from those kids. An unmissable reminder... Four short links: 4 October 2010
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 4, 2010 Two Brothers Await Broad Use of Medical E-Records (New York Times) -- The Doerrs’ software company is only one of many hoping to cash in on the national mandate for digital medical records. The companies range from giants like General Electric to specialists like Athenahealth that cater to small physician practices. They, like the Doerrs, are betting that the... Four short links: 1 October 2010
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 1, 2010 Interview with Martin Wichary (Ajaxian) -- interview with the creator of Google's Pacman logo, the original HTML5 slide deck. One of the first popular home video game consoles was 1977's Atari VCS 2600. It was an incredibly simple piece of hardware. It didn't even have video memory - you literally had to construct pixels just moments before they were... Four short links: 23 August 2010
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 23, 2010 Open Buildings -- crowdsourced database of information about buildings, for architecture geeks. A sign that crowdsourcing is digging deep into niches far far from the world of open source software. (via straup on Delicious) Lego-Based Time Tracking -- clever hack to build physical graphs of where your time goes. (via avgjanecrafter on Twitter) Smoothie Charts -- a charting Javascript... Four short links: 2 August 2010
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 2, 2010 Hidden Features of Google (StackExchange) -- rather than Google's list of search features, here are the features that real (sophisticated) users find useful. My new favourite: the ~ operator for approximate searching. (via Hacker News) Natural Language Parsing for the Web -- JSON API to the Stanford Natural Language Parser. I wonder why the API to the library isn't... Four short links: 19 July 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 19, 2010 OpenVibe -- open source software for brain-computer interfaces, from Inria. Robot Controlled by Mind (video) -- uses OpenVibe. I love that this can see blinks and other neural activity, and that it's hackable. Talend Open Profiler -- open source tool to QA data. AndEngine -- open source 2D OpenGL Game Engine for the Android platform.... Four short links: 7 July 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 7, 2010 The Way I Work: Justin Kan of JustinTV (Inc Magazine) -- I admit it, I had written Justin off as "that irritating guy who went around with a camera on all the time" but it turns out he's quite thoughtful about what he does. I try to keep the meetings small, especially when we're doing product design. If you... Four short links: 6 July 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 6, 2010 Critical Thinking -- a world-class resource for teaching critical thinking and Internet literacies. The ability to separate bullshit from truth (to find the gold nuggets in the butt nuggets, as it were), is how people can get the good effects of the Internet while avoiding most of the bad. (via Clay Johnson) Economist Direct is a Fabulous Idea --... "Hackers" at 25
By Mac SlocumJune 3, 2010 In mid-1980s, Steven Levy wrote a book that introduced the term "hacker" to a wide audience. In the ensuing 25 years, that word and its accompanying community have gone through tremendous change. In this Q&A, Levy discusses the book's genesis, its influence and the role hackers continue to play. Four short links: 3 June 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJune 3, 2010 How to Get Customers Who Love You Even When You Screw Up -- a fantastic reminder of the power of Kathy Sierra's "I Rock" moments. In that moment I understood Tom's motivation: Tom was a hero. (via Hacker News) Yahoo! Mail is Open for Development -- you can write apps that sit in Yahoo! Mail, using and extending the... Four short links: 6 April 2010
By Nat TorkingtonApril 6, 2010 Thinking Further About Copyright (Confused of Calcutta) -- several nice illustrations of the "copying is not theft" distinction. Copying per se is not stealing. After Michael Jackson did his moonwalk, children the world over copied him. They were not stealing. Digital forms of music, film, book and newspapers are cheap to copy and to distribute, because of the internet.... Four short links: 5 April 2010
By Nat TorkingtonApril 5, 2010 Wrong about the iPad (Tim Bray) -- I am actively ignoring the iPad drivel, but this line caught my eye: Intelligence is a text-based application. Fertile Medium -- online community consultancy, from the first and former Flickr community coordinator. One to watch: Heather and Derek really know their community. Again I say it: understanding of how open source and... Four short links: 26 February 2010
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 26, 2010 Who Is Going To Build The New Public Services? -- a thoughtful exploration of the possibilities and challenges of third parties building public software systems. There's a lot of talk of "just put up the data and we'll build the apps" but I think this is a more substantial consideration of which apps can be built by whom. Quake... Four short links: 29 January 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 29, 2010 Chat Roulette -- not sure it's new, as I think I recall Eric Ries talking about implementing it in the early days of IMVU, but it's still interesting: chat to a random person who also wants to chat. I wonder whether it's being used for drive-by phone sex, or whether there's a genuine curiosity about other human beings that... Four short links: 21 January 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 21, 2010 DD-WRT -- replacement firmware for cheap wireless router boxes that add new functionality like wireless bridging and quality-of-service controls (so Skype doesn't break up while you're web-browsing). Not a new thing, but worth remembering that it exists. Brain Dump of Real Time Web and WebSocket -- long primer on the different technology for real-time web apps. Conclusion is that... How has the Internet Changed the Way You Think?
By Linda StoneJanuary 8, 2010 How has the Internet changed my thinking? The more I've loved and known it, the clearer the contrast, the more intense the tension between a physical life and a virtual life. The Internet stole my body, now a lifeless form hunched in front of a glowing screen. My senses dulled as my greedy mind became one with the global brain we call the Internet. Four short links: 1 January 2010
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 1, 2010 Measuring Type -- clever way to measure which font uses more ink. Vowpal Wabbit -- fast learning software from Yahoo! Research and Hunch. Code available in git. (via zecharia on Delicious) Literature Review on Indexing Time-Series Data -- a graduate student's research work included this literature review of papers on indexing time-series data. (via jpatanooga on Delicious) igraph --... Four short links: 30 December 2009
By Nat TorkingtonDecember 30, 2009 How to Run a Meeting Like Google (BusinessWeek) -- the temptation is to mock things like "even five minute meetings must have an agenda", but my sympathy with Marissa Mayer is high. The more I try to cram into a work day, the more I have to be able to justify every part of it. If you can't tell... 1 to 50 of 98 Next Stay Connected
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