Hacker Friendly

John W. Cornwell writes from his project website,
Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, “What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???” Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months […]

 

There’s an excellent interview on CIO Insight with Alan Kay, one of the fathers of modern computing.
Most of the ideas in that sphere, good ideas that would apply to business, were written down 40 years ago by Engelbart. But in the last few years I’ve been asking computer scientists and programmers whether they’ve ever typed […]

 

This past weekend, I helped to establish a 101 Km (62.7 mile) wireless link from Trieste to Piancavallo, Italy. This was part of my work at the 2007 ICTP school on wireless. The gory details of the shot are up on the wiki, but here is the executive summary:

For the Trieste end of […]

 

I’ve been teaching at the ICTP in Trieste, home of one of the best scientific libraries in Europe. The library happens to be in the same building as the cafeteria.
A few nights ago, I arrived a bit early for dinner, so I went to the library to study vectors and quaternions and other 3D […]

 

A 26 year old woman who lost her left arm after a motorcycle accident has been fitted with a touch sensitive bionic arm.
The new technique — called targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) — involves re-routing nerves that once controlled the patient’s arm to a patch on the chest, where they grow into muscles. Electrodes on the […]

 

The Lindens giveth, the Lindens taketh away. It looks like dynamic reflections have been removed from the First Look branch, for the time being. From Steve Linden:
Also: if you had enabled dynamic reflections (which is still in the early testing phase so will *not* be making it into this release which is why […]

 

Q: What do you get when you cross a Tesla coil with a keyboard?
A: I’m not sure, but I’m sure somebody has done it on YouTube…
 

 

Details of last April’s 279 km world record wireless link have been published by Silicon Chip Magazine in Australia.
If you’re not a Silicon Chip subscriber, the original write-up is still available in English and Spanish.
 

 

I wonder if RMS knows about this. Yeah, he probably hurd. (ba-dum bum)
Scroll down a bit. At least HURD makes the first page of results, albeit just below the fold…
 

 

When you stop and look at the hidden costs of proprietary technology, it can be staggering to realize just how hostile some companies can behave against their own customers:

MPAA: Region encoding and CSS for DVDs, lawsuits and intimidation for customers.
TiVo: Mandatory firmware updates that remove features, add advertising, and interfere with legitimate use.
HDMI: Video standard […]