A while back, we announced that we would be bringing new features to Hackaday. One in particular that garnished a lot of interest was our question answer type thingy. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, that has not happened yet. Without divulging too much into the secret machinery that lies underneath Hackaday, I’ll just say that we(the writers) don’t necessarily have control over all aspects of the site. An example would be the copyright. Yes, we finally got it updated. Thanks for all of your emails. No, none of us had access to that part of the site, so don’t bother letting us know how simple that change should have been.
We are as eager as you to see some good ideas and good feedback flowing through this site, so we’re going to start a regular post, entitled “Ask Hackaday”. This isn’t entirely new, we’ve done it before actually. This is just to let you know that we intend to do it regularly, and to set some ground rules. “Ask Hackaday” will mostly center around you, our readers, and your ideas. We will publish a question, and possibly our thoughts, but the main content will be your responses. We have a huge collective of intelligent creative readers and it would be a shame not to tap into that pool of knowledge. When you are offering an answer, be thorough, give details, and please be kind.
Send your questions to askHAD@hackaday.com for consideration. They will be chosen based on a complicated system of random number variation involving furry woodland creatures and how we feel at the moment that we read them. Do not get offended if you question does not get published. We get tons of questions already and we don’t intend to publish them all.
What about http://www.reddit.com/r/hackaday
?
I didn’t make it but it seems empty. We could use that as a forum for questions that don’t need to clog up the main site.
@tehgringe,
good point. I may do that.
consider changing the email address to simply ask@hackaday.com
You’ll preserve the branding in the domain part of the email. You would not see microsoft publishing an email address such as askmicrosoft@microsoft.com…
Aside from that, looking forward to the service…this sounds similar to stackoverflow.com
While New Features are nice, what I think is far more important is that it remains a FREE site – Free from having to REGISTER to view the site content and provide the complete stories to ALL who visit(although we all know that’s registering is important for postings and ensuring creditability – I am talking about those who view). I WAS a loyal viewer to the “Instructables” site. That was until I woke up one day to find their new and annoying REGESTER/LOGON feature. Yes! JUST to view the complete illustrations/next picture in an Instructable one had to register and logon. It got worst – After a few months that same LOGON morphed into a “PAY to VIEW Privileged content” in which those who PAY get the complete article and step-by-step instructions. I understand maintaining a site isn’t free – however, that site is swamped with advertisements. The worst is what they want to charge for a yearly membership. It looks like they went from creating something they loved to do, and now went for total profit. PLEASE KEEP THIS SITE FREE!!!
@thegringe: stackoverflow.com for electronics is real : http://chiphacker.com
@Joegeek: yes, instructables.com is barely useable for anonymous users now… it was a great site, that’s sad…
A standard forum might be nice. I know I’ve had trouble finding decent help with my electronics projects.
@JonathanD – thank you for that.
Hmm, you have me wondering now what’s so secretive about the inner workings of hack-a-day… Perhaps a lonely hacker in a room with no windows or doors controls the HTML code and admin password with an iron grasp! Gasp!
Dear Hack-a-Day,
Why didn’t you at least use some clip-art for this post? I mean, anything to break up the block of text would be welcomed. The OP is dangerously close to the TL;DR threshold.
Sincerely yours,
Bob the Hack-a-Day Reader
I miss the golden age.
M4CGYV3R, indeed. I almost skipped it thinking it was one of those boring ads for something I never care about.
This talk about secret machinery and not having control somewhat makes me feel uneasy. Is HAD owned by some big company or PR firm?
It’s always nice to know who you’re generating content, pageviews, and profit for…
HAD is totally corporately owned. Half of it is owned by Arduino.cc, half is owned by SparkFun, and half is owned by Instructables…
Great idea… but i would like to ask when the forum is coming?
:)
Looking forward to these, but yeah,hackaday is a business isn’t it.
For a forum: http://hackerfoundry.com it’s new, fresh, and it is whatever we make it.
@M4CGYV3R
Plus HAD is the first site that consists of 3 halfs.
ps:just joking
i know they are watching, but we need more black hat stuff.
might be off topic, but where can we get swag?
When is Hack a Day going to hire some professional writers? What does “garnished a lot of interest” even mean?
Secret machinery is probably a reference to the hosting, and that they have admin access + publisher privs to this instance of WordPress (??) but not control panel access to the hosting account which is shared/supplied by someone else? This may explain why they have not stood up an instance of a forum?
How about a formspring page (http://www.formspring.me/)for Q&A, a lot of sites are using that :/
lol they mean garnered a lot of interest.
I am with Rain’s suggestion… to hell with whomever is watching…. HAD needs BH stuff period….and to fix the “eyes watching” problem make HAD a private site with members who pay dues, ect. Hell, I would pay to join! and then I could share my TRUE HACKS(all of which are BH btw), not some lame ass arduino-based BS! Come on ppl….rally up and change this site into what it should be….Aaarrrgggg Matey!!!
Freedom of Information
+1 for a forum
would be a good place to discuss front page news or other projects that may become front page news. Also, a good way to expand the community
@MysticShadow
Whaaa? Why they hell would you want to make this a black hat only website? And a private website? That doesn’t even make sense. Find a forum or IRC chatroom somewhere, jeeze…
Also, unofficial forum is already setup:
http://www.teamhackaday.com/forum/
instructables are for lames
Of course whatever changes Hackaday ever makes will never please everyone. Personally I’m not much on forums, as I tend to forget them, so I prefer email list servers, and they are easy enough to manage, so I’m never overwhelmed by a volume of email, while knowing that there’s something there.
I’d rather any any forum related to Hackaday, to be created, and managed by hackaday. For such a forum to be truly useful, a daily post to hackaday listing new questions posted. How easily such a thing could be done I don’t know, but such a post could be easily scrolled by, by those not interested, without comment or complaint.
Yeah – keep the site free. Gawker media has recently changed all of their feeds so you have to visit their site to get the full content (Translation: the greedy bastards were worried that they were missing out on ad revenue to those people reading the full feed).
Instructibles, though, is much worse and even their main site is now completely useless to me. I seriously hope Hackaday and other sites start boycotting their content. Let them change their ways or die out, imho.
@ mysticshadow
every1 starts off new and has no understadning and only a want to. btw… eye matey , aaarrrgggg
;)
http://chiphacker.com/ is another good site for getting hacking / hardware dev / electronics / etc questions answered. And it’s not moderated one-a-day like “ask hackaday”, so anyone can get their questions answered. I’ve gotten some good info from it so far.
I would like to see a home automation article using MF tones, not dtmf, MF tones. I miss my Phreaking days, and have this lovely MF box. . .
Dr.Booth@Gmail.com
Please I need help
I hacked Hp 5440 printer and turned it into a flatbed printer.
but I can’t control the motor’s of the printer is there a software that allows me to control it.
or should I use a third motor for the feeding process to bring the stage of the printer back to zero point
and if I need to add a motor, at then what the drivers and softwares should I have.
thanks a lot in advance.
Best regards,
Loai