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Goodbye Hackaday Subdomains

August 11, 2013 by 51 Comments

subdomains-going-away

We’re sure some of you will be sad that the LIFE and HANDMADE Hackaday subdomains are going away. Others will be happy, and many won’t realize they even existed.

We tried a little experiment in diversity this summer, launching the two outliers of our main focus (which is engineering oriented hacks). Each was interesting in their own way, with steady streams of readers and small conversations. But this diverted some of the attention away from what we do best, and that’s why we’re closing them down.

Handmade has already been absorbed. The features which highlighted craftsmanship and artful creations like blowing glass are tangentially interesting. We’ve imported all of the articles and will continue to feature this sort of content from time to time if it fits in with what our readers are normally after.

Life was a little bit outside of what we normally focus on. These sorts of hacks are interesting tidbits to have bouncing around your brain. But you probably won’t see them hitting our front page. Don’t let that discourage you though. If you’ve got a tip or trick to make daily life less mundane you can always let us know on the tips line. At worst we will ignore you. But you might end up seeing it in a Links post, which is our weekly Sunday column that showcases things which weren’t compelling enough for their own post.

Just to be clear for those that are really paying attention. We’re not cramming this content onto the front page with everything else. We’re phasing it out except for those things that go hand in hand with our lust for tech hacks of the highest caliber.

Rant: Why I Love What The Chromecast Stands For

August 9, 2013 by 63 Comments

I’ve had my hands on this Chromecast for almost a week now and I love it. Years ago I hacked my first Xbox after seeing [Kevin Rose] do it on The Screensavers (I did the hardware mod but that’s inconsequential). Why did I do this? So that I could run Xbox Media Center, the predecessor of XBMC. Since then I’ve dreamed of a device which can be hung on the back of the TV with Velcro and run XBMC. We basically got there with the Raspberry Pi, but the Chromecast is the form-factor that I had always envisioned. This lets me watch Netflix, while the RPi runs XBMC. The two are match made in heaven for under a hundred bucks.

That’s why I love the Chromecast device itself, but the bigger picture is that I love what it stands for. Keep reading to see what i mean.

Continue reading “Rant: Why I Love What The Chromecast Stands For” →

Have You Failed Hard Enough To Be On Hackaday?

August 5, 2013 by 46 Comments

hackaday-fail-announcement

There’s so much more to be discovered when your projects just don’t want to work. Grinding out the bugs, getting past roadblocks, and discovering gotchas is where real hacking know-how comes from. But most people aren’t motivated to document their failures. We want to change that.

We want to roll out a new weekly feature that showcases failure… well documented failure. But we need YOU to give up the goods. Write about your failed experience on your blog, post it to our project forums with [FAIL] in the title, or you can just write everything in an email and send it to us. Which ever way you choose, you’ll need to tip us off that you’d like to make it to the front page (come on, it’s not bragging since it didn’t even work!). If you already know of well documented project fails send in those links too even if they’re not your projects.

Make sure you include at least one descriptive image — snapshots, diagrams, schematics, screencaps, anything that tells the story is fair game. To show you what we’re after here’s a few of our favorite failed projects:

We’d like to point out that all of these projects are interesting ideas that show off missteps along the way. We will not be trashing on your skills as a hacker, but instead celebrating the lessons learned and hearlding the sharing of ideas from otherwise doomed projects.

Hackaday At DEF CON 21

August 1, 2013 by 30 Comments

DEF CON 21 Badge

I’ve arrived at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada for DEF CON 21. Over the next couple of days, I’ll be talking about what I get up to here.

The main event today is registration, which means getting a neat badge. This year’s badge was designed by [Ryan Clarke]. According to the DEF CON booklet, they are “non-electronic-electronic” badges this year, and DEF CON will be alternating between electronic badges every other year.

The playing card design is printed on a PCB, and uses the silkscreen, solder mask, and copper layers to provide three colors for the artwork. The badge is a crypto challenge, featuring some cryptic characters, numbers, and an XOR gate. I don’t have any ideas about it yet, but some people are already working hard on cracking the code.

Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to a few talks including one on hacking cars that we discussed earlier, and one on decapping chips. I’ll also be checking out some of the villages. The Tamper Evident Village is premiering this year, and they’ll be showing off a variety of tamper proofing tech. I’ll also try to get to the Beverage Cooling Contraption Contest, where competitors build devices to cool beverages (ie, beer) as quickly as possible.

If you have any DEF CON tips, let me know in the comments.