2600 Magazine Runs A Sale For The 20th Century Back Issues

January 27, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

In an effort to clear out some warehouse space, 2600 magazine has dropped the price for issues from 1984 to 2000 down to $2.50 each. If you haven’t read 2600, the Hacker Quarterly, shame on you. Pick some up and get reading. They are a resource beyond any other magazine out there for hacking and security related issues. They don’t gloss over the good bits either, they give detail because they know what they are talking about. Just to further prove that point, we present to you, the image above. Yes that is a schematic of a bluebox on a child and yes, you can buy it in their store(the shirt).

Official Hackaday Forums

January 27, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

Yes, finally, we have a forum. We get regular requests, both in the comments and in our email for a hackaday forum. We put it in operation a few days ago and started letting people trickle in and it hasn’t completely blown up in our faces. Please join us there and help build our community. Also, notice there is a button for it over on the right column now.

Some items of interest or common answers to common questions:

No illegal activities allowed. Yes, we have the word “hack” in our name. That does not mean that we will hack a website for you. (we get that request weekly).
Keep it moderately clean. Sure you can cuss, this isn’t a kids site, but no pronography/gore please.
No personal threats.
There will be google ads. We are trying really hard to balance the business with the fun, so bear with us. So far, they aren’t in the way. We have no plans on going overboard.
This will be readable without a login. You must register to post.
We’re working out the kinks. Please report any problems to caleb@

That’s it, enjoy and be civil.

Sparkfun Free Day Recap

January 25, 2011 by Chris Nelson 38 Comments

It looks like the dust has finally settled with sparkfun’s free day. They managed to give away $150,541 to users and $22,988 to charity. The general idea is you could ether take $10/year you’ve been a sparkfun customer, or take a 10 question quiz and earn $10/correct answer plus some money for charity. It looks like some technical difficulties prevented people from taking the quiz until free day had been under way for a couple of hours. Once they managed to fix the problem the money went pretty fast, eating up the last $40,000 in about 5 minutes. So did anyone manage to get anything good? Be sure to checkout sparkfun’s recap video after the break for more details.

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CES: Where Are They Now? CES Of Course!

January 7, 2011 by Greg R. Jacobs 10 Comments

CES is a time for showcasing the latest and greatest innovative products. While the crowd milled around the iLounge there was one company who stood out amongst the rest. [Mike] from CableJive is making his debut on the biggest stage for innovation this year. Many of you will remember [Mike] from a post back in 2006, where he was fed up of with all of the good docks being for the apple products exclusively. He set out to fix this and, when talking with him, attributes his success to the coverage Hack a Day did on his project. CableJive has become so popular that he has hired staff that help him produce his products. All detailed information for their products can be found at their website. The finished product is displayed after the break.

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CES: Microsoft Hacks Up Next OS As SOC

January 6, 2011 by Greg R. Jacobs 76 Comments

With the Pre-CES Keynote made by [Steve Ballmer], the announcement came that the next iteration of their operating system being available in SOC specific form. This will lead to windows being able to run a very diverse hardware set in a much more efficient manner than it does right now. Microsoft displayed 4 different versions of what the next generation prototypes are from 4 different manufacturers but there has been no work done yet on the GUI for SOC as [Ballmer] was very clear to mention that more than a couple of times. Some photos of the prototypes can be found after the break!

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Hackaday Sort Of Going To C.E.S.

January 4, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

We have decided that C.E.S. just really isn’t as much of a hacker mecca as we would have wished. Sure there were brilliantly shining walls of new 3d televisions and cellphones and camcorders as far as the eye could see, but there was mainly just tons of marketing for very little innovation, and much less hacker-centric gear than we had hoped. We had fun and tried to keep things interesting, but just couldn’t justify sending people from all over the country to Vegas for a week this year.

[Greg] had planned on going anyway, so we’ll still get a few updates when he finds the bits that interest us. He should also be snapping pictures and tossing them on twitter throughout the show. Be sure to let him know what you would like to see.

Santa-Pede Challenge: Take Two

December 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

We are going to give the Santa-Pede Challenge another try. This time, you have till the end of January to do something (make it walk/crawl/scoot) with a dancing santa (or dancing musical holiday toy). As you can see in my example, it doesn’t have to be complicated or efficient in any way.

Here are some issues and questions we would like to address:

1. Many of you suggested a banner of some type to remind you.
Great idea, we were waiting for some other features to be added, but we’ve just gone ahead and popped them in. You can see the featured items at the top of the right hand column.

2. Some pointed out that the “Buy Break Build” title isn’t very hack-ish since we often preach up-cycling.
yeah, we really think you should find these santas anywhere. The alliteration is fun though isn’t it?

You can get all the rules by going to the original post. Just note that the last date for entries will be January 31.