ENIAC Was First, Right?

February 3, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 46 Comments

Well, no. Many of us who went to school and have degrees in various computer related fields instantly think of ENIAC as the first “computer”, but we’re all wrong. We know some of you are already familiar with the Atanasoff-Berry computer, and we are too… now. However, when we learned about it, it was long after our school lessons were over, and it felt like learning Santa wasn’t real, or the pilgrims didn’t really have a fancy dinner with the native Americans. [Jane Smiley] is releasing a book telling the whole story, and it should be fairly interesting. She gave an interview with Wired about the book. In the interview she talks about how fascinating the story is and even addresses [Alan Turing]’s role.

Internships: Have Fun While Working Toward A Career

February 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Attention Students: Living your life with a devil-may-care attitude will soon come to an end… But while you’re at it, take the summer away from your normal school’s-out activities to hack together something cool while tricking family into thinking it’s good for the career.

That link will take you to Waterloo Labs’ announcement that they’re hiring four paid interns this summer. You’ll need a bucketful of hacking skills from mechanical, to electrical, to coding (or any combination thereof). If the name doesn’t strike a bell be warned; these guys and gals do things like riding the roof of remote-control cars, and playing video games with real armaments.

Is your company offering similarly radical internships? We’d love to connect some hardcore hackers with good summer homes. Send a tweet a to Mike (@szczys) so that we can post an internships follow-up with more opportunities.

[via Twitter]

Keepon Finally Gets A Cheaper Version

February 1, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

Keepon, the adorable bot meant to help autistic kids with its jovial dance moves, seems to finally be getting a cheaper version. The original cost $30,000 and did a lot more than dance. Actually, we got to play with it a little bit at CES a couple years ago. The commercial version most likely won’t have facial recognition or any of the other fancy features of the first one, but we hope it can dance well. We’ve actually seen a couple home made versions and we’re hoping that the new one has some major hacking potential. The temptation to have one of these cute little bots around is made even stronger when you see that some of the money is going back into autism research.

“Ask An Engineer” Live Streams At Adafruit

January 31, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

I [Caleb], finally had a chance to catch one of the live chat sessions over at Adafruit.com called “Ask an engineer“. I was pleasantly surprised. Though the show is only an hour long, the amount of information covered was quite amazing. They started out, announcing a new, this really cool looking touch screen system, product and going over the tech specs. This very quickly turned into a question and answer session about how to utilize and modify the device. [Limor], aka [ladyada] was extremely knowledgeable and [rossum], the designer who made it even showed up in the chat to fill in the rare gap. After that, there was a general question and answer period where people were firing off questions so fast I couldn’t watch them all and still follow her answers. It was a lot of fun and quite frankly felt way too short.

Be sure to check it out on Saturday night at 10:00 P.M. ET

Jeri Getting Her Own Show?

January 30, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 35 Comments

[Jeri Ellsworth] has been very excited about this new opportunity. She sent us a “pilot video“, so we’re assuming that there will be more to come. In the pilot, she explains how to build a musical art installation that will play music when a viewer is in position. She covers several different ways to detect the presence of the person, ultimately landing on using a PIR sensor for detection. We can’t wait to see where this show goes, but we hope she continues to do her own hacking videos as well.

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.