What should you drink? Take your cues from the tunes. That's the premise behind
Drinkify, a scrappy little webapp that recommends drinks based on what you're listening to. Their motto? "Never listen to music alone again."
[more inside]
posted by Diagonalize
on Nov 7, 2011 -
112 comments
In preparedness circles, EDC means
Everyday Carry, being items one keep on or near one's person at all times, to help with both planned and unforeseen events during the day. A lot of opinions about what should be in an EDC kit exist, but the minimum usually recommended seems to be a cell phone, light source and small folding knife. The
EDC blog shows pictures and lists of submitters' EDC kit.
[more inside]
posted by Harald74
on Mar 25, 2011 -
218 comments
Home Kinks, part 1 and
part 2 - for years, Popular Mechanics Press published a series of tips, many from readers, in a special edition format they called "Household Kinks."
Scanning Around With Gene has posted a collection from 1940s and '50s editions.
posted by madamjujujive
on Feb 20, 2011 -
40 comments
The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half.
posted by Obscure Reference
on May 22, 2010 -
90 comments
Why Do We Cheat? - The right, wrong, and why of videogame cheating. Go into virtually
any gamer's forum, and you'll see the subject of
using cheats and game hacks can stir
quite a hornet's nest, particularly in online gaming. But even those using cheats in offline games, not wagering against or directly competing with anyone else, will draw the ire from others in the community, possibly because
there are different types of players - that is, the difference between what Penny Arcade's Tycho once described as "
people who play games in order to excel at them, and those who play games as a conduit to fantasy".
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
on Apr 10, 2009 -
54 comments
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the most popular console of the 80s but the unstoppable march of time and the introduction of more advanced 16 bit consoles inevitably ensured its demise. But you can't keep a good console down and now it's back, thanks to the work of some dedicated mods out there. But it's not
quite how you remembered it. I mean, I don't remember the NES ever
coming in the form of a belt, do you? Or a
coffee table, for that matter. Those insane NES hackers have even gone and put an
NES in an NES cartridge. There's also an
NES in an NES controller,
an NES in a lightgun,
a wooden NES, an
NES alarm clock,
an NES wallet or finally,
an NES guitar. Want to see more?
Check this out.
posted by Effigy2000
on Jul 29, 2008 -
22 comments
Remember
Super Mario Frustration? Kaizo Mario World is another of those super-hard Mario level hacks, this one of Super Mario World. Someone played through its first level 134 times, with save states, recording all his deaths, then digitally composited them into one trip through the level. The result was
Many-Worlds Mario. (For those interested, here's a
video of a tool-assisted perfect run of much of the game.
Here's the rest. Here's some more.)
posted by JHarris
on Feb 3, 2008 -
36 comments
Ever admired those hard-working hackers, toiling away to get you the programs you've always loathed to have? Have you ever dreamt of exploring the innards of someone else's computer but have held back due to those pesky legalities? If you said yes to either of the above questions or just want to play an online hacking simulation, then
SlaveHack is the website for you.
[more inside]
posted by flatluigi
on Dec 23, 2007 -
9 comments
With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at
Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology
here and at
this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive. View the original Modal Kombat
here, and their newest installment, the admittedly trippy GuitarKart
here.
via
posted by Ufez Jones
on Dec 3, 2007 -
5 comments
I'm a huge fan of clever unintended uses for things, and
loloroy's favorites reuses a page/interface I've seen hundreds of times before in a cute way. It may take a second to figure out, but should be worth it [via
tmn].
posted by mathowie
on May 24, 2006 -
50 comments
For the last six months or so, it's been a war between Yahoo and Google to see who can outdo each other. They're often releasing competing products at nearly the same time, but
Google Maps has held the lead on coolest map for a while now. Yahoo finally countered today,
releasing their beta maps, which work much like Google's, though it uses flash instead of javascript. I kind of like the little video game-style radar map in the upper right to show where you are in the bigger picture and the directions feature closeups on the left pane when expanded. Apparently all the cool API stuff works in it already, and
they've released an events browser to show that off as well.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 3, 2005 -
60 comments
It's the equivalent of "You can play the CD on three designated CD players that support the DRM. Like,
it will play ONLY on xyz brand cd player and only three of those that you pick. Yes, you have to stick to that brand of cd player (the iTunes player, the supported OS of iTunes, no unix support in sight) and too bad if you have a fourth one in the bedroom. It's not gonna play in your second car's player either. Nor in the kitchen. Nor on your neighbor's player. Nor can you trade it on the used market when you're tired of listening to it. "
"They finally found a way to sell you some wind. Even better, they will restrict the direction and force in wich the wind will blow, how often and where it will happen..."
As "DVD-Jon" Johansen goes to
retrial, a
backlash is rising in the media & community towards Apple's DRM (digital rights management), a week after this same kid created an open-source
program that lets users copy the songs that they bought onto other sources.
posted by omidius
on Dec 2, 2003 -
28 comments
Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to
disable PCs used for illicit file trading. "The measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place."
posted by mathowie
on Jul 23, 2002 -
40 comments
Washtech.com hacked The Washington Post's tech site was hacked yesterday.
Here's the text (via FuckedCompany) that appeared after the hack and before the WaPo crew shut the site down. As of tonight, it is still not back up at its
own domain. Not sure why this gives me glee. I just wish one day someone could hack something and leave something profound in the way of a message.
posted by brookish
on Jan 29, 2002 -
6 comments
Striking back at hackers
"LaBrea" is a free, open-source tool that deters worms and other hack attacks by transforming unused network resources into decoy-computers that appear and act just like normal machines on a network. But when malicious hackers or mindless worms such as Nimda or Code Red attempt to connect with a LaBrea-equipped system, they get sucked into a virtual tarpit that grabs their computer's connection -- and doesn't release it.
Is this an ethical use of network resources, or just vigilante justice? What other methods have you used to strike back at hostile software?
posted by TheChump
on Sep 20, 2001 -
9 comments
