Pebbling Club 🐧🪨

  • the node.js aesthetic :: The Universe of Discord
    Notes
    I would like to document an emerging set of programming conventions, philosophies, and values that I see evolving in the node.js community. I call this the node aesthetic.
    Unfurl
  • The Rest Of The Story | codahale.com
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Little Printer | BERG Cloud
    Notes
    <blockquote>Little Printer lives in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely, beautiful mini-newspaper.</blockquote> Total waste of paper, but still a really cute product idea despite that.
    Unfurl
  • What's Wrong With #FirstWorldProblems - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic
    Notes
    But, for inchoate reasons, I have come to dislike it when people tweet #firstworldproblems. I could not identify what irked me about it, but there was something.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • BBC News - Coding - the new Latin
    Notes
    The campaign to boost the teaching of computer skills - particularly coding - in schools is gathering force.
    Unfurl
  • Google I/O Moved to June and Extended to 3 Days, Developers Will Have to Code for Tickets — SiliconFilter
    Notes
    Maybe even more interesting than the change in dates is the fact that Tran also hinted at a new application process for I/O. The last event famously sold out in less than an hour. This time around, it looks like developers will have to compete for spots at I/O. Tran tells potential attendees to use the two extra months to “brush up on [their] coding skills,” as this will “come in handy when the new application process opens in February.”
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Calepin
    Notes
    Publishing for writers who love Markdown and Dropbox
    Unfurl
  • Slimming down a Linux VirtualBox machine | MichaelCole.com
    Notes
    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/zerofile; sudo rm /zerofile
    Unfurl
  • SE Podcast #27 – Dave Winer - Blog – Stack Exchange
    Notes
    Right now, Dave’s working on a “magnificent symphony of software” – it’s the communication system he wants to use. It involves a minimal blogging tool with only RSS output (plus a dongle that will push the RSS to twitter, etc), a “River of News” aggregator, and an overarching tool for creating content that can be picked apart and included on other platforms.
    Unfurl
  • Arduino kit beams low-fi Google Weather to VGA screens -- Engadget
    Notes
    Looking for another way to use that aging VGA CRT screen hogging space in the closet? Try making your own dedicated weather screen by mixing together Google's meteorological data stream and some Arduino magic. It looks like parsing that Google Weather data was a bit of a challenge on the miniscule 2KB of RAM, but a tinkerer going by the handle Zmashiah has managed to do it. He's even managed to cram in a few extra graphical flourishes, including icons and background themes that change depending on the temperature and time of day. The entirely PC-free device grabs the data through an Ethernet connection and flashes up all the weather goodness in stunning VGA. Any meteorological mavens reading this can grab the full shopping list and procedure at the Instructables link below.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Freaklabs' FredBoard gives the gift of hackerspace to Mothership HackerMoms -- Engadget
    Notes
    Come this (Black) Friday, it'll officially be the season for gift-giving and general family dysfunction. So, why not warm that tech-tinkering heart while heating up the creative juices of the baby-bound set with a Freaklabs purchase that puts your money to good use? The outfit's got a monster mash FredBoard up for order that splices together an Arduino and breadboard to make your first brush with homegrown modding a relatively painless affair. Oh, and the proceeds are destined for a Mommy-centric hackerspace -- dubbed Mothership HackerMoms -- in San Francisco that does double duty as a day care for little leg-clingers and a lab for their electronics-inclined parents. These ladies-in-programming currently swap house hosting duties, but with the boost from your potential feel-good donations, could snag a proper venue of their own. Feel like getting in the holiday spirit early? Then click on the source below to bring some early cheer to Bay Area baby Mommas.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Mimo Magic Touch adds 10 inches of capacitive touchscreen to your PC using only USB -- Engadget
    Notes
    We've seen monitors with touch input and displays powered only by USB, but combining both those features into a single unit would make for something truly unique. We've gotta hand it to Mimo Monitors for pulling it off -- the Magic Touch and Magic Touch Deluxe deliver 10.1 inches of capacitive interactivity using only a single USB 2.0 cable. The panel itself offers a resolution of 1024 x 600 for keeping video chats out of your way, displaying email or monitoring social networks. The Deluxe version also adds a two-port USB hub but, if you plan to charge your devices through it, you'll have to hook up the optional AC adapter. Sadly, while they can act as a secondary monitor regardless of OS, you'll need a Windows 7 machine to take advantage of the touch capabilities -- and even then it's single touch only (though, the panel itself is technically capable of four-point multitouch). Both models are available to pre-order now for $300 (Magic Touch) or $330 (Magic Touch Deluxe) with delivery expected before Christmas. Check out the complete PR after the break.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • OFF MY LAWN! – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
    Notes
    It is publishing. It is humanity. It is the vanguard of ideas clashing against the rearguard of commerce. This is not new. This is all to be expected. We must stop raising our eyebrows and chuckling at it. We must decide to accept the world as it is, or to roll up our sleeves and help.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • FXI's Cotton Candy could turn every screen you own into a cloud client -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Occupy the Skies! Protesters Could Use Spy Drones | Danger Room | Wired.com
    Notes
    The proliferation of drones throughout the military — and into civilian law enforcement — can make it feel like we’re living in an airborne panopticon. But flying robots are agnostic about who they train their gaze upon, and can spy on cops as easily as they can spy on civilians.
    Unfurl
  • With a bold new redesign, AIM could finally be cool again (seriously) | VentureBeat
    Notes
    AOL launched a preview of its latest AIM vision today, which includes new desktop, mobile, and web apps. Surprisingly, AOL has cut out much of the clutter that previously made AIM a chore to use — it’s now streamlined and focused on conversations. Group chats are now a core part of the service, and video chats are seamlessly integrated.
    Unfurl
  • And Now... Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Posts (i.e., Not Just SOPA) | Techdirt
    Notes
    I recognize that all of the posts today have been about SOPA and the House Judiciary Committee hearings on SOPA. Some of you liked this. Some of you did not. We've never done anything like that before, focusing just on one issue for the entire day, but it is a big issue, one that I feel strongly about, one that I think impacts all of you... and one that there was a lot going on about.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • At Web censorship hearing, Congress guns for "pro-pirate" Google
    Notes
    The House Judiciary Committee today held an important hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act with a hugely stacked deck of witnesses—Google's lawyer was the only one of the six to object to the bill in a meaningful way. And it wasn't hard to see why. This wasn't a hearing designed to elicit complex thoughts about complex issues of free speech, censorship, and online piracy; despite the objections of the ACLU, dozens of foreign civil rights groups, tech giants like Google and eBay, the Consumer Electronics Association, China scholar Rebecca MacKinnon, hundreds of law professors and lawyers, the hearing was designed to shove the legislation forward and to brand companies who object as siding with "the pirates."
    Unfurl
  • NASA working on nuclear rocket for manned Mars trips • The Register
    Notes
    Since being redirected away from Bush-era plans for a base on the Moon towards a manned Mars mission, NASA has realigned its nuclear-tech-in-space efforts away from a Moonbase powerplant and towards an atomic-powered rocket able to get astronauts to the red planet quickly, without receiving dangerous exposure to cosmic radiation.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • The Shack® Blog » Blog Archive » The Great Create Arduino Challenge
    Notes
    We have seen some amazing projects centered around the Arduino system and now that Arduino is available at RadioShack, we want to challenge you! What can you make with Arduino? You’ll have three weeks (11/11-12/2) to come up with an idea, build it, submit your project to the Great Create and leave a link to your project in the comments below. We’ll go through and pick the project that uses Arduino in the most creative and innovative way – the chosen project will get a $500 RadioShack gift card – just imagine the awesome projects you could build with that!
    Unfurl
  • Stupid Raymond talent: Screaming carrier - The Old New Thing - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
    Notes
    Similar to Mike, I was able to scream (not whistle: scream) a 300 baud carrier tone. This skill proved useful when I was in college and the mainframe system was down. Instead of sitting around waiting for the system to come back, I just went about my regular business around campus. Every so often, I would go to a nearby campus phone (like a free public phone but it can only make calls to other locations on campus), dial the 300 baud dial-up number, and scream the carrier tone. If I got a response, that meant that the mainframe was back online and I should wrap up what I was doing and head back to the lab.
    Unfurl
  • Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired | The Digital Home - CNET News
    Notes
    In order to determine which employees would be asked to give stock back, Pincus and his executives tried to pinpoint workers whose contributions to Zynga--in the execs' eyes--didn't necessarily justify the potential cash windfall they could receive when the company went public, the Journal claims. One Journal source said that Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating a "Google chef" scenario.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Why we won’t enable DNT by default | Mozilla Privacy Blog
    Notes
    Mozilla’s mission is to give users this choice and control over their browsing experience. We won’t turn on Do Not Track by default because then it would be Mozilla making the choice, not the individual. Since this is a choice for the user to make, we cannot send the signal automatically but will empower them with the tools they need to do it.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • Coffeescript: Joyful and Unreadable
    Notes
    That said, if making Javascript look and act kinda like Rails makes Rails devs happier, maybe it just means I’m not Ruby enough.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • Setting up a Node.js development environment with NPM and Cloud9 IDE installed locally - Cambus.net
    Notes
    In this tutorial, you will learn how to setup a complete Node.js development environment, including NPM (the Node Package Manager) and Cloud9 IDE to edit, run, and debug Node programs. The following installation instructions have been sucessfully tested on Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” and on Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”, but they should also work properly on previous versions as well.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Keeping it-realtime-ch-ch-changes
    Unfurl
  • The Pirate Bay Trademark Handed To Alcohol Entrepreneur | TorrentFreak
    Notes
    A Sweden-based alcohol entrepreneur has successfully obtained the trademark “The Pirate Bay”. Colin Scragg, who made to complaints to police over share dealings at his former company earlier this year, had faced opposition at the Patents and Trademarks Office, but now the decision has swung in his favor.
    Unfurl
  • Is the iPhone Replacing the Motorcycle? - NYTimes.com
    Notes
    Are motorcycles — even superb and lovely Italian motorcycles from the land of Donatello and Bertolucci — being replaced as love objects, as arm candy, by other more contemporary show-off desirables? Electronic ones. Mostly made by Apple.
    Unfurl
  • Computer scrollbars: Why is Apple eradicating a linchpin of user interface design? - Slate Magazine
    Notes
    I can understand the impulse here: Most scrollbars are kind of ugly. Even the skinny, rounded gray bar that Apple invented for the iPhone isn’t the prettiest interface element ever designed. But as unpleasant as they may be to look at, scrollbars serve a purpose on a busy screen: They tell you, at a glance, where you are in a list or a document. Because most modern scrollbars are proportional to the size of the document you’re looking at, they also give you a sense of how much lies off-screen—the smaller the scrollbar, the larger the document. And when you don’t see a scrollbar—or when the scrollbar is dimmed—this usually means there’s nothing outside the screen to look at.
    Unfurl
  • It’s not just mobile — Adobe is abandoning Flash on TVs as well — Online Video News
    Notes
    While the market for TV apps is incredibly fragmented, it doesn’t appear that Adobe’s Flash will provide a solution. The company confirmed through a statement that like mobile, it will no longer focus on porting the Flash plugin into web browsers on CE devices, but believes developers should build native apps on those devices instead.
    Unfurl
  • Boxee Box may integrate live TV via USB dongle, push the definition of 'awesome' to a new level -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Treehouse Is an Elegant, Focused Online Learning Resource for Aspiring Designers and Developers
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Eric Schmidt: Google still has 'growing and profitable business in China' -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Utamin: the adorable, Theremin-like toy that's a great gift for someone else's kids -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Adobe confirms Flash Player is dead for mobile devices -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
    Notes
    Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?
    Unfurl
  • Fedora 16 now being served, with large side order of cloud -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Amazon's Kindle Cloud Reader storms into Firefox on an HTML5 chariot -- Engadget
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • 8tracks Brings User-Created Playlists and Music Discovery to Your Android Phone
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • Startup Pancake.io Hosts Websites Using Dropbox - ReadWriteCloud
    Notes
    If you're looking for a cheap and easy way to host basic Web sites, a new service launched today that you might want to check out. Pancake.io is a free service whipped together by Stanford student Tian Ping Wong.
    Unfurl
  • Counterfeit Chips Plague U.S. Missile Defense | Danger Room | Wired.com
    Notes
    If you're looking for a cheap and easy way to host basic Web sites, a new service launched today that you might want to check out. Pancake.io is a free service whipped together by Stanford student Tian Ping Wong.
    Unfurl
  • Why Google Plus Pages (Will) Beat Facebook. And Twitter | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com
    Notes
    And though many point to the similarities between Plus and Facebook — and the similarities have only grown with the addition of branded pages — the addition of Pages may be more of a challenge to Twitter. While a certain portion of the population is accustomed to information in 140 character bites, Google+ provides a richer forum where companies can release news to the public.
    Unfurl
  • Martin Nisenholtz, RSS, and the power of standards » Nieman Journalism Lab
    Notes
    As with any new technology developing in the open, RSS was constantly evolving, with competing flavors, and it was proving difficult to settle on one single standard. Until, that is, Dave approached Martin Nisenholtz about getting The New York Times content pulled into RSS.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • Google keyword: Pepsi | MetaFilter
    Notes
    Two weeks ago, Google disabled the + operator for searches, requiring quotation marks to force inclusion of a word. Today, Google Plus rolled out a new feature - Pages for companies and brands, so you can "build relationships with all the things you care about". Included is Direct Connect - go straight to Pepsi's Google+ page by searching for +Pepsi.
    Feed
    Unfurl
  • So Long, Launchpads: Pentagon Wants Jets to Send Sats Into Orbit | Danger Room | Wired.com
    Notes
    The technology to launch an orbiter from the sky, rather than the ground, already exists. The Pegasus rocket launcher, for example, has performed over 40 aerial launches: A carrier aircraft flies the rocket up, and then fires it off — satellite included — into the stratosphere. But to refine that system, then strip it of human personnel, is a tall order — the launching system would need to be entirely self-sufficient. Indeed, Darpa notes that ALASA is looking for a launcher requiring “no recurring maintenance or support, and no specific integration to prepare for launch.”
    Unfurl
  • Evercube
    Notes
    The kit contains everything — except harddisks — that is needed to build the Evercube: enclosure, motherboard (with onboard CPU and memory), 5-port SATA multiplexer backplane, internal disk scaffold, ultra-silent fan, power supply, wires, clamps, wedges, screws, nuts, washers ... everything.
    Feed
    Embed
    Unfurl
  • Advice for non-tech entrepreneurs: Become a Minimum Viable Developer « The Wabi-Sabi Start-Up
    Notes
    To any non-technical person planning on starting a web company, I have one key piece of advice: Become a Minimum Viable Developer.
    Unfurl
  • Web 2.0 Development and Business Lessons: CoffeeScript Means Giving Up on JavaScript
    Notes
    While many of you will probably disagree with me, I find the trend towards writing in languages that compile to JavaScript somewhat alarming. The most notable of these languages CoffeeScript, and it's one that has gained a good degree of traction over the last year or so.
    Unfurl
  • You're a developer, so why do you work for someone else? - Intermittent Intelligence
    Notes
    As a developer, you are sitting on a goldmine. Do you even realize it? No, seriously, a @#$% goldmine! Never in modern history has it been so easy to create something from scratch, with little or no capital and a marketing model that is limited only by your imagination.
    Unfurl
  • Don't use MongoDB
    Notes
    I've kept quiet for awhile for various political reasons, but I now feel a kind of social responsibility to deter people from banking their business on MongoDB.
    Unfurl