Cheers to another completed Community Byte project! Things went well regarding timeliness and being friendly to the other coders and students. If you've got ideas for our next mission, or an idea for a tutorial, submit them to me. Friday, our mission was to take out HackThisSite, basic mission 5. This mission focused on JavaScript, again. This time there is a little bit more security in place.
To the displeasure of many loyal Firefox users, Mozilla has been deploying what seems like a new marketing strategy to "catch up" to Google Chrome. I have no idea if this is because the version number is higher than theirs, but it is downright annoying. It's not all complaints, though. Firefox has done an amazing job at completely revamping its source code and redesigning all of its engines, making it a more than worthy competitor to Chrome. However, we are displeased with Firefox because eve...
Welcome to the second Goonight Byte! Our second coding session was kindly hosted by th3m, so props to him for letting this happen.
"How do I install Arch Linux?" That question was bound to come up eventually. And with me using Arch, it's no coincidence that all of you want to use it as well. Arch is arguably the best Linux distro available. Distros that come close are Gentoo and some aspects of Ubuntu, but Arch is meant for building your OS from the inside out. Arch is built around minimalism, so you won't get anything by default. It doesn't even come with sound!
One of the main reasons I was held back from fully switching over to Linux was the fact that media streaming is nearly impossible. You have two choices in Windows: either you use file sharing with Windows Media Player, or you can just use the Windows Media Center. But both of these softwares are not for Linux or Mac. Microsoft doesn't like to make open source software because they believe in making a profit, instead of allowing others to innovate it.
Often times when staying at a hotel or anywhere for that matter, you'll whip out your laptop and check the local area for Wi-Fi. I know you've all been in my shoes when you find an unsecured network that appears to be public Wi-Fi belonging to the hotel or airport, and you connect to it. You connect fast and perfectly, only to find that when you open your browser, it says you don't have an account, and are filtered from accessing the web. This is because the owners of the network want to keep...
Earlier last month, I wrote on how to subscribe to Google+ users using PlusFeed. I used it, and then I realized that I wasn't getting my own feed anymore. I discovered that the free service had been disabled due to cost issues, as detailed by the creator +Russell Beattie. The code is open source, and you can roll your own service, if you have the know-how and the time. If you don't, but still want to create RSS feeds for your own public posts, or just to track your favorite Google+ users, the...
Unfortunately, I'm a little behind schedule on my pizza dough making mission, but I promise - more experiments coming soon! In the meantime, here's a beautiful video about the nuance that goes into bread making, as demonstrated by famed San Francisco baker Chad Robertson of Tartine Bread. Bread and pizza dough go hand-in-hand, and I've been thinking about picking up the Tartine cookbook for some time now. As I mentioned above, the nuance that goes into the process is really pretty remarkable....
If you work in the film industry, are currently in film school, or have aspirations of being involved in the movie making process in some way, shape or form, you're probably very familiar with a certain set of books published by 411 Publishing that are commonly referred to as the "production bibles". If you live in the Los Angeles area, LA 411 is a valuable source of information when it comes to fulfilling your production needs. And if you're in New York, the NY 411 book is just as crucial fo...
More than a year ago, Twitter rolled out the first phase of its Promoted Tweets ad service, which consisted of selected tweets from advertising partners like Best Buy and Sony Pictures receiving "promoted" exposure in the search results pages on Twitter and in the trends lists. These ads were clearly labeled as such, so it was never any real bother to Twitter users.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is one of those things that nearly everybody loves. But if your craving is strong and you want to make it yourself, think again – the Colonel’s not keen on parting with his top secret recipe. According to KFC’s official site, “one company blends a formulation that represents part of the recipe while another spice company blends the remainder. As a final safeguard, a computer processing system is used to standardize the blending of the products to ensure neither company ...
Video games and books seldom have much impact on one another. Games based on movies based on books are fairly common, but games made directly from books are all but nonexistent. This is too bad, given that they're the two most interactive medias out there.
Chicken hypnotism is pretty mind boggling. We were enthralled when young Ciaran hypnotized a chicken with his infectious little boy charm (and more importantly, the gentle back-and-forth sway of his arms). There are a wealth of videos on YouTube depicting the process—a bonafide practice tried and true among both farmers and scientists. So, what is the why and how-to behind the art of fowl hypnosis?
With Microsoft's release of the Kinect SDK, things seem to have slowed down a bit in the world of Kinect development. Have developers exhausted the uses of Kinect already? No way! Four researchers at Cornell University have created an AI-based system on the Kinect that can recognize what you're doing, and maybe even who is doing it.
Video games are the most prevalent type of interactive media, but certainly not the only one. The interactive music video for the song "3 Dreams of Black" by supergroup ROME and digital artist Chris Milk utilizes the latest web design technology, video game influenced art and interactivity, and large crowd-sourced elements to form a compelling work of art. ROME is composed of producer extraordinaire Danger Mouse, Italian film composer Daniele Luppi, Norah Jones, and Jack White. Their recent e...
It's been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally released a software development kit (SDK) for the Kinect on Windows 7 PCs. The word "hacking" is no longer needed, thanks to the free beta download available at Microsoft Research that allows anyone with a Windows computer and some coding knowledge to take advantage of the Kinect's motion-sensing capabilities.
One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.
Earlier this month, game developer David Braben and his Rasberry Pi nonprofit foundation revealed a $25 USB PC. The computer can connect to an HDMI monitor on one end, and a USB peripheral on the other (such as a keyboard or a USB hub). You can use the USB hub to connect multiple items, such as a keyboard, mouse, printer, USB ethernet/wireless, creating a fully functional computer.
Could the world really be coming to an end tomorrow? Presuming you believe the biblical prediction from 89-year-old Harold Camping, May 21st, 2011 is undeniably Judgment Day. If you have confidence in that prophecy, you're probably not even reading this because you're too busy either A) preparing for the Rapture or B) sitting in your backyard bunker hoping to outwit annihilationism.
When you look up the word free in the dictionary, you'll find a lot of definitions, but in the days of digital dependency and a falling economy, free only means one thing—expensive stuff for nothing. And if you own a Windows computer, one of the best sites to get free software from is Giveaway of the Day.
With the globally rampant use of such social networking platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, the issue of privacy has become a prevalent concern for many. And for good reason—there's the violation of Facebook employing user names in ads, the Etsy slip-up, and of course, the everyman act of recklessly sharing too much information via common social media outlets: a night of drinking results in morning after embarrassment, or worst case scenario, sloppy Facebook posts and tweets resul...
When the iPad 2 was released earlier this month, as to be expected there was a whole lotta buzz. And for good reason—while the the newest version shares the same price tag as the old, it boasts some significant new features. In case you missed it, here's a quick overview:
Penny pincher? A true believer in "waste not want not"? Then listen up—here's a quick tip that will save you some spare change.
Traders are in a frenzy of instant messaging all day long. The best ones, at least. A recent study says the best traders are the ones that IM the most and the least successful traders were the ones that IM the least. So, it seems like if you can find a way to jump on the bandwagon, you can beat the odds, too. But, what's their secret? Are they passing around insider information?
Enjoy rolling around at night in the sleek luster of silk? Also afraid of a mobster finding out you're rolling around with his cousin's wife? Solution: bullet-proof silk sheets. All you need is the strongest biomaterial ever found--Darwin's bark spider silk. So, grab a loom and start weaving.
Some of you have already seen the superbness of tonight's "super moon", but for those of you in the western half of the United States, there's still time to ready your cameras and enjoy March 19th's super full moon. It's the biggest full moon in almost 20 years, the last one appearing in March of 1993.
Your roommate swears by 'hair of the dog' or chugging raw eggs and tomato juice, but do these hangover cures actually work? What do the scientists say?
After getting slammed with a crazy-big earthquake/tsunami, the Japanese nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi might be on the brink of meltdown. Not as bad as Chernobyl, but maybe as bad as Three Mile Island. Nobody wishes such a disaster on anyone...anywhere in the world. In the US, there are about 100 nuclear facilities, about 8 of which are located near hot beds of seismic activity.
As a California resident, I'm all too familiar with the delicious western fast food chain In-N-Out. The food is great: the fries, the shakes, the fresh ingredients, the secret sauce. And of course, the secret menu. There are only 4 items posted on the in-store menu, but for customers in the know, there are more "secret" items available:
Always wanted a fluorescent dog but didn’t want to commit? Well, here’s your solution. Researchers at Seoul National University developed fluorescent puppies that only glow when you want them to. Just inject the special pups with doxycycline and they’ll glow like a black light poster for a few weeks. Then, they return to dull, furry normal.
If you tried visiting the Apple Store online this morning, you were probably prompted with the same notice as the one below, which lasted a good portion of the a.m. What could Apple have been doing to shut down their online store for so long?
The Clock Bloggers love Angry Birds so much, they decided to transform into... Angry Birds. With a little advice from our jolly bloggers, you too can jump into the video game fantasy vortex.
Since its inception in 2007, the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest has been challenging the vulnerability of mobile phones and web-related software. In 2010, the fruit of two full days of hacking came down to the exploitation of the following web browsers: Safari 4 on Mac OS X, Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, and Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7. The winners walked away with the successfully hacked computer, plus a cash prize, but they left one Godly browser intact: Google Chrome. Even the savviest ...
PETA wouldn't consider James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau's ingenious flypaper clock very eco-friendly, but I might beg to differ. The clock doesn't require any electricity or batteries. Instead it captures flies and converts the bodies of the dead insects into energy. Eight dead flies makes for roughly twelve days of power. Not bad.
When I used to play Magic every day during 7th grade, one of my regular opponents was a kid named Eddie. He played an all-Blue, deck, the first I'd ever seen. At that point I was even more creature-obsessed than I am now and my deck were unwieldy hulks practically begging to be shamed by an all-Blue deck. I couldn't hurt him. Every time I tried to do something he had a response, a way to negate what I was doing. He would barely ever hurt me. He would win games just by making me play for so lo...
By Ethical Traveler As the world becomes ever more interconnected, being an ethical traveler becomes both easier and more urgent. Travelers today have access to far more information than we did even 10 years ago. We can observe–almost in real time–the impact that smart or selfish choices, by governments and individuals, have on rainforests and reefs, cultures and communities.
DYVOUR n pl. -S one who is bankrupt Nigel Richards played this word in his very first game in the 2010 National SCRABBLE Championship (NSC) held in Texas, which ended today. Richards won that first game against Lucas Freeman with a 462 to 392 score, but "DYVOUR" was no forewarning for Richards — not at all.
Japan's Shoichi Uchiyama is a hardcore advocate of insect cuisine. His selling point? A heavenly nutty flavor, the delicious texture of shellfish, AND high in nutritional value.
Feeling comfortable or at home means living in an atmosphere where you are accepted. Some people moving abroad worry about getting adjusted to the new social environment or the western culture. You may have left your home to make big business, excel in your career, get married, meet a relative/friend, discover new places, or for any good reason.
Scientists have recently released a mathematical breakdown of the perfect handshake. The University of Manchester researchers discovered that nearly one-in-five people hate the handshake, listing complaints such as sweaty palms, limp wrists, gripping too hard and no eye contact.