Learn to Code with 'Code Hero,' a new Kickstarter Project
The best thing about Kickstarter is all the cool and novel projects that it helps reach to fruition. Case in point: Code Hero, a new game being developed expressly to teach people how to code.
Code Hero is a hybrid coding and First Person Shooter (FPS) game under development by Alex Peake and Primer Labs. You play it a bit like an adventure game, running around a 3D world and interacting with things through a ‘Code Gun.’ This gun lets you write Javascript code, which you shoot at bad guys and obstacles.
This code lets you alter the...
US Nuclear Plants will be built again
Nuclear power has returned from the grave. The US Nuclear Regulatory Agency has given the go ahead for the construction of new nuclear plants--something that hasn’t been done since 1978. The license grants Southern Company, a utility company from Atlanta, GA, the right to build two nuclear power plants at one of their sites.
The US Nuclear energy industry pretty much died the day that Three Mile Island happened, and no new plants have been built since out of fear. While the existing plants continued to operate, serious thought was put into whether nuclear energy should be used...
The FBI Releases Report on Steve Jobs, Heavily Censored
Want to know more about Steve Jobs? Take a gander at tis 191 page document the government just released. Sure, they censored some of the best parts, but it is still an interesting thing to glance through.
The report was generated when Steve Jobs was being considered for a role in George H. W. Bush’s administration, and delves deep into what the government thought of the man. At the time, Steve Jobs was working at NeXT, a company he founded after being kicked out of his previous company.
The report isn’t exactly what you would call flattering. While...
Solar Panels from India now Dirt Cheap, Solar Revolution?
Solar panels aren’t cheap, and they never have been. As far as methods of power generation go, they've long been one of the most expensive on a per-watt basis.
Not only that, they need fairly precise conditions to work. Their performance drops dramatically if they’re not in a particular temperature range, and they need plenty of light to make power.
That said, they remain the most likely long term power source. Which is why the crash in the price of Indian solar power is so exciting.
India’s government has been pusing a “solar mission,” a dream of powering much of...
Watch a Computer Sketch a Drawing
This is impressive. Watch as a computer sketches, from code, an image. This isn’t a simple photoshop plugin.
A man who goes by @kyndinfo put the code and the video together, based on the openFramework toolkit (based on C++. for those who are interested). Explaining his work, he said:
“Pencils has been the most primitive or the most basic drawing and writing tool since around the last century. It also was the one of the primary tools when I was in an art school and has been my best friend since then. Trying to simulate the tone of pencil sketches with programing codes, I reacknowledged that the beauty...
Lost Jim Henson Short Predicts the War against the Machines
Jim Henson is known for his imaginative puppets, but this lost short has one of his more wacky. Dug up by AT&T (of all people), this short film was originally made for a seminar on data communications. It was meant to make the increasing tension between automation and human industry seem less daunting, by making the machines inexplicably cute (and a bit like maniacal, know-it-all children).
Anyways, you can watch the short below. IT hasn’t aged as well as it might have, but the short is still fun, and it is still a Henson production through and through.
The...
Teen Launches Lego Man to Edge of Space
You know that Can Do attitude that America is so well-known for? It’s alive and well, at least in Canada. 17 year oldToronto natives Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammad have managed to do launch a lego minifig into the stratosphere on a balloon. And of course they made a video.
Their photos show a conquering Lego man staring at the camera, brandishing a Canadian flag, with the graceful curves of Earth filling the space behind it. Its a posture that would fit an Everest mountain climber summiting, and it’s made all the more cute by it being a...
North Korea Calls Mobile Phone Users 'War Criminals'
In yet another example of the country’s complete and total disconnect from reality, the glorious leaders that be, now Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s son, have decided that using a mobile phone during the nation’s 100 day mourning period is a war crime.
Apparently, food supplies have been dwindling in the country, and people have been trying to defect across the border to China or South Korea, where more than 23,000 former citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have recently settled.
In an attempt to cease the abandonment of the ship that is Kim-Jong-il’s regime, the Worker’s Party has issued...
Decrypting Hard Drives not Self Incriminating, Says Judge
Decrypting a seized hard drive for police doesn’t count as incriminating yourself, says Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn. The defendant in the case, accused of bank fraud, claimed that decrypting her hard drive for the police constituted a violation of the Fifth Ammendment.
But in Blackburn’s ruling, he states “I conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer.”
As you can imagine, civil rights groups have been paying attention to this case. Until now, there has never been a ruling on whether it violated the...
Lisa Harouni- A primer on 3D printing
3D printing may be all the rage these days, but the technology is so general that it can be hard to find a specific use for it. In an absolutely wonderful TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk, Lisa Harouni gives a brief rundown of what the technology is, why it is important, and how it will likely shape the future.
If you are the least bit interested in technology, or even just have a passing interest in making stuff, you need to do yourself a favor and watch this video. Harouni does a good job of showing what makes 3d...
Modders Make Playable Hyrule in Minecraft
Minecraft modders continue to impress, this time managing to duplicate the whole of Zelda’s Hyrule in Minecraft. They even managed to make it largely to scale, shaping even the terrain to match the game. This mod, in short, is utter insanity.
We have seen Minecraft modders make some amazing things in the past. From recreations of famous buildings, to whole cities, to working CPU’s made entirely with elements from the game, Minecraft players are some of the most amazing builders in gaming. While this isn’t as great of a technical achievement as building a CPU in...
Supreme Court - Public Domain Works can be Re-Copyrighted
The Supreme Court has ruled that it can recopyright works if they are still copyrighted in another country. I’m conflicted on this one: on the one hand, I’m enraged about extending copyrights, which originally lasted only for few years but now last over 100.
On the other hand, it is meant to bring copyrights into synchronicity with the rest of the world, which is an admirable goal.
Copyrighting is a complex subject which I won’t pretend to be an expert on, so bear with me as I try and explain it. In the United States, we have a fixed-length...
Iranian Programmer Sentenced to Death
Even with SOPA/PIPA, we forget how good we have it. An Iranian citizen has been sentenced to death for developing a piece of software that ended up running on a porn site. His crime? Insulting the sanctity of Islam. The worst part? He didn’t even know that the porn site was using his software.
Iranian programmer Saeed Malekpour is a Canadian resident. In 2008, he went back to Iran to visit his sick grandfather. The Iranian government took the opportunity to seize him on the crime of developing porn sites. As per usual,...
Minecraft Version 1.1; Brings Grass Eating Sheep, and more
Minecraft, quite possibly the greatest indie game success story ever, has finally reached the 1.1 milestone, bringing with it a slew of changes and improvements.
The game, which was originally more akin to free-building with legos than a traditional game, has slowly morphed into an open world game that rivals many more professional productions.
The game has (favorably) been compared to other open world games such as Skyrim, with Kotaku even going so far as to say that Minecraft feels more real.
Minecraft version 1.1 brings in sheep that eat grass and regrow their wool, support for different world rendering styles, improved biome...
Are Tablets Taking Over?
In 2011, nearly 5 percent of all internet traffic from global markets-including the U.S., UK, Japan, Australia, and Singapore-came form non-computer devices. Mobile phones are responsible for two-thirds of traffic, but the remainder is attributed to tablets. While mobile may still be in the lead, tablets are gaining noteable steam. Take a look below to learn about the phenometal growth of tablets in the market.
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