April 30, 2012
Yancey Strickler digs up never-before-seen Kickstartr (sic) designs
— to commemorate the third birthday; related: Perry writes about the origin story #
NYT visualization of three years of Kickstarter projects
— companion piece to this article on the insane success of the Pebble watch #
Original Atari developer ports Star Castle to the Atari 2600, 30 years later
— why this is impressive; order a one here with optional box (via) #
First two seasons of Star Trek played simultaneously
— that'd make a great screensaver with this as the background audio #
Music for Programming
— hour-long textural mix tapes designed for "prolonged periods of intense concentration" (via) #
Nieman Lab on Gawker's new commenting system
— seems awkward to navigate and moderate to me, but interested to see how it plays out #
Steven Levy on algorithm-generated news articles
— they argue it frees up journalists for actual reporting, instead of routine grunt work #
Building Animusic's Pipe Dream in the real world
— making the classic music visualization real; incredible work, though it sounds very different in person #
"That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
— I could've used that speech when I was 14, but I never went to gyms (via) #
A Super Mario Summary
— every level from the original SMB, recreated on a single screen each (via) #
Valve's Handbook for New Employees
— fun and interesting glimpse inside their crazy flat structure #
Botanicula released
— new game from the creator of Machinarium and Samorost; the bundle is a steal #
Chinese hierarchies of snobbery and contempt
— ranking everything from sneakers to World of Warcraft classes #
Summarizing the UC Davis Pepper Spray Report
— communication failure at every level in the chain of command #
The History of #1 Projects on Kickstarter
— a capsule history of Kickstarter itself; the Pebble watch is up to $4.4M #
Marco Arment on Twitter's patent agreement
— agree with the issues, but defensive patents exist to ward off potential attackers with countersuits #
Twitter introduces the Innovator's Patent Agreement
— a contract that guarantees any filed patents will only be used defensively, even if sold #
The Republia Times
— Flash games puts you in charge of editing a state-run newspaper, with a twist (via) #
Image Error Level Analysis with HTML5
— spotting Photoshop trickery with a few lines of Javascript #
Ten Years of farbrausch Productions on GitHub
— one of the demoscene's legendary groups open-sources a decade of work #
Google BBS
— functional textmode interface to Google using termlib.js and the Google REST API (via) #
Why Netflix never used the algorithm that won the Netflix Challenge
— with DVD rentals, people were aspirational; with streaming, immediate gratification #
Printer, an open-source kit for Internet-connected thermal printers
— like Little Printer for hardware hackers #
The Intelligent Encyclopedia
— visions of an always-connected device from 1982, drawn by Glen Keane (via) #