Qubyte Codes - IndieWebCamp Brighton 2024
Mark’s write-up of the excellent Indie Web Camp Brighton that he co-organised with Paul.
Link tags: hacking
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Hacks Are Fine / Matt Hogg FYI
If you employ a hack, don’t be so ashamed. Don’t be too proud, either. Above all, don’t be lazy—be certain and deliberate about why you’re using a hack.
I agree that hacks for prototyping are a-okay:
When it comes to prototypes, A/B tests, and confirming hypotheses about your product the best way to effectively deliver is actually by writing the fastest, shittiest code you can.
I’m not so sure about production code though.
Gaming the Iron Curtain
The ZX Spectrum in a time of revolution:
Gaming the Iron Curtain offers the first book-length social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, or anywhere in the Soviet bloc. It describes how Czechoslovak hobbyists imported their computers, built DIY peripherals, and discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.
The Healing Power of Javascript | WIRED
I can very much relate to what Craig is saying here.
Revisiting Adaptive Design, a lost design movement (Interconnected)
This sounds like seamful design:
How to enable not users but adaptors? How can people move from using a product, to understanding how it hangs together and making their own changes? How do you design products with, metaphorically, screws not nails?
Google Maps Hacks, Performance and Installation, 2020 By Simon Weckert
I can’t decide if this is industrial sabotage or political protest. Either way, I like it.
99 second hand smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps.Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic
Jeremy Keith & Remy Sharp - How We Built the World Wide Web in Five Days on Vimeo
Here’s the talk that Remy and I gave at Fronteers in Amsterdam, all about our hack week at CERN. We’re both really pleased with how this turned out and we’d love to give it again!
Opinion | It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning - The New York Times
The New York Times is publishing science-fictional op-eds. The first one is from Ted Chiang on the Gene Equality Project forty years in our future:
White supremacist groups have claimed that its failure shows that certain races are incapable of being improved, given that many — although by no means all — of the beneficiaries of the project were people of color. Conspiracy theorists have accused the participating geneticists of malfeasance, claiming that they pursued a secret agenda to withhold genetic enhancements from the lower classes. But these explanations are unnecessary when one realizes the fundamental mistake underlying the Gene Equality Project: Cognitive enhancements are useful only when you live in a society that rewards ability, and the United States isn’t one.
CERN Hack days – Chiteri’s Blog
Martin gives a personal history of his time at the two CERN hack projects …and also provides a short history of the universe.
First Web browser revived during hackathon - YouTube
This is the lovely little film about our WorldWideWeb hack project. It was shown yesterday at CERN during the Web@30 celebrations. That was quite a special moment.