TechnologyIQ

Recently, I had a discussion on Reddit about why someone would opt to use Python over other programming languages. The discussion was pretty good so I decided to write a post about it. First of all, let me give you my thoughts on Python. This is a programming language I love and it can be used in a wide variety of applications, though I agree that all languages have their faults. I do believe it’s a great language for professionals to use, and also for beginners to enter the fascinating world of programming. Read Python is great, but stop using it for every damn project via The Next Web An interesting link found among my daily reading

Learn how to run OpenDataCam on balenaCloud, which adds a number of features to make managing a device (or a fleet of dozens) easy. This guide features deployment, remote configuration, how to use the built-in VPN, a public URL, and monitoring device diagnostics. Read OpenDataCam + balena to "Quantify the World" with AI via Hackster-io An interesting link found among my daily reading

We introduced this concept last year, and have launched three games so far. Our final game of 2019 was SumoBots Battle Royale — where players from anywhere in the world can fight real robots in a battle royale-style arena. The aim of the project was to have the game run semi-autonomously, meaning that the bots could self-reset in between the games, and the arena could run by itself with no human interaction. This was our most complex project to date, and we wanted to share some parts of the build process in more detail, specifically, how we’ve built these robots and hooked them online for people to control remotely. Read Creating an online robot fighting game using Arduino MKR1000 WiFi via Arduino Blog An interesting link found among my daily reading

Earlier this month the Trump administration stripped the CDC of its control over the nation’s Coronavirus data. By insisting that all case reporting be funneled through the White House, the administration further undermined public trust in its pandemic response and tainted any future release of information with the prospect of having been politicized. But incidents like this are symptomatic of a deeper problem, Julia Lane, a professor of public policy at NYU, explains in her new book, Democratizing Our Data: A Manifesto. She argues that the steady decline in data quality produced by the government that we’ve seen in recent years is not just a threat to our information-based economy but the very foundations of our democracy itself. Read Hitting the Books: America needs a new public data system via Engadget An interesting link found among my daily reading

A very geeky link today, but for some of you out there this could be a critical change. Geek On! — Douglas   A couple of weeks ago, Linus Torvalds laid down the law, in a particularly Linusesque sort of way. In a software community where tabs vs. spaces can start religious wars, saying that 80-character-wide code was obsolete was, to some, utter heresy. For more background on how we got here, read [Sven Gregori]’s history piece on Hackaday, and you’ll learn that sliced bread and the 80-character IBM punch card both made their debut in July, 1928. But I digress. When I look at a codebase, I like to see its structure, and I’m not alone. That’s one of the reasons for the Linux Kernel style guide’s ridiculously wide 8-character tabs. Combined with a trend for variable names becoming more and more descriptive, which I take to be a good thing, and monitors’ aspect ratios growing seemingly without end, which I don’t, the 80-column width seems like a relic from the long-gone era of the VT

I built a desktop radiation monitor based on a cheaply available board, added some toggle switches, Nixie tubes and a Raspberry Pi. I was always a fan of the steampunk style, and having also had experience building steam engines in the past, there was only one real direction this project could go. Once I had my radiation detector kit hooked up to my Raspberry Pi running InfluxDB and Grafana, I found myself woodworking, machining, and fabricobbling an enclosure out of mahogany, brass, copper, toggle switches and, because it just had to be done, Nixie tubes. Read the story of the almost year-long journey (*cough* some other stuff cropped up…) I went on to make my steampunk vision a reality below, and if you want to get up and running quickly, find out how to build your own simple one. Read A Steampunk Geiger Counter with Raspberry Pi & Grafana via Hackster.io An interesting link found among my daily reading

While electronics and water don’t generally mix, researchers at Ochanomizu University in Japan have come up with an ephemeral display method that uses floating clusters of bubbles to show messages on a liquid surface. The device, known as UTAKATA, utilizes a line of seven electrodes under Arduino Uno control that activate to form hydrogen bubbles via electrolysis. When arranged properly, these bubbles can be made to produce letters and words, which as shown in the video below, dissipate as they flow downstream in the container. Read This ephemeral display shows messages using floating bubbles via Arduino Blog An interesting link found among my daily reading

{Shan, Shui}* is art-generating code that produces traditional Chinese landscape paintings. It's running here and here and each time you load the page, you'll get a new landscape.   {Shan, Shui}* is inspired by traditional Chinese landscape scrolls (such as this and this) and uses noises and mathematical functions to model the mountains and trees from scratch. It is written entirely in javascript and outputs Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Read Generative Shan Shui landscape paintings via Boing Boing An interesting link found among my daily reading

Recently, my wife’s many-years-old Keurig stopped working. Like any engineer/hacker/maker, my first instinct was to poke around, clean out certain parts, etc. to see if I could fix it, and after some time I did get coffee flowing once again. Along the way, however, I noticed that it was rather nasty inside, and that these machines are not made to be easily be taken apart and serviced. Normally, I’d say this is a bad thing, but when dealing with water plus enough electrical current to raise water to a very high temperature, one can understand why it was made in such a way. So, it was a time for a new unit, which actually looks quite nice on our counter now. The old one, however—with a water tank and means for dispensing it—seemed like a perfect hacking target to turn into a sort of Pi-based gardening setup! Read Raspberry Pi Greenhouse: Raspberry Pi Plant Watering via Arro An interesting link found among my daily reading

Read SlothBot is the cutest way to monitor endangered ecosystems via Input An interesting link found among my daily reading