Computer security expert Jacob Appelbaum and renowned computer scientist Donald Knuth demonstrate the recursive homeboys principle.

current iteration:

“We’re recursive homeboys this year, Don.”
“Nested and recursive parens. … We can square it every year.”

previous iteration:

“Oh wait, let me stand behind you. Nested Parens”
“Don, do you mind if I put this on my home page?”
“Gosh no, you’re my homeboy after all!”
“Nested Parens”

The shirt Jacob is wearing in the photo is “Knuth Is My Homeboy” by Geekz Shop. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the shirt go to support the EFF and the FSF.

Has Donald Knuth got your back? Computer scientists need groupies too.

Bold two colour screen print featuring the father of the analysis of algorithms. Is this the Art in the Art of Computer Programming? No

The image on the t-shirt is based on a 2005 photo Jacob shot of Donald.

photos by Jacob Appelbaum

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Last week on The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien interviewed Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of the USB port, who was recently portrayed by an actor in an Intel Nerd Rock Stars commercial. Later Conan recreated the commercial with the real Ajay.

via Engadget

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guest post by Burstein!

The hackerspace Noisebridge is one of San Francisco’s cultural and artistic gems. Its members have contributed a wide variety of art, hacks and local culture.

Noisebridge is a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and of course, learning. Noisebridge is also more than a physical space, it’s a community with roots extending around the world. We help people build neat and awesome things.

On Friday, October 2nd, these über-makers and geeks are having an open house for their one year anniversary that will show off what they have done and can do. This alone is worth the price of admission, which is free. Things to see include:

The Brain Machine (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Compass Vibro-Anklet (which you can learn to make at noisebridge)

A Makerbot Robot (which can be used at noisebridge)

Also at the event will be the Reverse Engineering Bar with only the geekiest of drinks and music by DIY-band Corpus Callosum and Cally McMorrow, circuit bender of legend.

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The latest xkcd comic nails it with their Tech Support Cheat Sheet flow chart for “not computer people”.

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photo by Scott Beale

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day to all the awesome sys admins out there who keep our servers running. We would like to give a special shout out to Laughing Squid Web Hosting sys admin Frank Escamilla.

Here’s helpful advice on the proper use of the System Administrator’s valuable time.

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guest post by Burstein!

Although the tag line for Dork Yearbook is “the way we wish we weren’t,” I find these photos exceptionally sweet and endearing. They truly take me back to my excitement of going over to my friend’s house for a sleep over where we would dissemble his 486 and pretend we were adults on BBSes.

Joel Johnson began Dork Yearbook as a series of posts on Boing Boing Gadgets and they were so successful that he turned it into its own Tumbler blog.

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Pieter Woudt (212-BIG-BOLT) designed a really cool “Enter” doormat that is available through Kikkerland. Maybe he’ll make an “Esc” mat for the way out.

via swissmiss

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“Computer Software in Plain English”, the latest video by Common Craft, explains how operating systems and software programs work with your computer.

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guest post by RICK!

Joe Lifrieri, at Hugs For Monsters, created confrontational and extremely funny splash pages for visitors viewing his site in Internet Explorer 6. This is what half-ass PNG support and CSS compliance does to fragile developers.

images via Hugs For Monsters

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Kenny Frankland (Tin Spider) created a really cool animated music video for the drum ‘n’ bass song “Printer Jam” by Mistabishi from their new album “Drop” (Hospital Records).

via Ed Hunsinger

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guest post by RICK!

Our friends from monochrom are hosting a release party for their new video game Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Sector II at Chez Poulet this Saturday, March 7th.

The computer game is a tribute to the proud yet imperiled republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf»), the last existing appendage republic of the USSR. The tiny enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding “Republic of Austria” or with the Fortress “European Union”.

The game will even feature pseudo-celebrity NPCs:

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector II features Special Non Player Guest Characters:

Jello Biafra, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Emmanuel Goldstein, Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis, David ‘DaddyD’ Dempsey, Kyle Machulis, MC Frontalot, Eddie Codel, Irina Slutsky, Christian ‘plomlompom’ Heller, Jason Scott Sadofsky, Hans Bernhard, Robert Stachel (maschek) — and many more.

There will speeches, Soviet science fair and a proletariat baking competition: Cake for the Common Man. Revolts crushed, potatoes mashed.

Ticket Info: $5 entry, bring your passport for free Vodka.

More info on Upcoming and Facebook.

UPDATE: Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Sector II is now available for download and here are some photos from the release party.

image via monochrom

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David Prager and Mauricio Balvanera of Revision3 stopped by the 1234567890 Day celebration at 21st Amendment on Friday, making a video about the event. They started to ask me what Unix time was, but then I saw BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen at the bar and suggested that he would probably be able to explain it much better me.

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Tomorrow, Friday, February 13th at exactly 23:31:30 UTC the Unix timestamp will hit 1234567890 seconds from midnight January 1st 1970, the moment when time began on the Unix operating system (aka the Unix Epoch). 1234567890 Day events are being planned around the world to celebrate this historic occasion. Here’s the countdown clock.

In San Francisco, the celebration takes place at 2:31 PST (1 hour early for drinks) at 21st Amendment.

comic by xkcd

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Joe Mackenzie has created The HAL Project, a fantastic tribute to HAL 9000 the AI enhanced computer aboard the spaceship Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Make sure to check out Joe’s amazing HAL screensaver, I’m running it now.

via Daring Fireball

image via The HAL Project

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She’s Geeky, a technology unconference for women, takes place January 30-31 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. See the website, blog & wiki for more info.

She’s Geeky is a neutral, face-to-face forum for women who like to geek out about all kinds of things: computers, science, math, design, robotics, web 2.0, .etc.

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I’ve been using Dropbox, which lauched in September, to do secure file syncing between multiple computers, both Mac and PC (it also works with Linux). It’s by far the best hosted file synching solution that I’ve used so far. I also use it in combination with 1Password to securely sync passwords between my Macs. It works flawlessly.

Dropbox is also great for general file storage (it comes with 2GB for free or 50GB if you upgrade for $9.99/month) and to share your files with other people.

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Today is the 40th anniversary of The Mother of All Demos presented by Douglas C. Engelbart on December 9th, 1968 at Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. The demo essentially gave birth to the PC, laying the groundwork for the next four decades of personal computing as well as giving a glimpse of what was to come with the internet. It featured the first public use of a computer mouse, as well as many other new innovations including dynamic file linking, object addressing, hypertext and networked audio and video conferencing.

You can watch the complete demo online via Special Collections of Stanford University or on YouTube as a 9 part series.

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

More Coverage:

- San Francisco Chronicle

- Wired

image via Christina Engelbart and the Bootstrap Institute

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“The Matrix Runs on Windows” by CollegeHumor

via Jason DeFillippo

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“Dot Matrix Revolution” is wonderful pixel art animated history of computers from 1951 through today created by SUPERBROTHERS with music by Jim Guthrie.

via Drawn!

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guest post by Johannes Grenzfurthner

“KRFTWRK” is a socio-political statement and an ironic comment on current problems like the production and waste of electricity in industrial states, as well as the obesity and lack of exercise of their populations.The aim of “KRFTWRK” is to create a consciousness with regard to these topics by artistic measures.

The project consists of actions taking place in real as well as in virtual space. The most important elements are the staging of a company, the internet-based simulation of a global electricity network, and the realisation of power producing sculptures.

“KRFTWRK” is planning and realising a new generation of industrial plants, which produce electricity by means of muscle-power and chemical processes in the human body. For example, special workout devices operate generators and at the same time depict usable sculptures. Additionally, a community will be founded, which communicates and supports the content of the project. “KRFTWRK”, a work in progress since 2006, is situated in the fields of architecture, digital media, and the fine arts.

“KRFTWRK” will be featured at the Paraflows Festival in Vienna, Austria.

photo via “KRFTWRK”

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