"retro emulator" entries

Four short links: 10 November 2011

Four short links: 10 November 2011

Access Over Ownership, Retro Programming, Replaying Writing, and Wearable Sensors

  1. Steve Case and His Companies (The Atlantic) — Maybe you see three random ideas. Case and his team saw three bets that paid off thanks to a new Web economy that promotes power in numbers and access over ownership. “Access over ownership” is a phrase that resonated. (via Walt Mossberg)
  2. Back to the Future — teaching kids to program by giving them microcomputers from the 80s. I sat my kids down with a C64 emulator and an Usborne book to work through some BASIC examples. It’s not a panacea, but it solves a lot of bootstrapping problems with teaching kids to program.
  3. Replaying Writing an Essay — Paul Graham wrote an essay using one of his funded startups, Stypi, and then had them hack it so you could replay the development with the feature that everything that was later deleted is highlighted yellow as it’s written. The result is fascinating to watch. I would like my text editor to show me what I need to delete ;)
  4. Jawbone Live Up — wristband that sync with iPhone. Interesting wearable product, tied into ability to gather data on ourselves. The product looks physically nice, but the quantified self user experience needs the same experience and smoothness. Intrusive (“and now I’m quantifying myself!”) limits the audience to nerds or the VERY motivated.
Four short links: 15 June 2011

Four short links: 15 June 2011

Hacker Fun, GameBoy in Javascript, Global Mobile Data Prices, and Shackled Science

  1. HackerTyper — finally, a way to type like they do in the movies. (via Mark Jason Dominus)
  2. GameBoy Emulator in Javascript — I continue to be astonished at what can now be emulated/written in Javascript. GameBoys are classics for retro game programming and there are plenty of toolkits for creating games for desktop systems. I wonder how long until the coding kits move to the browser too…. (via Andy Baio)
  3. Pay As You Go SIM Data Wiki — wiki attempting to list all the prices you can expect to pay around the world for data SIMs. Travellers, take note. (via Nelson Minar)
  4. Science Shackled by IPR (Guardian) — it is estimated that some 20% of individual human genes have been patented already or have been filed for patenting. As a result, research on certain genes is largely restricted to the companies that hold the patents, and tests involving them are marketed at prohibitive prices. We believe that this poses a very real danger to the development of science for the public good. (via Gabriella Coleman)
Four short links: 6 June 2011

Four short links: 6 June 2011

Paper App, Retro Net Simulation, Games Creator, Beginning Large-Scale Machine Learning

  1. Turning Receipts into Paper Apps (BERG London) — I love the idea of the modern web app sensibility bleeding back into the world, the same way classic offline design has informed online.
  2. Telehack — an amazing interactive reconstruction of the early net, part nostalgia part game part simulation. Check out the README for more details. (via Andy Baio)
  3. Stencyl — free Flash games creation tool. Brilliant because they’re creating and owning a corresponding market for in-game assets (icons, sounds, etc.). (via Andy Baio)
  4. Introductory Machine Learning Resources (Quora) — collection of pointers for beginners. (via Joshua Schachter)
Four short links: 25 April 2011

Four short links: 25 April 2011

Healthcare Data, C64 Emulator, Python Machine Learning, and Startup Success Stats

  1. E-Referral Evaluation Interim Findings — in general good, but note this: The outstanding system issues are an ongoing source of frustration and concern, including […] automated data uptake from the GP [General Practitioner=family doctor] PMS [Patient Management System], that sometimes has clearly inaccurate or contradictory information. When you connect systems, you realize the limitations of the data in them.
  2. c64iphone (GitHub) — the source to an iPhone/iPad app from the store, released under GPLv3. It incorporates the Frodo emulator. Sweet Freedom.
  3. mlpy — machine learning Python library, a high-performance Python package for predictive modeling. It makes extensive use of NumPy to provide fast N-dimensional array manipulation and easy integration of C code. (via Joshua Schachter)
  4. What is The Truth Behind 9 Out of 10 Startups Fail? (Quora) — some very interesting pointers and statistics, such as Hall and Woodward (2007) analyze a dataset of all VC-backed firms and show the highly skewed distribution of outcomes. VC revenue averages $5 million per VC-backed company. Founding team averages $9 million per VC-backed company (most from small probability of great success). The economically rational founding team would sell at time of VC funding for $900,000 to avoid the undiversified risk. (via Hacker News)