Category Archives: Technology

Technology, The Daily Feed
By

Military Robots Author to Speak

Photo courtesy of
‘i bought the little grey guy on the right’
courtesy of ‘hsingy’

On Tuesday, June 2 at 7:30PM HacDC will host best-selling author Peter W. Singer  for a talk on military robotics and his new New York Times best selling book Wired for War.

Peter Warren Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and he is the youngest scholar named Senior Fellow in the 90-year history of Brookings. His new book looks at the implications of military robotics on war, politics, ethics, and law in the 21st century. Described as “an exhaustively researched book, enlivened by examples from popular culture” by the Associated Press and “awesome” by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, Wired for War made the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list in its first week of release. It has already been featured in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot, and Singer has given presentations on the book to a diverse array of military and civilian audiences.

Crime & Punishment, Technology, The Daily Feed
By

Missing: Hard Drive with Presidential Info

Photo courtesy of
‘Lady of the Archives’
courtesy of ‘M.V. Jantzen’

The Washington Post reports that in the wake this weekend’s “Post Hunt 2,” the National Archives is getting in on some scavenger hunt action of its own.  Just, instead of innocuous puzzles, NARA employees are attempting to solve the disappearance of a hard drive containing, among other things, Secret Service operating procedures and the social security numbers of Al Gore’s daughters. The prize for the person who finds it: the possibility of not serving a lengthy jail sentence.
 
The hard drive contains around a terabyte of information from the Clinton presidency and was a part of a project to digitize the National Archives’ collection. The FBI has opened a criminal investigation but has no firm leads, as of yet.  So, if you see an important looking hard drive lying around, the NARA would appreciate it if you would return it to them without looking at the contents.

Food and Drink, Life in the Capital, Media, Technology, The Features
By

The DC Food Scene: Twitter Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Pret lunch…’
courtesy of ‘Matt Seppings’

So… I joined Twitter. I know, right? I did it in the name of research for this story, and have liked it so much I think I’ll stay for good. (That may or may not be a hint for you to start following me, cause that makes me feel important and fuzzy and stuff.) So I come at this with an outsider-turned-quasi-insider perspective.

It seems recently all the DC food blogs I follow have gotten on Twitter, and are busy building a little community for themselves (ourselves?) complete with a list of the who-is-who. But us internet-types are always early arrivals, so the other half of my story is who else in the DC food scene, namely DC restaurants and more namely, which DC Chefs, are on Twitter. And then I’ll muse a bit about what twitter can do, and what others hope it can do, for the DC food scene and the betterment of our local food offerings. Ready? Let’s do it. Continue reading →

Business and Money, Media, Technology
By

The Newspaper Roundup

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘erin m’

If the doomsayers are to be believed, the above picture is the only way people are going to be experiencing print-based newspapers in the near future: as a museum piece. The future’s not quite that simple, nor is the current situation in the news reporting world as cut and dried as you might think.

You’d have good reason to think it’s pretty simple, even after the massive amount of discussion about it in our town last week. Maybe because of the discussion last week. If you somehow managed to miss it all, we had radio shows and Senate hearings and, of course, the various kibitzing in the print media itself. Somehow, through it all, everyone managed to say things that were mostly true but the picture didn’t add up to what they claim it did.

Let’s do a little walk through what was done and said, supplement it with what’s come from others, and try to apply a slightly critical eye to it all, shall we? Continue reading →

Technology, The Daily Feed
By

No Really, There’s Gonna Be a Rocket

I feel like we’ve been teasing you all week, and I’m totally sorry, but there’s finally some good news on the rocket front. NASA has re-re-re-rescheduled the launch tonight for 7:35. So, turn to the southeast right around then, and watch the Minotaur rocket take TacSat-3 into orbit. The Minotaur’s got a bright-burning rocket motor, so it should be visible despite the fact that sunset’s not til 8:08pm.

Technology, The Features, We Green DC
By

We Love DC Green: Getting 70 MPG on GW Parkway

Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company
Wayne explains more, courtesy of Ford Motor Company

I have to admit–when I think of driving on the George Washington Parkway, fuel efficiency isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. I think more of the feel of the car rolling along the gentle hills and curves, of sneaking glances out at the river and up at the thick green web of leaves, and of blasting the music.

But last Saturday, I got to experience the parkway from a whole new perspective. The crew from the 1,000 Mile Challenge was in town, attempting to eke 1,000 miles from a single tank of gas in a Ford Fusion Hybrid, and world record hypermiler Wayne Gerdes was giving driving lessons.

The idea behind hypermiling is that the way you drive can greatly affect your gas mileage, and that by using special driving techniques you can coax more mileage out of each gallon of gas. Wayne and the Challenge team proved this point nicely. The Challenge began on Saturday morning at Mt. Vernon, with team members driving the Challenge car round the clock. That one tank finally ran out at 1,446 miles.

Meanwhile, I hopped in a replica with Wayne, PR maven Nicole, and a guest from Earth911.com to find out how hypermiling works. Continue reading →

Comedy in DC, Night Life, Technology, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

When Text Messages Go Bad

Photo courtesy of
‘SLVR’
courtesy of ‘Max Klingensmith’

Oh, text messaging. Sure, some people think texting is the end of society. Some others think that it’s just a gateway to ratings (Um, how many stories does Fox 5 need to do on Sexting? Is their 10pm news editor just a perv?), but really, what texting is, is comedy. Enter Texts From Last Night. Better yet, they’ve got them segregated by area code, so you can read DC’s finest hilarious texts including my favorite:

(202): And then I said “flip over. I want to show you something i learned in Afghanistan.”

Of course, there 703, 240, 301, but oddly, no 571. What, does no one text funny things from Virginia?

24 in DC, Fun & Games, Technology, The Features, WTF?!
By

Amateur Spies (Like Us)

Photo courtesy of Don Whiteside
WLDC Stealth, courtesy of Don Whiteside

Unless this is your first time here you’re well aware that we’ve become a little obsessive over Jack Bauer’s tour through our city. We’ve got 15 17 hours worth of 24 recaps under our belt and fully intend to laugh (in order to fight off the tears) through the remaining 9 7 hours of Hollywood’s molestation of our geography. (Yes, Tiff, I suck at math.) So really, about the last thing we needed was to be further encouraged.

Enter the International Spy Museum.

The folks over at the museum’s retail store sent us some toys to play with, after having been entertained by our 24 recaps. So early in March, three items arrived in plain brown boxes by an unmarked panel truck. In the middle of the night.

After some email haggling, jovial threats and bickering, the WLDC staff managed to split up the loot gifts and proceeded to play with them: a micro-cam recorder, a ninja sword umbrella and night vision goggles. And now, we’re going to tell you all about it.

Continue reading →

Life in the Capital, News, Technology, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

Maryland Students, Legislators Still Tussling over Film

Photo courtesy of
‘White Booby on Letterbox plateau’
courtesy of ‘drewavery’

I figured after the Maryland Legislature threatened not to fund U-MD for next year, the screening of Pirates 2 was all over but the crying (and the mopping, and the disinfecting), but that appears to not be the case. Apparently a group of students is intending to hold a screening anyway, and hold a free speech discussion before the movie. Of course, that means the legislators who threatened to withhold funding are doing so again.

I’ll give you one guess which party they belong to.

Technology, The Daily Feed, The Mall
By

Mars Vehicle on the Mall!

Picture 3.png

I have no idea how I missed this. But, yesterday, you might’ve seen the Mars Capsule, the Orion, on the Mall over near Air & Space. It’s pretty similar to some of the gear we’ve seen before now, specifically dating back to the Apollo era, but it’s still pretty freaking cool. It seats six, or double what the old era stuff carried.

Business and Money, Media, News, Technology, The Features
By

Geek Corner: The Kindle and Local Newspapers

Photo courtesy of
‘Kindle 2 Homepage’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

I fell in love the Amazon Kindle 2 when I visited my folks in Arizona this Spring. Reading a book on the svelte device was remarkably similar to grabbing a nice paperback, and settling in on the beach. I didn’t think that it would be so easy to read a book in any other format, but the Kindle’s proved me wrong. In addition to being a book reader, though, it’s also a portable terminal for a number of newspapers and magazines. The issues are delivered silently overnight via Whispernet, the cell network attached to the Kindle, which never fails to deliver an issue, never drops it in a puddle or forgets to the tie the bag shut, and always remembers where you live. So, what’s available for your average DC person?
Continue reading →

Technology, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
By

Empty victories

Photo courtesy of
‘layers’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Today’s WaPo includes a story about WMATA deciding to put their information up on the web. The rational response from someone who isn’t a transit foamer or mega-nerd is  “isn’t it there already?” Yes, though not in the universal interchange format that would allow anyone with the will and ability to massage and repackage it – till now you’ve had to make use of WMATA’s website and tools rather than 3rd party options like using the transit calculator built into Google Maps.

Now that they’ve done this…. you’ll likely still have to use WMATA’s website. Whys and wherefores after the jump.

Continue reading →

Technology, The Daily Feed
By

Ignite Comes to DC on 14 May 09

ignite-dc-logo.jpg

Ignite DC will be hosting their first meeting on 14 May 09 at the new Artomatic Location at 55 M St SE right across from the Navy Yard Metro. So, get your five minutes and twenty slides in order, and work on what you want to tell DC. Tell us about your art project. Or maybe about your idea for a great new website. How about a new approach to lobbying the government. Great way to meet all kinds of cool folks. We’ll see you there!

55 M St SE
Washington DC 20003

Technology, The Daily Feed, The Hill
By

Hacking The Government (For Good, Not Evil)

Photo courtesy of
‘Open Government Data Session Tack-on Free For All’
courtesy of ‘illustir’

The hackers and do-gooders at Sunlight Labs are coordinating their first ever Open Government hackathon from March 29th to March 31st. Although the event takes place in Chicago (at PyCon2009 at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare hotel) there will also be an online presence, so those of you interested in making that rather large DC employer known as the federal government more open and accessible can still take part.

The nature of the sprint will be fairly freeform, two Sunlight Labs members will be on hand guiding users that want to contribute to opening up the government. Users can come to the sprint without any background and we would help coordinate them and place them on a project where there skills would be useful (there is always a ton of scraping that needs to be done, building mini-web apps to showcase gov’t data, etc.)

Technology, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

Arlington Turns on the Red Light Cameras

Photo courtesy of
‘Drafthouse at dusk’
courtesy of ‘wfyurasko’

How hard up are counties in Virginia for revenue? Well, ask Arlington, they’re turning the red light cameras back on. Each ticket for running a red light is $50 for the county coffers, and doesn’t bother with pesky moving violations or points on the license. They’ll be video cameras this time, and they’ll start with four on Lee Highway, and one at Glebe & Fairfax.

Business and Money, Technology, The Daily Feed
By

Technovultures, Hold Off

Photo courtesy of
‘Circuit City going out of business’
courtesy of ‘F33’

It’s still too early for the crazy deals at now-liquidating Circuit City. I went by the location in Bailey’s Crossroads off Columbia Pike, looking for a plug adapter for our impending trip to London. I figured we might be getting into crazy-deal territory, since it’s been about a month since they let the liquidators take over and start to clear out the stuff. Most of the stuff was between 10% and 30% off their already high prices. There aren’t any super deals to be had yet. Check back in a couple weeks.

News, Special Events, Technology, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

ShmooCon Day 1 – Moose Spotting in D.C.

The Shmoo GroupYes boys and girls, it’s the annual start of the conference season for hackers, geeks, nerds and security people (and those are not mutually exclusive titles). ShmooCon, in it’s fifth year, has grown to 1500 attendees in an effort to spread the gospel about information and physical security and other novel topics that you’d be surprised to see any any con. While last years’ con had interesting neighbors (a CosPlay convention), the sheer size of this years has people scrambling to see how to make a homebrew UAV (members of HacDC), how the Srizbi BotNet was taken down (aka “The Day The Spam Stopped“), how your local Home Depot is selling you insecurity (“How To Defeat the Kwikset SmartKey“) and the keynote speaker, Matt Blaze, more famously known for helping defeat the use of the Clipper Chip and open up the government’s attempt at putting encryption backdoors into almost everything. There are some great talks planned for Saturday, which we’ll cover on “Day Two”, but if you’re in the Woodley Park area and see a lot of black t-shirted individuals crossing the street, trust me, they won’t hurt you…they just want your base. (If you want to view past conferences, the videos are located here – c’mon learn a little bit!)

Life in the Capital, Technology, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

Some Days Call For Quality Profanity

Photo courtesy of
‘brown is the new clever’
courtesy of ‘solidstate.’

Some days just call for quality profanity.

You know, the kind that peels paint from walls, or causes old ladies to blush and then hit you with their handbags. Or maybe the kind that caused your mom to get out the extra large bar of soap to wash out your mouth. But some days, well, some days require elegant profanity. The kind from a previous era.

Or, from, say, the mouth of Barack Obama (warning, NSFW language in audio and text).

That’s the kind of day I’m having.