Saturday, February 1, 2014

Favorite Websites: Hack A Day.

It is the good kind of hacking... Most of the time.

Hacking does not mean breaking the law. 
Hack A Day is a site dedicated to "Hacking", it covers all kind of fun projects that involve technology and Hacking culture. Some of the projects that Hack A Day has published are...




Hack A Day also posts series, such as Retrotechtacular.




Hack A Day covers all kinds of projects at all levels of experience. It doesn't matter if you are interested in building a robot or looking for a good science fair project Hack A Day probably has covered it. 

Scorecard
The Rating uses G, PG, PG-13, and R while the other categories use A for the best that I know of,B for good but others might be better,C is average, D below average, and F is just terrible. 
  • Rating PG-13 I wish that I could give it a G, but in the past Hack A Day covered some drug use based hacks as well as some that have more sexual content than some people are comfortable with. Honestly the total number of none family friendly posts is under ten but that is enough to keep me from recommending it to everybody. I am hoping that the new owners will go in a more family friendly route. The other reason is many of these Hacks involve soldering and power tools which requires adult supervision. 
  • Quality A Hack A Day carefully selects the projects that it posts so they usually include very good documentation. 
  • Community C+ The community is not as bad as some, but you can get some rather rude comments from people who do not think a hack is worthy.
  • Depth A  Hack A Day has not fear of going deep and most of the instructions are very complete.
  • Overall B I would love to give it an A, but the less than generous culture of the commenters and the few drug related hacks keep prevent it. I feel It is still a great site and well worth visiting. 

My thoughts on Hack A Day.

I really enjoy Hack A Day, it is a great educational resource as well as great fun. The one thing that bothers me are the few drug hacks that are on the site. There are only three of those hacks out of hundreds of posts, but they are enough to make schools ban it, company HR departments worry,  and for parents to not want their teens to go to the site. That is a real shame because so many of the posts are just great. I know some people support legalization of some drugs. I am not saying they are right or wrong, but that content is enough to keep Hack A Day to be a website for everybody and that is a shame. I will still read it everyday because I love the projects and as an adult I can decide what is appropriate and what is not. 

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