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1001 Things To Hack Before You Die
There's already 1001 (places to visit|books to read|movies to see|{insert other activities}) before you die. Why not 1001 to hack/make/develop/design/start/attempt before you die that's more HN friendly:
- andre 16y ago1 - register YourName.com 2 - start a blog 3 - learn *SQL 4 - develop a javascript site, (gmail.com) 5 - write your own planning/todo program (because others just don't work) 6 - read, sign up, make at least one post on HN 7 - start an open source software project
- andre 16y ago8 - set up twitter account 9 - poke somebody on facebook 10 - comment on techcrunch story
- ruchi 16y ago11 - Write a book 12 - Fall in love 13 - Donate
- adolfoabegg 16y ago11 - Install LAMP
- mitemitreski 16y agoWhy LAMP just why? :)
- stevelosh 16y ago14 - Get a patch accepted to an open source project. 15 - Version your dotfiles and put them up online for others to learn from. 16 - Write and open source a plugin for your favorite text editor.
- kno 16y ago17- Get some sleep
- andre 16y agolol, good one, or a way to lower the requirement for so much sleep
- anonymouslambda 16y ago17 - Make it through as much of http://projecteuler.net/ http://projecteuler.net/ as you can.
- baguasquirrel 16y ago- Finish "The Art of Computer Programming." - Use the fixed point combinator in Javascript for something. - Make your own bike lights. - Figure out how the monad laws really work. - Write something that makes more than $100 on the App Store. - Figure out how to get the plants in the garden to not die.
- jacobroufa 16y ago18 - Learn proper use of a version control system.
- sgt 16y ago- Learn Forth - Learn Erlang - Learn to play the panflute
- ivanstojic 16y agoOf all the things arbitrary, why a pan flute?
- inetsee 16y ago- Learn to play the electric cello
- Locke 16y ago- Write a video game emulator (any old console or computer platform) - Create a programming language - Restore an old broken down pinball machine - Build a mame arcade cabinet - Write some Interactive Fiction - Learn to make awesome programmatic artwork with something like Processing or Nodebox - Create a roguelike
- Raisin 16y agoIt's like your read from my personal list.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago- Create an editor. - Create an os in the language you designed above.
- stakent 16y agoShip it.
- cing 16y ago-Switch from vim to emacs
- nevinera 16y ago-Switch from emacs to vim
- andre 16y ago- start using emacs or vim
- LordLandon 16y agoIgnore the haters and promote nano!
- mike463 16y agoI've always wanted to switch emacs from elisp to perl. :)
- angadsg 16y ago- compile a linux kernel - overclock/underclock your cpu
- whatrocks 16y ago- Build a windmill
- JonnieCache 16y ago- Program a microcontroller, interface it to both a packet network and some analog sensors.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- temugen 16y agoWell, it looks like the 9 Things To Hack Before You Die are already posted.
- dreaming 16y agoMake a 1001 X to Y list
- revorad 16y agoUpload myself.
- alanh 16y agoCheating!
- Dylanlacey 16y ago- Repair something that isn't meant to be repaired - Make a disposable consumer product into something more useful and enduring - Use something old to create something meaningful for someone you love
- cing 16y ago-initiate new item freeze on your todo list in order to check everything off
- iuguy 16y agoSome of this is hacking in a technical sense, some of this is hacking in terms of modifying your life to get it to be what you want it to be, or to grow yourself. 19 - Harness Zero Point Energy 20 - Publish a paper in a journal 21 - Present at a conference 22 - Hack food, make something new 23 - Modify your body (with something cool like magnets) 24 - Do something legally/morally questionable and get away with it, just enough to make you rethink boundaries but not enough to hurt someone. 25 - Modify your brain chemistry in an expansive way 26 - Build a great group of friends 27 - Put your projects down and spend some time with your family 28 - Learn assembly language 29 - Code an old school demo 30 - Write a cool program on an 8-bit computer 31 - Travel to another continent with a completely different culture and immerse yourself in it. 32 - Learn how to crack (i.e. break into) applications 33 - Learn how to crack (i.e. break copyright and write keygens) software
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- bfung 16y agoeasier to keep count: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdFhNVi1GUVhQNXM0WVpuTDFkOHNjMXc&hl=en&authkey=CIn98vIK https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdFhNVi1... go ahead and add stuff, let me know if permissions are set incorrectly.
- binarymax 16y agoOutput Mandelbrot. Make it interactive. Enter a hacker/code competition. Predict the outcome of a sporting event.
- phamilton 16y agocause an additional security policy to be put in place on your high schools network
- swombat 16y agoI did that. In an Oxford college, to boot.
- Natsu 16y agoCollege, actually. Got them to fix an issue with forgetting to clear the cached AFS credentials when their login program crashed. Also tried to convince them to get people to use SSH instead of telnet, but they took a few years to get around to deploying that and ignored me. In retrospect, the university president was the wrong person to tell; he had no clue what I was even talking about. Mind you, this was in 1998 and more than a few people had already figured out that it's not too hard to listen in to unencrypted traffic on a LAN. I'm assuming that the people who did bad things with that knowledge are the ones who actually got them to change the policy. Also made them change the terms of use that forbade "downloading copyrighted material" to "downloading copyrighted material without permission" given that almost everything online is copyrighted. I also ended up acting as an unofficial helpdesk member just because I was up there chatting to the real people too often. It's always fun to fix problems for people and when they ask how you know so much about the program they're using to point out that, in fact, you've never actually seen or used it before...
- detcader 16y agoAh, jmeter. The whole district was jammed. Two days ISS.
- reinhardt 16y agoDid anyone else read the 1001 in the title as 9 in binary ?
- mitemitreski 16y agoyup :)
- eam 16y ago- Run your own web server.
- pluies 16y agoBuild your own web server. :) Bonus points if you hack the hardware together in the most power-efficient way. Or as small as possible. Or pretty. Or if it makes coffee too.
- mitchdev 16y ago- Make a clone of steve jobs
- gregfjohnson 16y agoI would have assumed the list would be numbered in binary ;-)
- phamilton 16y agoget posted on hack-a-day
- drblast 16y agoSome things I'm glad to have done: 1. Write a Hello World application from scratch. No C library, compiler, linker, nothing. You get a hex editor. 2. Write a non-bootstrapped compiler or interpreter using assembler. 3. Write a program that learns to play a game. 4. Develop a network protocol. 5. Write a web server. You can use the language of your choice, but nothing is allowed except a socket library. 6. Write a platform game that performs at least as well as the original Super Mario Brothers. 7. Design a circuit that has some sort of non-trivial purpose and build it. 8. Write Tetris in Javascript.
- niktech 16y agoYou can also take 1. to the extreme and write a mini-OS from scratch. Bootloader and all. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1605119 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1605119
- jrockway 16y agoOrthogonal. They are using gcc there, which is not the same as his #1.
- jrockway 16y ago1. Write a Hello World application from scratch. No C library, compiler, linker, nothing. You get a hex editor. Does this involve anything more than loading "Hello, world" into memory, setting up the registers/stack in a certain way, and invoking the syscall interrupt? (All the cool stuff happens in your terminal emulator. That's where 0x41 gets turned into the pixels that look like "A" on your screen, after all.)
- angusgr 16y agoAt least part of the "fun" on a loosely modern operating system is learning the nuts and bolts of the executable format and loading conventions. I've never spent much time there, but some of the ideas are laid out well in this two part post: http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/04/libc-free-world-2/ http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/04/libc-free-world-2/ Doing it with _just_ a hex editor (ie writing out the ELF headers and sections yourself) may not be exactly what the commenter did, though. Cos that sounds really tedious. I imagine that even writing "Hello, World" in the simpler way that you describe, on a simpler system (Apple IIe or so), would probably teach me something. I remember trying to write 6502 machine code in hex (no assembler) on my IIe when I was about 10 years old. It never worked then, I wonder if it would work now?
- gregable 16y ago- Write a (simple) web server. - Implement part of a networking stack. - Interface with some piece of hardware in a way it wasn't designed. - Create a browser extension. - Add an easter egg that nobody ever finds. - Code a strategy to a game and compete against other implementations. - Discover a subtle bug in a very well used bit of code.
- Hexstream 16y ago(disclaimer: I'm a bit of an ambitious guy and I probably won't achieve even a "sizeable" portion of this, but I will try) Make my own versions of these pieces of infrastructure in one or more variants of Lisp, using various novel approaches or combining some "old" approaches that are nevertheless not used as much as they should be today, and comprehensively document it all: My own web framework (in progress), window manager, UI toolkit and layout system, 3D engine, video editor, image editor, video and sound codec, emacs-style editor, operating system, kernel, Common Lisp implementation, virtual machine, BIOS, OS bootstrapper. Also, maybe an NES or SNES emulator, for fun and maybe trying to make a full blown modern development environment to make it easy to make whole new games for these consoles instead of just making more or less elaborate hacks to already existing games. Learn to play the piano, guitar and violin. Learn to compose my own music. Not that I expect or count on it, but it would be convenient if a treatment to stop aging appeared while it's not too late for me, cuz I'm pretty sure I'll be out of time before I'm doing what I want to do properly...
- harry 16y agoBuild a giant robot.
- harry 16y agoLarger than a city bus. Oh, and in case someone hasn't seen Jaimie Manzel in all his retro 1990's site glory: http://jamius.com/ http://jamius.com/
- stonemetal 16y agobuild a motorcycle or other vehicle invent a device like this guy http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130890701&ft=1&f=1053 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1308907...
- aberkowitz 16y agoThe Wikipedia page on the Universal Nut Sheller makes up for NPR's lack of technical detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Nut_Sheller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Nut_Sheller The thought that this machine is sometimes custom made to accommodate different environments and plants intrigues me.
- frankus 16y agoWrite a quine (http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm)
- kellishaver 16y agoNotable things I'm proud to have achieved/hacked/made, in no particular order of importance: - Built a HAM radio-vacuum tubes were involved. - Developed a useful library of JavaScript tools - Developed my own MVC web framework - Collaborated on the design of, developed and launched custom child-still tweaking that one for performance - Started a successful business - Be a part of a popular Open Source project - Wired a house - Participated in the saving of a few lives
- enduser 16y ago0000. master the command line 0001. master a keyboard-only text editor (vim/emacs) 0010. master your mind 0011. determine how to help the world the most with the least effort 0100. learn from your mistakes 0101. learn as many programming methodologies as you can 0110. create an awesome sheep for electricsheep 0111. reverse engineer a program from decompiled machine code 1000. write a book worth reading in 100 years
- Ixiaus 16y agoShouldn't 0010 be 0000? I would think mastering your mind would come before mastering any external tool...? Definite up vote for answering a question about what to hack in the spirit of a hacker.
- enduser 16y ago0010 is the true hack. these tasks can be executed in any order--even in parallel.
- jrockway 16y agoYou skipped #4.
- dmuth 16y agoLearn 3D graphics and build a small virtual world. Virtual worlds have always fascinated me, but I've always been a command-line/server guy and never got around to learning the theory/math that goes into doing 3D graphics.
- Aetius 16y agoBefore you die, you absolutely need to create a child. It will be your greatest creation.
- jrockway 16y agoYeah, nobody has ever done that before.
- Gilson_Silveira 16y agoOr you can create a child that solves the 1000 hacks before you die. That's the closer you can get of a high order function that solves that for you :)
- tetha 16y agoI'd say you need to create 2 childs in order to work towards a dominance of hackers on earth.
- HerberthAmaral 16y ago1 - Develop a typesetting language based on markdown + css which can be so good as LaTeX. 2 - Learn Python, Haskell, Lisp, Lua, Ruby and build you own f*cking good language. 3 - Discover what is a monad. 4 - Play with Arduino. 5 - Write a basic kernel from scratch. 6 - Forget about Vim and Emacs. Learn how to capture brainwaves, plug an usb cable on it and do an text editor based on thougths.
- misterbwong 16y agoIn the spirit of the topic... 0001: Learn a functional language well enough to write something of some complexity 0010: Create a product with 100+ users 0011: Sell 100+ products (doesn't have to be the same as 0010) 0100: Get married! 0101: Learn either vim or emacs 0110: Learn Mandarin 0111: Become an expert at something tech *and* something non-tech 1000: Contribute to an OSS project 1001: edit: learned binary. thanks for pointing out my stupidity lol
- themrbluesky 16y ago1000: Learn binary!
- Natsu 16y agoI'd have made that one 0000, personally...
- indrora 16y ago0001: Does F# count? 0010: Done that. the last project I openly released to the outside world now has at least that many users (6x that in downloads): http://dl.qj.net/psp/homebrew-applications/ebootr-v15.html http://dl.qj.net/psp/homebrew-applications/ebootr-v15.html 0011: Nope. 0100: Ditto. 0101: I use gvim and Nano. Sue me. 0110: Did that in high school. 我贏得了比賽 0111: Working on it. 1001: I run a few (ebooter, and my first work on Git: http://github.com/indrora/creed http://github.com/indrora/creed )
- pageman 16y agoyou should have started with "0000:" :)
- inetsee 16y agoBuild your own computer using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Bonus points: Make it capable of reconfiguring itself based on the program it's executing.
- rick_2047 16y agoMy top ten list (I just thought it up now, so this is not my final list): 1. Making my own uC architecture and write it in HDL. 2. Make a lisp machine 3. Hacking a game for a old game console (not an emulator, you have to actually get it working on the physical machine). 4. Experiment with different types of OS on uControllers. 5. Hacking to gather a home automation system. 6. Implement a whole web server in the uController from scratch (means you have to make your own protocol stack and such things). 7. Make a widely used C library. 8. Get my long standing dream of localized electronics kit store to launch. 9. Get a patent on something new 10. Make a super computer cluster from home PC's I know lot of these are very hard but hey I am just 19 and have a whole life ahead.
- postit 16y agoCreate your own computer from scratch
- jolie 16y ago-Do something that warrants its own Wikipedia article.
- webgambit 16y ago-Do enough somethings that you warrant your own Wikipedia article
- pontifier 16y agoA few years ago I came across an old teddy-ruxpin... I thought it would be awesome to build a setup to record custom control tapes... never did it, but I still want to.
- wglb 16y agoGood challenge. Here are some of the things that I have done so far. 1. Write an editor based for card-image files in XPL (for the Sigma 5 RBM system) 2. Write a document processor along the lines of nroff for fixed-width character printers (think Courier). There were at least two of these I believe 3. Write a simulator to estimate the probability of a busy signal for a given call volume and a given number of phone lines. Oddly, when we later compared these results to similar simulations provided by the phone company, the phone company's numbers showed we needed more lines. 4. Write a code generator for an industrial compiler. 5. Write the (rough) equivalent of an IRC channel for AX-25 packet radio DX-spotting network. 6. Write the software necessary for the first real-time QSO-logging system used in a DXpedition. (Used in the YJ8V/YJ8PD trip.) 7. Contribute a very tiny piece of software that is part of a control-system analysis program used to decide where to locate Argonne National Labs. (And I mean really tiny.) First program I wrote for pay. These are just a few of the more fun ones. However, there is one challenge that has captured my imagination over the years. Imagine a final exam of programming skill that has the student in an electronically-locked room with a computer that controls the lock. There are but a few necessities in the room, no internet. The student needs to write a program that will unlock the door. I haven't done this last one exactly, but sometimes it seems like a metaphor for some near-deathmarch projects I have gotten myself into. Current homework includes writing an intercepting proxy in a handful of languages.
- ViKT0RY 16y ago1 - Develop a custom firmware for Playstation 3. 2 - Create a native and fully fuctional distro for Playstation 3. 3 - Achieve 1 and 2 and send a certified post mail to Sony with you happy face on it. 4 - Try to return to the Open source community as much goods as it has given to you.
- elitelinux 16y ago1. learn asterisk 2. Install Haiku 3. Make a Firewall with a xBSD 4. Install linux in Mac/apple 5. Install cool stuff in device with adroid 6. With Backtrack hack your Police Department 7. Help people in a forum 8. F&%k in second life 9. Build a LFS 10. Help someone to be better hacker
- lexinerus 16y agoCreate your own genetic algorithm for generate your own society of virtual beings!