Seth Puckett - @sethpuckett
DC Snoop
I used public data from the DC Board of Elections to make a proof of concept search engine with names, addresses, etc. of every registered voter in DC. Note: The search service is currently disabled to the public and will probably stay that way. It’s kinda creepy. I mostly want to talk about the responsibility and care that should be taken in regards to privacy when releasing “open data”.
Holy crap! You can search for any voter with the data open on DC gov. Name, birthday, address number.
Public voter data available as a very large PDF file, which Seth parsed using custom C# code and regular expressions.
Martha Grant
https://womenonlywonderwoman.eventbrite.com
We wanted a Woman Only Wonder Woman showing here in DC - this is how we made it happen - and turned it into a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood!
Shared costs between herself and 7 other co-sponsors in case the event bombed.
For movie tickets (and many other fund raisers?), $20 is a good price point.
Apparently AMC will let you do whatever you want if you buy out every seat in a theater.
They sold tickets through fearless fundraisers and several other venues, and were able to sell out as of June 15th!
Travis Hoppe - @metasemantic
https://thoppe.github.io/text-blending/HnT_presentation.html
https://github.com/thoppe/text-blending
RNN that blends the work of multiple authors together. Watch Johnathan Swift descend into the madness of HP Lovecraft in the same paragraph!
Travis trained several RNN’s to mimic the writing style of a few famous authors, and then used these neural networks as bots to randomly generate new texts. Then, he combined the bots to create text that would be sort of like a mix of two writing styles.
Olivia Cheng - @heyits0livia
OpenPuppies! All the puppies when you need them!
Hit space bar and a new puppy animated gif is shown!
Imgur provides a mp4 version of all gifs. Pronounced (jiff).
Open puppies is great for bad days
https://github.com/heyitsolivia/secretpuppies
Sam Agnew - @SagnewShreds
Let’s play a game together!
Sam put together a clone of “twitch plays pokemon” which interfaces with texting, and had hack and tell play Pokemon with him.
Sam named the “rival” character after Jess Garsson, co-organizer of H&&T. The group made it to Prof. Oak and chose a pokemon.
After grabbing everyone’s phone number via Pokemon he promised to send a link in a text to a blog article on how to do this yourself.
Jess Garson - @jessicagarson
https://github.com/JessicaGarson/laser-cut-art
Used a laser cutter to print some art she made.
Jess used to do art when she was an angry teenager, but now she’s cool but her mom wants some art. She used illustrator to make some cool drawings, and used a laser cutter printer to send it out. Can print in color?!
Jared Nielsen - @jarednielsen
http://jarednielsen.com/pictorial-st-louis/index.html
Hacked together a non-geographical story map using a Library of Congress image collection, ‘Pictorial St. Louis’, and LeafletJS.
There exists an extremely high detailed hand-drawn map of St. Louis, used LeafletJS to view it all.
github.com/nielsenjared/pictorial-st-louis
James
Desktop metallurgy: Part 2
He totally did make metal this time, in his own words.
How to crush hematite. Desktop chemistry. By adding padding of from the box of the 3D printer and putting it in his bathroom it was quiet enough to run in his bathroom. Made 1/10th of a gram of (iron and hematite?)
Hematite to iron?
Announcements
David Reed - @xDavidReed
Not presenting–just an announcement:
Hack & Tellers are invited to a book club meeting about what to do when your job wants you to lie. Book is “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” by Leonard Wong and Stephen J. Gerras, and it’s open access courtesy of your government
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1250.pdf
The meeting is July 19. More info and register for free at
https://www.meetup.com/Center-for-Public-Administrators/events/240612354/