CodeBender Makes it Easy to Program Your Arduino from a Browser

Traditionally speaking you need to download software to your computer if you want to upload a program to your Arduino. CodeBender allows you to code from your browser, share your work to the cloud, and collaborate with others. CodeBender supports uploading to pretty much any Arduino board connected with a USB cable. Within it, you can browse other people's code, upload your own, and store everything you do so you can access it anywhere. It's a nice one-stop shop for all your Arduino coding needs and since you don't need to download anything you can sneak

How Can I Turn Off "Seen By" Messages in Facebook Chat?

More than ever, we live in a read receipt world. Your friends (and enemies) know when you've seen their message. But it doesn't have to be that way in Facebook. There are several extensions that can help you keep your frenemies in the dark. The web apps experts at Stack Exchange offer up some options. When two or more people chat together, "Seen by" appears when one of the participants views the last message. It nice to know your message has been viewed, but it is also an invasion of privacy. How can I disable "Seen by" so that people do not see "Seen by Nicolas"? See the original question. FB Unseen (Answered by swege) The only thing you need to do is block the URL: facebook.com/ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php For Chrome, use the extension FB Unseen which blocks the URL (full disclosure: I wrote this extension). If you want, with a little work you can use almost any adblocker to achieve this. But with FB Unseen you can "mark as read" whatever you want, so you can decide for yourself when the "Seen" flag is set. One drawback of this extension is that all your messages will be marked as unread for yourself, too, and the "unread messages" notification stays visible as long as you do not reply (or explicitly mark it as read). Another drawback: there are ads (which you can disable). Unseenly (Answered by David Verhasselt) I've created a simple Facebook application that uses the Graph API to access your messages and display them in an intuitive way: Unseenly allows you to check your messages without being seen and without having to install a browser extension. Facebook Chat Privacy (Answered by Lukas) Another Chrome extension: Facebook™ Chat Privacy automatically blocks "seen" + "is typing" status confirmations in Facebook Chats and Messages. The extension has overwhelmingly positive reviews at the Chrome web store. Adblock Plus & SocialReviver (Answered by galacticninja) In AdBlock Plusor a similar extension that can use ABP filters, simply add facebook.com/ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php$xmlhttprequest as a custom filter, which will disable the other party from receiving the "seen by" notification. Find helpful instructions on how to do this here. Another option is SocialReviver (available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera), which allows you to customize Facebook in various ways, including disabling "seen by."

Do You Believe a Stranger Will Do the Right Thing?

We see strangers every day, and interact with them more and more because of the internet. If people didn't have a little trust for one another, they wouldn't meet each other to make all kinds of transactions via Craigslist or share personal details online. While we sometimes hear horror stories about what happens when you trust the unknown, the numerous moments of success go unnoticed. So do you trust strangers? In a recent article, the Verge points out that serial and mass murder has declined significantly and researchers think it might have to do with the rise of technology: A 2011 study, "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder," found that the number of serial killers in the United States began rising in the 1960s, peaked in the 1980s, and has been falling ever since. "There is definitely an intriguing connection between the decline of serial killers and the rise of this sharing culture," says Harold [Schecter, a professor at Queens College and a true-crime writer]. "These startups reflect how much our anxieties have eased." Do you feel more comfortable trusting people nowadays, or do you just feel more paranoid? What keeps you safe in the digital era we live in, and do you think a stranger will do the right thing? Tell us.

Learn the Secrets of the Service Industry This Weekend

You can eat out, order coffee, get your car washed, or whatever else and get through life just fine, but several secrets exist in the service industry. Take a little time this weekend to learn them to save yourself time, money, and the occasional headaches. Restaurants If you frequent a restaurant, you probably like the food. That leaves one major variable in your enjoyment: service. You can't always guarantee your waiter will do a great job, but you can do a few things to improve your chances. First, save yourself some money by checking Yelp, Groupon, Amazon Local, and other deal sites prior to dining. I do this before I sit down (or even while I'm eating) and half the time find a really good discount. If you frequent a restaurant, still check regularly. I get coupons for one of my favorite Ethiopian restaurants every time I go. Even if I max out one site, there's another coupon on another site. I just have to keep looking and I save $10-20 off the bill for the entire party. If problems come up, you need to handle them well. Generally that comes in the form of bad food that needs to go back to the kitchen. When that happens, know how to talk to your server without getting some sort of bodily fluid back in your food. It isn't hard—you just need to be nice and not assume they screwed up. A lot of the time, it's you. Finally, you should know what happens when you tip because it doesn't always go to the server directly. Many restaurants use a tip pooling method and split tips evenly amongst the waitstaff rather than hand them off to the people who earned them. That means you could give a waiter a crappy tip for crappy service and it wouldn't really matter. If you get really awful service, you probably want to complain instead. Some restaurants—although this is far less common—don't necessarily provide the entire time to the waitstaff. In some cases it goes to the business. If you want to know where you're tip money goes and how to respond accordingly, ask a restaurant about its practices prior to dining there. Fast Food You have a lot of options at fast food restaurants you may not know about. For starters, many have secret menu items. Here are a bunch we've dug up so far: Panera Bread McDonald's Wendy's Burger King In-And-Out Burger Starbucks Subway Chipotle Jamba Juice Olive Garden Taco Bell As you can see, you can get a lot of special meals at pretty much any chain. Of course, you can make a lot of them at home, too. Customer Service You can't guarantee good customer service when you call a cable company to ask for a discount or tech support because of a problem, but you can up your chances by being a decent human being. Most of the time, anyway. You just need to know how to keep your cool. Most customer service or support agents want to help you, but only if you treat them kindly. If you turn into a monster, don't expect much back in return. Even if you don't have problems, you should still regularly call customer service. A little call can save you a lot of money. If you don't feel like calling, you can also enlist a service to do it for you instead.

Overcome an Understocked Bar By Knowing How to Substitute

If you're mixing up some cocktails at home, but you're missing one of the ingredients, chances are you can still make something tasty with whatever you have to work with. The key is knowing what works as a good substitute. Michael Dietsch at Serious Eats put together an impressive guide on finding substitutes for specific ingredients, or entire cocktails. Here's a taste: If you don't have dry vermouth, try: dry sherry Lillet Blanc Cocchi Americano If you don't have triple sec, try: maraschino cherry liqueur pomegranate liqueur a floral liqueur such as St.-Germain Elderflower Liqueur a spicy liqueur such as Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur He also points out that some drinks like an Old Fashioned can be made with just about any liquor: the other ingredients are more important in getting the right flavor. If stocking a full bar isn't an option for you, the rest of the post is well worth a read.

Modify a Scotch Tape Dispenser to Hold Electrical Tape

You might not need to use it often, electrical tape is a pain to work with when you do. To make things a little easier, try dispensing it from a normal Scotch tape dispenser. Instructables user Joe Bass shows you how it's done. The ridged plastic teeth of a standard tape dispenser won't do much to cut off strips of electrical tape, so step one is to attach a razor blade in their place. Needless to say, you'll want to be careful with the finished product. Once that's done, just add a small screw to keep the tape from falling off the reel, and you're good to go. For complete instructions, check out the source link.

How to Save Money by Ditching All Your Digital Subscriptions (Temporarily)

Ten dollars here, six dollars there. Those cheap subscriptions you have—Netflix, Hulu Plus, whatever—add up. Chances are there are quite a few you don't use, or you've forgotten you have altogether. Here's a relatively painless, easy tip. Take inventory. Go through all the things you subscribe to that cost you $10 or so/month that aren't on a contract. Unsubscribe from all of them. You'll probably be surprised how much those inexpensive recurring charges amount to, and how much you save without them. How many services do you need to stream TV shows, anyway? Give yourself a chance to live without Hulu, Netflix, whatever. Add them back as you need them. You don't, mostly. Doing my own personal inventory, I realize I have a lot of subscriptions I shouldn't be paying for. Like, when the hell did I subscribe to NextIssue? I don't remember the last time I used it to read magazines. Ever since I disconnected Netflix from my TV, I've been forgetting I even have it. I also have DVR and HBO Go, which is downright excessive. Different people get caught in different dead money swamps, and it's easy to totally forget you even have some subscriptions. Maybe you have a bunch of recurring comic book subscriptions that pile up and never get read. Or maybe it's a Newsstand apps, just issues and issues and issues of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair and Wired and Sports Illustrated, never opened, never downloaded, forgotten until the next 12-month billing cycle comes up. Or it could be something as simple as never, ever going to the gym, and needing to come to terms with that instead of blowing hundreds of dollars on a pang of guilt ever night around 6:30PM. Personally, I have a New York Times weekender subscription to the print edition that I can assure you I forget to read at least half the time. And do you reaaaaaally need an ad-free Pandora? It would probably be hard to live without Spotify, and that or Rdio might or whatever music service you use might be something you don't bother trying to do without, but there are plenty of free means to get streaming music—just look how much you can find on Soundcloud or YouTube. You just might be in the same boat. If you are, think about doing this. It's a pain, but it'll end up saving you money, and keeping a little clutter out of your life.