hacks

Engineer unlocks Wii's hidden potential

Correction 7:45 a.m. PST: I got the sensor bar and the Wiimote's duties mixed up. Names notwithstanding, the sensor bar has the infrared LEDs, and the Wiimote actually has the cameras that detect the signals.

I support the hardware-hacking philosophy on principle, but most of the movement's labors have left me uninspired. That all changed when I started seeing the uses that Carnegie Mellon researcher Johnny Chung Lee has found for the Nintendo Wii's infrared remote control.

In a collection of videos, notable for their lucid explanations, the Ph.D. graduate student from CMU's … Read more

Angry worker accused of deleting $2.5 million worth of data

A Florida woman who feared she was about to be fired was accused of deleting seven years of architectural drawings valued at $2.5 million. The woman allegedly saw a want ad from her boss that described her position. Someone entered the office at 11 p.m. that Sunday and apparently spent four hours deleting files. The company owner said the files were recovered.

Read the full story on The Register: Employee's silent rampage wipes out $2.5m worth of data.

Near cyber-war--an inside job

Dmitri Galushkevich, a 20-year-old ethnic Russian living in Estonia, admitted his guilt in launching cyberattacks against Estonia's leading political party's Web site last April. This was one of many attacks against Estonian government and business sites which almost caused a cyber-war between Russia and Estonia. According to authorities, he engineered denial-of-service attacks to protest the move of a World War II statue in Estonia. Galushkevich was fined $1,600.

Read the full story on Yahoo News: Estonia convicts first 'cyber-war' hacker: prosecutors .

Hack iTunes to remove the movie-rental time limit

Update: It appears this may not work after all. And here I thought those Giz guys were crackerjacker hackers.

Renting movies from iTunes? Love it. Having to finish watching a movie within 24 hours of starting it? Not so much with the love. Fortunately, those crafty fellows over at Gizmodo figured out an easy way to turn the clock back, so to speak, thus extending your watchability window.

Basically, if you set your computer's clock ahead a few days (or weeks, or months) before starting the movie, then set it back to normal again, you'll have virtually unlimited … Read more

End of the innocence? The iPhone's first Trojan

Early adopters are an impatient lot, especially Apple boys and girls. With Macworld looming Tuesday (a 3G/GPS iPhone? I will so be in line to get one if or when it comes out) and with reports of impatient iPhoners being hit with a Trojan masked as "leaked" 1.1.3 firmware, you can see that the line between enthusiasm and caution can be thrown to the wind.

While there don't seem to be any lasting or major effects from 1.1.3 Trojan, it made me wonder, when the iPhone is finally opened up for "… Read more

Archos 605 WiFi Linux hack

Some industrious programmers have found a way to hack the Archos 605 WiFi portable video player to run the Qtopia Linux platform. By the looks of it, the Qtopia hack doesn't add much in the way of extra media features (the Archos does pretty well as-is), but it opens the door to developing the Archos 605 WiFi as a more generally useful and configurable tablet PC. The Qtopia hack appears to work on older models of the Archos players as well, although the Archos fifth-generation players seem to be easier to configure.

Personally, I think the Archos 605 WiFi … Read more

Bug Labs: Build your own dream gadget

It's the rare product that excites CNET editors across all categories. The Bug Labs platform, which has been the subject of several conversations around the CNET booth, is one such rarity.

Described as "the Lego of gadgets" by Webware's Rafe Needleman, the Bug Labs platform starts with a minicomputer, the Bug Base, onto which you can snap multiple modules, such as a digital camera or an LCD screen. You can then program your own software to run your custom gadget or download software others have written from the Bug Labs site. Need a GPS-enabled digital camera … Read more

Demented Genius Award: Massimo Banzi, Tinker.it

As you may know, we have a fondness for intelligent people who create unorthodox new works of twisted inspiration. Our Demented Genius Award occasionally goes out to acknowledge these important accomplishments of whimsy and circuitry. Today's award goes to Massimo Banzi, interviewed Friday on NPR.

Banzi, of Tinker.it, uses toy hacking to teach electronics and industrial design at a university in Milan, Italy, and in workshops all over the globe.

For the full story, listen to NPR's interview and watch the video instructing viewers on how to wed a frightful motion-sensing mewling cat to a remote-control submarine … Read more

Episode 614: CyberCommand is go

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