Hack-A-Day Extra

xbox

Yes, I was able to get an Xbox 360 on launch day. No, it wasn’t actually hard for me to get one either so I’ll spare you my story. I’ll probably sell it for a Playstation 3 when that is released, but I felt it was necessary to buy one on the first day since I’ve been missing out on all of the PSP homebrew fun. I’ll be doing a separate Xbox 360 post (with crash pictures), but if you’ve got specific questions you’d like me to answer put them in the comments.

The Folding@HOME team is still plowing ahead. They recently completed 4 million points and will become a top 100 team in less than a week. Find out more at the team forum. If you are going to be back at your parents’ house for Thanksgiving, don’t forget to start their machine folding.

We’ve moved from #96 to #86 on the Feedster Top 500

I don’t know why everyone is getting excited about MacDevCenter figuring out
how to use a generic AV cable with an
iPod video
. Hack-A-Day reader [Mark Question] figured out how to
use an iBook cable
and I mentioned how to
use a generic
cable
weeks ago.

Bruce Schneier wonders why antivirus companies have been so
slow in response to the Sony DRM rootkit. I find it
especially odd since they responded quickly to the PSP
downgrader
which doesn’t even affect PCs. The Microsoft Anti-Malware Engineering Team added the
rootkit signatures to Microsoft
AntiSpyware last Thursday
.

Ladyada has started selling
SpokePOV kits.

Second Amendment launched a pumpkin 4331.72 feet at this year’s
Punkin Chunkin World Championship [via
WMMNA]

Also from WMMNA: Old photo of treadle powered
bicycle rollerskates and
Sony QRIOs dancing to Beck’s Hell Yes.
They’ve been seen dancing before, but this is to music you’ve heard of.

[grayskies] was concerned about Digg ripping off stories from
us
. It doesn’t bother me if you link to the
daily story
since you saw the link here first. Digg is a great source of traffic (and hopefully new readers), but
if you’re taking the link and using our text for the description,
gamer31, that’s wrong.

[Bill Meara] and a couple other HAMs have started the
Soldersmoke podcast to talk about their homebrew radio projects.

[sparr] says that KB Toys will have a JuiceBox bundle for $25 on Black
Friday. It includes the MP3 player, which you will need to run Linux
or other projects.

[Wildoman]’s PSP speaker mod Was the power horn
really needed?

[mike] is hoping to do homebrew galvanic vestibular
stimulation
and is collecting links on his site. GVS is used to
remotely control humans.

[Walter Schreppers]’s MythTV LCD display

We covered how-to resurrect a hard drive, but you
should check out [Barry]’s videos if you want to really
destroy a drive
.

[Ben Jackson] built a PCI interface for a Xilinx CPLD

[Nick Lott]’s AVR Butterfly based MP3 player

[Jason] Has written a series of articles on
integrating Google Maps into web services.

[Clay]’s
corrugated ghetto blaster was built for mixed
media sculpture class. It contains a Discman, some cheap speakers and an auxiliary input jack; the buttons are
functional.

[Jeffery Alan] has a good method for mounting a Christmas
tree securely
.

[ad] has a quick list for how to keep
your pages from getting axed by content filters
. He forgot “Don’t put the word ‘hack’ in your URL”. I’m sure a lot
of people that read my resume can’t reach Hack-A-Day.

[Andrew] has extensive notes on Perl, SQL, and Web Publishing
Security
.

[h-tech] sent in links for connecting
Gamecube,
Playstation,
N64,
SNES, and
Genesis controllers to your PC.

[Andrew]’s review of Microsoft BOB for those of
you who never encountered the fabled resource gobbling beast in person.

[Clinton Mann] builds a picture frame from a hard
drive
.

[Steve] sent in an interesting site on
breaking CAPTCHAs. Here is their
OCR research blog.

[Isaac Huang] pointed out a utility for finding out
what’s eating up your
iPod disk space
. Excluding videos I think KMFDM is taking up the largest chunk on mine.

Bug-A-Day Seems like bug every 5 seconds to me. [Gert]

An overkill method for keeping your router from
overheating
[steve]

Javier Sanchez Merina’s transformable four-seat sculpture.
[edgar] says the BMW seats were cheap at the junkyard because of limited
demand.

[brady]’s homemade flamethrower uses argon to pressurize
the fuel supply.

[Brent Riley] put a full sized desktop in his Neon.

Controlling lights using .NET It’s
on MSDN, but it’s nice to know they consider us an
essential link. [Mike]

[Sam Krupa] has a guide for installing Linux on the iPod
Nano
.

Keyboard + skateboard = [DarkJimmy]’s Skeytboard

The Soft Robot uses a deformable body
to move [xev]

Using sound for an archery chronograph [Liam]

[Nick] stuffed his broken clamshell into an Altoid’s
tin
. Freeweb’s ads won’t let me cache the page; goodbye bandwidth.

[krome]’s wide angle sector
antenna

Links are always appreciated

22 thoughts on “Hack-A-Day Extra

  1. do you think its worth buying an xbox 360 for a casual gamer? i dont play games much, but it couldn’t hurt to have another dvd player and one of my computers is a media center one, so is it worth the 400 some odd dollars or just wait till it gets cheaper?

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