Hack removes ads from Kindle ‘Special Offers’ hardware

We figured it wouldn’t be long before someone figured out how to remove the ads from the ‘Special Offers’ versions of the Amazon Kindle hardware. There are two things that made this obvious to us, the huge flaw that lets code be easily run as root, and the MP3 tag forming that makes it possible to unlock the device.… Read the rest

I am root! — Kindle Fire edition

Amazon’s new tablet reader, the Kindle Fire has been rooted. Early this morning [Death2All110] posted the steps he took to gain root access to his device (which is so fresh out of the box it still smells new). The heavy lifting is done by a package called SuperOneClick which aims to root all manner of phones and devices running … Read the rest

Ubuntu 9.04 on Kindle 2

kindle2

Having read books on a Palm device for years we were excited when Amazon came up with the Kindle. Our problem is that if you’re going to carry around a portable device it should do a whole lot more than just display text from a few books. [Jesse Vincent] managed to get Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope running on the Kindle Read the rest

Kindle 2 teardown

kindle2

The people at iFixit have shown that they’re still on top of their game by tearing down the new Kindle 2 eBook reader. The main processor is a 532MHz ARM-11 from Freescale. Interestly, there isn’t any significant circuitry behind the large keyboard; it seems its existence is just to hide the battery.

Related: previous teardowns on Hack a Day

[via … Read the rest

Using Bittorrent on Amazon EC2

Bittorrent is a great distribution method for large files, but its heavy bandwidth usage can be disruptive to both work and home networks. [Brett O'Connor] has decided to push all of his torrenting activity into the cloud. Amazon’s EC2 service lets you run any number of Amazon Machine Images (AMI, virtual machines) on top of their hardware. You pay … Read the rest

Hackit: Network Attached Storage?


With each passing day the rate we acquire digital media increases (we don’t even bother unpacking our CDs when we move anymore). Large publishers have started moving away from DRM, which means we’ll be buying even more digital media in the future. Acquiring all of this nonphysical property puts importance on not just making it easily accessible, but also protecting … Read the rest

Console on the Kindle (and more)


[Dev] sent in an interesting blog series on hacking Amazon’s kindle. [Igor] has documented getting a console, the bootloader and more. Even if you don’t have a Kindle to hack on, it’s a good overview of hacking similar devices. He used a cell phone cable to build his interface, but I suggest getting familiar with the MAX232 family of … Read the rest