[whatsisface] sent in his scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate. The PowerMate… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to see why more than one person has attempted this. [whatsisface] was inspired by a bit-tech post that did nearly the same thing, only they used the head out of a VCR for the knob. All the other components, like the optical encoder, are salvaged from a mouse, which we talked about in our scavenging How-To. He used a RC car tire for the actual knob. While we’re sure it works great in dirt, we’d probably go with the weight and inertia of the VCR head instead. Have a look at the video below to see the knob being used with the Volumouse software.
Year: 2008
PS3 Hacked For Backups?
The video above supposedly shows a Playstation 3 booting a game from the hard drive by booting a legitimate game from disc. There aren’t many other details besides a comment that backing up Blu-ray discs takes a lot of space. So, if this does actually work, it’s doubtful we’ll see much piracy because of it.
[via PS3Scene]
25C3: Nothing To Hide Announced
Germany’s Chaos Computer Club has announced the theme for their annual Chaos Communication Congress: “Nothing to hide“. Like last year’s “Full steam ahead!“, it’s open to many interpretations. People striking down privacy laws often say citizens shouldn’t mind since they have “Nothing to hide”. The phrase is also connected to the inability to hide data, as the CCC demonstrated this year by publishing the German Home Secretary’s fingerprint. On a more positive side, “Nothing to hide” is also about the free exchange of information that happens at hacker conventions. The Congress is in its 25th year and promises to be as good as ever. At last year’s 24C3, we saw great talks like [Drew Endy]’s biohacking talk and the original MiFare crypto presentation. 25C3 will be held in Berlin December 27th to 30th. The wiki is already up and they’ve published a call for participation, if you’re interested.
Acer Aspire One Hard Drive Upgrade
As promised, [tnkgrl] has published part two of Acer Aspire One upgrade. In part one she added Bluetooth and more RAM. This time around she focuses on the storage. The subnotebook comes from the factory with an 8GB SSD. The flash based storage readily unplugs from a small ZIF connector. [tnkgrl] replaced it with a 60GB PATA Samsung drive salvaged from an iPod. It’s a 1.8inch disk and is only 5mm thick, so it can be tucked under the motherboard. Knowing its previous use, it should prove fairly resilient. You can view a video of the swap and more photos on Flickr.
Up next is part three, where she’ll add 3G support.
Making Packaging Part Of The Product
Discouraged at the mounds of packaging you’re throwing away every time you buy new stuff? Artist [David Gardener] may have just the solution for you: design products where the packaging is an integral part of the product itself. We can envision a whole line of IKEA furniture, for example, that turns inside-out and uses the cardboard box as part of its internal support structure. On the whole, this may be just a touch less tacky than making furniture out of packaging not intended to be used as furniture at all (i.e. FedEx boxes).
[via DVICE]
How To Hotwire Your Own Car
Picture this scenario: it’s 2 AM, you’re stuck somewhere you’d rather not be, and you’ve lost your car keys. If you can’t call the Auto Club, what do you do? Hotwire your own car, of course. Wired.com has a wiki article detailing all the things you need to do to get that car running: how to identify which wires to connect, potential pitfalls of newer cars that require an RFID chip in the key, and so on. Of course, hotwiring a car that doesn’t belong to you is illegal, but this is one of those skills-like lockpicking-which just might come in handy in an emergency.
[Photo: D.B. Blas]
Hack Your Customer Service Rep
Hacks come in all forms, and psychological hacks are no different. [Noah Goldstein], a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago, has written a book in which he details scientifically proven methods of persuading others. One of these methods stands out as being particularly useful at alleviating one of the most aggravating aspects of modern life: dealing with customer service representatives over the telephone.
The trick? Be nice, compliment the rep on doing a good job, and offer to write a letter of recommendation. Since it stands to reason that the customer service rep is probably having a crappier day than you (imagine having to talk to a hundred annoyed people five days a week and you’ll get the idea), making the rep feel appreciated is likely to make them want to do more for you in return.
[photo: brycej]
[via BoingBoing]
