XBMC Cross Platform Beta Released

September 20, 2008 by Eliot 7 Comments

It’s been a big week for the XBMC team. They announced the release of their first cross platform beta in preparation for a full release in October. XBMC started as a media center project for the original Xbox, but has expanded a lot since then. The new beta works on Linux, OSX (Leopard and Tiger), Windows, and Xbox. They’ve created XBMC Live, so you can get XBMC up and running quickly either by booting from the CD, from a flash drive, or using it to install to a disk. People have been writing add on apps too, like the XBMC Remote for iPhones.

This summer we covered both Boxee, a social version of XBMC, and Plex, the original XBMC OSX fork.

Mark Hoekstra Has Passed Away

September 20, 2008 by Eliot 63 Comments

UPDATE: His personal site has been updated.

It was with great sadness that we learned of [Mark Hoekstra]’s death this morning. Earlier this week, the 34 year old hacker suffered a heart attack while riding his bicycle and was admitted to the hospital in a coma. [Markie] has been a Hack a Day commenter for much of our existence and a project contributor for nearly as long. It started simply with things like his bright green Hack a Day iPod sock and a hand crank iPod charger. He did an excellent job documenting his projects; many people had built IR cameras, but none were nearly as thorough as him. He also enjoyed sharing his love for obsolete hardware with the community. He built a wireless eMate, turned two Mac SE/30’s into audio viualizers, and wired shutter glasses to an old SGI.

It was always a treat to hear about [Mark]’s latest project and he’ll be missed greatly.

[photo: Bram Belloni]

24kJ Capacitor Bank

September 20, 2008 by Jason Rollette 42 Comments

The Leyden jar capacitor posted the other day fails to compare to what [FastMHz], one of the members over at the 4HV.org forums, has been busy building, a 24kj capacitor discharge bank. This capacitor bank will be configured for 4500v @ 2400uF and can be charged up slowly using microwave oven transformers. It can then release all its stored energy in under a millisecond through a triggered spark gap. This allows for some pretty big sparks as seen in this video, we are not sure about the laughing in the video maybe the power has gone to his head? Continue reading “24kJ Capacitor Bank” →

Hack A Day T-Shirt Contest Winner

September 19, 2008 by Eliot 34 Comments

Congratulations to [John Keppel] for his winning t-shirt design. He wins a Dash Express, an in-car navigation device with both cellular and WiFi data support. It’s running Linux on top of the Openmoko FreeRunner’s hardware platform; yes, [John], we do expect you to hack it. We’ll let all of you know when we plan on putting the shirt into production. Thank you to everyone that entered!

GPS Alarm Clock

September 19, 2008 by Eliot 5 Comments

We spotted an interesting app in Gizmodo’s iPhone roundup for the week. iNap is designed for commuters that don’t want to miss their train stop. Just pick any location you can find on Google Maps, set the distance for the alert radius and the alarm tone, and it’s ready. It’s a great app and only costs $1.

The app actually reminds us of the first time we heard about Bug Labs. The modular gadget building system was described to us as a way to build unconventional consumer electronics. They specifically talked about one person that built an alarm clock with GPS because he kept falling the asleep on the train. Thanks to convergence we’re seeing a lot of devices expand from their initial intentions, whether it’s an iPhone GPS alarm clock or an N95 being used auto upload your bike ride to Flickr.

Boston LED Sweatshirt Arrestee Interviewed

September 19, 2008 by Eliot 43 Comments

In today’s episode of Boing Boing tv, [Xeni] interviews [Star Simpson]. She was arrested a year ago at Boston’s Logan airport for wearing a sweatshirt with a breadboard and some LEDs attached. With a collective groan, we watched this event unfold just months after Boston was held captive by Mooninites. After many court dates, [Star] is being forced to apologize and perform community service. She has since left MIT, disappointed with their nonexistent support, and left Boston entirely. Watch the interview for her side of the story. She’s posted how to recreate the sweatshirt.

Palin Email Hack Post Mortem

September 19, 2008 by Nick Caiello 27 Comments

A few days ago a lone individual decided to crack [Governor Sarah Palin]’s private Yahoo! email account. He did this by navigating the password reset procedure. [Gov. Palin]’s birthday was publicly available and Wasilla only had two zip codes to guess. The follow up question “Where did you meet your spouse” required some more research. They met in high school so a few more guesses turned up “Wasilla high” as the answer. The original poster then read every single email only to discover that there really wasn’t anything of interest there. Frustrated, he posted the details to 4chan to let any wonk have at it. /b/ members began posting screenshots of the account, but very little came of it.

One screenshot of her inbox even revealed her daughter Bristol’s cell phone number. While there was no groundbreaking political information revealed, it is important to point out that it appears that Gov. Palin was using this private account to correspond to her assistants about potentially sensitive government information. This security breach should serve as a wake-up call to many public officials by showing how dangerous it can be to have a private e-mail account, especially when a free web-based service such as Yahoo! is used.