Misc Hacks

4179 Articles

Best Firefox 3 Extensions

August 23, 2008 by 43 Comments


We generally try to limit the number of extensions we install for security, performance, and because we use a lot of different systems. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of interesting addons out there and Mozilla has recently announced the winners of their Extend Firefox 3 Contest. Lifehacker has a full rundown of each of the winners. Nothing really stands out in our eyes (although we might try Last.fm’s toolbar).

The three extensions we always end up installing are Firebug, Greasemonkey, and Flashblock. What are yours?

MySQLgame, Playing With Database Queries

August 23, 2008 by 12 Comments


mySQLgame is a quirky App Engine game that has decided to forgo flashy UIs and just stick with the core of the system: a database. You start the game by creating your own row in the shared game database. Game time increments your fuel and money resources every ten seconds. Fuel is spent on scanning other rows and for attacking. Money is used for upgrades and building units. Build up resources and attack your neighbors using database queries, just like any other game. Like a bit more gloss on your internet metagames? Have a look at trolling simulator Forumwarz.

[via Waxy]

Furbies Transformed Into A Furby Gurdy

August 23, 2008 by 5 Comments


[David Crammer] must really like nightmares. The hurdy gurdy is a stringed musical instrument, dating as far back as the eleventh century A.D., where the strings are sounded via a rosined wheel that is turned with a crank. [Crammer] took this unique instrument, applied his circuit-bending and Furby-scalping skills to generate a Furby Gurdy that sound like Kraftwerk on acid.

[via Gizmodo]

Kindle Screen Transplant

August 22, 2008 by 4 Comments


[blakebevin]’s sister shattered the screen on his Amazon Kindle, so he decided to try replacing it with the screen from a Sony Reader. He disassembled the Sony Reader and used a Dremel to mill down most of the aluminum tabs on the E Ink screen. The screen plugs into the same harness as the original Kindle screen the only problem is fit. The new screen interferes with some of the button movement and without trimming the case will bulge a little. Performance wise the screen ghosts on page turn and [blakebevin] assumes this is due to older technology. We’d hope to never have to do this, but it’s good to know the transplant option is there and not very difficult.

In The Lab: SIM Reader

August 21, 2008 by 7 Comments


Adafruit Industries sent us one of their SIM Reader kits a few weeks ago to test. Assembly was a breeze thanks to the through hole components and good documentation. We plugged it into our USB -> RS232 converter and tried out the provided pySimReader software. It worked fine, but our modern SIM card out of an N95 didn’t prove very interesting. It was too new to attempt cloning and being a smart phone it doesn’t rely on the SIM for storing anything unless you specifically tell it to. The story was the same for a SIM we pulled out of a Treo. We tried the device with [Dejan]’s SimScan and a copy of Woron Scan. Both worked without any issue. Conclusion: the device works great despite us lacking anything interesting to do with it.

Defcon 16: List Of Tools Compiled

August 19, 2008 by 3 Comments


Zero Day posted a list of tools and applications that were released at Defcon 16. The applications run the gamut, from Beholder, an open source wireless IDS tool, to CollabREate, a reverse-engineering plugin that allows multiple people to share a single project. The list covers a lot of ground, and there’s a lot for hackers to play around with and explore. It’s nice to see someone bothering to maintain a list since the majority of conference tools just get lost in the shuffle and are never seen again.