Preregistration for ToorCon San Diego ends today. The current price is $100 and it will be $140. This is the 10th year for the San Diego hacker convention which will happen September 26th – 28th. The schedule for ToorCon X has already been posted. We highly recommend this convention. We’ve attended the last four years and it’s always been a favorite.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWDEZqqqBHE]
UCSB researchers demonstrated how disturbingly easy it is to hack into Sequoia’s e-voting systems and delete or add votes with little more than a USB key. Given the fact that recent elections have been very close, and this upcoming national one looks also to be decided by a close margin, it’s absolutely inexcusable that our voting systems could be so easily rigged. Not only that, Sequoia has fought hard against having its equipment tested and verified independently. Can we really afford to be using such insecure machines in democratic elections, when the risk of abuse is so great?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNpucos9wc]
The Large Hadron Collider was a success and it didn’t destroy the world. We have to admit, we were a little bit worried about the possibility of generating black holes but were soothed by scientists’ reassurances that we would still exist, and this self-explanatory website. We’re also kind of hoping to build our own. PHD Comics visits CERN to learn all about the experiment. Xkcd prepares for the end times with a new friend. The curious can explore some amazing imagery of the LHC, and read about the best-and-worst-case scenarios, and what scientists are hoping for, or monitor progress via webcam. The celebratory will listen to appropriate music, consume inspired science fiction, and drink to the Large Hadron Collider and its success.
Well, that was fun… no, not really, but we’re back from the dead like Steve Jobs. We’ve been getting DDoS’d since essentially the first day we originally came back. After killing a 1G connection, we decided to find a different solution. Since the world didn’t end this week, we brought the site back using WordPress.com as the new host. We now return to our regular blog shenanigans. Here’s to another four years of beta!
[10rdonic0] sent us this video of the Xbox360 Chatpad being used with some Sony PSPs. [Jean] over at ps2dev.org has been developing custom firmware for the Chatpad wich allows it to work with the PSP. You can see that he’s able to type pretty quickly on the On Screen Keyboard app and maneuver the internet decently. From what he says, not all apps are functional yet, but it’s coming.
The Israeli hacker [Ehud Tenenbaum], known as “the Analyzer”, was arrested along with 3 Canadians for allegedly hacking into a Calgary-based financial services company and withdrawing almost CDN $2 million. The arrests were the results of a months-long investigation by both the Canadian police and the U.S. Secret Service. In 1998, [Tenenbaum] was accused of hacking into unclassified computer systems owned by NASA, and the Pentagon, among others. He is in custody without bail, although the three other suspects have been released on bond.
[thanks vor]
While we were away, we missed the story about the giant mechanical spider in Liverpool. That spider has come to life, and you can watch the video courtesy of the BBC.
Named La Princesse, she an art project designed to build tourism and boost the economy. Developed by french company La Machine, she looks amazing. It looks as though it takes 9 people to pilot her, possibly another running the crane she’s suspended from. Watch the video and see her reach out and tap an onlooker’s umbrella with one of her legs.
[via Gizmodo]
