Hasta La Gadget!

The White House has announced that this summer it will launch the National Day of Civic Hacking, a nationwide event where individuals can stretch their creative fingers using publicly released data to create “solutions for problems that affect Americans.” The event will take place on June 1 and 2, and will be a collaborative effort amongst anyone who wants to participate.

The event is a collective effort between government agencies and companies/organization, which will host various challenges for the participants to undertake. According to the announcement, National Day of Civic Hacking is a take-off of Super Happy Block Party by Innovation Endeavors, and is happening in conjunction with Code for America’s Brigade and Random Hacks of Kindness.

The event is said to take place both online and in person, depending on the event the participants take part in. It is open to anyone, no hacking skills necessary, and will target challenges that range from a local neighborhood to the nation as a whole. Some of the agencies that will be announcing challenges include NASA and the Department of Labor.

Several cities already have events planned, with the list sure to grow over the coming months leading up to the event. Locations that are already set to participate include Seattle, Denver, Detroit, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and San Diego, among others. Participants can also plan their own event.

Says the event’s website, “The event will leverage the expertise and entrepreneurial spirit of those outside federal, state and local government to drive meaningful, technology-based solutions for federal, state and local government. It demonstrates what’s possible when we all work together to strengthen our society and our lives.”

Those interested in participating can get more info at the event’s official website, HackforChange.org.

[via White House]

The White House unveils National Day of Civic Hacking is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Living in New Jersey, I can tell you we experience every season to the extreme as our winters are freezing and our summers are red-hot. So no matter what time of year it is, if it isn’t spring or fall, then I won’t ever want to leave my apartment. But when I do, the lower the amount of time I’m actually outside of my home, the better it’ll be for myself and the crazy people who actually talk me into going outside. If I was technologically advanced, I could probably set up a jailbroken iPhone to start my car for me without needing to spend my money on a remote ignition, just like this genius did in the following story.

The SMS Remote Starter is a hack Will O’Brien came up with that uses your iPhone, which is hopefully an old model as we can’t imagine having your current iPhone sitting in your car all the time. With a combination of a jailbroken iPhone, an Arduino, an iPhone breakout board and some other components, he was able to get his car started just by sending an SMS.

If you have an old iPhone lying around and want to try this hack out for yourself, then you’re encouraged to visit O’Brien’s website where he breaks down the entire experience to show you how exactly you could do it, too.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Hyundai Connectivity Concept Gives NFC-enabled Phones Power Over Your Car, FCC Asks FAA To Allow The Use Of Electronic Devices During Flights,

Hack-collective Anonymous broke into MIT’s website over the weekend and subverted it into a tribute to open-access activist Aaron Swartz, the internet hero who committed suicide on Friday last week. Describing the $1m lawsuit Swartz faced for hacking into the JSTOR database as “a grotesque miscarriage of justice,” Anonymous also called for “reform of computer crime laws,” CNET reports, in addition to “a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet.”

In a lengthy post, including a link to details on Swartz’s funeral on Tuesday this week and a copy of the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto,” Anonymous describes Swartz as “A hero in the SOPA/PIPA campaign, Reddit cofounder, RSS, Demand Progress, Avaaz, etc.” and sets out a list of “wishes” for legal and ethical change moving forward. “The situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of US computer crime laws,” the hackers wrote, “particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining.”

Our wishes

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of copyright and intellectual property law, returning it to the proper principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.

However, contrary to some of Anonymous’ more aggressive take-overs, the hacking team included an apology to MIT for co-opting their site. In fact, despite complaints from some that MIT had let Swartz down by not vigorously defending him when the US government decided to prosecute over the JSTOR case, Anonymous claims not to blame the institution:

“We tender apologies to the administrators at MIT for this temporary use of their websites. We understand that it is a time of soul-searching for all those within this great institution as much — perhaps for some involved even more so — than it is for the greater internet community. We do not consign blame or responsibility upon MIT for what has happened, but call for all those feel heavy-hearted in their proximity to this awful loss to acknowledge instead the responsibility they have — that we all have — to build and safeguard a future that would make Aaron proud, and honour the ideals and dedication that burnt so brightly within him by embodying them in thought and word and action” Anonymous

Swartz had a history of butting heads with the law as he pushed for freedom of data. Back in 2008, he wrote a custom app to take advantage of free Pacer digital judicial library accounts to gather around 20m documents in a more easily-accessed place, while the similar hack which led to the JSTOR indictment saw him pull almost the entire database using a secretly-installed laptop.

Anonymous hacks MIT with Aaron Swartz memorial & manifesto is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you work in an office that uses one of the various Cisco branded IP phones, word has surface about a hack that might make you uncomfortable. Reports have indicated that Internet phones sold by Cisco Systems are vulnerable to hacks that can turn them into remote bugging devices allowing nefarious sorts to eavesdrop on calls and conversations close to the phone. Cisco warned about the flaw this week.

Cisco’s warning came after security experts demonstrated how people that have physical access to the phone could execute malicious code allowing eavesdropping. Cisco plans to release a software patch later this month to plug the security hole. The vulnerability has been confirmed to affect several models of desk phones in the CiscoUnified IP Phone 7900 series.

Cisco has also confirmed that the security vulnerability can be exploited remotely over a corporate network. However, Cisco has already issued workarounds that makes those attacks more difficult to execute. The security researchers who discovered the vulnerability are Ang Cui and Salvatore Solfo from Columbia University’s engineering department.

Details of the vulnerability were presented at the 29th Chaos Communications Congress. The hack was demonstrated using a device that connects to the local serial port of the Cisco phone. Once the device was attached to the phone it was able to inject attack code giving the attacker control over the device. The attack allows the hacker to monitor phone calls and turn on the phone’s microphone unbeknownst to people nearby. Cisco has promised to rewrite the underlying firmware to eliminate this vulnerability. Check out the video below to see the researchers outlining the hack.

[via ArsTechnica]

Hack turns Cisco desk phones into remote listening devices is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Many of us whiled away untold hours of our youth mashing the D-pad, A and B buttons of the original Game Boy, which is why we’ve seen many hacks using its iconic hardware. Gaming on mobile touchscreens isn’t nearly so tactilely pleasing as that portable, however, so nostalgic modder Chad Boughton decided to swap out his GB’s dot-matrix display for the Super AMOLED of a Galaxy Nexus.

He first removed the screen and trimmed the chassis so that a GNex case could be bolted flush with the rest of the body. The more involved part of the mod, however, was getting the buttons to work wirelessly with the phone. To accomplish the trick, he trimmed the Game Boy’s circuit board to make room for the guts of a Wiimote, which he then connected to the buttons. From there, he installed the Wii Controller IME app to get the GB talking with the phone, and presto! One of the coolest Android gamepads we’ve seen was born. You can see how it works in the video after the break, and there’s a slew of shots showing the mod in progress at the source below.

Continue reading Game Boy repurposed as an Android gamepad, adds retro flair to your mobile gaming

Filed under: Gaming, Mobile

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Instructables