Emotiv headsets hack into your brain

I know that we have been living in the atomic age for quite some time already, but we have yet to see mutants running around like crazy as depicted in the X-Men movies. This means you are safe from a telepath “hacking” into your brain, but a normal human might be able to do so with the right tools and under the right circumstances, of course. It seems that security researchers have managed to rely on affordable Emotiv headsets (which we have seen in the past) to capture the subconscious responses of a person to external stimuli, further using them to uncover data straight from the horse’s mouth – in this case, their subjects’ brains. Needless to say, on paper, this is a theoretical risk to privacy and security which might eventually end up as rather significant should such technology advances further in its own field. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The Dark Pi Rises in the form of a drone, Blizzard says Battle.net Password Breach occurred, security compromised,

Video out enabled on Windows Phone 7, just not for you

Video out enabled on Windows Phone 7, just not for you

The video out feature in Windows Phone 7 is reserved for select Microsoft employees, and now one enterprising member of the XDA Developers forum. With certain files ripped from an LG Panther 7003 ROM, the help of someone on the inside and many months of work, forum member marsrogers succeeded in pushing video from his Samsung Focus to a companion PC app. Don’t get too excited though — this particular trick will not be released to the masses so the MS confidant involved is not exposed. However, it’s not all bad news, as marsrogers’ source reports that Windows Phone 8 will have remote desktop capability straight out of the box. Sadly, for those of you carrying around current-gen WP devices, there’s still no hope.

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Video out enabled on Windows Phone 7, just not for you originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexus 7 2GHz overclock delivers benchmark-crushing tablet

Google’s Nexus 7 may run NVIDIA’s cheaper Tegra 3 KAI chipset, but that doesn’t mean the 7-inch tablet isn’t capable of impressive speeds once carefully overclocked. Thanks to a new 2.0GHz ROM for the tablet cooked up by xda-developers, the Nexus 7 burned through Android Community‘s benchmarks and scored a whopping 8,082 in Quadrant testing. That’s double what HTC’s capable One X smartphone could manage.

The ROM itself uses an experimental kernel, not yet publicly available, to drive the Nexus 7 up to 2.0GHz rather than the 1.8GHz overclock we’ve seen in recent weeks. Even that slightly lower speed is enough for impressive performance, however, cracking the 7k mark in Quadrant.

Stability is described as having “a few issues” hence the absence of a public release, and according to Cory over at Android Community the Nexus 7 itself got somewhat warm during the tests. Still, the “Elite Kernel” is showing more than a little promise.

Out of the box, the Nexus 7 runs at 1.3GHz, ASUS and NVIDIA opting to prolong battery life rather than chase outright power. Thanks to the KAI chip, ASUS can use cheaper DDR3L memory for the tablet’s 1GB of RAM, helping Google hit its sub-$200 starting price goal.


Nexus 7 2GHz overclock delivers benchmark-crushing tablet is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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The Dark Pi Rises in the form of a drone

I am quite sure by now that you have watched The Dark Knight Rises, and the film should have left quite the impression on you. Hopefully, a good one at that, just like how the highly sought out Raspberry Pi mini computer has been transformed into what you see in the video above – The Dark Pi Rises. Aerospace engineer “algorhythmic” has cobbled together a remote controlled, roving surveillance vehicle that is equipped with a night-vision camera. Obviously, a Raspberry Pi mini computer runs at the heart of things to keep everything working fine and dandy.

Considering how the Raspberry Pi itself costs approximately $25, this surveillance drone hack will see bits and pieces from all over the place, including a PlayStation 3 Eye camera and a Wi-Fi module, which is hooked it up to a remote control car while the system has been specially configured to stream video from the camera over the Internet. An Arduino component also sees action to control a motor which enables the camera to move.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Raspberry Pi is at the heart of this BBC Micro-inspired keyboard , Royal Data Throne made out of printed circuit boards,

New Father Uses Wii-mote, Lasers to Keep His Child Safe

It’s not easy being a new father. Infants are so tiny and delicate that I’m scared to even look at them. So I totally understand why this guy went the extra mile to look after his new child. Before his daughter was even born, hacker and blogger Gjoci was working on putting together a breath detector from a Wiimote and three 1 milliwatt lasers.
baby wiimote hack1
He positioned them above the crib and it sets off an alarm anytime his daughter’s breathing seems to stop or becomes irregular. It sort of does look like an alien is abducting your child, but it works and gives him some peace of mind while she sleeps. And that is priceless.

A simple program asks the camera every couple of milliseconds whether the lights are still moving. If they are, then everything is good. As long as there’s a little bit of motion, the detector knows everything is just fine. Should anything bad should happen, an alarm sounds, alerting the parents immediately.

[via Hack A Day via Geekosystem]


Back in the BBS days: how-to helps newbs navigate to a pre-internet playground

Back in the BBS days howto hack helps newbs navigate to a preinternet playground

The web has an origin story, one that predates any cozy trip in the wayback machine. That’s because where we’re going, there is no internet — at least, not as you now know it — only Bulletin Board Systems. And to help guide curious digital natives on this journey back to the time tech forgot, a programmer by the handle of Proppelerpowered has whipped up a how-to that leverages nothing more than a microcontroller-based microcomputer and BASIC knowledge. The brief step-by-step, listed over on Instructables, requires intrepid geeks to build a Pocket Mini computer, which purportedly takes only “an evening,” after which they’ll have to tinker with some low-level coding to complete the connection setup, hitch a ride online via PC and then link up with any number of active BBSs around the world. For the purposes of this beginner guide, you’ll have instructions for access to a Canada-based Commodore 64 clearly laid out. But the more adept are encouraged to swap out the standard setup for an ANSI terminal and wade into serious retro-gaming waters (Trade Wars, anyone?). Hit up the source below to peek the blow-by-blow and see if this hack’s made for you.

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Back in the BBS days: how-to helps newbs navigate to a pre-internet playground originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 02:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Digispark, Arduino’s unofficial kid brother, takes Kickstarter by storm (video)

Digispark, the quartersized Arduino board takes Kickstarter by storm

Hobbyist Erik Kettenburg was concerned that the size and cost of Arduino stifled his ability to craft, so he set about developing Digispark. It’s an Arduino-compatible board, the size of a quarter, that offers a few pins at around a third of the cost of an Uno — so you don’t have to worry about taking projects apart when you’re done. Designed to be fully compatible with the Italian standard, it’s packing six I/O pins, 8k memory and a full USB connection amongst other things. The aim is to retail the gear for $12 a piece, and has been so popular that it’s made nearly $100,000 in Kickstarter pledges, smashing its original goal of $5,000. We’ve got video for you below, and you can still throw some cash Mr. Kettenburg’s way if you fancy getting your hands on one quickly.

Continue reading Digispark, Arduino’s unofficial kid brother, takes Kickstarter by storm (video)

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Digispark, Arduino’s unofficial kid brother, takes Kickstarter by storm (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DSLR gets dollop of Raspberry Pi for future home-baked camera accessories

DSLR gets dollop of Raspberry Pi for future homebaked camera accessories

We love a tasty mélange of gadgets, and that’s just what photographer / hacker David Hunt has served up with a Raspberry Pi board inserted into his DSLR’s battery grip. He used the handle for power, while exposing the Pi’s USB, network and video ports for easy on-camera access, and so far he’s managed to transmit images via WiFi and ethernet. But the Raspbian Linux OS opens up a world of potential DIY accessories, like wireless tethered shooting (with the addition of a WiFi dongle), cheap USB instant backup, storage, remote control from anywhere in the world and an intervalometer for timelapse photography. That’s just for starters — with the credit card sized board now in so many hands, the permutations are endless.

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DSLR gets dollop of Raspberry Pi for future home-baked camera accessories originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 10:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Check ‘N Chew Foursquare-enabled gumball machine hands-on (video)

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When Tyler DeAngelo asked if we’d be interested in checking out his new project, we jumped at the opportunity. After all, we were pretty blown away with Fifth Avenue Frogger, his hacked arcade cabinet that incorporated real-time webcam footage of a busy Manhattan street into gameplay. His latest project, Check ‘N Chew certainly has more apparent commercial applications, offering up a form of immediate gratification for social media users. The concept is fairly simple: check into Foursquare, get a gumball.

DeAngelo (with help from fellow modders Matt Richardson and Ben Light) has hacked an off-the-shelf gumball machine with a stepper motor, Arduino and an XBee radio. There’s also a port on the rear of the machine that plugs into a wall to power it all. The Check ‘N Chew communicates wirelessly with an ethernet-to-wireless gateway device. When someone checks into an authorized location, information is sent from DeAngelo’s server to the gateway, and a gumball is dispensed. The whole process is quite speedy, only taking a couple of seconds from Foursquare check-in to gumball dispensing.

Continue reading Check ‘N Chew Foursquare-enabled gumball machine hands-on (video)

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Check ‘N Chew Foursquare-enabled gumball machine hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google teases hackers with $2 million in prizes, announces Pwnium 2 exploit competition

Google teases hackers with $2 million in prizes, announces Pwnium 2 exploit competitionThe folks in Mountain View are starting to make a habit of getting hacked — intentionally, that is. Earlier this year, Google hosted an event at the CanSecWest security conference called Pwnium, a competition that challenged aspiring hackers to poke holes in its Chrome browser. El Goog apparently learned so much from the event that it’s doing it again — hosting Pwnium 2 at the Hack in the Box 10th anniversary conference in Malaysia and offering up to $2 million in rewards. Bugging out the browser by exploiting its own code wins the largest award, a cool $60,000. Enlisting the help of a WebKit or Windows kernel bug makes you eligible for a $50,000 reward, and non-Chrome exploits that rely on a bug in Flash or a driver are worth $40,000. Not confident you can break Chrome? Don’t let that stop you — Google plans to reward incomplete exploits as well, noting that it has plenty to learn from unreliable or incomplete attacks. Check out the Chromium Blog at the source link below for the full details.

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Google teases hackers with $2 million in prizes, announces Pwnium 2 exploit competition originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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