Hacked | TeamDroid

How to Hack Humans, Epilepsy Sufferers Targeted

Posted on 04.01.08 by John @ 7:37 pm

Not that I think that doing this with the intent to harm people is very nice at all, I have to admit that figuring out what in essence causes a ‘BSoD‘ in humans is impressive. Reminds me of ICE in the William Gibson books.

This incident is quite possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims: hackers uploaded a flashing computer animation to an epilepsy support forum to trigger epileptic attacks!

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she "locked up."

"I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d’Alene, Ohio. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak."

After about 10 seconds, Fultz’s 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

Neatorama » Blog Archive » Hackers “Seize-rolled” Epilepsy Sufferers in a Support Forum

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Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

Posted on 04.01.08 by John @ 4:26 pm

Looks like the mega corps of Virgin and Google have decided to reach higher than anyone has ever thought possible. They have she their goal on a journey to the red planet Mars

(from the PR page)

"Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Virgin Group today announced the launch of Virgle Inc., a jointly owned and operated venture dedicated to the establishment of a human settlement on Mars.

"Some people are calling Virgle an ‘interplanetary Noah’s Ark,’" said Virgin Group President and Founder Sir Richard Branson, who conceived the new venture. "I’m one of them. It’s a potentially remarkable business, but more than that, it’s a glorious adventure. For me, Virgle evokes the spirit of explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, who set sail looking for the New World. I do hope we’ll be a bit more efficient about actually finding it, though."
The Virgle 100 Year Plan’s milestones will include Virgle Pioneer selection (2008-2010), the first manned journey to Mars (2016), a Virgle Inc. initial public offering to capitalize on the first manned journey to Mars (2016), the founding of the first permanent Martian municipality, Virgle City (2050), and the achievement of a truly self-sustaining Martian civilization with a population exceeding 100,000 (2108).
"Virgle is the ultimate application of a principle we’ve always believed at Google: that you can do well by doing good,” said Google co-founder Larry Page, who plans to share leadership of the new Martian civilization with Branson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
"We feel that ensuring the survival of the human race by helping it colonize a new planet is both a moral good in and of itself and also the most likely method of ensuring the survival of our best – okay, fine, only — base of web search volume and advertising inventory,” Page added. “So, you know, it’s, like, win-win."
The original contingent of Virgle Pioneers will be selected by numerous criteria, including an online questionnaire, video submission, personal accomplishments, expertise in scientific, artistic, sociological and/or political fields of endeavor, and inadequate Google and Virgin personal performance reviews."

This is trurlly a banner day for the human race!
And if you want to stay a little closer to the cradle of mankind, you could opt for a position on the Google Copernicus Lunar Center.

Virgle: The Adventure of Many Lifetimes

(I love days like these)

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Filed under: General and Mad Science and Space and Hacked and Historic
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1 GB, Then and Now

Posted on 09.24.07 by John @ 7:37 pm

When people say that things just keep getting smaller sure aren’t kidding. Seen here is a photo comparing 1GB of storage in 1987 and same amount in 2007. Wow! (click on the image for a larger version) I once owned a Burroughs B-20 computer system. It’s hard drive was the bigger than a shoe box and fit in the bottom of this wheeled cabinet that the keyboard, monitor, and communications box sat on. I was amazed at just how big a 5MB drive was. I’m so grateful for the miniaturization of technology.

[via gizmologia, digg]

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DIY Canon Camera Firmware Enhancements

Posted on 09.14.07 by John @ 6:56 pm

One of the greatest things about technology isn’t what it does, but it’s what it can do. This is a shining example of this very concept:

If you have a point-and-click digital camera made by Canon, you may be able to turn on all sorts of features usually reserved for more expensive SLRs. That includes live histograms, depth-of-field calculation, under and overexposure highlighting, and — best of all — shooting your pictures in RAW. The secret is CHDK, an enhanced, free software replacement firmware.

I’m going to have to disagree that the best part of this is being able to shoot in RAW mode. Don’t get me wrong, I love using RAW (or NEF as it’s called on my Nikon) but the best part of this enhancement is that fact that you can do scripting in a BASIC like language in the camera. Wow… This is like getting a computer that has predefined programs on it and then discovering the programming tools for it. With these scripts you can do such amazing things as automatically create a series of photos for HDR stacking that can later be run through software to extend the dynamic range of the images. You can run an interactive interval timer to take X number of photos ever X seconds, minutes, or even hours so you could do a time laps study of ice melting or a building being built. Those are just two examples of what can be done with the powerful feature.
One clever thing is that if you make a mistake and screw something up that chance of you ‘bricking’ your camera is quite low. To remove the firmware enhancement you simply remove the CD card and power up the camera. Bingo, everything is back to normal. I for one will be on the lookout for a camera that this will work on.

[via MAKE]
Linux.com :: How to give your low-end Canon digital camera RAW support

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Filed under: Photography and Technology and Mods and Hacked and DIY
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‘Glass Give Gas’ Artistic Hotplate

Posted on 09.10.07 by John @ 7:40 pm

I have very little info on this other than it is apparently made by Harry Thaler and is titled ‘GLAS GIBT GAS’ (German for ‘Glass gives gas’). It looks very attractive and quite functional. I wonder if this is a hack (used found parts) or he made everything from scratch.
UPDATE: I received a comment about this item: "Orboc can answer!
I’ve seen it in a show a couple of days in a design show in Paris. I can tell that it’s a prototype made from scratch and the creator is a student from an italian design school." Thank you very much Orboc.
[via notcot]
moN DieU qUe C’Est BeaU ! - ORBOC, a good source of protein!
(Translation by Google)

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DIY GPS Jammer

Posted on 09.07.07 by John @ 6:45 pm

DIY GPS Jammer Hackers listen up. Everyone understands and enjoys the utilitarian benefits that GPS has brought to our lives but what if it didn’t work any more? I suppose you could build some sort of surface to space missile robot that would systematically seek and destroy all the GPS birds in orbit, but that might attract unwanted attention by the authorities. No, your best bet would be to build a little portable device that just affected a small area. That is exactly what this does. It works by blanketing the GPS L1 frequency (1475.42 MHz) with noise rendering the receiver unable to get an acquisition code. Without one of those it can’t see any satellites. Pretty clever. Now, I have to say that I have no idea if this circuit is going to work, I’ll leave that up to you. I mean, it’s from Phrack magazine after all so that makes it pretty hardcore. Use some common sense in the operation of this device. It might be best used as a conversation starter and that’s all.

[via navigadget]
Low Cost and Portable GPS Jammer

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Filed under: Mad Science and To be used for Evil and Dumb and Hacked and DIY
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Bicycle Electric-Motor-Assist Project (BEMAP)

Posted on 09.06.07 by John @ 10:40 pm

An old friend of mine is undertaking a project to add an electric motor to his bike. He has been asking me a bunch of questions about motors and such because I have a bit of a background in building robots. I tried my hand at the old combat robotics thing a while back, had my own robot and even started a real competition. However, the sport turned out to be a great way to burn through money so I had to give it up. Anyway, I gained quite a bit of skill at scrounging for parts and how things like that work. I’ll be more than happy to help out even if is just as a sounding board for ideas.The BEMAP project looks to be pretty cool. So far he has a supply of DC motors from a disused car and some battery packs. Mike is a born scrounger so I’m sure his solution will be very unique.

Bicycle Electric-Motor-Assist Project (BEMAP)

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Astounding Steam Powered Robot Arm

Posted on 06.18.07 by John @ 9:40 pm

What a cool application of steam power. The perfect super retro project!

Armatron was my favorite toy as a kid, it was made by Tandy, and sold through Radio Shack in the 80’s. It was made with ONE electric motor, with gears and clutches throughout the entire base and arm, controlled by 2 joysticks that engages and disengages gears for 6 degrees of movement (the joy stick each move in 2 axis, plus they twist for closing/opening of the jaw, and rotating of the hand). This complex machine is a marvel of engineering, the amazing control and ease to operation made this toy amazingly fun to play.

Steam Armatron - Crabfu.com

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Nuked Czech Live Remote

Posted on 06.18.07 by John @ 6:17 am

This may not have been the most advisable of artistic hacks ever done, but it did look pretty good. Nothing like watching the weather and all of a sudden you see a bright flash followed by a mushroom cloud! Who says the cold was is dead?

Members of ZTOHOVEN connected up to one of the stationary camera during TV weathercast and in real time broadcast their own shots, which showed nuclear exposion. Then the picture changed. Instead of the name of the locality (Black Mine) the website reference ZTOHOVEN.com (now is overloaded) came up on the screen.

No nuclear weapons have been harmed in the making of this video clip.

[via boingboing]
CzechTek WebLog

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Very Nice DIY Holga Camera Lens Mod

Posted on 06.05.07 by John @ 6:07 am

Very very cool camera mod:

Don’t you wish you had a full Holga outfit with wide and long lenses? I did! So I made a holga with a portrait lens. This is a single-element, plastic, 110mm lens. It is all the things that make Holgas great: Non-anachromatic, non-aspheric, non-astigmatic, and even more pincushioning than the Holga 60mm.
Built using a $2.49 magnifying glass from Walgreens (lovingly extracted from its housing with a 1" wood chisel) and about $15 of plumbing supplies (counting the stuff I bought "just in case" but never used). The Holga shutter had to be replaced since the aperture was much too small. I had purchased a cheapo Metax shutter on ebay a couple of months ago for $20, thinking I’d put it on a pinhole camera. This is a much better use! (The pinhole shutter will remain a strip of electrical tape.)
The image on the lower right shows a wax paper "ground glass" view (rather out-of-focus) of the image through the lens.

HOLGA 110mm portrait lens on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Photos from the camera

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Filed under: Photography and Mods and Hacked
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DIY - Glowing Crystal Lamp From a Light Bulb

Posted on 05.23.07 by John @ 9:16 pm

I’m touched, it’s like seeing your child graduate. I have inspired others to follow and improve upon my works. After seeing my photo of the "neo-Victorian New Age Flemming like valve" on Flickr, Donald decided to hollow out a light bulb and build one of his own. Hats off for using a UV LED to excite the dye out of a highlighter marker! He also incorporated a Basic Stamp microcontroller in it so it has some nice flickering when it’s started. Watch the video to see what I mean.

[via brassgoggles]
I Make Projects

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DIY Video Camera - The VanceCam VC25P

Posted on 05.20.07 by John @ 9:19 pm

I like the idea of building something that fits your needs as opposed to going out and buying it. Building your own video camera is a little exteem but hey, I like that even more.

This is a one-of-a-kind "film-look" digital camcorder custom-built specifically to shoot the independent feature film, Cold Day in Hell. The camera module is based on a Hitachi HV-C20A/E, 1/2" format, 3 CCD industrial PAL camera with 700 lines of resolution.

I love the fact that they used a mechanical shutter in the camera. I bet the camera operator even got to yell ’speed!’ when there were doing a take.

[via retrothing]
VanceCam VC25P Camcorder

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Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote Control

Posted on 05.17.07 by John @ 4:33 pm

Alan over at Hacked Gadgets just told me about his latest project:

I wanted a simple remote that could be used to easily control the volume and mute the TV when the phone rings. I have replaced all of my remotes with a single Harmony 880 control which works great, but I wanted something a bit more cool to compliment it. Building the retro remote was fun and simple since the mini remote that I used was very easy to hack.

It looks pretty slick, and he even used a modern Atari Flashback case so no vintage 2600 controllers were harmed in the making of this project.

Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote Control

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LOLTrek

Posted on 05.07.07 by John @ 8:06 pm

LOLTrek There looks to be a sudden influx of LOLcat creations lately. This one gives a new spin on the classic Star Trek episode "The Troubles With Tribbles".

LOLTrek « Live Granades

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PET Creatures Made From Recycled Plastic Water Bottles

Posted on 05.01.07 by John @ 7:51 pm

PET creatures By working plastic water bottles made of PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) with heat guns, soldering irons, and knives artist Miwa Kozumi transforms trash into beautiful works of art. I expect that any day now there will be new forms of these creatures popping up from other creators. Maybe someone will post a tutorial on how to build them. It’s not like there is any shortage of working material, I mean from my desk I can see at least six empties waiting to be disposed of. Humm… I could do with a nice jellyfish PET pet next to my PC.

PET project - plastic water bottles

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Filed under: Japan and Cool and Hacked and Artistic
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