Hardware

There was a time not so long ago when Minecraft was actually a game. Now, it’s an insane sandbox where people build all kinds of incredibly complex things… like a word processor… out of blocks. This crazy contraption is the work of a a third-year robotics student who goes by the name of Koala_Steamed on YouTube. It’s the result of nearly two years of painstaking work inside the Minecraft world. That’s not continuous, mind you. Breaks were obviously taken to do things like attend classes, use the washroom, and interact with people and things that had curves. ...

A summary of some problems I faced when tinkering with Quake to get it play nicely on an oscilloscope. After seeing some cool clips like this mushroom thing and of course Youscope, playing Quake on a scope seemed like a great idea. It ticks all the marks that make me happy: low-poly, realtime rendered and open source. » Pekka Väänänen | lofibucket.com

In May of this year, LinuxGizmos and Linux.com collaborated on a joint survey, asking our readers to choose their favorite open-spec hacker SBCs from a list of 32 that run Linux and/or Android. Our SBC survey winners, ranked one to five, included the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, Odroid-XU, CubieTruck, and Banana Pi single board computers. Thanks to the flood of new open-spec, community-backed boards, as well as the demise of others, we have updated our list for this end-of-year snapshot. ...

El sistema truca las ondas electromagnéticas del monitor. De esta forma se puede transmitir información desde la pantalla a un teléfono que esté a menos de siete metros, con un ancho de banda de hasta 60 bytes por segundo, suficientes para obtener una contraseña en ocho segundos, según aseguran los investigadores. » Sergio Ferrer | elconfidencial.com

Imgur user smellystring has officially changed my view of Minecraft – and he’ll change yours as well. Below is a fully functional 1KB hard drive, created within Minecraft and it’s incredible. Smellystring walks us through the process which includes binary blocks, pistons, a data collection room, indicator lights and ”bit” emulators. Watch and learn. » reddit.com » | imgur.com » Steven Norris | gearburn.com

Running Doom on a printer is more than a gimmick: it’s a security concern. In 1993, first-person shooter Doom was a groundbreaking game. In 2014, it’s being used by ethical hackers to demonstrate security vulnerabilities in connected devices. » Tom Fox-Brewster | theguardian.com

We’re happy to announce that fail0verflow, GTVHacker, and Team-Eureka have jointly discovered and exploited a new vulnerability in the Chromecast which allows root access on the current software build (17977) as well as new in box devices » Team-Eureka | xda-developers.com

Apps that use your smartphone’s microphone need to ask permission, but the motion sensors? No say-so needed. That might not sound like a big deal, but security researchers from Stanford University and defense firm Rafael have discovered a way to turn Android phone gyroscopes into crude microphones. They call their app ”Gyrophone” and here’s how it works: the tiny gyros in your phone that measure orientation do so using vibrating pressure plates. As it turns out, they can also pick up air vibrations from sounds, and many Android devices can do it in the 80 to 250 hertz range – exactly the frequency of a human voice. ...

That’s the takeaway from findings security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell plan to present next week, demonstrating a collection of proof-of-concept malicious software that highlights how the security of USB devices has long been fundamentally broken. The malware they created, called BadUSB, can be installed on a USB device to completely take over a PC, invisibly alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user’s internet traffic. Because BadUSB resides not in the flash memory storage of USB devices, but in the firmware that controls their basic functions, the attack code can remain hidden long after the contents of the device’s memory would appear to the average user to be deleted. And the two researchers say there’s no easy fix: The kind of compromise they’re demonstrating is nearly impossible to counter without banning the sharing of USB devices or filling your port with superglue. ...

On a standard headphone plug, the left channel comes through the outer ”tip” contact, the right channel through the middle ”ring” contact, and the ground connection through the inner ”sleeve” contact. The acronym for these so-called ”tip-ring-sleeve” connectors is where TRS Drawbot gets its name. It has no microchips or circuit boards and uses free software to turn line graphics into sound files that make almost any audio device into an on-the-go robot controller. ...