tequila bomb

Very cool use of a springboard hack and the accelerometer (or more likely the gyroscope).

Very tempting reason to jailbreak your iPhone. It will of course speed up your battery consumption.

Just a quick post before I gotto bed, the iPod Nano hasn’t been “jailbroken” as some sites claim, I do not have root access over the device. I did not “install” an app. I figured out how to remove them and insert a blank space into the springboard.

What I have also done is figured out a way for the iPod to boot with modified files (eg the SpingBoard Plist), bypassing the procedure it takes to stop this, I hope this will allow us to figure out a way to jailbreak it. I am primarily focusing on exposing some of the (for now) hidden features of the device.

The hack is simple. It may lead to greater things. I just don’t want people getting their hopes up that’s it’s jailbroken just yet or what I have done to be blown out of proportion.

I’ll write up more tomorrow. Any questions, contact me on twitter: @jwhelton

I’ve emailed Steve three times asking for an iPod Nano SDK! He’s got the emails. I know he’s got the emails. But he must have been too busy to get back to me!

Consequently I am very much looking forward to more revelations from Mr. Whelton. In the meantime here’s a video…

Oliver Kreylos has done what many thought were impossible – using multiple Kinects to capture different angles of an object simultaneously. Interference between the different IR-dot grids is a problem, but it is a much smaller problem than expected.

From KinectHacks.

I love this kind of hacking around with gear. Impressive initial results. Source code will apparently be forthcoming soon…

AirPlay Video is part of a public framework called MediaPlayer. This is the same MediaPlayer framework that developers use to show video in their applications. The current movie players ship with an AirVideo selection option built right in. The problem is that when you select AirVideo in a non-Apple application, the video continues to play on-device; only the audio is re-routed through the server to Apple TV.

That’s a big bummer, especially when applications like AirVideo and VLC are crying out for this kind of functionality.

But…

self.movieController = [[[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:CINDY_PATH]] autorelease];
[movieController setAllowsWirelessPlayback:YES];
movieController.view.frame = self.view.bounds;
[self.view addSubview:movieController.view];

Yes, it still won’t be App Store safe, but it’s jailbreak friendly, works flawlessly, and suggests only a single item that Apple could move to a public API to open up this functionality to developers. What’s more, with a little screen scraping or off-screen layer manipulation and a clever use of AVFoundation, you can probably have games working out to Apple TV almost immediately.

There is more background on this in the original article at TUAW.

First of all, I would strongly suggest waiting until you get a release version of iOS 4.2 on your devices. Things may well change at that point.

However, if you have already installed OS X 10.6.5 and AirPrint does not work for you, and you are an impatient little thing, here is a way to get it to work…

[Y]ou’re going to have to pull some files from a prerelease version of 10.6.5.

The files you need are:

/usr/libexec/cups/filter/urftopdf

/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.convs

/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.types

If you migrate those from a 10.6.5 prerelease build (there seem to be many floating around torrent sites and file sharing sites – build 10H542 works; naturally I can’t link you to the files themselves, sorry!) to your machine you’re just one step away from having AirPrint working.

The final key thing is you have to remove and re-add your printer in the Print & Fax preferences pane. Once you do that (and share your printer in the Sharing preferences pane) it should show up on any iOS devices that support AirPrint.

A year ago, the idea of being able to run Android on the iPhone was damn near laughable. Surely, no hacker was good enough to pull off that feat!

Then this happened, and our minds were blown wide open.

7 months later, the project has progressed enough that just about anyone can do it — in fact, you don’t even need a computer.

You can now install Android on your iPhone 2G or 3G via Cydia, as long as it is jail-broken (obviously) and running iOS 3.1.2+

If you want to do it manually, the old fashioned way, or the quick way via “Bootlace” and Cydia, then info on all that is all here.

So what are you waiting for? If your 2G doesn’t multi-task, or your 3G is crippled and slow, why not switch to Android.

Go for it. Experience “freedom” and “openness” on Google’s mobile OS.

Good luck with that!

UPDATE : Bootlace, the app that you install via Cydia to then be able to swap OSs and install Android, is a really solid app. I am playing with it all now on an iPhone 2G.

When you iPhone is locked with a passcode tap Emergency Call, then enter a non-emergency number such as ###. Next tap the call button and immediately hit the lock button. It should open up the Phone app where you can see all your contacts, call any number, etc.

Newsflash : The windows in your house are not burglar proof.

If you thought the lock screen was there to do any more than protect your phone from accidental key presses or from kids or colleagues nosing around while you are out of the room, then you are mistaken.

Some people are claiming that this is a “feature” to allow emergency services access to your iPhone. I think it is more likely to be for Apple’s technicians and geniuses. But I would love to hear from people in the know who are aware of this being a standard procedure that is taught at Fireman or Ambulance-man school.

Recently, T-Mobile released the HTC G2, their latest Android handset, and it’s got a trick up its sleeves Apple’s iOS engineers must be dying for: a little wafer of silicon that makes the handset effectively jailbreak proof.

…

It’s too early to say if Android’s jailbreakers will find a way around this limitation, but the Dev Team would do well to pay attention anyway: this might be the next hurdle they have to deal with.

Firstly, it will be exploited.

Secondly, Apple like to sell hardware. They will always do all they can in software to maintain control. But I think it is very unlikely, in the current world we live in, that they would want to jeopardise the massive hardware sales they see in unofficial markets with a truly air-tight device.

Late Thursday, security firm Symantec released a detailed paper with analysis of the headline-making code, which reveals two clues in the Stuxnet malware that adds to speculation that Israel may have authored the code to target Iran.

Or, they could simply be red herrings planted in the code by programmers to point suspicion at Israel and away from other possible suspects.

I am not really interested in commenting on where the virus was made, or by whom. I think that is very clear for all to see already.

The code targets industrial control software made by Siemens called WinCC/Step 7, but is designed to deliver its malicious payload to only a particular configuration of that system. About 68 percent of infected systems in Iran have the Siemens software installed, but researchers don’t know if any have the targeted configuration. By contrast, only 8 percent of infected hosts in South Korea are running Step 7 software, and only about 5 percent of infected hosts in the U.S. do. An apparent “kill” date in the code indicates that Stuxnet is designed to stop working June 24, 2012.

The code has so far infected about 100,000 machines in 155 countries, apparently beginning in Iran and recently hitting computers in China. Researchers still have no idea if the malware reached the targeted system it was designed to sabotage.

What is concerning is that Stuxnet has spread so far around the globe, which was something it was apparently specifically designed not to do.

One mystery still surrounding the malware is its wide propagation, suggesting something went wrong and it spread farther than intended. Stuxnet, when installed on any machine via a USB drive, is supposed to spread to only three additional computers, and to do so within 21 days.

This is probably the most important thing to consider about this entire episode.

We wouldn’t be happy if our governments were messing with the chemical or viral based weapons. Even if they guaranteed that they would only target our “enemies”. Lest the obvious happens.

And yet Stuxnet, a digital equivalent of a viral weapon, was developed without anyone’s knowledge, and is able to target industrial infrastructure in more than one countries nuclear / industrial plants.

Imagine if it spread further than they expected. Oh, it did that already!

Or Stuxnet did something catastrophic and unexpected. Now imagine that it targeted similar hardware in our own nuclear power plants, or equipment that Siemens makes for hospitals?

It’s no good eventually admitting to this, and saying that it was a targeted smart virus. Because it obviously didn’t behave as expected. Just like those missiles of the same name often don’t.

“The real-world implications of Stuxnet are beyond any threat we have seen in the past,” Symantec writes in its report. “Despite the exciting challenge in reverse engineering Stuxnet and understanding its purpose, Stuxnet is the type of threat we hope to never see again.”

Stuxnet is interesting from a purely technical standpoint. But morally it is not very different from experiments the Nazi carried out in the 40s, the development of Nuclear weapons, or some of the actions of the US and Russia during the Cold War.

Intel has confirmed that code posted to the Internet earlier this week is the master key that is part of an Intel-created standard used to make sure only authorized devices are playing copyright-protected movies.

…

HDCP is used in set-top boxes, DVD, and Blu-ray disc players, and other devices to encrypt the content, audio, or video, and verify that the devices have HDCP licenses and thus won’t play pirated content.

…

With the master key code it is possible to build devices that play copyright-protected content without having to pay for licenses.

…

“We believe that this technology will remain effective,” [Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop told CNET today]. “There’s a large install base of licensed devices including several hundred licensees that will continue to use it and in any case, were a (circumvention) device to appear that attempts to take advantage of this particular hack there are legal remedies, particularly under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).”

Ok then. Because industrial grade black market copy shops in the back streets of Bangkok, China, and even New York really give a damn about the DMCA.

Just give it up guys.

With the master key code it is possible to build devices that play copyright-protected content without having to pay for licenses. But Waldrop said that wouldn’t be easy to do because the technology would have to be implemented in the chip. “As a practical matter, that’s a difficult and costly thing to do,” he said.

And you have a Master Code, and sold this technology to the industry specifically with that method of protection because…?