The Edge of I-Hacked

from consumerist

The Consumerist’s 3-month sting operation snared a Geek Squad technician stealing porn from our hard drive, and we’ve got the work-safe video and logfiles to prove it.

from shacknews

 

A Sony Computer Entertainment representative has confirmed to Shacknews that developers can now take full advantage of the PSP’s CPU following the late May release of the system’s version 3.50 firmware. Rumors of the unlocking were initially reported by fansite PSP Updates via an unnamed source.

Previously, developers were only able to run the CPU at 266MHz rather than its full potential clock speed of 333MHz, though most games ran at only 222MHz. High Impact Games’ Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, released in February, is said to run at 266MHz. Hackers long ago discovered methods to run the PSP’s CPU at full speed, the benefits of which include a smoother framerate for certain games, at the cost of reduced battery life. There is no word yet if this update enables previous PSP releases to run at 333MHz, something hacked PSP firmware has enabled in the past.

It is widely believed that the PSP CPU was underclocked to increase the portable’s battery life. Some speculate that the availability of the portable’s full CPU speed affirms recent rumors of an upcoming redesign, which supposedly includes a brighter screen, a slimmer profile, and increased battery life. Such a system would be better equipped to deal with the greater power demands of the unthrottled CPU.

from Engadget

Reports of MacBook Pros getting crazy-hot because of misapplied thermal grease have been floating around for a year now, and it doesn’t look like the recent bump to Santa Rosa has changed anything. A reader at the MacRumors forums noticed his week-old MBP getting a little hot, so he bravely decided to pull the unit apart to check things out and found what he estimated to be forty times too much paste applied to the logic board. There are also a few threads on the Apple support site with similar pics of MBP logic boards slathered in grease, so this doesn’t appear to be an isolated issue. Apple hasn’t commented yet, but seeing as it managed to cool things down last time with a firmware update, we wouldn’t expect too much fanfare when this finally gets resolved.

From New York Times

The Department of Energy estimates that in the average home, 40 percent of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Add that all up, and it equals the annual output of 17 power plants, the government says.

I started checking how much electricity my electronics were consuming when I wasn’t using them. I used a Kill A Watt EZ energy meter (available online for about $25) and began measuring. My PC was continuously drawing 134 watts all night.

The more devices I checked, the worse it got. My TiVo digital video recorder was sucking down about 30 watts when it was not playing or recording a show. A Comcast digital cable set-top box made by Motorola that I tested was drawing about 40 watts. My DVD player was drawing 26 watts while idle, and my audio system — which I rarely turned off — was using 47 watts. This was in addition to the numerous power adapters and chargers, each drawing 1 or 2 watts, not to mention several other devices sipping energy to keep clocks running or to be ready to turn on at the push of a button.

I am completely guilty!

Whether or not you think the Zunefairly ho-hum media device, the one thing that’s pretty agreeable is that its relatively subtle “doubleshot” casing — where the edges have a translucent or different color than the rest of the plastics — is unique, and the closest thing to an iconic aesthetic the Zune has right now. Potentially unfortunately for Microsoft, three days ago the USPTO published Apple patent application 20070048470, for “Housing of an electronic device formed by doubleshot injection molding”. Filed August 16, 2005 by, among others, Johnny “iPhone” Ive himself, the process details a multiwall plastic-injected enclosure which, among other things, can be useful for for “forming internal features on the inside surfaces” — like, say, alternate edge colors in the Zune, or the white and black-yet-clear plastics as seen in MacBooks and iMacs and iPods. So, in addition to that per-Zune tariff Microsoft pays to Universal, is Apple about to join the list?
Note: It’s not that known if this patent has actually been fully granted. It is, however, definitely published, and is still currently the only published patent in the USPTO database for the doubleshot plastic molding process.

 

from engadget.com

Oh no they didn’t! By now you already know it’s on, and the latest round in the iPhone v. iPhone dance-off comes from Apple spokesman Steve Dowling, who was quoted as saying the Cisco lawsuit is “silly” and that several companies are already using the term iPhone for VoIP products. He called Cisco’s trademark “tenuous at best” and noted his company was the first to ever use the name for a cellphone. He goes on to boast that Cisco is gonna totally get served: “if Cisco wants to challenge us on it, we’re very confident we’ll prevail.” Oh yeah — Apple to Cisco: let’s see you dance, sucka!

from torrentfreak.com

It is no secret that the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations track down alleged pirates by uploading fake torrents. Up until now it was always unclear where those files came from, and how to identify them.

The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs try to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP adresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They hire a company to put up fake copies of popular movies, music albums, and TV series. They even use pirate like filenames such as “Battlestar Galactica S03E07 REPACK DSR XviD-ORENJi” and “Miami Vice[2006]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo“.

One of the btjunkie admins has found a unique way to identify trackers that host these fake files, which makes it easy to efficiently remove them.

Virtually all the servers that spread these fake files are located in Southern California and Las Vegas. The administrators of these servers follow patterns that make it easy to identify them. The content of the trackers and seed amounts make them stand out. There are more unique characteristics, but we wont reveal all the tricks because they could take counter measures. Here are some examples of servers that host and track fake torrents:

Tracker 1, Tracker 2, Tracker 3 & Tracker 4. (Screenshots: One & Two)

All the information was provided to me by one of the admins of btjunkie, who works together on this with other torrent site admins. He says that the MPAA and friends use a variety of tactics. The tracker will either stall everyone at around 90% or the content will just be a blank monochrome screen.

“I really think this is being done by professionals with a budget, that’s a lot of servers to setup and it takes some expertise to setup in the manner that they did it,” says the btjunkie admin. “I don’t think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this.”

Here are some good examples of how these fake torrents clutter up the search results. Virtually all of those X marked torrents are coming from the ip-ranges we mentioned, and are fake files. The good thing is that Torrentportal’s report system is well used by their users.

The server boxes that host these torrents fall in serveral ip-ranges, and are not yet blocked by blocklist software like peerguardian. Here are a few of the ranges that were discovered recently. You can easily add these to the blocklist of your torrent client (if it supports one), filewall, or blocklist manager.

The anti-piracy servers use hostnames like 101tracker.dhcp.biz, aplustorrents.qhigh.com, bitnova.squirly.info, bittorment.ocry.com, and pirate-trakkrz.leet.la. All these hostnames can be traced back to the same IP Ranges, these ranges contain possibly hundreds of fake trackers, so feel free to block them:

66.172.60.XXX, 66.177.58.XXX, 66.180.205.XXX, 209.204.61.XXX, 216.151.155.XXX

Note that it’s not only MPAA material that is hosted on these fake trackers. It is more likely that the servers are owned and operated by an organization that logs IP addresses for several copyright owners and or anti-piracy organizations. However, I think it is likely that the MPAA is one of them.

from Liberation Hosting

Liberation Hosting is now solely staffed by codedchaos. As a result, afew changes have been made.

• Liberation now offers both free and premium hosting to anyone that needs it.

• Anyone may get free hosting or premium hosting (details on plans page).

• If free hosting users more space/bandwidth/etc, they may upgrade to either of the paid plans when they choose.

• If a site I like has free hosting, and needs more resources, I will give them more resources at no cost.

• Liberation does not adjust paying customer’s resources negatively, but may increase their resources if they need it.

• Anyone can buy more resources than listed in the plans either by contacting me for a custom plan, or by selecting the add-ons when they order their account.

This is a big difference from the way Liberation used to do things.

from psp-updates

If the great news with regards to 2.80 kernel dumping wasn’t enough for those who were on lower firmwares, Dark_AleX’s latest release of 3.02 OE-A will definitely make your day! Don’t worry, while the name makes it sound like a totally different hack, it is in essence, just like the earlier SE firmwares. What you get with the latest version is amazing to say the least.

Here’s the full list of new features in 3.02 OE-A:

• 3.02 Custom Firmware - 3.02 firmware environment with 1.50 homebrew capability.
• Can run homebrew using 3.02 kernel
• UMD Video region free
• PSP kernel region selector
• O/X button selector
• WMA enabling option
• Flash player enabling option
• Pops (SCE PSONE emulator) - DRM protection hacked (Which means that you can now your game on more than one psp, and share them over the internet)

The installation is just like the previous custom firmwares by Dark_AleX. Nonetheless, here’s a guide:

Generating the DATA.DXAR:

1. Copy oeupdmaker and oeupdmaker% to /PSP/GAME/ if you are using 1.50 firmware and to X:/PSP/GAME150 if you are using whatever version of 2.71 Se.
2. Get the 1.50 and 3.02 Update eboots in the oeupdmaker folder with the names “150.PBP” and “302.PBP”.
3. Run oeupdmaker. This program will create a file called DATA.DXAR in the same directory (oeupdmaker).
4. The program will verify that the SHA-1 of the generated file is correct.
5. Once that you have done this, you can save the DATA.DXAR file to skip this step in the future.

Flashing DATA.DXAR:

1. Copy the directories oeflasher and oeflasher% to /PSP/GAME (or /PSP/GAME150 if you are on 2.71 SE)
2. Copy the generated DATA.DXAR from oeupdmaker to oeflasher directory.
3. Run the flasher. If your battery is less than 75%, the program will show the error saying so and will return you to the XMB. This check can be by passed at your own risk by executing the program with triangle and L pressed.
4. The program will continue showing an agreement. Press X to accept and flash the custom firmware, or R to cancel and exit to the XMB.
5. If you accept, the program will flash the custom firmware. Don’t shutdown the PSP and don’t remove the memory stick.
6. Once finished, shutdown the psp and restart manually to 3.02 OE

Again, the latest release is nothing more than revolutionary, the key features being 3.02 VSH and the PSONE emulation hacks. Unfortunately, this release is not aimed at TA-082 users, so all the TA-082ers will have to keep wishing and praying for some magic. For the rest who’re on their 2.71 SE firmwares, this represents the next golden firmware…Enjoy!

(A last minute note - occasionally this program will result in a blue screen error, but this is not harmful. Just restart and try again.)

Download Link: [3.02 OE-A by Dark_AleX]

Just as a side-note, I’ve installed this firmware on my PSP, and it’s great

from ps3seeker.com

Just enter in your zip code and this site will tell you where the Wii’s are, with google maps!