A bug in the Quicktime player, which is used to play video in Second Life, allows a malicious user to create clothing or buildings which can rob people of their money when they come in proximity of the video object. Yikes.

Submitted by jason - 2007-12-01 18:37:41
Channels - hackszine metaverse
Tags - hack secondlife digital_currency quicktime

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Google maps has a collaborate feature now that will let you make a map layer that you can share with a group or even the world. It works like a wiki, so anyone in the share list can edit, edd or remove any data point.

I'm monkeying around with it and trying to kick off a worldwide map of hackers. If you code--or just pretend to--click on this link and add yourself and your hacker friends to the map:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?i... ;amp;hl=en&msa=0&msid=108480887738389422212.000440310dcdec9d1c93a

Submitted by jason - 2007-11-30 20:37:35
Channels - hackszine futuretech
Tags - hack google mashup maps

2 comments

The term "fuck-you money" is used to describe the amount of money a person would need to accumulate in order to walk out on their job permanently and live free of responsibilities.

I put together a spreadsheet last night which describes how an average person can achieve fuck-you money realistically. Assuming you can be happy living on 1/2 of your income, investing the rest, your investment returns will exceed your expenses in 10 years, and within 20 you'll be making more off your investments than your entire salary.

This is also an experiment with a Wiki-style spreadsheet using Google Docs. Everyone has access to edit the sheet to plug in their own hypothetical numbers, or even create whole other simulation models.

Submitted by jason - 2007-08-03 21:03:47
Channels - blogcadre hackszine futuretech
Tags - hack money finance retirement

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A cool way to draw generic triangles efficiently in Javascript. This will let you create 3D objects that can be rotated or scaled. Still a bit slow, but hey, it's Javascript.

"The trick is to take advantage of the beveled edges on a div border to make right triangles. By setting the div height and width to 0px, then setting 3 borders to transparent and 1 border to an opaque color, you can make a right triangle of various sizes by adjusting the border widths.

Using some fancy geometry, you can then cut any type of triangle into a series of successively smaller right triangles. Now, in real life, the right triangles would get infinitely small (and numerous), but in the digital world, they only need to get as small as a single pixel before we don't care anymore."

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-20 08:30:17
Channels - blogcadre hackszine webdev
Tags - hack javascript 3d modeling geometry

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"This hack goes out to all the Mac diehards who have an older machine sans Apple Remote. You folks don't need to upgrade your trusty system just to control Keynote or iTunes from a distance. Just pick up the cheap (relatively speaking) Wiimote and download DarwiinRemote."

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-20 08:27:11
Channels - blogcadre hackszine
Tags - hack mac wii keynote wiimote darwiinremote

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The iPhone has a removable SIM card. You just need a paperclip to remove it. Until there is a good procedure for unlocking the device, you'll still need to sign up with AT&T, but you can use the WiFi services with a T-Mobile SIM after the device has been registered. It'll just complain about needing an AT&T SIM when it boots.

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-02 10:46:54
Channels - hackszine mobile
Tags - iphone att sim tmobile

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Here are some links for sites that are working on -- or have the capability of -- unlocking your iPhone so that you can use it on other networks besides AT&T:

http://iphoneunlocking.com/
http://www.cell-unlock.com/apple...
http://www.ifoneworx.com/
http://fineunlock.com/products/A...

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-02 10:43:31
Channels - hackszine mobile
Tags - apple iphone att unlock sim

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You can avoid an AT&T contract plan and do pre-paid minutes on your iPhone. The trick is to fail the credit check during the registration process.

How do you fail the credit check? Just enter the bogus 999-99-9999 SSN during the registration process. Doing this will cause a prepaid plan option to appear!

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-02 10:39:39
Channels - hackszine mobile
Tags - mobile iphone prepaid att

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Joshua Davis puts together some really beautiful computational artwork using actionscript. His method is to define a set of drawing rules and allow the algorithm to create the composition automatically.

You can download example source from his site, which you can extrapolate into your own computer generated art creations.

Submitted by jason - 2007-06-19 09:55:02
Channels - blogcadre design hackszine
Tags - design art interactive flash opensource dynamic actionscript

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WiseBread.com did a quick look at how paying toward your principal affects your payoff date and interest paid.

More interesting is the discussion in the comments regarding the value of an accelerating your amortization schedule versus just investing your money elsewhere.

Submitted by jason - 2007-06-03 22:29:16
Channels - general blogcadre hackszine
Tags - home mortgage taxes interest amortization

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Slurpr is a cool homebrew device that can connect to 5 wireless APs at the same time and loadbalance your connection over them.

The idea is that if you can connect to a bunch of open access points with low signals and combine them into a single, faster signal. We used to do this back in the day with two modems and phone lines. With the proliferation of unencrypted WiFi in every metropolitan area, this could be a really useful tool.

Submitted by jason - 2007-05-29 11:51:36
Channels - blogcadre hackszine makezine
Tags - hack wifi slurpr loadbalance wardrive

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This really works well! Just moisten the trackball with a little saliva, turn the mouse upside down, and scroll the trackball around on a piece of clean paper.

My trackball has been jammed for a few days and all other methods for cleaning it failed. This took about 5 seconds and worked perfectly.

Submitted by jason - 2007-05-25 11:41:41
Channels - general hackszine
Tags - hack mac mouse mightymouse

1 comment

ASeriesOfTubes is an AppleTV plugin that will allow you to browse and watch YouTube videos right on your TV.

Submitted by jason - 2007-05-25 11:39:17
Channels - hackszine
Tags - youtube mac appletv aseriesoftubes

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By touching your car remote to your head, you can make your noggin' act as a crude antenna and gain significant range. Nice for finding your car in the parking lot.

Submitted by jason - 2007-05-25 11:37:54
Channels - blogcadre hackszine
Tags - hack remote auto rf antenna

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reCAPTCHA provides the user 2 words to decode. One of them is known on the server side (like traditional captcha), but the second is an unknown word that failed the optical character recognition process.

With 60 million captchas solved by human eyes every day, this could really assist the digitization of printed works for the Internet Archive.

Submitted by jason - 2007-05-25 11:36:08
Channels - hackszine
Tags - captcha ai ocr archive print distributed

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