Hey, students — pay attention. Not to us, mind you, but to the syllabus provided by your professor. Kieran Mullen, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma, has a fairly strict rule about gadgets in class: there won’t be any, ever, under any circumstances. Balk all you want (understandable given his own clipped-on cellie), but if you sign up for this guy’s class, you’ll be flipping your phone to “off” and leaving your laptop in the dormitory. And if you try to blaze your own path and slip that netbook into the back row, you might leave bitterly disappointed. As you’ll see clearly in the video past the break, Mr. Mullen sought to make a visual point that laptops weren’t allowed in class (he calls them “a distraction”), and while it seems that the whole stunt was premeditated, most students acknowledged that his point was driven home. In short, he took a defunct machine, submerged it in liquid nitrogen, and proceeded to make the following statement:

“This is just liquid nitrogen, so it alone won’t hurt the computer. But this will.”

Geohot has released his PS3 exploit to the masses… This particular exploit is for research purposes only; it won’t serve the average user any real purpose. So now it’s on you — all you hardcores out there.

A couple things you should know:

1. You need a non-Slim PS3;
2. You need OtherOS installed.

Once you’ve soldered the appropriate connections (see pokemehere.jpg) and have loaded whatever Linux distro with OtherOS, you’re all set… Download the exploit below and:

Compile and run the kernel module.

When the “PRESS THE BUTTON IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS” comes on, pulse the line circled in the picture low for ~40ns.
Try this multiple times, I rigged an FPGA button to send the pulse.
Sometimes it kernel panics, sometimes it lv1 panics, but sometimes you get the exploit!!
If the module exits, you are now exploited.

This adds two new HV calls,
u64 lv1_peek(16)(u64 address)
void lv1_poke(20)(u64 address, u64 data)
which allow any access to real memory.

The PS3 is hacked, its your job to figure out something useful to do with it.

Download: geohot’s PS3 Exploit

Source – ps3-hacks.com

The Buddypress theme has been restored. Also clicking on the forums button will allow users to create and communicate in forums. We are currently working on direct buddypress integration.

Thanks,

Mr. Joseph

Wanted the primary students to check out the following link…

http://www.gamegarage.co.uk/play/halloween/halloween.swf

We will be carving virtual pumpkins this Wednesday in class.

Sure, it looks like a silly box, but the 2010 Brabus Mercedes-Benz Viano Lounge hides a wonderland of crazy tech toys. It’s quite the list: a 32-inch “electrically deployed” LCD, Wi-Fi, an onboard network that connects computers to the TV and one another, a PlayStation 3, Dolby surround sound, Nespresso machine and external cameras that can be viewed on the main screen.

I’m sure this thing’s supposed to be used to ferry around important businessmen and all that, but to me it looks like what would happen if the guys from Entourage wanted to throw a LAN party. Pretty sweet, but I doubt I have enough arms and legs to chop off to every afford one.

– from dvice.com

DARPA shows off its remote-controlled cyborg beetles

Yep. You read that right: cyborg beetles. Remote controlled ones, no less. It’s the work of a team of puppet masters over at UC Berkley, who have successfully wired up beetles with electrodes that allow them to be controlled remotely.

“We demonstrated the remote control of insects in free flight via an implantable radioequipped miniature neural stimulating system,” the team reported in a paper titled Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. “The pronotum mounted system consisted of neural stimulators, muscular stimulators, a radio transceiver-equipped microcontroller and a microbattery.”

The research is (of course) sponsored by DARPA, and the UC Berkley team isn’t the only group reporting success — researchers at the University of Michigan have their very own cyborg moth.

Tomorrow’s headline? “Cyber Beetle to Take Cyborg Moth This Sunday SUNDAY SUNDAY!”

Wired, via Geekologie

-- from dvice.com

From the makers of DoTA comes their next big hit. It is wonderful to see guys that worded so hard on a product for no money at all land a huge contract with a gaming company. I look forward to an excellent title and am happy they had a chance to get funding over a box of noodles.

mnmlst notes a Wall Street Journal story (picked up at Total Telecom) on the move of some patents originally held by Microsoft to the Open Invention Network, where they will join a portfolio whose purpose is to inoculate open source companies against patent trolls. OIN is near a deal to buy 22 patents from another patent-protective group, Allied Security Trust, whose members include Verizon, Cisco, and HP. AST won the patents in a private auction Microsoft put on earlier. An AST executive says that “Microsoft presented the patents to potential bidders in its auction as relating to Linux.” While OIN’s acquisition of the patents will act to protect the Linux community, AST, by contrast, exists to protect only its corporate members, not the community as a whole. But by selling the patents to OIN, they are cooperating in the protection of Linux. And by allowing the patents to go to AST in the first place, Microsoft may (the article implies) be signaling at least their lack of active intent to disrupt the Linux marketplace.

– from Slashdot