The builders of Wii hacking devices, Wiikey, have announced that they’ve found a method to hack the Wii U to play content via USB media. The kit also claims to work on devices from any region and requires no soldering. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite electronics hobby shop, Adafruit has posted instructions for building your own HAL 9000 replica out of a big red button, an Arduino board, and some cleverly cut plastic. Best of all? With the press of a button you can make HAL tell you what to do – until you kill it. → Read More
An indie band relying on crowd-sourcing is nothing new; many a tour bus has been paid for by way of things like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. But a band asking for your mouse cursor, instead of your money? Thats a new one.
Dutch rock band lightlight has tapped the power of the crowd along with a rather impressive hack to make what might be the cleverest* music video the world has ever seen. → Read More
While visiting, and judging, the Photo Hack Day at Facebook headquarters yesterday, one of the more than 60 hacks presented in a two-minute format was iMaze. The team that put it together in just a little over a day was comprised of developers, some of whom were high-school students, and it ended up being one of the most polished apps coming out of the hackathon. With Aviary and Facebook putting… → Read More
When there is no central authority, who has the authority to sell t-shirts? That question came to a head over the past few days when YourAnonNews announced it planned to create something like a newswire for Anonymous news. → Read More
A Brooklynite named Matt Richardson has built a working prototype of a bicycle headlight that uses a Raspberry Pi to project his current traveling speed as he rides around the city. Richardson calls it the Raspberry Pi Dynamic Headlight, and it’s one of those jaw-dropping DIY projects that makes you wonder why this isn’t something you can buy in a store yet. → Read More
A Bitcoin brokerage, Bitinstant was hit by hackers who used a bit of social engineering to take control of the company’s DNS servers and ultimately funnel out $12,000 worth of Bitcoins. → Read More
Twitter announced via its blog today that it has begun using DMARC, a security protocol designed to cut down the number of fake emails that users receive from companies pretending to be Twitter itself. The move should help cut down on phishing scams, where third parties try to get users to give up their login details via false requests for password verification or other personal info. → Read More
Twitter is sending out emails to 250,000 users it says may have had their accounts compromised in the last week as the site experienced “unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data.” Twitter tells TechCrunch that this is “not related” to the widespread, but intermittent, outage the site saw yesterday. → Read More
I attended PennApps 2013 this weekend and got to judge the winners out of 20 excellent finalists. The 48-hour event brought out some amazing talent from many colleges across the nation but one product, SparkTab really stuck out as a unique and interesting solution to a thorny problem. → Read More
In the pantheon of geek projects there are few things as potent as the creation of an FTP server. Rather than doing cool stuff like serving up web pages or handling phone calls, an FTP server just sits there serving up files like a Michelin-starred chef slinging hash at a diner. But what if you made it solar-powered? What then? → Read More
On the web, we have a host of user names and passwords we have to remember, whether for news sites or apps or Netflix. So Michael Thomas and Vahur Roosimaa of Los Angeles-based startup Scopely have hacked together PhoneID, which lets you login to websites without a username and password. → Read More
This hack comes from a pair of charming Germans who created an app to find books related to apps you just opened. For example, when you download or install an app – Word, Photoshop, Skype – it will automatically find books related to the new app. → Read More
Here’s a heartwarming story for a Hackathon Saturday: Chad Ruble’s mother suffers from aphasia due to a stroke. She hasn’t been able to use a keyboard for years because she is simply unable to recognize text. In order to help her, he built a Kinect-enabled interface that lets her move her hand around a series of simple icons – happy, sad, upset, etc. – and other icons that signify degree.
After… → Read More
Do you have hardware project that’s been simmering on the back burner because you can’t get access to a 3D printer? Come on down to the Disrupt Hackathon and use one of the MakerBots and Raspberry Pis we’ll have on site for anyone to use. Build toys, robots, Arduino cases, or whatever you want and enter the Disrupt Hackathon as an inaugural hardware hacker. We dare you.
The best hardware hack… → Read More
12 million Apple UDIDs (unique device identifiers) may be in the wild, or at least that’s the claim from the hacker group Antisec, which has released a sampling of that data, allegedly retrieved from an FBI laptop computer. The actual leak, however, did not include 12 million records – it included 1 million and one records. The group also claimed that they stripped out personally identifiable… → Read More
Hacker group Antisec has released 1,000,001 pieces of data related to Apple’s UDID identification scheme. This data, if cross-referenced with Apple’s developer resources, could potentially identify a unique user’s geographic location and other specific information. In fact, the database does contain device names (for example, one UDID points to a device name “hobamain” and appeared in a search for… → Read More
Friend of TC Nik Cubrilovic posted this clever hack that allows you to listen to the free version of Spotify without having to listen to advertisements. He recommends that it only be used by people who, for reasons of geographic control, cannot pay for a pro account (which is totally worth the cash). → Read More
So here’s something you may have seen floating around on Hacker News or elsewhere, but we thought it was cool enough to share in case you’re looking for something to do with your weekend. After all, there are few of us who don’t love stories that end with robots. Especially robots controlled by phones.
Robots have indeed fascinated many of us since childhood, and thanks to modern technology… → Read More
WHy ride like the rest of humanity when you can turn your bike into a robo-shifting supermachine? This Instructable by programmer and maker Nabil Tewolde shows us how to create a push-button-controlled electronic derailleur system with parts you can pick up at your local electronics shop. → Read More
This story made the rounds a few days ago but I think generally it’s something more people should know. During a visit to the very expensive and not very nice Times Square Marriott, Justin Watt noticed a strange bar at the top of his blog’s home page. He had recently dealt with a PHP hack and so was alert for changes on the site and when he dug further he found some strange Javascript embedded… → Read More
BrowserQuest, playable in a browser near you, is a proof of concept so ingenious that you’ll wonder why they didn’t just build a Zelda clone and be done with it. In short, the site is a multi-player RPG based entirely on HTML5 with no Flash to be found.
The source code is free and open source and it uses WebSockets to communicate with a central server in order to render the movement of the… → Read More
Like most hacks, this discovery of a way to find an Android phone’s Google Wallet PIN requires a lot of initial access but is disturbing nonetheless. Google knows about the hack and is repairing it. Discovered by Joshua Rubin of Zvelo, the hack is one of the most interesting attacks on Google Wallet so far.
In short, this hack allows access to credit card data and purchase history and could, in… → Read More
You like cats. Even if you’re a “dog person,” or allergic, I still know your little cat-loving secret. And how do I know?
Well, since you’re here on TechCrunch it’s apparent that you’re at least mildly interested in the internet, which happens to be infested with cats. → Read More
Well-known iOS hacker chpwn (aka Grant Paul) along with Ryan Petrich have released a new tool for installing Siri on jailbroken phones. The Siri port, called “Spire,” works on any phone that can run iOS 5. However, because Apple only officially supports Siri requests coming from the iPhone 4S, a proxy server address is still required.
Oh, there’s one more thing: Spire is legal. → Read More
In a moment as historic as Alexander Bell’s call to his assistant, an iPhone hacker wrote on Twitter that he had successfully ported Siri to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. → Read More
Doot doo doot doo doo doot! Hacker Retrobrad created a handheld console that displays Super Mario Brother in a very special way: each sprite is reduced to one pixel. The console, called Super Pixel Brothers, includes all 20 levels as well boss fights.
The game is played on an 8×8 mutli-colored LED board and to hit enemies you need to position your single-pixel Mario over their single-pixel… → Read More
Google is advising users in Iran to take specific steps in order to re-secure their Gmail accounts after last week’s reveal of the man-in-the-middle attacks that targeted Iranian users. The attackers used fraudulent SSL certificates issued by a compromised root certificate authority in the Netherlands, DigiNotar. These fake certificates allowed hackers to impersonate Google.com and others. → Read More
This project is part of a bachelor’s thesis by Armin Ambühl and involves a quadrocopter, a Kinect sensor, and what I assume is dark magic.
To activate the copter the user lifts his arm and to stop it he claps. The rest of the interaction is performed by swinging his arms around to rotate and steer the vehicle. What was it that Arthur C. Clarke said? → Read More
This wild Game Gear and Master System-playing mod uses the guts of a Game Gear, a PS One screen, and the original buttons from the original device to offer a fairly massive package full of retro fun.
Made by loveablechevy, it includes a rechargable battery and, as mentioned before, weighs more than a Motorola Xoom. → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
