Hanging out at sites like Giz may have instilled in you an insatiable, pocket-emptying gadget habit. But now we're entering a new era—the old guys on the TV are saying that soon we may not even have pockets, let alone money for them. Don't panic though: You've probably got a wealth of gadgetry sitting underutilized in your living rooms, closets and basements, just waiting to be given powerful new (not exactly authorized) features. For free.

I've collected the best firmware replacements, software mods and homebrew hacks from the DMCA-flouting, EULA-hating frontiers of gadgetland that'll breathe new life into your stable of hardware and maybe—just maybe—let you feel that lusty new-gadget rush again.

Turn Your Xbox, Old PC or Apple TV into a Genuine Media Center

Xbox Media Center is about as refined as an unauthorized hack can get, playing back virtually any audio and video format, running a bevy of console emulators and still playing your Xbox games. To be honest, this should almost be viewed as a natural update for every Xbox, which at its core is a slow but functional PC with an easy TV connection. (Any actual PCs you have lying around can run a PC-ported version of XBMC.)

Boxee is a very slick fork of the XBMC project for Mac, and it's available for Apple TV. As shipped, the Apple TV works fine within the closed iTunes ecosystem, but Boxee's support for virtually every video codec and free online video like YouTube, CNN, BBC, and Revision3 will suit your new, more destitute lifestyle a bit better.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Installation is pretty straightforward in most cases, with simple Boxee and XBMC setup programs available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Before you load XBMC, though, you have to mod your Xbox with one of these methods, many of which require a specific game. After that it's all install wizards and lollipops.

Installing anything on the locked-down Apple TV used to take some serious finagling, but there are now tools that will create an automated Boxee installer on a flash drive. Just plug the drive in, restart and you're good to go.

XBMC Online Manual

Boxee

Make Over Your iPod, Archos, iRiver or Sandisk with Rockbox

It's hard to look at the current generation of media players and not admire their diverse capabilities and extensible software platforms. That's not to say that your 5th-gen iPod doesn't play back music perfectly well, or that your iRiver H10 still isn't a kickass media player, but they do feel a bit dated. Rockbox replaces your MP3 player's operating system with something more substantial, effectively making it a completely new device. You get endless codec support, advanced audio options, dozens of games, useful apps like a calculator and a text editor, plus you can choose from tons of different interface skins for a unique look and feel. Rockbox's tweaking possibilities mean you will earn admiring "what is that?" questions from friends, and it won't cost you a thing. If your player isn't supported yet just hold on—everything from the Zen Vision:M to the Toshiba Gigabeat S has a fairly active dev team.

Difficulty: Easy. Rockbox has an automated tool called the Rockbox Utility available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It does the work for you. Even better, it often automatically configures your player to dual boot with its original OS.

Rockbox Official Site

Convert Your PC or Notebook Into A Much More Expensive Mac

It's undeniable that Macs are too expensive. For many, they are considered a luxury item whose added cost doesn't justify the benefit. Luckily Apple's switch to an Intel platform opened up a world of unauthorized OS X installations which can turn your existing PC into a powerhouse Mac Pro workstation, or morph your MSI Wind or Asus EeePC into the Mac netbook that should be in their goddamn product line anyway. Check the hardware compatibility list to see if your PC is eligible for the upgrade.

Difficulty: Moderate to Hard. If you're not morally opposed to downloading iATKOS and Kalyway, which are pre-patched Leopard install DVDs (this is bit torrent territory), then the process is much like installing any other OS. If you insist on building your own patched install from a DVD you own, then, well, good luck. Always check hardware lists first, though, because driver support is everything.

OSX86 Project Page

Flash Your Crappy Router Into a Top-Line Piece of Hardware

The DD-WRT project exists for a simple reason: Most routers are physically very similar, but are priced differently because of functionality derived from software. The DD-WRT firmware unlocks the potential of the most basic routers out there—too many to name but damn if yours isn't on the list. As it turns out, your budget model is kind of impressive: Program-specific traffic throttling, professional level wireless security and radical signal boosting are just a few of the dozens of new features that can be enabled.

Difficulty: Easy. If you can't manage this one, then you don't deserve a router—installation just takes a few clicks on the device's default configuration pages. A word of caution, though: Make sure your router configuration page is totally compatible with your browser before the operation, as some choke on Firefox and can botch firmware upgrades. Stick to IE if you have the choice.

DD-WRT Project Page

Download Updated Maps For Your Old GPS

I'm referring of course to capital 'D' downloading here, mainly because at the moment GPS map updates are a racket. You could spend hundreds of dollars on map data that is freely available on Google Maps, Microsoft Live and MapQuest, among others, or you can just, you know, not. Map packs for Garmin, TomTom and Magellan units are floating around torrent sites and usually don't require much more than a simple CD image mount and run routine to set up. (Guilty conscience sold separately.)

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. If you're just running a copy of a CD, then you'll be able to use the installation wizards. Some more involved methods for Windows CE-based devices require some SSH file transfers, but these are relatively rare.

Jailbreak Your iPhone for Wi-Fi Internet Tethering

Two internet plans are enough, but to sign on to a mobile internet contract when you've already got unlimited iPhone data feels kind of stupid. Jailbreaking your iPhone is now about as easy as performing a firmware upgrade, and there are actually multiple tethering apps. PDANet and iPhoneModem both work a treat, but keep in mind that excessive usage could draw AT&T's attention and ire: Tethering is not allowed on the data plan, even though it works fine. Both apps are available in Cydia, where you can also find a limited assortment of other apps that don't have a place in the app store.

Difficulty: Moderate. Jailbreaking can be managed through the Dev Team's fantastic Quickpwn tool, but it does take a few minutes and can go wrong if instructions aren't followed closely. After jailbreak, Cydia and Installer fill the role of the gray-market app store, functioning as simple package managers that are arguably as polished as their more legitimate younger brother.

PDANet and iPhoneModem take different approaches to tethering, but neither requires more networking expertise than it would take to, say, set up a router.

iPhone Jailbreak

PDANet

iPhoneModem

Turn Your Wii Into a Free Emulation Machine

It's more than a little infuriating to have to repurchase your childhood library of console games from the Virtual Console, especially when free PC emulators and accompanying ROMs abound on the old intertubes. All you need is a copy of Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, an SD card and an SD reader and you're ready to install A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, which is pretty much all anyone has ever really needed since this whole "Video Gaming Television Machine" thing got under way in the first place. Throw in extended media playback and some helpful widgets for an extra value-add.

Difficulty: Moderate. This is one of the only hacks here that needs additional hardware to work, even if it's basic. The good news is that once you find a copy of Zelda and load up your SD card, the process pretty much takes care of itself. Further app installs are taken care of through a intuitive dedicated channel.

WiiBrew WIki

A great resource for similar projects is our industrious sister site Lifehacker, where you can find a veritable treasure trove of tutorials and tricks. Have you postponed any gadget purchases until you're sure your bank is solvent? Have any other budget hardware resurrection techniques that we missed? Let us know in the comments.

If you've got a Mini 9 you'd like to load OS X onto, hit up the link for, not quite step-by-step instructions, but probably enough to get the job done. [UneasySilence]

From the group responsible:

Regardless how good the intention of the government might have been, the facts are that tested implementations of the ePassports Inspection System are not secure.

ePassports give us a false sense of security: We are made to believe that they make use more secure. I'm afraid that's not true: current ePassport implementations don't add security at all.

But now that the security loopholes have been demonstrated, we can't possibly keep using ePassports. Err...right guys? [THC Blog via Slashdot]

Futhermore, the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services isn't even sure where the device is located. So far, Childs isn't talking. Despite giving up info to SF's charismatic mayor, there are still a lot of pieces left to the puzzle. Maybe another meeting with the mayor is in order—except this time fists should ask the questions. [NetworkWorld via Tech Digest]

To the untrained, the cached images disappear after a few seconds, but Zdziarski demonstrated that if you know what you're doing (and you've got over an hour), you can recover the file system and see many, many of these grabs. Gadget Lab is also reporting that Zdziarski said forensics experts have actually used this method to solve serious crimes. You can probably count on two hands the number of people like Zdziarski who actually know how to accomplish this, so it's not like small-time thieves are getting their iPhones scanned regularly. But still, interesting development in iPhone security. [O'Reilly, Gadget Lab]

Now, this post is similar to Juan González did back in June with his robot, but we'd argue it lacks the personality of Tajima's cleaning creation, which combines vacuuming with limited physical fitness.

And, let's face it, stumbling around Azeroth and Google Earth has nothing on a Roomba. [Wii Balance Board Blog via Kotaku]

For those interested in actually doing this stuff to your Wiimotes, head over to Wiimotemods for their complete guide of step-by-step projects. [Wiimotemods via MAKE]

At least, that's what the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's lawsuit against the students, their professor and the university claims. They argue that the students actually ran afoul of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because one of the fare cards "constitutes a computer," and that because the MBTA works with the Department of Homeland Security, national security, yadda yadda. End result, the judge agreed and gagged the students for at least 10 days, so they couldn't give their talk (you can still check out the presentation here though). The students say that they believed the matter had been resolved before the restraining order was filed, and didn't realize that the MBTA wanted a full copy of the presentation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently repping the students, and says that the judge came to "a very, very wrong conclusion" and that the decision "has a tremendous chilling effect on sharing this sort of research. . . . And we intend to fight it with everything we've got." [Wired, WSJ, The Tech via Alley Insider]

[PSPzProject via Kotaku]

The researchers took a photograph of a Medeco key, printed the image onto a label and used the label as a cut-out guide for reshaping the plastic of the credit card. Voila; State secrets here we come! Any credit card plastic could be used to create a simulated key, they said.

The Medeco M3 key does have an extra feature that is supposed to add security – a step protrusion on one side of the key that helps moves the Medeco lock's slider. But the same crew that created this easy hack proved last year that all you needed to do was insert the end of a bent paper clip into lock, pushing back the slider and rendering the feature toothless. Considering Medeco locks are three to four times more expensive than conventional ones, maybe the company should jump on this problem stat. [Wired - Photo Credit: Dave Bullock]

Microsoft programmers are apparently aware of the exploit presentation at Black Hat, and are waiting to see the findings themselves. Presented by Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov, of IBM and VMware, respectively, the exploit negates key security features such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP), which make it difficult to locate and execute code and data. And apparently this exploit is so broad and game changing that it could be applied to other platforms. OS X, beware? [SearchSecurity via Electronista]

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Apparently, the passcodes recovered by Mayor Gavin Newsom last Monday did not grant administrator access to the entire system as everyone had hoped. Instead, they provided access to a computer at the Hall of Justice that no one was aware of. They also discovered that Childs had set up more than 1,000 computer modems in locked cabinets and other hiding places as part of a network he was building right under the noses of his superiors. Prosecutors now believe that Childs envisioned a meltdown of the entire system that would target supervisors he considered to be incompetent and inferior to himself. And, the best part was that the system was booby-trapped so that routine system maintenance would trigger the destruction of sensitive city records. Child's hands would be clean—so to speak.

We have also learned that Childs had a troubled past and lied about it to get his job. As a teen, he spent time in jail for aggravated robbery and was arrested a second time for assault. Police have also recently found ammunition in his home that he was not authorized to have. Why his past was not uncovered during a background check is unclear, but when you put a man in charge of the entire computer network for the city of San Francisco, you would think that due diligence would be in order. At this point, Childs remains in prison with bail set at $5 million until further decisions regarding his fate are set during a hearing on September 24th. [SF Gate and SF Gate]

The next step, of course, is to get some sort of repository for hacked apps going. iPhone developers who are still pissed about the NDA might be receptive to people paying for their app on the iTunes store, but getting TIMELY updates from another source (or direct from themselves). This way users can bypass that week-long waitlist for revisions we're currently seeing in the App Store. [iPhone hacking via haklabs via Macnn]

Wired has published a particularly enjoyable series of interviews in celebration of Wargames' anniversary, which includes those who wrote and directed the film as well as those inventing all the hacks back in 1983. But our favorite moment that can't be missed from the article was a too-weird-to-be-made-up story from co-screenwriter Lawrence Lasker about visiting Norad and meeting its quirky commander:

As we're walking back to the bus that's going to take us to the hotel, James Hartinger [then commander in chief of Norad] walks up between me and Walter and plants a hand on the back of our necks: "I understand you boys are writing a movie about me!" he says. "Let's go to the bar." Walter says: "Well, we have to get on the bus to go back to our hotel." And Hartinger replies: "Are you insane? I've got 50,000 men under my command. You think I can't get you back to your hotel? Plus, I can't drink off the base. So c'mon." He was all for the message in our script. We kind of simplified it to "machines are taking over." He said, "God damn, you're right! I sleep well at night knowing I'm in charge."

Hit the link for the rest of Wired's oral history of Wargames. It's worth the read. [Wired]

From the look of the finished result pic below, I was reminded of Club Nintendo SNES Classic Controller (Japan only), and became insanely jealous all over again. [Ed's Howto]

Despite being in jail, the authorities are worried that he may have enabled a third party to access the system and destroy sensitive information. Administrators still do not have access themselves, but they maintain that the system is up and running and that no serious data problems have come up thus far. The exact motives behind Child's crimes have not been determined, although his frustrations at work seem to be a likely culprit. Still, why someone would commit a crime and throw away a $150,000-a-year job after "almost" being fired is a mystery to me. And I highly doubt that using the true passcodes as a bargaining chip is going to earn him any leverage. [SFGate]

[intomobile]

[Aram Bartholl via Make via Technabob]

Key Features: - Play most video formats (DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, RMVB + more) - Play DVD files WITHOUT converting them - Sync, organize and watch non-iTunes video files - Browse the web with a Safari based web browser - Rent & watch Hi-Def movies from Jaman.com - Stream media from UPnP(v1) media servers - View local weather forecasts - View RSS Feeds - Enable SSH access - All original Apple TV features remain intact - And much, much more...

[Colors, Wired How To via Lifehacker]

[Curious Inventor via MAKE]

With the current version you can:

•Play 2 octaves of an 8 note scale at a time,
•Change the starting note anywhere in the range of a regular keyboard
•Change octaves
•Change keys
•Change tonal modes (Ionian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian, Locrian)
•Change the timbre of a sound
•Change the resonance of a sound
•Use the whammy bar to pitchbend
•Play chords in the mode you have the guitar set to (major/minor/etc.)
•Rock out with a video game toy

Bringing the good ol' Cold War days to the future, the system would be linked to the Air Force's high-speed instruction detection systems, letting them immediately strike back at the source. I'm internally debating whether this is a good idea or not, all Skynet jokes aside. Your thoughts? [Threat Level]

And don't worry—when the cops come, another press of the button will make the whole thing disappear as quickly as it started. If you want to build this system yourself, all you need is $634 in parts and the instructions outlined in the following link. [plasma2002 via MAKE]

In other words, you could be surfing the internet, making Skype calls, broadcasting your own pirate radio station, functioning as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, watching TV (and taping your favorite shows), checking your GPS and playing the guitar while you cruise down the road. Sounds like safe fun to me. If you want to get in on it, check back in on the project page. They are planing on posting detailed instructions on how to build one for yourself in the near future. [Project Page]

For the full instructions, hit the following link. [Instructables via Hacked Gadgets]