Hacks

Google Glass Has Already Been Hacked and Rooted

Though Google Glass runs Android, it’s not exactly as wide open as your typical Android phone. And given its spot as the most futuristic tech available right now, you know hackers want to tinker with Google’s specs. Legendary hacker Jay Freeman, famously known as Saurik who created the Cydia app store for iOS jailbreak phones,…

You’ll Never Destroy This Heavy Duty Remote In a Post-Sports Rage

Is there anything more infuriating than watching your favorite team lose while you’ve spent the past two hours shouting fantastic coaching advice at the screen? Taking your frustration out on your TV’s remote can help, particularly if it’s able to shrug off the abuse like this impressive heavy duty alternative you can build yourself. Instructables…

6 Clever Tricks You Can Do with Aluminum Foil

As a kid, I’ve always been amazed at the shininess and flimsiness of aluminum foil. It was always so, like, technological! And it was always around! But if you wanted to do more with aluminum foil, try out these six tricks. You can make a AAA battery become a AA battery. You could quicken up…

Your Web Cam Can See Your Heart Rate, Which Isn’t Creepy At All

Sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen for 12 hours a day on Chatroulette can’t be good for you. So while you webcam the hours away you can also keep tabs on your health with this app that can determine your heart rate based on the constant discoloration as blood pumps in…

How a Single Android Phone Can Hack an Entire Plane

If airlines were already keen to keep your phone switched off, things could soon get even more militant. According to a talk by Hugo Teso at the Hack In The Box security conference, it’s possible to hack an entire plane using an Android smartphone. Gulp. Teso—a commercial airline pilot turned computer security consultant—explained to the…

How To Build Your Own Muscle-Controlled Iron Man Repulsor

Iron Man 3 is just around the corner, and if you intend to show up on opening night decked out in your own home-made armor, you’ll want to check out this slick Instructable by Advancer Technologies. It shows you how to build a muscle-controlled repulsor that functions just like Stark’s does in the movies. When…

How to Turn Your Shell-Prompt Into a Hamburger

Shell prompts are, by definition, pretty dull. So, if you spend a lot of time looking at one, why not make it more fun by… replacing it with a hamburger! Actually, you can replace the thing with any emoji character (as long as you have an emoji font installed—get a free one here), and Andre…

Turn Some Boring Stools Into a Pint-sized Scooter With This Brilliant Ikea Hack

Ikea’s furniture isn’t just cheap and easy to transport, it’s easy to hack too, with sites like Ikea Hackers showcasing some of the best modifications. But none can top this hack by Andreas Bhend and Samuel N. Bernier that converts a couple of Ikea Frosta stools into a pedal-less bike—or draisienne if you really want…

Hack a Can of Compressed Air So It’s Refillable

It’s useful for blasting dust, crumbs, and other crap off your keyboard and electronics, but those overpriced compressed air cans are almost as big a rip-off as printer ink. So here’s a brilliant and relatively simple hack that makes a compressed air can refillable with a standard tire pump. And just to highlight what’s probably…

How to Get a Can of Soda for Free from a Vending Machine

If you’re ever thirsty for delicious carbonated sugar syrup and find yourself without any cash or quarters, maybe you’ll be wise enough to carry around a measuring tape with you. Turns out, the wild minds of Russia have developed a slick vending machine hack that’ll give you free sodas. And it only takes just a…

How Apple’s Password-Reset Security Breach Worked

Yesterday, The Verge uncovered a security breach that allowed malicious users to reset Apple ID passwords with nothing but an email and the user’s birthday. Luckily, the process didn’t leak out in full before the whole thing was patched up, but now iMore was able to reproduce the hack step by step and now it’s…

Hacked Bike Headlight Projects Your Speed On the Road Ahead

Unless you’re blasting through red lights and stop signs, you don’t really need to care what speed you’re riding a bike at. But maybe knowing that you’re careening through traffic at a blistering eight miles per hour gives you some kind of thrill. In that case, check out Matt Richardson’s Dynamic Bike Headlight hack. Using…

Hacker Turns an NES Console Into an 8-Bit Gaming Laptop

Forget dropping thousands of dollars on the monstrously spec’d gaming laptops sold by the likes of Alienware. As long as you’re not itching to play the latest titles, you can look to the hacker who created this brilliant working NES laptop for some money-saving DIY inspiration. When closed it looks like a perfectly unmodified NES…

Got a Galaxy Note II? Ne’er-do-wells can use this trick to peek past your lockscreen for a second, but not much else.

Thanks To HTML5 This Website Can Fill Your Whole Hard Drive with Cats

Sometimes a browser needs to leave a little data on your computer, just a little 5-10KB nibblit, a cookie. HTML5 is a hungrier beast than that which came before it though, and sometimes wants a little more. Maybe 5MB or so. But that’s where it should end. Thanks to a little HTML5 vulnerability, however, this…

This 8-Bit Annoying Person Remover Has Great Prank Potential

If you start wasting somebody’s time at NASA, this is how they’re going to get you out of their office. Or, it’s how JPL engineer Mark Rober will, anyway. This hacked Nintendo console will definitely put you on notice. It’s really fairly straight-forward. You take an old Nintendo console (a broken one, hopefully), gut it,…

Microsoft Says It Got Hacked Like Apple and Facebook

Microsoft just revealed that “a small number” of its computers, which includes its Mac business unit, have been hacked in a similar attack to what happened with Apple and Facebook earlier this week. The computers were infected with malware using techniques similar to the Apple and Facebook hacks. Luckily, Microsoft says that there is no…

All You Need Is Glue, a Knife, and Mad Soldering Skills to Build Your Own Cardboard Camera

Are you tired of paying the outrageous markups that camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon are asking for their hardware? Fight back with Coralie Gourguechon’s open source Craft Camera that comes with some—actually all—assembly required. You can download the schematics here, and from there you’ll just need an Arduino and other miscellaneous hardware outlined in…

The Super Easy Way Twitter Could Make All This Account Hacking Stop

Twitter accounts are getting hacked left and right. Today it was Burger King. Before that, it was the Westboro Baptist Church (Admittedly, they deserved it). And before that, it was us and Mat Honan. Hacks will always happen, but this is dumb because Twitter could make this all go away. Forever. All we need is…

iOS 6.1 Security Risk: Anyone Can Bypass Your iPhone’s Lock Screen

So, iOS 6.1 hasn’t been Apple’s finest hour. So far it’s been plagued with connection issues, battery woes, and now it’s sadly insecure, too. You can bypass any lockcode on an iPhone using this straightforward sequence of button presses. The instructions are pretty simple. First you have to pretend to turn the phone off, then…