Tag: happy-mutants

Self-destructing thumb drives with smoke loads, glowing elements, tiny explosives

MG’s Mr Self Destruct project takes the USB Killer to new levels, combining a $1.50 system-on-a-chip with a variety of payloads: smoke bombs, “sound grenades,” and little explosives, cleverly choreographed with keystroke emulation, allowing the poisoned drive to first cause the connected computer to foreground a browser and load a web-page that plays an appropriate animation (a jack-in-the-box that plays “Pop Goes the Weasel” with the drive’s explosive detonating for the climax). (more…)

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Self-destructing thumb drives with smoke loads, glowing elements, tiny explosives

New York’s rat population has genetically diverged into "uptown" and "downtown" subspecies

Matthew Combs, a Fordham University Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station grad student worked with colleagues from Fordham and the Providence College Department of Biology to sequence the genomes of brown rats in Manhattan, and made a surprising discovery: the geography of rats has a genetic correlation, so a geneticist can tell where a rat was born and raised by analyzing its DNA. (more…)

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New York’s rat population has genetically diverged into "uptown" and "downtown" subspecies

A working modem using HTML5 sound

Martin Kirkholt Melhus’s workplace bans connecting his development computer to the internet, so he hacked together a modem using HTML5: by plugging over-the-ear headphones into his laptop’s 3.5mm audio jack and then placing the headphones over a network-connected built-in mic, he is able to tunnel a network connection outside the firewall (or that’s the theory; as he notes, “This was only ever intended as a gimmick and a proof of concept – not something that I would actually use at work.”) (more…)

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A working modem using HTML5 sound

How EFF cracked printers’ "hidden dots" code in 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izMGMsIZK4U NSA whistleblower Reality Winner may have been caught thanks to a hidden pattern of dots that color printers bury in every page they print, as an assistance to law enforcement agencies. (more…)

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How EFF cracked printers’ "hidden dots" code in 2005

Translate between Charles Babbage’s computing jargon and modern terminology

If you’re intending to build an analytical engine with a six-sided prism to run Charles Babbage’s weird cardboard vaporware program , you will need some help with Babbage’s notes, as old Charles was inventing a whole technical vocab from scratch. (more…)

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Translate between Charles Babbage’s computing jargon and modern terminology

Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Lasermad’s Nixie Chessboards take 8-10 weeks to hand build, during which time each of the chess pieces is painstakingly built around a vintage nixie tube scavenged from the world’s dwindling supply, and the board is prepared with the wireless induction coils that power the pieces when they’re set on the board, lighting them up. ( via Red Ferret ) (more…)

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Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Lasermad’s Nixie Chessboards take 8-10 weeks to hand build, during which time each of the chess pieces is painstakingly built around a vintage nixie tube scavenged from the world’s dwindling supply, and the board is prepared with the wireless induction coils that power the pieces when they’re set on the board, lighting them up. ( via Red Ferret ) (more…)

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Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Lasermad’s Nixie Chessboards take 8-10 weeks to hand build, during which time each of the chess pieces is painstakingly built around a vintage nixie tube scavenged from the world’s dwindling supply, and the board is prepared with the wireless induction coils that power the pieces when they’re set on the board, lighting them up. ( via Red Ferret ) (more…)

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Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Lasermad’s Nixie Chessboards take 8-10 weeks to hand build, during which time each of the chess pieces is painstakingly built around a vintage nixie tube scavenged from the world’s dwindling supply, and the board is prepared with the wireless induction coils that power the pieces when they’re set on the board, lighting them up. ( via Red Ferret ) (more…)

Originally posted here:
Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes

Lasermad’s Nixie Chessboards take 8-10 weeks to hand build, during which time each of the chess pieces is painstakingly built around a vintage nixie tube scavenged from the world’s dwindling supply, and the board is prepared with the wireless induction coils that power the pieces when they’re set on the board, lighting them up. ( via Red Ferret ) (more…)

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Chess with wireless, glowing nixie tubes