Gearfuse

We haven’t been talking about the Amazon Kindle 2 a lot. Know why? Because everyone and their mother has been talking about it. Jeff Bezos was even on The Colbert Report shilling his new eBook reader. Interestingly, though, when the boys at iFixIt cracked open a brand new Kindle 2, they found a surprise waiting inside. See that circled area on the PCB? That’s a space for a SIM card. And something tells me, that with a soldering iron, a SIM card holder and some programming, you could turn the Kindle 2 into an entirely new device. Perhaps you could even speed up the downloads of eBooks and digital content.

Any ideas? What do you think that missing SIM slot is for?

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No joke. The MD5 algorithm, which is used widespread around the web for encryption, has been broken. A group of researchers used a cluster of PS3s to create a forged certificate authority, essentially enabling them to break into SSL-encrypted sites. HTTPS? Gone. There is no security. Sure, most of us don’t have 200 Playstation 3s sitting at home but if something is broken, you have to fix it. If you’re a programmer or coder of some sort, make sure implementing MD5 isn’t on your list of things to do.

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Cracking software and generating serial numbers is nothing new. But what happens when a developer catches on and decides to play fun with you? Such is the case with USB Overdrive X. Enter a stolen or pirated serial number and this message will be displayed by the developer. An excellent point is made here: the little guy is getting hurt. This isn’t Adobe or Apple, this is an independent developer trying to feed his family.

I recently wrote about some software I actually paid out of pocket for. You should too if you’re running Bit Torrent 24/7.

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The original gangsters of unlocking, the iPhone Dev-Team, has finally jailbroken the iPhone 3G through software. Right now, they’re packaging it up for use as a user-friendly application similar to that of Pwnage.

Plus, with the recent announcement of the iPhone 3G gift card, people will be able to activate their iPhone 3Gs from home and thus, will be able to jailbreak them and use them with T-Mobile, etc., just like the good ol’ days. Sure, the next software update will break it, but that’s the price one pays.

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Building a car from a kit is nothing new. Open any modern auto magazine and you’ll find plenty of that crap in the classifieds. But when one man goes above and beyond to turn a 2001 Mercury Cougar into a fully-functional, stylish Audi R8, well, that’s magic.

While there’s just some things that can’t be copied, overall this car looks just like a damn R8. Since the actual Audi R8 is a $100,000+ car, most people won’t have one and thus won’t be able to tell the difference between this Cougar and the real thing. There’s no Audi power behind it but hey, it’ll still get you laid. Creator Alberto Gavach from Spain is no dummy. He claims he spent about $50,000 building it. Not too shabby. After the jump, a photo with the real R8 next to the fake one.
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Barack Obama is all about spreading the word of hope. His counterparts would like you to think otherwise, as can be seen by a recent hacking of Obama’s very own Hope.net. The hacker smeared the site with red lettering which says “Spread the word! Barack Obama has no security on his web site! Will his administration have no security?”, later editing the text to read “To the media! Stop saying Clinton hacked Obama. They want nothing to do with this. You spread lies.”

I’m not sure whether this was a legitimate hack or not, since removing the “www” from Hope.net will take you to the normal appearance of the website (Editor’s Note: Or at least it did, seems the standard Hope.net page is now redirected to the www version), though the addition of the www still takes you to the defaced version of the site. If so, is this a prank from one of the Nutcracker’s supporters, as the links clearly point towards Hillary’s website? — Andrew Dobrow

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