Tag Archives: hackers

Kinect, hacked.

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Since its North American release date on November 4, Microsoft’s Kinect controller-free motion accessory has proved to be a boon for the open source community.  Over the last month or so I’ve collated the most intriguing Kinect hacks and today is the day I’ve decided to let them live free inside this post. Tinkerers are constantly throwing up their latest creations online, so expect Kinect, hacked to become an ongoing series.

First up we have Yankeyan‘s Super Mario Bros. Kinect hack.  Using OpenKinect drivers and NES emulation he’s figured out how to make the plumber’s on-screen movements mimic his physical jumps and arm flails.  It doesn’t match up perfectly, but that doesn’t make the hack any less impressive.

Now go on, hop after the break to browse oodles of Kinect hack videos; I promise they are all super inventive! Continue reading Kinect, hacked. →

EPIC WIN & FAIL for Kinect owners

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Kinect for Xbox 360 released earlier this month.  And when new super cool tech such as the motion sensing Kinect hits the mass market, you expect some astute attempts at hacking and laughable attempts at practicing to hit the interwebs at some point.  This very post presents you with these videos.  Let’s start with the hackers.  Visualization researcher Oliver Kreylos has discovered a way to turn the Kinect into a 3D video capture tool.  He describes the hack: “By combining the color and the depth image captured by the Microsoft Kinect, one can project the color image back out into space and create a “holographic” representation of the persons or objects that were captured.”  Kreylos’ demonstrating is embedded above (left); is your mind blown yet?  A man who goes by AlexP managed to hack the Kinect’s built in accelerometer in an interesting way; check out his batch of demos after the break.

And on to the wacky EPIC FAIL videos you’ve been oh-so patiently waiting for.  Or maybe you haven’t and you already watched my personal favorite Kinect fail in the video embedded above (right).  Salivating for more embarrassing moments like this?  You know where to find ’em.  Ahem, they’re sitting after the break.

Update (11/17): Hacker Chris Rojas has managed to make the Kinect communicate with an iPad.  Click here to see the action.

[Via Engadget, here, here & here, here] Continue reading EPIC WIN & FAIL for Kinect owners →

Willow Garage’s beer-fetching robot now on sale for $400k

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The tinkering geniuses at Willow Garage have decided to put their beer-fetching PR2 robot on the market for a cool $400,000.  Besides grabbing you a beer and informing you when the fridge is out of stock, PR2 can also play pool, clean up your mess with a cart, plug in devices, fold towels, and open doors.  The most exciting bit about PR2 is that the personal robot is open source; with the hardware platform and over 1000 software libraries open to potential buyers, developers, and hackers, Willow Garage is supplying PR2 owners with the tools to come up with their own applications.  In fact, the company imagine a future where a Robot App Store exists.  In this exciting (frightening?) world, human owners will have the option to purchase “robot apps” for their personal smart machines in effort to make life at home and work “more productive.”  Today’s PR2 is the first major step in that direction.  I’m excited to see what sorts of applications (people with tons of money to spend) come up with.

[Via WillowGarage; Engadget]

Twitter, Facebook under attack

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The Twitter service went down today for several hours due to a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack.  What exactly is a DDOS attack, you ask?  Let CNET’s Elinor Mills explain:

In the distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on the sites, computers that have been compromised by viruses or other malware are instructed by the attacker’s computer to visit the specific Web sites all at the same time and repeatedly. The barrage of connection requests overwhelms the target sites, making it so that legitimate Web traffic can’t get through.  Such coordinated attacks require the efforts of tens of thousands or more of hijacked computers, which together form a botnet. Spammers send e-mails with malicious attachments or URLs to millions of people to create botnets.

Basically, computer hackers are putting heavy pressure the servers that run websites and making them fall to their knees.  The end result is users not being able to access the service’s main portal to log in.  Why did this happen today to Twitter and other related social media sites, though?  According to the latest reports, a Georgian blogger who goes by the name “Cyxymu” was targeted by a group of hackers.  Cyxymu had accounts on the sites Twitter, Facebook, Live Journal, and Google’s Blogger and YouTube.  These sites were affected by a DDOS attack because the group of hackers did not want Cyxymu to voice his opinions on these social websites.  Immature, huh?  Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook: “You have to ask who would benefit the most from doing this and think about what those people are doing and the disregard for the rest of the users and the Internet.”

Kelly had this to say about the culprit(s): “We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”  A Google spokesman: “We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.”  Twitter and Live Journal have yet to comment on the matter.

[Via CNET]