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How To: Hack a Radio to Pick Up Different Frequencies - Including Law Enforcement & More

Hardware hacks are something I feel we don't get enough of at Null Byte, so today I figured I would introduce a fun one. I've always been a curious hardware hacker. Taking things apart and learning how their internals work has always been a part of my nature. Quite some years ago, my father showed me a really cool trick on how to hack normal radios to scan frequencies that are normally non-listenable. This little hack allowed us to scan frequencies belonging to law enforcement, and even frequ...

How To: Remove a Windows Password with a Linux Live CD

Back when I was a Windows user, I know I'm not the only one who has experienced password loss—that moment where you just can't remember your password. Sometimes it happens to the best of us. So, how can we get into the system without paying a local geek or geeksquad to do it? First, we have to look into how Windows stores their passwords.

Secure Your Computer, Part 4: Use Encryption to Make a Hidden Operating System

This is Null Byte's fourth part in a series about fully securing our computers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). In our last Null Byte, we went over how to encrypt an entire operating system to protect our data, however, this doesn't fully protect us. In the case of legal extortion, the government can actually make you give up your cryptographic key to your computer so that they can look through it.

Bethesda vs. Notch: Does 'Scrolls' Infringe Upon 'The Elder Scrolls'?

Minecraft might still be in development, but that doesn't mean a creative guy like Notch doesn't have time for other projects. A few months ago he and his company Mojang announced their second game, a digital collectible trading card affair called Scrolls. A simple title (perhaps too generic if anything), but it's not the name of an extant game, and it's appropriate given the visual style and card-based gameplay of the game itself.

News: Supreme Court Deems Violent Video Games Protected Under Freedom of Speech

Video games are the newest major expressive media. As such, their role in society is still being defined continuously. A monumentally important example of this took place yesterday at the US Supreme Court. After a long deliberation, the highest court in the land handed down a decision invalidating a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors on the grounds that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment, like movies and books.

News: Google Kills Gaming on Android

One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.

News: The Revolution of the Hacked Kinect, Part 3: Gaming Gets Artsy

Video games and art have somewhat of a sticky relationship. Many video games have large teams of talented artists doing amazingly creative work, and yet the art community is only just beginning to utilize video games as art (sometimes). Perhaps if video games were shown not just as a medium of expression, but as a means of creating great art as well, the art community would be forced to consider it differently. The third part in the Hacked Kinect series will focus on the artistic possibilitie...

How Do You Create Your Own Job: An Example

On Thursday, March 9, there was a news story on the evening news about Khan Academy (NBC News). The story began when Sal Khan started tutoring his cousin in 2004. Since he was in Boston and she was in a different city, he decided to make and post videos on YouTube so anyone could watch the videos. Later he added videos for her brothers and for people that contacted him with requests for other videos. During this time Sal had a job that he later replaced with another job. Today Sal has 2010 vi...

How To: fix the error "transaction was not successful"

So many of you like to save up your gold coins to buy things like castles, treasure cards and clothing. But sometimes when you buy something, an error message pops up. One of them is this extremely annoying one: "Transaction was not successful."This error happens mostly when buying clothes. Let's say you want to buy a robe, but it is too expensive. You change the color of the robe to brown, yellow or white and try to buy it. When you click Buy, the error pops up. You switch realms. No differe...

News: "Writing for Television" Class

I took a class in the fall entitled Writing for Television at Bentley University in Boston. Much of what I learned has helped me through my first year of creative writing. One of the keys to writing television that we learned in the class was that a television show follows the traditional three act structure that any story follows, except for the fact that in a television episode, many questions are allowed to go unanswered.

News: Crochet Break Coming To End

I've been on the inside of my box reflecting to what is on the outside. I live my life outside the box but occassionally have to get back intot the box to see what's going on... I have been on a 4 - 5 week non creative mode... Through this time frame... great people on Mikeyssmail have been still continuing to exercise their creativity... I'm so pleased to see that! Though many ideas come daily on what I could do next... I'm not motivated by just a simple request... I've allowed this same tim...

How To: Remain Anonymous and Chat Securely with Cryptocat

I'm sure we've all heard about MSN and Yahoo! Messenger, right? They can be useful, but the setup can be quite time consuming for those who need to use it just once or twice—and the privacy statements are a real bother. For example, we must provide our real details. You could use Fake Name Generator, but if you get caught, you will have your account suspended. I don't have a law degree, but to my understanding the United States recently passed legislation that gives the authorities the power ...

How To: Encrypt your Skype Messages to Thwart Snooping Eyes Using Pidgin

Skype is a great service. It allows a free solution for VoIP to VoIP calls, and cheap VoIP to landline calling. However, a very disturbing, little known fact that might push you away from Skype does exist. If you closely read the terms of service agreement, it clearly says that Skype is allowed to decrypt your messages whenever they please. Here at Null Byte, we tend to enjoy our anonymity, don't we?

Scrabble Challenge #17: How Many Words Can You Find in TURKEY?

The big day may be over, but the weekend is still full of Thanksgiving spirit. And so is this week's puzzle. But let's keep it short this time, because we should all be taking this time to play a real game of Scrabble with friends and family. I was thinking of making a puzzle about edible birds in general, but practically every bird is edible, meaning there's a lot of avian-related words. Since the turkey is such a big part of Thanksgiving, let's just stick to that...

News: Kaplan University Business Degree Through our Online School of Business

When beginning her journey at Kaplan University, Michell Sturgis was unsure how the demands of working full time and college coursework would impact her life. Kaplan University’s flexible learning schedule and online degree programs allowed her to complete her assignments at her own pace while still being able to spend quality time with her daughter. Michell took the next step forward from her associate’s degree to earning her bachelor’s degree online.

How To: How Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks Sneak into Unprotected Websites (Plus: How to Block Them)

XSS stands for cross-site scripting, which is a form of web-based exploitation that uses client-side vulnerabilities in a web page to execute malicious JavaScript codes. JavaScript is referred to as "cross-site" because it usually involves an external website containing the malicious code. That code is most commonly used to steal cookies with a website that the attacker created and hosted on another server. The cookies can then be used to escalate privileges and gain root access to someone's ...

How To: Create a Bump Key to Open Any Door

Lockpicking is a skill that takes years upon years to master. Locks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but have common ground in how they work. Most cylinder locks have "tumblers," which are metallic cylindrical objects that sit vertically to the actual locking mechanism. Tumblers have five or six holes with rounded key pins of various height in them, each needing to meet an exact height or the cylinder in the center (the lock itself) will not be allowed to turn. This is the reason why yo...

News: Double Fine Improves the Psychonauts Meat Circus!

Anyone who likes shooters is going to hate me for saying this: the best game of the 2000's for me was Psychonauts by Double Fine Studios. It came out in 2005 for the original Xbox, achieving critical acclaim, but never selling very well due to its sheer kookiness and poor marketing. Over the ensuing years it has become a cult classic, with downloadable re-releases on Xbox 360 (sadly no longer available). PC has allowed gamers who missed out on the original to bask in its ageless glory.

Scrabble Challenge #9: Can You Win the Losing Game on the Last Move?

The end game is a very important aspect of playing Scrabble. If you have just a few letters left on your rack and there are none left in the draw bag, but you're currently losing the game, you still might have a chance to win if you play your cards (er… tiles) right. No matter if you're playing a casual game at home with a friend or competing against diehards in club or tournament games, the scoring process at the end provides the same results.

News: Iconic Indie Game Publisher Interplay Struggles to Make a Comeback

For more than a decade, Interplay was arguably the best video game publisher in America. Their list of games is a who's-who of the most creative and forward thinking games of the '90s, including everything fromOut of This World to Alone in the Dark to Earthworm Jim to Descent. They've been around since 1983, but have fallen on hard times since 1997, when they became a public company. They were acquired by a French publisher who then went bankrupt. They were forced to close their internal deve...

News: Will Games Ruin Google+ Like They Ruined Facebook?

Last week, Google+ took a crucial step towards becoming exactly like Facebook. As of now, there are games available for download within the service, most notably Angry Birds, which is already available on at least one of the devices owned by everyone in America today. Some of the other popular games include Bejeweled Blitz and Zynga Poker, and out of all of the available titles, all come from four companies that have come to form the four-headed dragon of U.S. casual gaming: EA, Zynga, PopCap...

News: Project Zomboid Has More Problems than the Guy in this Screenshot

Making a video game requires an incredible amount of work. It requires people skilled in many disciplines to work together for thousands of hours merging visual art, computer programming, game design, sound design, and music composition into a fun game. The Indie Stone is a Scottish indie development studio started, like so many others, by industry vets who were tired of corporate restrictions and wanted to make the crazy games they had always imagined.

Dumpster Drive: Exchange Your Digital Trash with Strangers

Do you ever wonder if the files you're trashing on your Mac are actually trash? Let's say there are 80 million computer owners running Mac OS. If each user trashes at least 10 files each day, that's 800 million deleted files that cease to exist every 24 hours. If that doesn't sound like a lot to you, a month would equal 24 billion junked files, a year—nearly 1 trillion.

News: Monkey See, Monkey Do

Chi gyo ichi nyo is a familiar expression in the dojo. The word chi means knowledge. Gyo means doing, or action. Ichi nyo means inseparable. Action and knowledge are one! Acting without adequate knowledge or understanding is a constant source of frustration and problems. In our lives we are often busy and active without really understanding the basis of our actions and their full impact. Some people practice karate without really knowing why they are training. In class they do the techniques ...