Please, someone get this. We’re all el oh eling over at my office.

[Via User Friendly dot Org]

Seriously, things we’re going nicely in land of tech: Joost went into overdrive allowing users to send out unlimited invites, something got blended and a decryption code was released that in turn caused what right now (9:00 PM on the west coast) appears to be a complete uprising on the front page of Digg.com. New stories are flooding in containing nothing but spam and a decryption key for hacking HD-DVD’s, each one scoring thousands of diggs all to show the site admins whose really in charge … for now. But I think overall Niero puts it best:

“Note to the HD-DVD legal council: don’t waste your time, stupid. The code is Chinese to 99% of the people involved in this Digg party. It’s the guy that chatted about it on mIRC four weeks ago with his legion of 7R0Z3NCR3W M3MB34Z that they have to worry about. Book a flight to Europe and get off Kevin’s back.”

Well I’m off to go illegally copy some HD-DVD’s I don’t have using my non-existent HD-DVD player, goodnight!

[UPDATE!]

Looks like Kevin couldn’t take it, Digg.com is officially offline, let’s see how this whole thing blows over in the morning.

Joining the company of modern democratic governments that utilize technology to streamline elections, the Philippines will begin implementing an internet-based voting system. In order to ensure that their results will be secure and untampered, the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the International Foundation for Electoral System have requested the aid of local hackers as well as those that hail from across the world.

The voting system that they are attempting to break was created by the Spain-based Scytl Consortium, and cost the Philippine government $452,000. Starting July 10, Comelec will begin public testing of their newly-made voting system, using over twenty-five thousand absentee voters from Singapore as guinea pigs. Scandalous.

While the polls will be merely survey questions with no valuable or important data, the hackers have until July 30 to crack the system, providing both the developing firm and the Philippine government insight and information about possible security flaws and logic holes. As far as reputation and safety for the voting system go, Comelec commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. claims:

“When Scytl presented the system, everybody was impressed on the security features. It is covered by international patent and it has been declared secured by no less than Switzerland and everyone in the global community should respect that decision,”

And this is not the first time the Scytl’s Consortium’s software system was put to use, already “being used in countries such as the U.S., Switzerland, and Belgium.” Whether or not this system will work in the Philippine’s population depends on how well the tests go, and how much difficulty hackers have to go through in order to crack the security.

[Via AHN]

One of Vista’s greatest selling points is ironically the fact that software pirates may actually have to buy it. Microsoft is trying to catch every last hack, exploit, workaround, and any other method used to illegally deploy copies of Windows Vista. On Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage Blog, the efforts against Vista and XP activation vulnerabilities are chronicled, giving well-informed consumers and hackers an inside look into their war on piracy. Recently, blog writer and Microsoft Senior Product Manager Alex Kochis posted an article regarding the Original Equipment Manufacturer motherboard BIOS workaround, and what Microsoft was planning to do regarding the activation security flaw.

But, what exactly is OEM Activation? Basically, it is an agreement between Microsoft and motherboard manufacturers, originally created for Windows XP, to put a marker inside the BIOS of the motherboard that designates that it will have a copy of Windows XP pre-installed on it’s system. Hackers quickly found a way to thwart XP’s protection, named OEM Activation 1.0, since BIOS editors made injecting the marker rather simple.

Of course, Windows XP was easier to get into than Paris Hilton’s … purse. Pirates discovered several simpler methods to illegally use Windows XP, making the actual implementation of OEM Activation 1.0 nearly worthless. With Vista came new techniques from Microsoft, forcing exploiters to be more creative. Likewise, Microsoft got more creative as well, adding new features in its BIOS protection and updating Vista motherboards with OEM Activation 2.0. Naturally, stubborn computer fanatics have once again found flaws in the new protection, but Microsoft has remained calm and composed.

Kochis sheds some light on the software giant’s understanding of the exploit:

There appear to be two primary variants of OA 2.0 hacks circulating. One is similar to the XP approach I described above where actual editing of the BIOS on the motherboard is done to make the motherboard appear to be from an OEM. It is a pretty labor-intensive process and quite risky. If you mess up editing the BIOS of any motherboard, you can quite easily render it permanently useless. So while this method works today, it’s potentially hazardous and really doesn’t scale well to large numbers of systems, which makes it less of a threat.

The second variant does not change anything in the BIOS itself, but uses a software-based approach to fool the OS into thinking it’s running on OA 2.0-enabled hardware. And while this method is easier to implement for the end user, it’s also easier to detect and respond to than a method that involves directly modifying the BIOS of the motherboard.

Since the mass-machine reproduction of the first method would be pretty difficult, mainly due to the possibility of broken hardware and various BIOS factors, Microsoft would rather focus on more wide-spread activation exploits. Stressing customer satisfaction over anything else, Microsoft does ensure that it would put in full effort to counteract this workaround if too many of their customers got scammed by sellers of illegitimate OEM Vista machines.

Secret IPod Hack - video powered by Metacafe

I personally have no real reason to bring up random screens on my iPod, it plays music nicely thank you very much. Although I am hopeful that if by doing this magic trick I can somehow unlock that insane European techno track, Ibiza FTW!

[via Tagzin]

Some crafty designer in Spain decided wheelchairs were way too passe looking for him so he decided to hack and mod a Segway. I need one ASAP!

UPDATE: It’s not directly being developed by Segway. The Industrial Designer whom created it is Josep Mora from Barcelona, Spain. You can check out his website for other works and contact info.

[Via freshcreation]

Remember a while ago when the “Samy is my hero” worm broke out on Myspace and automatically added you as a friend? Right, me neither. My conclusion: Samy’s a dick and deserves whatever he gets, all hail News Corp!

Samy Kamkar is actually being forced to pay Myspace restitution for his worm. I cannot see Myspace really needing any money, unless Tom is fishing for that new underwater mini-bar he saw in Sky Mall. God, people with money piss me off.

Fines aside, Samy my hero has to endure 90 days of community of service, but here’s the real kicker. He is now officially banned from the internet for an undisclosed amount of time. Bummer dude.

[via SCMag]

For those without a clue here is the story of went down in October 2005 via Wikipedia:

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