Ben Heck’s Essentials series: A Star Wars LED art project
This week, Karen has a project that requires a bit of intelligence, and discrete electronics can provide just that. To make her laser-cut Star Wars BB-8 light more responsive to the world around it, Ben helps design a circuit using active and passive components, from resistors, capacitors and inductors to diodes and transistors. These components form the foundation of modern electronics, including everything from video cameras to...
Final Cut Pro X helps small company delight world’s biggest clients
From beginning to end, the editing process is dramatically streamlined by the powerful features built into Final Cut Pro X. Its skimmer tool makes it faster for editors to view and evaluate incoming footage. “Final Cut Pro X offers you a quicker way for that third pass on your rushes,” says Lindsay. “You can scrub to the point of action and get the part you want.” Sophisticated keywording for clips allows editors to mark clips by...
‘Psychonauts’ in VR is a story Tim Schafer never planned to tell
It’s almost poetic. Just as Psychonauts was Double Fine’s first game as a new-development studio, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is the company’s first game made exclusively for virtual reality — and it picks up the story exactly where the original game left it. Rasputin (“Raz,” for short) has officially been inducted into a group of psychic secret agents and is heading out on his first mission:...
iOS cracking tools reportedly used by FBI released to public
The data released includes code that seems to relate to Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), and can allegedly crack older iPhones like the 5c as well as Android and Blackberry devices.Speaking anonymously to Motherboard, the hacker explained that simply creating these tools makes their release inevitable, where they can be used by anyone with technical knowledge, including oppressive regimes around the...
Hackers use streaming devices to make radio stations play ‘FDT’
As Radio Insight explains, hardware left unprotected by firewalls and with default passwords can easily be exploited remotely. The Michigan Association of Broadcasters has information on how the devices can be secured, but if they aren’t, then we can expect to keep hearing about incidents like this. The Shodan search engine makes it trivially easy to find vulnerable connected hardware, so make sure your hardware (security...
