mods

GoldenEye: Source, the fan-made conversion modification of Half Life 2, has been knocking about for years, but the team responsible for the redressed retro multiplayer has finally ditched the beta label and released the fully optimized mod. Now up to v4.1, the conversion consists of 22 maps - both the classics from GoldenEye on the N64, and new revisions - and eleven characters, together with over 50 custom music tracks.

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Christmas lights can be gaudy and distracting, or they can be a force used for good; well, as long as by "good" you mean individually-programmable and capable of showing IM status. Microsoft .NET developer Andrej Kyselica discovered that, after some tinkering, he could get a FEZ embedded controller to individually manage each LED on a string of $60 Christmas lights from Costco.

Video demo after the cut

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You can always tell the geeks by the hardware and gadgets they use. Sure, your mom might get a Galaxy Tab, but will her Tab be running something as geeky as Ubuntu? I think not. If you are the sort of geek that lives to add alternative OS's to hardware it wasn't meant to run on, we have a project for you.

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Our review of T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy Tab went live yesterday, and while we bemoaned its lack of official voice call functionality, if you're willing to get your hands dirty in alternative ROMs then you can bypass that limitation. The xda-developers community has been working on enabling what the US Galaxy Tabs lost from their European counterparts, and - with a few limitations - has managed to activate voice calls on the T-Mobile Tab.

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Apple's hardware is generally pretty well-admired; it's the company's attitude to software that rubs quite a few people the wrong way. Now, the prospect of dual-booting Android and iOS 4.x on the iPad, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS is another step closer, with Hexxeh managing to get the OpeniBoot boot-loader tool running on the Apple slate.

Video demo after the cut

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The latest version of the iPhone Dev Team's PwnageTool, v4.1, has been released, with the new software updated to include jailbreaking of the new Apple TV.  The hack is an untethered jailbreak, taking advantage of the limera1n exploit among other things, though once you've actually got a jailbroken Apple TV there's not a huge amount you can do with it right now.

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Sony's UX-series of UMPCs may not be in production any more, but they're still like catnip to modders.  After the beastly upgrades applied to one UX490 late last year, now here's another which has seen the stock CPU switched out and a 3G modem squeezed inside, together with GPS, a TV tuner and a USB hub.

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Chumby was made for hacking, and so we probably shouldn't be too surprised to see one sprout legs and start its gradual path to world domination.  Eric Gregori of EMG Robotics has developed a bipedal walking ChumbyBot by pairing the touchscreen Chumby One with a Freescale MMA7455l controller board.

That board is soon going to be commercially launched as part of the Tower Robot/Sensor board from EMG, working with the company's RobotSee and Robot Vision Toolkit to make for easy vision-based navigation and control.  It's also apparently easy to code for, using the same sort of language as BASIC.

Video demo after the cut

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The Nokia N8's photography skills are already prompting plenty of discussion, but one modder has instead concentrated on squeezing out some extra performance rather than arguing over the standard results.  Notorious Symbian-lover hyperX has already managed to coax the N8 into shooting 720p video at 30fps rather than the default 25fps, and he's also worked some magic on the smartphone's still images.

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Friday's news that open-source tinkerers had managed to get Ubuntu 10.10 up and running on Toshiba's hitherto-Android AC100 smartbook raised a few eyebrows, but the usability of the hack was significantly scuppered by the fact it wouldn't load past the boot screen.  That's been ironed out over the weekend, and Carrypad now has video of the AC100 doing its Ubuntu thing.

Video demo after the cut

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We've been keeping a close eye on the Apple TV jailbreak situation, and with one reportedly functioning exploit based on SHAtter already tipped to be working on the set-top box, it was only a matter of time until it fell to the hacker's attempts.  The iPhone Dev Team wrapped SHAtter up in a custom build of their PwnageTool - apparently not quite ready for public release, sadly - and managed to convince the Apple TV to load a pre-jailbroken IPSW.

Video demo after the cut

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A photo and now video seemingly showing Google's Chromium OS running on an Apple iPad has prompted no small amount of controversy these past couple of days, and it's still unclear to what extent the open-source platform has infiltrated the iOS slate.  Modder Hexxeh revealed the fruits of his hacking labors earlier this week, though with very few details, prompting speculation both that he had installed an unofficial ROM and that he was merely using some sort of iPad remote display.

Video demo after the cut

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