Hardware

The news over the past few years has been spattered with cases of Internet anonymity being stripped away, despite (or because) of the use of privacy tools. Tor, the anonymizing “darknet” service, has especially been in the crosshairs—and even some of its most paranoid users have made a significant operational security (OPSEC) faux pas or two. Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, for example, forgot to turn Tor on just once before using IRC, and that was all it took to de-anonymize him. (It also didn’t help that he used a stolen credit card to buy car parts sent to his home address.)

From performance issues at hosting provider Liquid Web to outages at eBay and LastPass, large networks and websites suffered a series of disruptions and outages on Tuesday. Some Internet engineers are blaming the disruptions on a novel technical issue that impacts older Internet routers.

People familiar with Apple's internal repair network have informed AppleInsider that the company has no immediate plans to initiate a replacement program for early-2011 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models suffering from systematic crashes and graphics failures seemingly related to the laptops' discrete AMD-built GPUs.

Routers appear to be as insecure as ever, after hackers successfully compromised five popular wireless models during a contest at the DefCon 22 security conference, reporting 15 new vulnerabilities to affected vendors.

The SOHOpelessly Broken contest pitted hackers against 10 router models from different manufacturers: Linksys EA6500, ASUS RT-AC66U, TRENDnet TEW-812DRU, Netgear Centria WNDR4700, Netgear WNR3500U/WNR3500L, TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, D-Link DIR-865L, Belkin N900 DB and the Open Wireless Router firmware developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Intel finally provides solid information on Haswell's successor, the next-generation Broadwell core. We also learn some detailed info about the new 14nm processing node, a must-read for CPU enthusiasts who are interested in the future of Intel's Core!

With the exception of [Eric Evenchick], the Hackaday crew are safely back from Defcon and not missing in the desert. This means we can really start rolling out all the stuff we saw this weekend, beginning with an interview with [Joe Grand], creator of the JTAGulator, early member of l0pht, and generally awesome dude.

It certainly isn't the first robotic arm made out of Lego that we've seen, but this particular one can actually be worn and easily controlled by the user.

According to its creator, Diavo Voltaggio, the arm was made using Lego Mindstorms EV3, which is a software-and-hardware kit for DIY robots. He says the machine is pretty straightforward: it has four buttons connected to four motors that control each finger.

n the world of security penetration testing, researchers often rely on stealth and deception when testing a target. At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas, a new level of penetration testing deception was demonstrated Aug. 8 with a WiFi hacking device that could be hidden in what appears to be a standard carbon monoxide detector casing.

avid Andrade, the CIO of Bridgeport Public Schools in Connecticut, has deployed 11,000 Chromebooks over the past year and plans to add another 5,000 in the next 12 months. It's a major deployment, but not unusual.

Other school systems are doing much the same thing. The Cherry Creeks School District in Greenwood Village, Co. deployed 18,000 last year, and Boston recently announced a deployment of 10,000 Chromebooks.

Citing sources familiar with Apple's supply chain, Bloomberg reports Apple's partner suppliers in Asia have started mass production of the next-generation 9.7-inch iPad, while a new iPad mini version enters early stages of assembly.