Have you ever wanted to ride a rollercoaster while listening to Lady Gaga? Or have the Star Wars theme auto-play when you enter your house? You can with Minecraft. Search Youtube for a popular song + Minecraft, and chances are there will be a video for it! Minecraft gives pla ...more
Got a knack for speeding? Like running red lights? Believe or not, the police have better things to be doing than pulling you over, like catching real criminals. That's why more and more cameras are popping up at known speeding zones and on street corners—so the cops can clean ...more
Death is tough for the living, and those who mourn do all sorts of odd things to cope with it. Some keep mementos, some build towering statues, others create memorial paintings or write sad songs, all of which are healthy in moderation. Honoring the dead has been around for so ...more
At Google I/O this morning, Google finally announced the launch of its much awaited Google Music service. It's currently in invite-only beta mode, but they claim it will open up to the masses soon enough. To start syncing your music library with Google's Cloud now, you need ma ...more
Making bread from scratch is extremely difficult. Painstakingly following instructions does not necessarily guarantee successful results. Baking delicious homemade bread takes practice, skill, and frankly, a level of real culinary artistry. Enter the no-knead method. First po ...more
Today we pay homage to a phenomenon. One as diffuse and amusing as the internet itself, and as pointless as dog Halloween costumes. I'm speaking, of course, of giant games. Not Supergiant Games, makers of the forthcoming and awesome-looking indie RPG Bastion, but giant games ...more
Are you one of countless Facebook users who find the classic Thumbs Up symbol tiresomely sycophantic? You're not alone. Back in August of 2010, the widespread addition of an "official" Thumbs Down symbol to Facebook pages quickly revealed itself to be a scam, but only after co ...more
If you're interested in nabbing superhero memory strength, the secret behind training your brain is not necessarily what you might expect. Your standard G-rated brain strengthening exercises range from crossword puzzles to Sudoku to calculating fairly simple math problems to i ...more
Since its inception in 2007, the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest has been challenging the vulnerability of mobile phones and web-related software. In 2010, the fruit of two full days of hacking came down to the exploitation of the following web browsers: Safari 4 on Mac OS X, ...more
Halloween just isn't Halloween without Jack O'Lanterns. Below, anything and everything you need to know on the art of pumpkin carving. 1. Prepare a Pumpkin for Carving Serious Eats' video demonstration is for true novices: "This video is for you unlucky souls who never got t ...more
This German video is amazing. A joyously analog interpretation and deconstruction of the digital gaming experience. Malte Jehmlich is as primitive and inspiring as the the Vanuatu natives who devoted themselves to cargo worship after World War II! Try to imagine. It's 2010 an ...more
From Major Nelson, Xbox 360's spokeperson: Kinect Pricing: Existing Xbox 360 owners can purchase Kinect and Kinect Adventures for $149.99 (U.S. ERP). Remember, Kinect will work with every Xbox 360 ever made. Xbox 360 4GB Console: The new Xbox 360 4GB Console includes built i ...more
It seems even Al-Qaeda is not immune to World Cup hysteria. The international terror network issued the following demented statement, early in the pre-season: “How beautiful would the game between England and the USA be when broadcast live from a stadium full of spectators - ...more
I still have hope that this will be a good World Cup... This article aggregates a lot of things that have been said about the World Cup experience this year (South Africa's infrastructure, low scoring games, uninteresting first round match-ups, etc). I've noticed in a few bro ...more
You don't need flying broomsticks or magic balls to play this version of the game – it's tailor-made for muggles like us. Step 1 Hang three Hula-hoops as the goals on each end of the playing field from a tree branch, soccer net crossbar, or something similar. Place the hoops ...more
Learn how to choose soccer cleats. If you’re a soccer player, you know how important a good pair of cleats are. They’re everything. You Will Need * A sports store * Soccer socks Step 1. Go to sporting goods store Go to a sporting goods or soccer store. Step 2. Pick out a ...more
Store-bought fake blood isn't too expensive, but the consistency and color are always the same. Real blood varies, from bright red when oxygenated (arterial blood) to deep, dark red when deoxygenated (venous blood), and it can be either thick or thin. So to achieve the best sp ...more
Law enforcement can make a lot of folks cringe. Too often do we hear on the news, and even experience in our own lives, the unjust way that an unacceptable portion of law enforcement treat the very citizens they are supposed to protect. People's rights are violate each and eve ...more
Here's something fun for the Null Byte community to do—a coding competition! This week, I wanted to get everyone involved by offering you all a nice library of possible program types to choose from and try to code. At the end of this competition, all of the submitted programs ...more
Lost the product key for your game? If you have to reinstall the game and don't have that key anymore, you're out of luck, especially if you didn't "buy" the game. But never be in fear of losing product keys again with today's Null Byte, where we'll be practicing a little bit ...more
Welcome to the 10th Community Byte session for coding in Python and completing the challenges presented to us by HackThisSite. These sessions are created to bring our community together, to learn from each other, and grow together. Everyone is welcome, from novice programmers ...more
With the purchase of my latest computer, installing Linux turned into a nightmare from Hell. The graphics drivers are probably the biggest issue that anyone with a newer computer will run into when installing Linux. AMD and NVIDIA are the dominant ones on the market, both of w ...more
Null Byte is looking for forum moderators! Welcome to the ninth Community Byte for coding in Python and completing the challenges presented to us by HackThisSite. These sessions are created to bring our community together, to learn from each other, and grow together. Everyone ...more
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Getting up and down in Minecraft can be extremely time consuming without the assistance of fly mods or speed hacks. If you're a pure player looking for a safe and effective way to t ...more
Another Community Byte announcement from Null Byte! The Community Byte projects serve to teach people in a co-operative, hands-on manner. Learning from experience and immersing yourself in a subject is the best way to learn something foreign to you. In our sessions, we have st ...more
Friday's Community Byte was weird. The intent was to do a HackThisSite mission, but upon time to begin, everyone in there was programming without my assistance, with the help of Sol Gates. This is great! It's really awesome that everyone enjoys programming that much and will m ...more
Anonymity is very important to many internet users. By having your "e-identity" exposed online, you can be stuck with a number of unwanted issues, such as: Privacy invasion. Internet tracking. Exposure to being hacked. However, what if we wanted to spend money anonymously? T ...more
In these weekly Scrabble Challenges, so far we've covered two-letter words, double bingos, high scoring moves, triple-triples, last moves, parallel plays, phoneys and opening moves. For this week's puzzle, we're revisiting the strategy for opening moves. It's said that the pl ...more
Welcome to the second Null Byte in a series educating you on Social Engineering awareness and techniques. Today, I'm going to show you how a saavy Social Engineer would trick a friend into unknowingly surrendering their Facebook password. My intent is to warn and demonstrate h ...more
The noble board game has stalwartly staved off elimination in the face of more technologically advanced video games for four decades. Try as they might, video games just can't seem to surpass them as an easy-to-use diversion for large groups of seated indoor people. Since the ...more
Scrabble has invaded just about every medium out there. It started as a mere board game, but has since spawned numerous board game spinoffs and variations, an electronic version, mobile apps for just about anything (Android, iPhone, iPhone, iPad and Kindle), games for both PC ...more
Angry Birds and FarmVille have become two of the biggest game franchises in the world. And recently their creators, Rovio and Zynga, have hit the news again, but not because of anymore major game announcements. Zynga, the kings of Facebook gaming from San Fransisco, recently ...more
One of the coolest things about Twitter is the fact that you can get direct access to some of your favorite celebrities, and have one-on-one conversations with them in less than 140 characters. With Google+, you can have the same advantage, but you don't need to feel constrict ...more
World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the fu ...more
George Plimpton may be one of the most interesting Americans ever. Foremost a sports journalist, he was also a novelist, Fireworks Commissioner for New York City and host of Mouseterpiece Theater. Some of you may also recognize him as one of the men who tackled Robert F. Kenne ...more
At first, it seemed like a clever art installation housed on the web, but now we're not so sure... the Newstweek hack may indeed be legit. Earlier this year, Newstweek claimed to have developed a way to hack into webpages on a local Wi-Fi network using a homemade device that ...more
Do you ever really know someone? I mean really really? Super really? Sometimes we can talk and be with people normally for years and then bam: five people dead, house on fire, dog missing. All the while people shake their heads and regret that if they had just put the little ...more
In 2008, Audiosurf came out on Steam, creating the psychedelic music game genre. If you haven't played it in the intervening three years, you're missing out on one of the coolest things in video games. The player selects any MP3 on their computer, then the game builds a unique ...more
Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons ...more
We've talked about the deep web before, but we never really covered the details of what's out there. It occurred to me that a nice list of resources would be very helpful to all of you anons out there. Think of this like a helpful brochure to the hidden web. However, I should ...more
Yesterday, Mojang announced their next video game project 0x10c, and the response has been tremendous. Discussions have covered everything from the math mystery over the game's name, to creating projects that interpret the assembly instruction code the in-game computers use (m ...more
If you've ever been inside of a real laboratory, you probably noticed how expensive the equipment is. You'd never be able to afford even just one of those ultra high-tech machines required to splice genes or split atoms. Even the lesser machines can be prohibitively costly, in ...more
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. For last week's Workshop, we decided to attempt to communicate long distance without the use of the chat bar. To accomplish this, we built an elementary redstone pulser that would a ...more
Improve your bingo skills with a roundup of this week's Scrabble Bingo of the Days. What exactly is a bingo? It's when a player empties his or her rack in one turn, placing all seven of their letters on the board to create a word that's at least seven letters long. The term " ...more
This Null Byte is the first part in a mini-series on the art of Social Engineering. I will be teaching you how to effectively defend yourself against it. What is Social Engineering? Social Engineering is the art of hacking humans. It's when a person is manipulated into doing ...more
The United Kingdom has long been known as an international hub of yellow tabloid journalism. The News Of The World, one of the nation's largest tabloids, is famously in court right now because of the deplorable methods it used to acquire salacious information about interesting ...more
There are two types of Scrabble players in the world—those who enjoy it and those who love it. I definitely fall into the latter category. Unfortunately, most of my friends don't. I'm lucky to have a few who simply enjoy it from time to time—some are even standing on the edge ...more
Welcome to the Google+ Insider's Guide to all things Google+. We're dedicated to keeping you updated with all the latest news, tips and tricks on Google+, and this official index will serve as a one-stop catalog of all our How-To articles, as well as all the news & updates we' ...more
Game demos are unfortunately a dying breed. While broadband has made it easier than ever to distribute demos to PC and console gamers, they've become more expensive and risky to make. They seldom come out before the full game, especially for AAA games. Developers realize their ...more
What happens when a person who has never played a building sandbox game tries it for the first time? Reality happens. The harsh reality of human nature. You would think playing with friends in a creation game would be utopia, but in truth it's more like being stuck with people ...more
Today concludes our Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software (see Part 1 & Part 2). In our final installment, we will shift away from engines toward video games that allow you to make your own games within them. Many games have featured level editors that allow users to create th ...more
Real-time strategy (RTS) was the most popular genre in PC games at one time. It put Blizzard on the map—one of the biggest game developers in the world. And it buried the once venerable turn-based strategy genre, the only survivor being the Civilization series. But like hair m ...more
GreenYou can tell a lot about a person's thought process by MTG color they favor: Red: aggressive, unsubtle, will surpass an obstacle by blowing it to bits with the largest explosives available (or Fireballs, as the case may be Black: vindictive, mean-spirited, will tie the o ...more
Final Fantasy 14 the MMO is now live. The special edition priced at $75 enables people to play eight days earlier than people getting the regular edition, which comes out on September 30th. Mine arrived yesterday and here are some pictures of what's inside the special edition ...more
The Holy Grail of chicken has just been found by an unsuspecting reporter of the Chicago Tribune. Yes, that's right: The secret 11 herbs and spices in Colonel Sanders' Original Recipe chicken has finally been revealed, and it looks legit as hell. While a copy of the Original ...more
The days of trundling hoops, hopscotch and painted wooden rocking horses are long since past. The latest trend in toys? Biofeedback. Electroencephalography. A decade into the 21st century, the toy market is awash in products that incorporate functional neural sensors. One suc ...more
The famed chessmaster Capablanca was once asked how many moves ahead he saw when playing a game of chess. His answer? "I see only one move ahead, but it is ALWAYS the right move." Such confidence! How did he get it? Cognitive scientists and neurologists have long been fascina ...more
In Alan Wake, there are hidden messages hidden throughout the levels that are only visible with a flashlight. If you don't flash the light at a particular spot, you will not be able to see the message. These messages are left by a mysterious entity trying to give hints to Ala ...more
Hallelujah, a miracle tool has been released to the world. This Windows/Mac tool is called Spirit and it enables you to jailbreak any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad quite easily. And Gizmodo is all over it, with an in-depth guide on exactly how to do it. Some of you may be hackin ...more
Minecart rides primarily serve two different functions—transportation or entertainment. We rarely see minecart-based transportation systems in Minecraft these days because most servers support warps or allow users to set multiple homes that they can simply teleport to. That le ...more