How Make 8 Bit

Is your tiny city apartment or super modest house starting to feel a bit too cramped for comfort? While most of us don't have the luxury of hiring an architect to add on more kitchen space, or the money to live in a more spacious apartment, there are a number of simple things ...more

I sometimes play on a survival server where griefing is not only allowed, but almost encouraged. Keeping yourself safe and other on their toes is important. :) So, I came up with this simple TNT + pressure plate trap. I know what you are all thinking at the moment. "Aaaw, no ...more

This week, I will be covering one of my favorite styles of roofing in Minecraft—the arched roof. This is basically just a roof that starts out steep and slowly slopes down until it meets in the center. I think this type of roof looks great in Elvish-styled buildings and can ma ...more

You're hellbent on taking over the world, but one race of robotic minions isn't enough for you. With your hexapod robots acting as your ground forces, it's only natural to take to the skies. These cardboard quadcopters are the perfect air force for you. Combined, you are mere ...more

My kids found an old Spoke-Hedz three digit lock, and wanted my help to crack it open. One of the first things I noticed was that it doesn't function like a normal code lock, where one half of the lock will open, or the lock itself separates. In this lock, the locking bail ext ...more

Want to protect your home from unlawful entry? You may not have the means to invest in an expensive alarm system, but you can definitely use cheap and practical methods around your home to deter burglars from breaking in when you're not home. The best thing you can do is to m ...more

Wireless networks. Nowadays, everyone uses 'em, but most don't secure 'em. On average, I can drive up and down any block in my city and find at least one or two open or semi-open networks on any given day. With some changed MAC addresses for good measure, an attacker can use y ...more

For the limited-free-building contest I gave myself an even more extreme challenge: what could I do with only ONE block type? I chose nether brick stairs, in the gold challenge pack, because stairs are great. The whole thing (texture pack: Xiawalker). First floor pattern. Se ...more

Tonight, I saw Mercury for the first time. Mercury is a hard planet to see, even though it is quite bright, because it's orbit is so close to the sun. The angle Mercury makes with the Earth and the Sun is never more than about 25 degrees and most of the time it is much less. A ...more

SSH is amazing, and we praise its existence on Null Byte for many reasons. Notably, it allows us to reroute our traffic through encrypted ports on our local host to be sent to its destination when on the go. You can even control your home computers remotely over a secure and e ...more

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, realistic 4. The fourth in a series of realistic simulation missions was designed to be exactly like a situation you may encounter in the real world. This time, we are told "Fischer's Animal Products is a company th ...more

In this article, I'll be showing you how to make a cool visual representation of sound using an old cathode ray tube (CRT) television, a stereo, and a sound source. You'll also need a pair of wire cutters, and a few screwdrivers. To properly understand this project, it's a goo ...more

This article will show you how to make a proportionally correct 1/187 (about) size Hubble Space Telescope. I tried to add as many details as possible, but it was hard at such a small size. It was really easy, but it did take a while to make. Here are some specs for the real H ...more

What would MacGyver do if he was stranded on a trash dump in the middle of the ocean? If he had the right supplies, chances are he'd come up with something very similar to this PVC and duct tape boat. C'mon, we all know MacGyver always has duct tape on him! A while back, Ben ...more

Thanks to Yifan Lu, it's been discovered that the operating system running on the Kindle Touch is written mostly in HTML5 and JavaScript, unlike the previous models which used Java. This is exciting, because when a device is hacked or rooted, that means homebrew programs can b ...more

Don't be too disappointed if you don't have the spiffy new Kindle Touch, there is an up side. The benefit to owning the older (duller) models is that the firmware remains the same throughought generations, so the hacks retain their usefulness. This has given the modding commun ...more

The biggest struggle with flashing DVD drives on Xbox 360s has been the price tag of the probe to extract keys on some drives. The probe and kit is required to extract the DVD key, which is needed to perform a drive repair, flash, or backup of any kind. Who wants to pay big bu ...more

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, basic mission 10. This mission teaches us how to use JavaScript to manipulate cookies on poorly coded cookie-based authorization. These missions are for everyone here, and you can join at any time. Your experience ...more

Lots of people are going to be getting the latest iOS devices this holiday season. But what good is a portable device if you don't hack it? Jailbreaking on the latest stock iOS, version 4.3.5, is a bit of a trivial endeavor. Not many people know how to downgrade from this firm ...more

NASA announced yesterday that their Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-sized planets orbiting a sun-like star outside of our solar system. Could this mean aliens? Unfortunately, no. The two newly discovered planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are 0.87 and 1.03 time ...more

Hopefully by now, you've played a good chunk of RAAM's Shadow for Gears of War 3. I've just now started to get to it, as my buddy and I have just completed the main campaign on co-op. For today, we've got three achievements for the newly released DLC. Just make sure you have t ...more

Ever since kernel 2.6.xx in Linux, a lot of the internet kernel modules for wireless interfaces ended up becoming broken when trying to use monitor mode. What happens commonly (to myself included) is a forced channel that your card sits on. No good! For users of airodump and t ...more

I got hooked on origami sometime after Math Craft admin Cory Poole posted instructions for creating modular origami, but I had to take a break to finish a quilt I've been working on for a while now. It's my first quilt, and very simple in its construction (straight up squares, ...more

Here's my Sonobe Jasmine Dodecahedron built from Imatfaal's instructions. I built it using "cheap" patterned origami paper (150 cm so I could use Imatfaal's measurements) from Michael's. I then took some silver metallic leafing paint and painted the exposed white parts with s ...more

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it's awesome that you can now download music from the iTunes Store that's free of DRM (digital rights management) limitations. That was always my biggest problem with buying music from iTunes. Paying a buck for a song that I can only ...more

Looking for something a little more exhilarating this Thanksgiving? Something with a bit more kick? Forget traditional roasted turkey. If you've got the stomach for it, try turducken, a wonderful triplex of turkey, duck and chicken with sausage stuffing and Cajun seasoning. Or ...more

Since today (11/11/11) is the last 6 digit binary date this century, I thought we should look at some kinetic binary calculators. Matthias Wandel built a beautiful 6 digit binary computer out of wood. If you want to build one, he even gives you some more information and instr ...more

hello, straight 8 invite anyone (that means you) to make a short film on one cartridge of super 8 — without editing. the first time you see your film is at one of our awesome worldwide premieres. check out the lovely 2012 trailer here: http://vimeo.com/30856684 & there's a ...more

Keep your smile pearly white without buying a teeth-whitening kit or making an expensive visit to the doctor's office. One popular home remedy is to add a little bit of baking soda to your tooth paste on a weekly basis when you brush your teeth. (Do not do this more than once ...more

Richard Sweeney is an incredible artist whose body of work consists mainly of sculptures made from paper. His art is often related to origami, and much of his work is related to geometrical forms. I personally really love his modular forms in paper. Many of them are based off ...more

The "slide-together" paper construction method is a fun and satisfying way to build 3D geometric objects. It only requires paper, scissors or an exacto knife, and some patience. In Tuesday's post, we explored the slide-together method, using ordinary playing cards to build th ...more

Where did PC games begin? It was before windows, before graphics, even before Zork (pictured in thumbnail). In 1975-76, while working as a programmer at defense contractor and packet switching inventors Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (now BBN, part of Raytheon), spelunking enthusi ...more

BOVINITY 66 points (16 points without the bingo) Definition: the state of being a bovine [n] At first glance, the definition for bovinity seems a bit too obvious… the state of being an ox-like animal. But outside the world of cattle, it's meant more as a disparaging remark t ...more

Warning Don't torrent things that you do not have the rights to torrent. Everything I torrent, I have a physical copy of, and just want a copy on my computer without causing wear-and-tear on my DVD drive's laser. Piracy is naughty. I used to get extremely frustrated with Bit ...more

Minecraft never ceases to amaze, from programmable pianos to serial killers. But now someone has tackled M. C. Escher's famous Relativity lithograph from 1953 that depicts a world not bound by the normal laws of gravity. It's an amazing puzzle of a three-dimensional world trap ...more