Category Archives: News

[PS3] GeoHot Hacks PS3’s Hypervisor Protection

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Notorious iPhone hacker GeoHot has succesfully circumvented the Playstation’s security system. According to his latest blog entry, he has dumped LV0 and LV1 code, thus allowing him to (theoretically) run code on the processor, bypassing the hypervisor.

The Playstation’s hypervisor is intended to run third party software (like Yellow Dog Linux) on a virtualized level, thus maintaining system integrity and protection of the host system. Within this virtualized environment arbitrary access to certain hardware devices has been disabled, thus allowing only basic access to the graphic processing unit (GPU) for example.

GeoHot seems to have broken the chain of trust. This means he can bypass the hypervisor to directly access hardware like the GPU with his custom code. Anyway he has not released any further information or proof of his work. But hey, it is not anyone, it is GeoHot, so it seems solid.

We compiled some links for people being interested in the hypervisor protection topic.

» GeoHot: Hello hypervisor, I’m GeoHot…
» WeboPedia.com: Virtualization – All About Hypervisors…
» PS3News: Overview on Security architecture of the PS3…
» PS2Dev Wiki: Details about hypervisor functions of the PS3 and Toshiba’s CellEB…
» PS3News: A PS3 Game’s Flow of Execution; PS3’s base AIX…


Massive Attack: Protection (1995)…

[Muzaq] Incomplete-MP3 Store Alpha

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The Situation

As an addition to our periodical music reviews we now offer to get those tracks legally as mp3 downloads from our own site here. We don’t expect big sales here. We see this as another experiment in our large field of experiments.

As this is all about gathering experiences, we currently offer this service for the U.S. and for Germany only.


The Quality

The quality of the mp3 files is very good. The mp3 files have round about 256kBits/s compressed variable bitrate.


Your Benefits

You get real mp3’s  without digital rights management (DRM) or watermarks. You can play mp3 files virtually on any mobile music player around, mp3’s are of course compatible to Apple’s iPods or iPhones or Palm’s Pre.

And yes: this is legal. No downloading from dark places. And the best: we teamed up with Amazon, thus allowing you to use Amazon as your payment service to get our finest mp3 selections.


The Prices

The prices vary depending on the size and the amount of tracks. LP’s usually cost about US$9.98 (€9.98). EP’s vary between $3.00 – $5.00.

Links

» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (USA)…
» Incomplete-News.Com: Incomplete-MP3 Beta Store (Deutschland)…

Preview is limited to 30secs at the moment…

[Muzaq] GrandCrew.com: Antipop Consortium Live in Paris

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Anousonne Savanchomkeo of GrandCrew.com just sent us this nice link. This time the GrandCrew team filmed this outstanding avangardist concert of Antipop Consortium on November 9th, 2009 in La Maroquinerie in Paris. It is an outstanding mixture between electro and hip hop… Don’t miss to watch and listen. Enjoy and kudos to Paris…

» GrandCrew.com: Antipop Consortium Live in Paris…
» Wikipedia.org: Antipop Consortium…

[e-Biz] Tablet-Mac iSlate Using iPhone Kernel

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The guys over at BoyGeniusReport.com seem to have been talking to an Apple contact, having more details of Apple’s iSlate. As already rumored during the last days, the iSlate seems to be featuring an ARM CPU, will be using the iPhone Kernel and will have the internal model number K48AP.

[Pre] WebOS 1.3.5.2 Released in Europe

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Telefonica (O2/MoviStar) has approved Palm’s latest update. We expect they found some bugs that are on the american 1.3.5.1.  The update will be installed automatically over the air. The 15 MB update brings Tethering via Bluetooth and 3D graphics acceleration to European Palm Pre’s, thus allowing us eventually to play Doom, Quake and Need For Speed.

The update features:

  • installation of apps to the media partition, thus allowing to use up to 7GB for applications
  • simultaneous installation of apps from the AppCatalog
  • Downloads can be paused and resumed
  • speed improvements
  • improved support for prepaid SIMs
  • improved battery runtime
  • support for animated GIFs

We are still waiting for a full changelog from Palm for this update.

Warning

Before updating: don’t forget to use the “Emergency Patch Recovery” (EPR) tool, if you installed patches via PreWare. The EPR tool can be found in PreWare under Available Packages -> Linux Applications -> All -> Emergency Patch Recovery

[e-Biz] The Slate Tablets Are Coming

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Tablet PCs seem to be the next big thing. After Apple’s smartphone revolution with their iPhone, it seems the next big market revolution might be the Tablet PCs.

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft introduced one of the Tablet PCs – a prototype of the HP Slate – last week on the CES 2010. In his presentation the HP Slate is of course running Windows 7, what else, but there are rumors it might also be shipped with Google’s Android. We suppose Amazon’s Steve Bezos will not really like it, because Steve Ballmer showed the HP Slate running the PC Kindle application.

Dell seems also be ready to enter the Touch PCs’ market with the Dell Slate. Gizmodo.de got photos of a prototype of Dell’s Slate. Dell’s Slate has a 5-inch screen, most likely an OLED, a SIM slot and a 5 megapixel camera.

If Apple was a typical tech company they would also have showed something to the public on the CES, but Apple isn’t. Anyway there are enuff rumors floating around about Apple’s Touch-Mac – rumored to be named Apple iSlate. According to Reuters Apple might be launching the iSlate in Q2/2010. It is expected to have a 10 or 11-inch display and a aluminium case. TheStreet.com reports that Apple’s Slate will be shipped with a P A Semi CPU, instead of Intel based Atom CPUs. This could be also the reason, why Atom CPU has been removed from Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s latest update 10.6.2. It is widely expected that Apple will announce the iSlate on Januar 27th, 2010.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD interviewed Mr. Podfather Prefather Jon Rubinstein of Palm at the CES. Although he seems to have been highly involved in the development of Apple’s iPhone back in the days when he was Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, he said he never used an iPhone. Well… All in all he wasn’t telling too much, but when Kara asked him, if Palm will do a Tablet aswell, Rubinstein answered: “(..) we designed webOS to scale and it could be used in different form factors.”

[FreePress] Wikileaks Offline

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What is Wikileaks

Wikipedia‘s definition of “Wikileaks”:

Wikileaks is a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents, leading to many front-page newspaper articles and political reforms.

Achievements

Since their going public in December 2006, Wikileaks have won several significant Awars like the “New Media Award 2008” by the Economist magazine. In 2009, Wikileaks won the Amnesty International UK’s Media Award for their 2008 publication “Kenya: The Cry for Blood”.

In 2008 Wikileaks published documents of business practices of Swiss Bank Julius Baer. The documents contained allegations of illegal activities of the Bank on their Cayman Island branch. Julius Baer sued Wikileaks, and Wikileaks.org was taken offline, but remained accessable thru its various world wide mirrors. Eventually the case was dropped, after a coalition of major U.S. newspaper publishers and press organisations filed a motion protesting the censorship. As of today the documents remain available on Wikileaks mirrors.

Financial problems

While Wikipedia managed to collect 8mill US$ within the last few weeks to keep up operational, Wikileaks has major financial issues. According to their spokesman Julian Assange Wikileaks requires about 600,000US$ per year only to maintain their services.

Main Page Offline

To underline the necessity of financial help, Wikileaks has gone offline until Januar, 11th. The website currently states:

To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, until Jan 11.

Find more information on how you can (financially) support and contribute to Wikileaks here…

[e-Biz] Palm’s Presentation on the CES 2010

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I. Summary

Quite a bunch of news for the Palm community has been presented by Palm’s CEO John Podfather Prefather Rubinstein. Find the whole video presentation at the end of the summary.

II. WebOS Update 1.4

WebOS 1.4 will be released in February, 2010 (in the US at least, we Europeans are still waiting for 1.3.5). WebOS 1.4 will feature:

  • Video Recording
  • Adobe Flash 10.1
  • better Battery Life and
  • improved performance

III. WebOS Plug In Development Kit

For developing native 3D games Palm secretely extended their development tools with a plug in kit, that allows to write code in C or C++.

IV. Native 3D Games

Moreover Palm showed they are in the know what their customers will like and how to explore more markets besides the Linux community. As of today some 3D games have been released to the U.S. American AppCatalog:

  • Need for Speed Undercover
  • The Sims 3
  • Monopoly
  • Asphalt 5: Elite Racing
  • Let’s Golf!
  • Glyder 2, and
  • X-Plane

IV. Palm Pre Plus coming to Verizon

A special version of the Palm Pre is coming to Verizon Wireless, only 7 months after the initial release of the Palm Pre to the Spring network. Verizon’s Palm Pre Plus is coming with 16GB Ram, a reworked slider mechanics and a tethering plan. Verizon is said to have one of the best 3G coverage in North America. We suspect the Palm Pre Plus to be SIM locked.

V. The whole video presentation on the CES 2010

Enjoy Mr. Podfather Prefather John Rubinstein…

[Pre] webOS 1.3.5, webOS 1.3.5.1 and the CES 2010

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European customers are still waiting for webOS 1.3.5 update. The European carrier Telefonica (o2 and MoviStar)  seems not to have approved it yet.

Meanwhile it seems versions 1.3.5 had issues. According to PreCentral.net, Palm Pre customers on Sprint (USA) and Bell (Canada) are able to update to version 1.3.5.1 since Januar 5th, 2010. Version 1.3.5 has been released in the US and Canada on December 29th, 2009.

Issues with homebrew apps on 1.3.5 and 1.3.5.1

It is known, that webOS 1.3.5 breaks homebrew installer PreWare. Known workaround is using WebOS Quick Install to remove and then reinstall PreWare. It should be working well again.

There are also issues with homebrew apps that don’t contain  an appinfo.json file. Apps not properly prepared would not be getting moved from /var to /media/cryptofs/apps. Package Manager Service 0.9.24.3 has fixes for this problem.

And the latest 1.3.5.1 also breaks myTether. This seems not resolved yet.

Amazing news

In the meantime people from the WebOS Internal forums have discovered, that webOS 1.3.5 includes Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL). SDL allows hardware accelerated graphics and sound and is available on different platforms for free and open source. Via homebrew installer PreWare a playable alpha version of Doom using SDL has already been released.

Europeans still waiting

Although Palm is said to be unveiling something big on the CES 2010 tomorrow, we don’t expect Telefonica to approve 1.3.5 until then for Europe.

It is rumored, on the CES Verizon Wireless will be officially named the new partner for a device called Palm Pre Plus (Palm Pre 3).

Links

» PreCentral: webOS 1.3.5.1 Available for OTA Download…
» PreCentral: webOS 1.3.5.1 goes live for Pre users on Bell…
» PreCentral Forums: Status of Preware and 1.3.5…
» PreCentral Forums: Preware + mytether unavailable after 1.3.5.1…
» WebOS Internals Wiki: Doom on Palm Pre…
» Wikipedia: Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)…
» WebOS Blog: Was kommt zur CES 2010 von Palm? (Google translated link)…
» PhoneArea: Verizon to get Palm Pre Plus…

Video