Light Start – Bionic coffee, water landing, VW hack, and THQ is back
Brett Venter
Turning an unwanted pod-slurping coffee machine into a bionic hand (yes, really)
We’ve seen someone take an old, unwanted item and repurpose it before. Heck, we’ve seen an old motor vehicle shell turned into a pot-plant holder. But turning a coffee machine into a bionic hand? Without a clear set of plans? Yeah, that’s a special kind of talented. But that’s just what one Evan Booth has done, converting a Keurig 2.0 coffee machine (the kind that ships with DRM for their coffee pods) into an actual bionic hand. You can check out the super-supercut above, which compresses around 200 hours of work into just five minutes or so. All that was used for the build was the coffee machine, a power supply, some tools and a heat gun, as well as a faint glimmering of an idea of what Booth wanted to build.
SpaceX puts another rocket on the ‘ground’, making this their fourth water landing
Hey, remember when SpaceX’s rocket landings were almost destined to fail? Yeah that was a long time ago, relatively speaking. The space company has, over the weekend, successfully landed their sixth rocket without incident. The mission to launch the JCSAT-16 satellite over the weekend was successful, as well as the Falcon 9 landing on the drone barge. That marks the fourth time that SpaceX has touched down over water, too. It’s an impressive track record so far and it’s going to get better. In September or October this year SpaceX intends to reuse the first of their landed rockets, which will see the company finally starting to save money on some missions. If it goes well then the price of space travel should come down. Again, that’s relatively speaking. We’re not booking any orbital holidays this year, is what we’re saying.
Own a VW? You could be vulnerable to having your car hacked
Hey, you know what sucks? Having your car stolen. What would suck harder is if it were taken because it’s vulnerable to a software hack that allowed someone to unlock your vehicle, as is the case with a new vulnerability revealed by the University of Birmingham’s Flavio Garcia and team. The hack affects most VW models produced since 1995, so you’re probably not even safe with an old model car. The only exceptions? The newest Golf models from the company. Garcia and his researchers were able to extract a cryptographic key from an unspecified component in a VW engine — alone, it’s pretty useless but it could be used to clone your keyring unlocking thingy quite accurately. VW drivers aren’t alone, though. Wired‘s Andy Greenberg says that there’s a second hack which affects “…Alfa Romeo, Citroën, Fiat, Ford, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Opel, and Peugeot” models. Ouch.
Like all the best zombies, THQ is back from the dead and sporting a new look
Some of you might remember THQ, a once-solid game publisher that slowly imploded and which was then sold for scrap. Well, it’s back. Sort of. A Swedish company called Nordic Games bought up just about everything about THQ some time back, including rights to the name, and they’ve just rebranded themselves as THQNordic. There’s more than just wanting to scoop up some of the name recognition from the older company behind the move, though. According to the company “As of now we have 23 game projects in development, 13 thereof have not yet been publicly announced, but are sure to be in the next months.” Contained in those 13 are titles based on old THQ properties, which is why they’re bringing the name back from the dead. Whatever, as long as we get a new Darksiders out of the deal we’re okay with whatever they want to call the company. Red Faction would be cool too. Just sayin’.
