I'm really just working this stuff out for my own benefit. You should ignore it unless you're working on something similar. Seriously.

that's what it is! and frankly, it is awesome.

I've been meaning to write something quick about the state of console hacking, but kept getting sidetracked. Might as well do it now, before the news gets completely stale:

Xbox 360
Xplorer360 was released a little over a week ago. The app lets folks read and write to the Xbox 360's hard drive — but don't get too excited. The hard drive isn't encrypted, it's just in a mildly exotic format. This is a useful tool, but not a breakthrough in and of itself.

In other Xbox news, the "kiosk disc" was disabled by the latest Xbox Live update. You might remember me talking about it before — the disc was electronically distributed to retailers for them to play in display units. But recipients were expected to burn the disc image to a DVD-R, bypassing the console's usual prohibition on playing writeable media — this made it an intriguing means by which hackers could potentially inject their own code. The executable files were still encrypted, but the media assets (an in particular, Flash files) weren't and could be replaced. All of this looked like a promising, if less-than-surefire way to find an exploit on the 360. Sadly, that avenue is now closed for anyone with an up-to-date system.

Nintendo DS
But although the news for the 360 crowd isn't as encouraging as it might have first seemed, owners of the Nintendo DS now have more capabilities than they used to. Via BoingBoing I learned of the PassMe, a slick add-on for the DS. But BB got their facts slightly wrong — the PassMe isn't the only thing you need to hack up a DS.

Actually, all the PassMe does is transparently pass traffic back and forth to a genuine DS game (necessary because of the platform's encryption) — with one exception. When it sees a specific instruction — one that tells the DS to begin executing at an address corresponding to the beginning of the DS cartridge — it rewrites it, telling the console to go to the Gameboy slot instead... in which you presumably have a writeable flash cartridge (aka "flash cart") onto which you've loaded your hacked applications.

There are a lot of flash carts available for the Gameboy Advance, and they're all roughly compatible with the DS. But if you want to play "commercial backups" (aka pirated DS games), you'll need to use one of two specific brands, and you'll need to use some custom hacked ROMs that have been released by a group called Golden Sun. You can find details on all of this here.

So, sadly, the cost of modding your GBA isn't as cheap as the $20 PassMe, despite what BoingBoing thought. You also need one of those two brands of flash cart, which will run you another $125-150. For once, piracy doesn't come cheap.

And hey, while I'm at it...

PSP
It's cracked yet again. I can't afford a PSP, and don't really want one, so I haven't been tracking this particularly carefully. But last I checked, you can run homebrew apps, emulators and commercial backups on all firmware revisions.

this post over at jolienyc about allure's feature on cheap makeup thrills reminds me of a few bargain bin products i've been enjoying myself. not that i've ever enjoyed products from anywhere else but a drugstore; grad student budget doesn't exactly let you go shopping weekly at sephora. but anyways!

garnier fructis fortifying deep conditioner: this is supposed to be a once-a-week-or-so deep masque for your hair, but i love it so much, i use it every day. it's amazing mostly because i have fine, tending-to-oily hair, but it rinses super clean (as long as i just use it on the ends) and makes my hair all nice and soft and shiny. and the kicker: it smells yummy. one recommendation: the packaging - a plastic tub - sucks. it's difficult to open in the shower, and if you drop it, the top'll shatter everywhere.

clean and clear oil-free dual action moisturizer: perfect for those with skin like mine that tends to get super dry in the winter, but that will break out into nastiness if you even think about putting moisturizer on it. this gets rids of the dryness but doesn't make me break out.

curel ultra-healing lotion: i think curel must be undergoing a product redesign and shedding all of its old-looking tubes, because i came across a different-looking minitube of this lotion in osco's bargain bin. 25 cents. how could i pass it up. and i loved it so much i came back the next day and bought, i shit you, 10 more minitubes. it's a little bit greasy, but lightly so, and moisturizes really well. my hands are not disgusting and red and cracky any longer!

and thus ends the temporary transformation of the blog into beauty tips galore! but feel free to leave your own in comments. i very rarely buy a product unless recommended by friends, and i'm always looking for recs to help along my product obsession.

UPDATE: i made some other drugstore recs a while back.

our lovely legal instructor loves us all so much that as we're all desperately struggling to finish our terrible 1200-word articles, she ordered us lunch - pizza from piece (her husband is an investor there). unfortunately for me, it's located somewhere in wicker park and not really accessible to my 'hood, but i'd highly recommended it. yummy thin crust.

i love this article:

Just over seven months after he made his first appearance at the National Zoo, giant panda cub Tai Shan, has apparently discovered that he and his mother are not alone.

Zoo officials say that over the weekend, he began staring into the outdoor enclosure next to the one where he has been playing over the past few weeks with his mother, Mei Xiang.

Consumerist brings news that TechCrunch (which appears to be down at the moment) has just reviewed the private beta of a service called FlySpy. It looks fairly neat — enter your origin and destination cities, and get back a graph of fare prices for the coming month. You can overlay graphs for different airports, adjust parameters, and generally short-circuit the airlines' confusing pricing schemes.

Or that's what it looks like, anyway (there's a screenshot on Consumerist). The site is still in closed beta. So, on the off chance that anyone has invite capabilities... yeah. Drop me a line.

via peter, a really kind of fascinating article on, of all things, ice worms!

Thriving in conditions that would turn most living things to Popsicles, these inch-long earthworm cousins inhabit glaciers and snowfields in the coastal ranges of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. They move through seemingly solid ice with ease and are at their liveliest near the freezing point of water. Warm them up slightly and they dissolve into goo.

Their life cycle remains a mystery.

But ice worms are beginning to yield their secrets to a few hardy scientists who see broad applications from understanding one of the planet's oddest inhabitants.

NASA anted up $200,000 last year to explore the worms' cold tolerance and what it might say about the possibility of life on Jupiter's icy moons and other planets. That work could also improve cold storage of organs and tissues for transplantation.

As glaciers shrink in the face of global warming, interest is growing in ice worms and other animals whose habitat could melt away within the next 50 years. National Geographic funded one of the first field surveys to focus on ice-worm ecosystems.

"They're kind of hot right now," Lee said as he and roommate Dave Eiriksson strapped on their gear and headed up the slopes above Paradise.

i should feel shame at seeing people fall and potentially hurt themselves very seriously, but when they are wearing the outfits that these ice dancers are wearing, i can only feel utter glee and manic laughter. check out the blow-by-blow photo gallery here.