It’s no secret that the central US is feels like a very humid oven right now. [Erik's] window AC hack might help you out if you’re coping with triple-digit temperatures. He added network connectivity to the unit above but the picture is a bit deceiving. The blue CAT-5 cable that enters the bottom isn’t connecting directly to the network, but extends the up and down button connections for the unit to an external relay board. From there he uses an SNMP board to connect it to the network and uses PHP commands to reset the temperature. The unit has a working range of 66-88 degrees Fahrenheit so he cycles enough button press to reach the maximum or minimum level, then sets the desired temperature (avoiding the need to know what temperature the unit is currently set at). If you’ve got an AC unit with a remote control you could always use an IR device to patch into the system for similar functionality.

Wired took a look at this year’s Ninja Party badges. We were giddy about all the goodies involved in last year’s must-have badge that served as an invitation to the party. It was tailor-made for hacking, including an on-board disassembler. This year’s details are still a bit sparse but the offering is more along the lines of a market-ready product. The badges come in hand held gaming format, with a d-pad and two buttons. They can connect wirelessly with each other and with hidden base stations, allowing participants to fight in the digital realm for LED-indicated achievements. The teaser is tantalizing and we can’t wait to hear details about the real/digital gaming adventure soon to unfold.

[Kenneth Finnegan] is back with another video showing some cool stuff he’s doing to connect his microcontrollers to the internet. Usually, we see this done with a prebuilt module like an iobridge. [Kenneth] is using a Microchip ENC28j60 module for the communication and he’s managed to stuff it all onto a tiny Electroboards piece.  [Kenneth] is starting to become a regular around here. [via HackedGadgets]

[Nicholas] built an active tracking system using RFID tags. The system’s tags operate in the 2.4 GHz band and are used to track either people or assets. The readers are on a mesh network and can triangulate the location of any tag for display on a map. His system is even set up to show the travel history of each tag. [Nicholas] shared every detail in his writeup including some background about available hardware options and how he made his final decisions on what devices to use for the job. His conglomeration of software that ties the whole project together is also available for download.

A post about Operation Chokehold popped up on (fake) Steve Jobs’ blog this morning. It seems some folks are just plain tired of AT&T giving excuses about their network. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when AT&T floated the idea of instituting bandwidth limitations for data accounts. Now, someone hatched the idea of organizing enough users to bring the whole network down by maxing their bandwidth at the same time. We’re not quite sure what to think about this. Our friend Google told us that there’s plenty of press already out there regarding Operation Chokehold so it’s not beyond comprehension that this could have an effect on the network. On the other hand, AT&T already knows about it and we’d wager they’re working on a plan to mitigate any outages that might occur. As for the effectiveness of the message?  We’d have more sympathy for AT&T if they didn’t have exclusivity contracts for their smart phones (most notably the iPhone). And if you’re selling an “Unlimited Plan” it should be just that. What do you think? [Thanks Bobbers] [Headlock photo]

As far as password recovery utilities go, Cain & Abel is by far one of the best out there. It’s designed to run on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista but has methods to recover passwords for other systems. It is able to find passwords in the local cache, decode scrambled passwords, find wireless network keys or use brute-force and dictionary attacks. For recovering passwords on other systems Cain & Abel has the ability to sniff the local network for passwords transmitted via HTTP/HTTPS, POP3, IMAP, SMTP and much more. We think it is quite possibly one of the best utilities to have as a system administrator, and definitely a must have for your toolbox.

We’re starting to think that phone numbers are deprecated; it may be time to integrate how we connect telephones with the new digital millennium. To get a firm grasp on this topic it is important to take a look at the reason we started using phone numbers, why we still use them, and the why’s and how’s of transitioning to a new system. History of phone numbers Telephone numbers started out as a way of physically addressing a telephone extension. Whether connected by an operator at a switchboard or through a magnetic exchange, each number corresponded to the hardware switch that connected the handset you were trying to ring. This originally started with named exchanges such as Pennsylvania-6-5000. The geographic location of the extension was  shown in the name and this system gradually transitioned over to area codes and prefixes. Continued usage The proliferation of cell phones means that numbers are no longer tied to a physical location but are routed to the nearest tower to which each wireless phone is currently connected. So why have we continued to use telephone numbers? Backwards compatibility is paramount. Cell phones overtook land lines years ago but there are still millions of people connected to the telephone companies’ wired networks. Most of the phones used on these land lines rely on the touch tone system to function. Even the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol implements the same system of connecting calls by dialing a number. What works better than phone numbers? How many different phone numbers does your family have? Many households have a home phone, a cell phone for each family member, and a work phone for each adult. What if all of these numbers were addressed similarly to how the Domain Name System works for internet addresses? Something like this: phone://famiy.johndoe2155.voice/john_at_home phone://family.johndoe2155.voice/jane_at_home phone://www.your_company’s_domain.com/customer_service This can be accomplished in the near future. All cell phones and many land line phones already have the ability to store numbers so that you only have to enter them once. Cell phones can already input web-style addresses and a firmware upgrade would allow for a new system of addressing and storing voice connection information. Service providers like Comcast and Charter are already providing phone service that utilizes VOIP, paving the way for dialing from your computer. For legacy hardware an inexpensive interface box similar to the digital cable converter boxes could be implemented. The new box would have a keyboard and character LCD and be rolled out in the same way that caller ID boxes were. Conclusion No one wants to change their telephone number and be in the position of trying to inform everyone who might ever call them. This is why laws were enacted to allow you to keep your telephone number if you change carriers. If each family owned their “voice domain”, changing carriers, cities, or even countries would be as simple as editing the domain registration. Transitioning to a new system of dynamically addressed telephone extensions is the next logical step in voice communications. Although it would be a change for billions of people, it is possible and worth taking a look at. [photo credit Projekt Runeberg]

[Florian] and [Xavier Carcelle] started the day at 25C3 by covering power line communication. PLC technology is not widespread in the US, but has gained popularity in countries like France where it’s included in set-top boxes. PLC lets you create a local network using the AC wires in your wall. The team started exploring PLC because despite being newer technology, it had a few principles that made it similar to old networks. There’s no segmentation in the wiring, which means it behaves like a layer 2 hub. You get to see all of the traffic unlike a switched network. Most power meters don’t filter out the signal, so it’s possible that you might see your next-door neighbor’s traffic on your line. [Florian] reports having seen all the traffic in a six-story building just by plugging in. The wiring also acts as a large antenna so you could employ tempest attacks.

The technology involved is certainly interesting, but they found a lack of tools to work with it. They wrote FAIFA to fill this gap. It’s currently a command line tool for probing and configuring Intellon-based PLC devices (Intellon is the majority chip supplier for PLC). You can query devices and it even has a sniffer mode. Sniffing may not seem interesting since devices that support the HomePlug AV standard use encryption, but they’re all shipping from the factory with the same default key. In the future, they hope to build their own open source FPGA based PLC device to take even more control of the system.