Game Romer

There are roughly 64,000 possible combinations for a standard Master Lock padlock. If you don’t know the combination (and there aren’t any bolt cutters handy), it can take a long, long time to crack that lock. Well, that used to be true. Hacker Samy Kamkar has devised a method for unlocking any Master Lock printed combination lock in eight or fewer attempts, and all you need to do is spin the dial a few times.

This hack is based on feeling for resistance as you spin the lock, then noting where on the dial it’s happening. Kamkar has built a website where you can input the numbers to have eight potential combinations generated. If you’ve entered the right data, one of those combinations should open the lock.

It starts with pulling up on the shackle (that’s the locking bit) and spinning the dial slowly from zero. You’re looking for the first two places the dial locks up that are centered on a whole number less than 11. Drop those into the tool and let up on the shackle until you can spin the dial freely. With a little upward pressure, the dial should get hung up in the same place once per turn. This might be a whole number, or it might be in between two, enter the value in the next box and hit “find combos.”

The site will list two possible numbers for the last digit, which you can check by pulling up on the shackle while hovering over each one. The number with more give in the dial is the final part of the combination. Then it’s just a matter of trying the eight middle numbers with the confirmed first and last digit to open the lock.

Kamkar developed the algorithm to crack these locks when reading up on a known hack that reduced the number of possible combinations to 100. He also took one of the locks apart to examine the combination mechanism. The real key was when he realized that the first and third digit of the combination, when divided by four, always return the same remainder.

Don’t expect the Master Lock people to get too frazzled about the hack. It’s still far from instant and these are mostly cheap locks that no one is using to protect anything vitally important. Still, neat party trick.

This is what happens when your dad and your uncle work in a design studio and love Star Wars as much as you do. You get to sleep in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon every night. And no, they didn’t win it in a sector-wide Sabacc Tournament.

It’s easily one of the coolest — and geekiest — bedroom builds we’ve ever seen. There’s room for the pilot and his co-pilot, and the ladder that provides access to the cockpit swings up to keep bothersome Imperial goons from boarding. The fact that the whole thing was built largely out of found objects and on a shoestring budget of just $250 makes it absolutely amazing. I’m fairly confident that the Hoth-themed bedroom in this palatial $15 million home that’s for sale on Estately cost a bit more to build.

Outside the cockpit, the brothers added a couple of additional elements to make the room a little more “Star Wars.” Hanging off the back of the cockpit, there’s a wing that functions as a writing desk (when it’s clutter-free, anyway).  There’s also a massive hangar door that can slide forward to cover the window. You can see it better in this photo that shows the bed as a work-in-progress a little over a year ago:

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GTA V is finally available to play on PC, which by default also means you get to see it at its best if you have the hardware to turn all the settings up to 11. The impact of that graphical superiority will wear off though, it always does. The game looks great. What gives GTA games lasting appeal on the PC is the mods, and GTA V is no exception.

It’s been just two weeks since the game launched and we have our first impressive mod. Reddit user planetleak has managed to hook up a real smartphone to control the in-game smartphone your characters use.

Here’s a video showing the mod in action:

This is by no means a simple mod. Planetleak recreated the entire GTA V phone app as a real app for the iPhone. He then setup a web server using an Arduino, which runs a key binding macro. The buttons pressed on the real phone app send a URL to the Arduino and that gets translated into the appropriate key press in the game, with the end result being a real phone controlling a virtual one.

It’s an impressive piece of work, but not one that is easy for anyone else to use unless they have an Arduino lying around and the requisite knowledge to understand and copy what planetleak has done. It may also no longer be possible as patches released for the game remove the functionality used to allow the mod to happen in the first place. There may be a workaround, but let’s face it, only planetleak is going to attempt to keep this mod working.

According to Apple, the newly released Apple Watch can achieve 18 hours of use between charges. That’s a maximum, though, and real-world use will no doubt come in below that figure, heavy users may not even reach double figures before charging is required. So accessory makers are scurrying to provide additional juice in the form of batteries hidden in a strap. One of those is Reserve Strap, and they’ve discovered a hidden port on the Apple Watch that is going to prove very useful.

The hidden port is covered up on the Watch, but can be accessed with the right tool. Removing the cover reveals a 6-pin port that Apple has never officially explained. It seems the port is there for software transfers and possibly some diagnostic testing. However, the team at Reserve Strap, who are developing a band that charges the Watch, did some R&D and realized they can use the port.

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Star Wars fans take note: just about every piece of The Force Awakens merchandise goodness will go on sale September 4 at midnight! The event has been dubbed Force Friday and will celebrate the debut of toys, books, comics, collectibles, and e-books both in retail stores and on DisneyStore.com. The House of Mouse encourages people to celebrate on social media with #ForceFriday and #MidnightMadness hashtags if they feel so inclined.

In addition to announcing the big day, Lucasfilm and Disney also unveiled the package design for some of the products. As you can see, the box features Kylo Ren, the mysterious villain with the triple-threat red lightsaber.

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It never fails. You’ve got a hankering for a nice, juicy steak grilled to perfection in your own back yard, but your propane tank is dry or you’re out of charcoal. You’ll never have that problem with the GoSun grill. The GoSun is a new solar cooker that popped up on Kickstarter recently. Like other solar grills, there’s a highly-polished curved reflector that directs heat from the sun onto the cooking surface, but there are a couple features that make GoSun unique.

First, the food you’re cooking gets locked inside a cylindrical glass vacuum tube. It helps keep food nice and moist while it cooks, but it also isolates the heat in the system: the cover stays cool to the touch. Temperatures inside the cooking chamber can reach 300 to 400 degrees, even when there isn’t a single ray of sunlight hitting the reflectors. How is that possible?

The GoSun features an innovative “thermal battery.” Unlike the one one inside your phone, it’s a very good thing that it heats up. The GoSun can “charge” it in about two hours of direct sunlight. Stored heat can be tapped into later, letting you grill up a feast even when it’s pitch black outside. There’s no risk of flare-ups like with a gas grill, and GoSun’s enameled cooking pans are also super easy to keep clean.

You can snag a GoSun grill by pledging as little as $349 on Kickstarter. Adding the battery will run you an extra $100, but at $449 that’s still a pretty sweet deal for a barbecue that you’ll never spend a single penny fueling.

May the fourth be with us and all that jazz. In celebration of Star Wars Day, Vanity Fair has unleashed the first look at its upcoming Annie Leibovitz photo spread and story about JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

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