QuickJump QuickPeek Issue 09: Of resurrected PSPs, Bioshocking events, and real-life Harry Potter invisibility cloaks
(Editors Note: Welcome to our 9th ish! I won’t be spoiling anything here, dig on all the news below. One request though: Quickjump QuickPeek is here to stay, and we would appreciate any kind of ideas you have on improving it. Are four articles per blog enough? How should we select top stories? Do we need polls for the comment of the week? Do tell us!)
New week, new breakthroughs, new issue. The last week was one of the most monumental so far, so if you’ve missed checking our sites, you’re a goner. Nah, we’re just messing with you. That’s what QuickJump QuickPeek is for, to provide you guys with the week’s top events. Sure, nothing beats being among the first to read about newsbreakers once they hit our pages, but the QuickPeek experience is close enough. On to this week’s issue!
The full issue awaits after the jump!
(Editors Note: Welcome to our 9th ish! I won’t be spoiling anything here, dig on all the news below. One request though: Quickjump QuickPeek is here to stay, and we would appreciate any kind of ideas you have on improving it. Are four articles per blog enough? How should we select top stories? Do we need polls for the comment of the week? Do tell us!)
New week, new breakthroughs, new issue. The last week was one of the most monumental so far, so if you’ve missed checking our sites, you’re a goner. Nah, we’re just messing with you. That’s what QuickJump QuickPeek is for, to provide you guys with the week’s top events. Sure, nothing beats being among the first to read about newsbreakers once they hit our pages, but the QuickPeek experience is close enough. On to this week’s issue!
PSP
What a week it was for the followers of PSP homebrew! It’s been a while since we last had an update of this magnitude, and that’s a big thing considering that the PSP homebrew scene has been consistently seeing breakthroughs left and right. The last seven days are a clear testament to how strong the PSP community is. If you’ve been living under a rock (a very huge one at that) and a bit lost on what we’re saying right now, then it’s a good thing you’re reading this. Dig in below for the week’s hottest updates!
The week started with a promise – Noobz is working on a PSP unbricker! Renowned homebrew developer Fanjita wrote an article over at the Noobz team website regarding the recent PSP brickings involving a “broken version of the latest M33 custom firmware, deliberately distributed by a certain disreputable piracy site.” This is not just some random post, mind you, as Fanjita noted that they are working on a way to fix the broken PSPs. According to Fanjita, the bricks occurred due to “a delicate decryption algorithm” in the program. Here’s what he said:
We hope to be able to develop a way to fix those bricks in the near future. At this time, this is just for the M33 bricks. I can’t predict exactly when this might be ready (it should be very soon), but maybe it will save some of you the hassle and expense of sending your PSP off to be repaired.
That got you excited? If it did, then you don’t know half the reason why we’re this giddy. Ssshh… No spoilers, read on to find out.
Link: Fanjita, Noobz to undo recent PSP bricks soon
When Fanjita said “soon”, we didn’t know it would be this soon! They’ve just announced it, and lo and behold, barely hours have passed and they have a fully working PSP unbricker ready for public release! A project promulgated under Noobz has given birth to another monumental development in homebrew: a PSP unbricker for every Sony PlayStation Portable. In short summary, it would perform the following:
1. You run a program on a homebrew-enabled PSP that will convert a standard PSP battery into a jigkick battery. Note that you can’t then use that battery normally – so you should use a spare one.
2. You run a program to generate the unbricker memory stick image, built from the v1.5 update EBOOT (note that this, and the custom IPL, means the release is completely free of Sony copyright materials).
3. You run some programs on a PC to install the image to your memory stick.
Hold your horses, we know those who heard of it just now are rarin’ to do some PSP unbrickin’. Chew on this factuality for a moment – Noobz team had plenty of help on (what they dub as) the Prometheus project. Wanna know who they are? Adrahil, Booster, Cswindle, Dark AleX, Ditlew, Fanjita, Joek2100, Jim, Mathieulh, Nem, Psp250, Skylark, and TyRaNiD. That’s all the pillars of the PSP homebrew hacking scene, actively working outside the limelight of fame. Make sure you give them their thanks. If they’re this active, who knows what kind of PSP wonders the future holds?
Anyway, for those interested in knowing all the details of this PSP milestone, go over our link below.
Link: Noobz, C+D release Pandora’s Battery – unbricker for all PSPs
Of course we can’t possibly contain such a phenomenal event in such a small section, so we’re covering all the spillovers here. As expected, beginners flock the scene with the hopes of saving their bricked PSPs. It’s not hard to imagine how difficult it’ll be for them to understand even some of the simpler things (at least for all of us) homebrew-related mentioned in the process. Of course we just can’t let them try to figure things out on their own, it’s a good thing there are guys like Freeplay who are willing to extend a helping hand to those who need assistance.
What we have here is a very detailed step-by-step procedure aimed at PSP newbies. Freeplay’s got everthing down pat, every single action you need to create a jigstick battery, a magic memory stick, and the actual unbricking process. What’s really great about this guide is it’s from someone who created the tutorial on the same time he’s doing the whole process himself. It’s plucked right from the heart of the PSP community. Go to the link below for the guide.
Link: Tutorial: How to unbrick your PSP via Pandora Battery
Also, with every good thing comes a band of opportunists waiting to cash in. When Noobz and C+D released their Pandora Battery unbricker for the PSP earlier, the teams warned everybody that information on their project was leaked. We’re letting you guys know about an ongoing auction over at eBay that appears to be for one of these “unofficial” releases. The auction starter (aka mediaseller1977) is selling an “Unbricking Battery” for £ 40.00 (US$ 80). We’re assuming that the dealer means a PSP battery that’s already been prepped with the Pandora Battery. Also being vended is a copy of what appears to be the installation software for the unbricker, for £ 2.50 (US$ 5).
As an important reminder, Noobz and C+D released their Pandora Battery unbricker as a free downloadable. We’re letting you guys in on this information as a form of warning – the dev teams did say that certain “enterprising” individuals would be popping up to take advantage of their success. Spread the word.
Link: Spotted on eBay: The PSP “Unbricking Battery” for 80 bucks
Like a lightning bolt out of the blue, Team M33 strikes unexpectedly with their fourth update to their very own Custom Firmware 3.52. It’s not as major as the previous one, as it’s mainly a bugfix that takes care of a few nagging issues the team must have missed after they rolled out their highly-anticipated third update. In any case, let’s get to the changelog and see what’s new!
Changes in M33-4 (mainly bugfix)
- Fixed the bug that caused CRC error when writing to flash usb in the XMB. Now writing is OK.
- Added the new speeds to vshmenu and core, because we forgot in recovery.
Also, a few notes from Team M33:
- As we didn’t want to release a new update without something new, we worked in making 3.10/3.11 to work with popsloader, and that’s it, the new popsloader plugins supports them.
- Instruction for 3.10 and 3.11 are same as 3.30: you need pops.prx, popsman.prx and pafmini.prx with the correct names in popsloader directory. And remember that savedata of 3.10-3.30 are incompatiblewith those of 3.40+. We’ll research if a solution for this is possible
Very timely huh? Now that we have a host of new members toting freshly unbricked PSPs hungry for homebrew and custom firmwares, this update is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Link: Update #4! Team M33 releases Custom Firmware 3.52’s fourth update
What a week that was!
– QJ.Net PSP team
PlayStation 3
Fans of the shiny black console had another interesting week. A lot of chewy tidbits of news were tossed to the media at Leipzig Games Convention, and as always we were there to sort the really juicy ones for you PS3.QJ.Net readers. As we’ve said (or written?) we had an intriguing week behind us, come and take a quick peek with us.
Gears of War is probably the other game outside Halo 3 that’s causing problems for Sony in the market. Well here’s the thing: according to Epic Games VP Mark Rein because of Gears of War, their developers gained experience which turned out to be a great help in the development of Unreal Tournament III. Since both games use the Unreal Engine 3, developers had the advantage after making GOW.
Rein further says that UT3 will be also be able to utilize more of the Unreal Engine than GOW did, thanks largely to their experience with it:
We’re a little ahead on PlayStation 3 compared to where we were at this time on Xbox 360, and what I mean by that is our code and our level of completeness, and that’s because we have shipped a game with Unreal Engine 3 already. […] When you see UT, this pushes the engine a lot harder than Gears of War did. I know it sounds preposterous because of how great Gears of War is, but we’re pushing this up another notch. I’m very proud of that, and I think it’s good for us and it’s good for our licensees.
Wooo…. We hope that didn’t send shivers (the bad kind) to some. Full details below.
Link: GCDC 2007: PS3’s UT3 will benefit from Gears of War
This may not sound new to most PS3 loyalists, but it appears another analytical wing is predicting a PS3 win over Xbox 360, at least for this period. According to Lazard’s Colin Sebastian, PS3’s recent price cut and Microsoft’s recuperation from console failure may very well propel the sales of Sony’s next-gen console above and beyond Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
We have seen the huge difference the US$ 100 price cut has done to the PS3: Amazon PS3 sales went up by 2800%, and analyst Michael Pachter has seen a better future for the PS3 in terms of sales. Indeed, the PS3 has greatly benefited from the price cut. What remains to be seen though is how consistent it’ll be in the coming months. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.
Link: PS3 sales may outdo Xbox 360, says analysts
To those yelling the PS3’s hardware prowess is making it harder for developers to come up with games for it, you should read this. Developing games is not harder for the PlayStation 3 compared to the Xbox 360 according to Yann Le Tensorer in an interview. He has the credentials to back up his statement considering he is the co-founder of Ubisoft’s Tiwak studio as well as the co-creator of the Yeti engine which was used for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and the up-and-coming Beowulf. Here’s a part of our report:
Le Tensorer justified the statements of other developers who said that it was harder to develop on the PS3 by saying that the console is still in the early phase of its life cycle. As more and more studios learn how to harness the power of the unit, we can assume that better and more high-quality game will be coming out.
Ubisoft International Brand Manager Adrian Lacey cited God of War as a prime example of fine development. He said, ” If you take the PS2 for example, when God of War come out people saw it was tremendous. But it wasn’t until the end of the PS2 cycle that we’ve seen the machine being pushed to its fullest.”
The future looks bright for the PS3 as long as developers keep that mindset and persevere to learn the ins-and-outs of the next-gen consoles. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing better games in the future.
Link: GRAW engine creator says developing games for PS3 is not harder
Here’s a bit of downer – Symantec’s saying the PS3 (along with the Wii actually) will be vulnerable to viruses and phishing. Symantec is the same company behind the Norton AntiVirus Series. Ollie Whitehouse, software architect for Symantec, explained that they found the vulnerability by subjecting the Wii to a vulnerability found on Windows and Macs using Adobe Flash Player.
Their point was that if one platform is vulnerable, the same vulnerability will be found “to some extent” on other platforms, even consoles. Now that the consoles freely access the Internet, they are susceptible to web related problems such as viruses and phishing attacks. Symantec pointed out that the PS3 has no protection from such malicious attacks. Whitehouse explains further: “In terms of how bad it could get, it’s conceivable at least in the short term that phishing attacks could become commonplace via a games console browser.”
Link: Symantec: Wii and PS3 vulnerable to viruses and phishing
Overall a very good week for PS3. We’re limited to four articles per QuickPeek issue, there are loads more that should have been added here. Make sure you visit us regularly to get updated with the issues, news, controversie surrounding Sony and PS3.
– QJ.Net PS3 team
Xbox 360
The past seven days complete the best week our Xbox 360 has had in a while. The whole world is still reeling from the BioShock, Master Chief’s dawning arrival, and the Xbox 360 hacking scene showing signs of life. We won’t tarry any longer, the green army marches on!
Downgrading your Xbox 360 firmware from any Kernel without using your CPU key used to be just a legend. However, some hackers on the xboxhacker.net had plans on doing just that. After much thought they were able to successfully do so using a method that has been dubbed a “timing attack”. A hacker by the handle Robinsod managed to successfully boot his Xbox360 using a flashed eFuse with kernel 1888.
While less experienced (and less daring) individuals might not be able to do this for now, the hackers are currently working on a way to simplify the process. Here’s a little quote from Robinsod explaining how the process works:
The timing attack does not try to “bruteforce” the cpu key itself. It tries to find/bruteforce a hash value which is a result of the usage of the cpu key (so even if you have that hash you still cannot backwards compute the cpu key). But finding this hash value (I usually refer to it as the CB-auth value) will enable the xbox to boot the original kernel (v 1888).
This then allows you to upgrade to a vulnerable kernel (eg 4532) and THEN you can extract the cpu key using the kk exploit. Since -on average- you will find the correct value at roughly half of the possible byte values you only need to try (approx) 128 values for each of the 16 bytes.
Thats why vax is talking about 16 * 128 total number if byte changes… There is a theoretical minimum to the reboot time of about 1 second. So in theory you could find the 16 bytes in 34 minutes. Thats probably not gonna happen. Grin And installing the hardware will probably take even more time so its not a really big issue. But this is basically where the time speculations are based on.
Interesting huh? Let’s all wait and see how this will turn out. Follow the link below for more details:
Link: Xbox 360 downgrading from any kernel without CPU-Key now possible
BioShock has indeed taken over the gaming world after its release. Of course when you’re way ahead of the pack, it’s easier for those lagging behind you to spot even the most minute flaws. That’s probably why this gem from 2K Games is getting a lot of controversy from various sources.
First off, it must be said that there will be no PS3 version for Bioshock, as Ken Levine makes clear. Also, he assures the “pissed off” owners of Bioshock who have some problems with installing the game on their PC that patches are in development. Levine, lead designer for Bioshock, explains that he is aware of the problems Bioshock has on the PC. He expresses that there were indeed “screw ups” with the game’s online copy protection verification.
The problem stemmed from the developers not expecting that the game would become such a hit. So when the requests came in for verification, the server simply crashed. Levine explains that they will eventually remove the verification process.
Link: Levine talks Bioshock: PC woes, PS3 version
Here’s another BioShock update. The game’s getting a lot of attention for its graphic depiction of violence and usage of drugs, and most recently, the moral decision you’re forced to make regarding the lives of the Little Sisters you stumble upon in Rapture. Here’s our report about it:
The media attention comes in the form of an article by the Patriot Ledger. It talks about Bioshock as a game that breaks taboos by letting the player character kill enemies in the form and shape of little girls for Adam, an important resource in the game. The article also cites a murder case where videogames were allegedly involved – namely, the murder of 15-year-old James Alensen at the hands of 16-year-old John Odgren. John was reported to be heavily into videogames, one of which is the highly-controversial Grand Theft Auto series.
The article also quotes 2K Boston President Kenneth Levine, with his statement of Bioshock being a game that presents difficult moral choices to the player. His statement, verbatim: As a piece of art, we want to deal with challenging moral issues and if you want to do that, you have to go to some dark places. And BioShock certainly does go to some dark places.
Link: Little Sister “killing” in Bioshock gets media spotlight
Time for a dose of oddity: This story is a classic example why anyone shouldn’t submerge live wires under water. A 14 year old teenager from Brevard, North Carolina was found unconscious after a futile attempt to save his Xbox 360. Our report:
His mom was around to see him having troubles with the Microsoft next-gen console, claiming it turns off after every 5 minutes. When she left to visit neighbors next door, the young guy found suggestions online on how to fix his suffering box. He then wrapped the power supply with plastic, dropped it to a pan of water, before knocking himself unconscious.
“When I left to go next door he was playing a game but when I got back he was laying on his back on the floor and unconscious,” the boy’s mother said.
Fortunately, he recovered even before the paramedics arrived. Poor guy didn’t get to play after all, and was left contemplating in the Transylvania Community Hospital. As for the Xbox 360, well, it wasn’t as fortunate as the boy.
Link: Shocking: teenager knocked unconscious trying to cool Xbox 360
That’s it from us this week. Too bad we’re limited to four articles per issue, but we’ll try to do some cheating here (shhhh!). There were a LOT of BIG Halo 3 news this week, we dare not list them all here. But if you want, you can get all the info by clicking here (wink-wink).
– QJ.Net Xbox 360 team
Wii
Talks of Wii’s supremacy on this ongoing console war isn’t exactly new. This baby from Nintendo’s stable has been lording over its more graphically gifted competitors the past weeks, and this time we have more facts to back that up.
Game industry sales tracking site VG Chartz reports that the Nintendo Wii game console has hit total lifetime sales of 10.57 million in the period ending August 23rd, surpassing Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to take first place in this generation’s console war. VG Chartz says that its figures come from samples drawn from consumers worldwide, and not retailers, meaning that there may have been more Xbox 360s shipped, but more Wiis have been sold.
VG Chartz says that very few analysts would have even conceived of this development happening a couple of years back, but Nintendo proved all its critics wrong with innovative controls and casual games that expanded the market. Full report below.
Link: Wii eclipses Xbox 360 in overall sales, becomes new market leader
With the current controversies surrounding RockStar’s Manhunt 2, we’re almost sure it’ll be a worldwide hit if it escapes the ESRB’s graps. That’s a big IF.
After all the drama, lawsuits, and Houdini-ish disappearing acts, it looks like North America will be getting its cut of Manhunt 2 after all. The ESRB site just added the game to their ratings list, along with a clearly visible M (Mature, 17 and above), which means that we’ll be seeing the title pop up in all the usual retailers come October 31, 2007 (according to the Take-Two Interactive’s press wire). Bloody good fun for Halloween.
Link: Trick or treat: ESRB gives Manhunt 2 an “M” rating
Here’s something we don’t see everyday: homebrew on the Wii, and we have two. This one promising to perform something that Nintendo’s been keeping mum about. Yes, it’s Team Symbiote’s unexpected entry into the Wii homebrew scene, with their very own Wii DVD Player in its toddler stages, or beta 1.0. So, what does this piece of homebrew goodness actually do? Well, it’s a DVD player program, so it should very well let your Wii play DVDs.
Next is a nifty new piece from mat_dizzy, Wii Earth. Wii Earth v0.1 is an application based on PSP Earth v0.2 that essentially allows you to view a handful of cameras placed on specific points in New York and London areas. There are two things you guys will need to note if you’re planning on using this application. First off, you’re not actually seeing the entire earth. To be more specific, the cameras are placed in Times Square, Trafalgar Square, and BBC Radio 1 Studios A and B. More importantly, you’ll need to grab a copy of the Wii Opera Browser, so if you missed it when it was free, you’ll now have to shell out 500 Wii Points for it.
Try them out here.
Link: Team Symbiote releases Wii DVD Player beta 1.0
Link: Wii Earth v0.1 released
Now we move on to the video games department. Here’s the latest installment of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl update, and this time let’s welcome Diddy Kong for his inclusion into the group of playable characters in the game! Not to be outdone by Donkey Kong, this small monkey’s a force to be reckoned with, especially when he’s armed and ready with his Rocketbarrel Boost and Peanut Pop Gun.
He must have quite an impressive moves list. So impressive, not even the screenshots taken by the Smash Bros. official website could even capture the way Diddy moves! Follow link below for the screenshots!
Link: Super Smash Bros. Brawl update: Diddy Kong
See you all next week!
– QJ.Net Wii team
General Gaming
First up, would be the PvE to PvP transfers that were allegedly granted to some of the Community Manager’s friends. Well, Nethaera didn’t deny that the transfer happened, but she did say that this was against one of their policies. The offending character was transfered back to its original realm and new safeguards have been put up to prevent this from happening again. This is good news, as it brought back a little of the trust that the CMs lost due to this incident.
Link: PvE to PvP Transfers now available in World of Warcraft?
Finally, we have a concrete time frame on when Guild Banks will be implemented. Community Manager Vaneras confirmed that the feature will be in patch 2.3. While some players might feel that this is being added a patch too late, it still comes as a relief that we’ll be getting this feature. After all, long time players must be really tired of creating alts just to store the items they’ve collected from all their adventures on Azeroth.
Link: World of Warcraft to get Guild Banks in patch 2.3
The rest of the MMORPG scene was rather quiet this week. However, this was all changed by Square Enix’s announcement that their online store is finally open. The website is selling various memorabilia, jewelry, and even figurines that gamers will definitely appreciate. If you want to buy some of the stuff they have, note that all online purchases coming from the States will have a US$ 23 minimum order fee excluding tax.
Link: Square Enix Store now open for business
– QJ.Net MMORPG team
Honorable Mention:
QJ.Net’s deans of geekology are back with another dose of realism we residents of the virtual world so desperately need. Our Gadget and Science blogs have been really active the past weeks, and we’d like to believe our moments of fame here have something to do with that. So to you guys, we give our thanks. On to this week’s biting realities.
Soon, Harry Potter may not be the only one walking around with an invisibility cloak. Scientists from Zhejiang University and MIT are looking into the physics behind invisibility cloaks and seeing if such a theory can be made into reality.
While still in the early stages of development, the group has demonstrated how electromagnetic waves can interact with invisibility cloaks made out of metamaterials. Much in the same way that water from a creeks flows around rock, the metamaterials, made from a matrix of tiny metal wires and loops that control electromagnetic waves, can create an area of space where no electromagnetic waves appear. A snippet from our article:
The cloak is both anisotropic and inhomogeneous: all of the components in the permittivity and permeability tensor are functions of the radius, which implies that the perfect invisibility cloak is very difficult to design. If we introduce a specific type of loss both in a spherical cloak and a cylindrical cloak, only the spherical cloak exhibits a zero backscattering, which indicates only the spherical cloak can still be rendered invisible with a monostatic (transmitter and receiver in the same location) detection. This is because the impedance of the spherical cloak is still matched to the free space in this particular loss case.
We know your brain’s oozing with ideas for practical jokes once this hits mass production (which should be in a hundred years), to know more about it just click on the story link below.
Link: Invisibility Cloaks: So that’s how Harry Potter does it!
Now we bring you word on something any Wii-wielding, SIXAXIS-toting, DS-brandishing gamer should probably heard of by now – touch screen technology and the next step science has in store for it. All forms of technology evolve, so must the touchscreen – and it seems a man by the name of Patrick Baudisch has just the thing. Called the Lucid Touch, it’s a gadget that remedies finger occlusion (or what happens when your finger blocks your view of what you want to specifically touch) by detecting not only direct touch input at the BACK of the device, but also displays a real-time reflection of your fingers.
It sounds weird, yes, but after you see it in action (namely from the video on the link below), you’ll be just as impressed as us writers over here at QJ.net are. And watch out for the bit where they tackle item-dragging – it definitely looks like loads of fun to do.
Link: Touching is good: Lucid Touch presents a new look at touch-based technology
See you around guys!
– QJ.Net deans of geekology
Comment of the Week:
Welcome to another edition of QuickJump QUickPeek’s extra feature, Comment of the Week. As you all probably know by now, this area is specially dedicated to putting up one (or sometimes two) of the better ideas floating in our comment’s section. The image on the left (click to enlarge) is a really funny comment from the ever peace-loving Mister Common Sense. The right image (click to enlarge) below, on the otherhand, is from QJ veteran MGSROCKS1. Have fun folks!
