Thebroken Videos

From a reader: "The guys over at thebroken have put together a fun hacking videozine ( .torrent here ). This episode covers Windows password hacking, destroying your hard drive with 3,000 degree molten iron, console modding, and an interview with Kevin Mitnick. Think "The Man Show" meets computers. Divx Required. "

Comments

torrennts...

[minus_273]

hmm the bittorrent paper says that it does not scale beyond roughly 2000 users. Now, given the number of people who come to /. and the duration of the downloads, it would be interesting to see if the torrent really does die. I have seen the graphs of results going beyond 2600 and it looked prettly bad. Observing the torrent die may prove itself to be more interesting than

Goddamnit!

[GoNINzo]

Now there are zero 100% completed people on this torrent because everyone is hitting 100% and disconnecting. This defeats the entire purpose of a torrent!

At least do it for a half-hour after you've completed... that way someone else has a chance of finishing and covering for you after you leave!

Re:it's not thermite

[thx2001r]

And they're idiots. not only was their premise of "destroy your data" poorly thought out (it's a switch sticking out the side of the laptop, with no safety), but it also probably didn't even damage the hard drive platters.

Dude,

It's a joke! If you've seen the rest of the episodes with Ramzi (he's in all of them so far), any segments with him in it are a joke (as in on purpose to get a laugh or two).

Also, the whole thing kinda mildly mixes (some) tech reality with humorous stereotypes of Hackers (the dudes drink beer throughout the whole show... every show). Most conversations I've had with "real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue" would probably make extremely boring tv (Not to say that it isn't possible (never say never) to have a good show with real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue, but imho, it is less likely).

Since this is an unofficial spin-off of TechTV's "Dark Tips" with Kevin Rose (Kevin in TheBroken), they are instinctively trying to be entertaining (sparing those who just want a laugh from a seminar in hacking windows (not to mention, sparing themselves from DMCA implications of getting that specific... everything is kinda vague on purpose)). I suspect that most of their regular viewers are also regular TechTV viewers (and probably not "real" hackers (no matter how bizzarly spelled)).

It's easier to tear something down than to build

[severed]

I'm the guy that created HaXXXor, and it's very interesting because while reading through this thread, I hear a lot of the same things said about these guys' video that was said about mine. It make me wonder if someone has hacked a version of beagle to spam discussion on hacker videos... :-)

But seriously, here's my opinion. I'd like to think it counts for something being a producer and all...

There seems to be two types of people that comment on projects like The Broken, and HaXXXor, and 2600, et al.

First there's the people who say, wow that's cool.

To them, I say: Thank You.

Then there's the people who act as those the presence of any material, whether it's a video, or a print magazine or whatever is a direct threat to their way of life. Then the screaming begins.

It's not the type of thing a REAL SYSADMIN should care about, it's only worth reading if you're 15 (obviously doesn't apply to HaXXXor), it's stupid, why bother, and on and on and on.

I don't really see why the negative points are really valid, besides from the obvious fact that freedom of speech means freedom of all speach. Once you get past the freedom of speech part though, it really doesn't pan out.

First, it's a good thing that people are making videos and books and magazines talking about this sort of thing. While it may be old hat to some people, there's a lot of other people out there that haven't even heard of this stuff. So the next time that you want to lament the masses for their ignorance, remember the heaps of criticism that anyone who produces any material that might help a few more people who aren't as L33t as you to bridge the gap.

Second, for the people out there who throw out the massively insightful, this is stupid and pointless, why bother, type of remarks. Just remember, a lot of really cool things have been created because someone spent a lot of time working endlessly on something that was considered pointless, and then an occassion would come up with something that proved to be useful.

Here's the deal, just remember that there are people actually creating these things. There's a person on the other side of the video, or book, or magazine, or whatever, that's put a lot of time and work in to it. If you think you can do better, then pick up a camera and give it a shot. But if you've never even tried doing something like that before, then why don't you try to appreciate the work that was put in to it, and what was done right, before you rush to tear it apart.

In this community, it is common that a program that still needs a whole lot of work gets gushed over, but the moment someone makes a video it's an instant target? You really should be supporting these efforts (or at least constructively criticizing them). It's hard enough to be a small independent producer. However, it's small independent producers that are the competition to Hollywood and the big television networks. Do you prefer them to be the only people who talk about hackers?

Anyways, that's my take on it...