By CrunchGear, on 2009.11.20, 11:00.39 am

Sharper eyes than mine have spotted this little easter egg in the Google Chrome OS Demo video that Google published yesterday. (Or were you completely off the grid yesterday, and didn’t know that Google hosted members of the media to demonstrate Google Chrome OS?) Big Boss? An e-mail from Yoji, asking you to be on time today? Snaaaaake!
So yeah, apparently someone on the development team is a big Metal Gear fan. (Yoji Shinkawa is a character designer at Konami, and Big Boss hopefully needs no explanation.) Google instantly wins, like, 10 Awesome Points for the references.
And that’s all there is to say.


By CrunchGear, on 2009.10.31, 08:57.54 pm
Inspired by this post back in August, I decided to learn how to knit just so I could make this costume of Link from The Legend of Zelda for our 3-month-old son, also named Link. My wife and I just finished it just in time today to go to a party with some other new parents. Happy Halloween!


By CrunchGear, on 2009.08.25, 12:40.42 pm

Please turn your attention to Rolling Stone, where an article about a blind, lonely phreaker is currently tearing up the charts. That is to say, it’s an article worth your time, and it’s certainly better than refreshing drudgereport.com for the thousandth time today.
The quick version, in case you can’t block off 15 minutes of your time to read the whole article, is that a blind kid named Matt was a great phreaker. He was handy with a telephone, able to recognize phone numbers by the tone alone, call up the phone company, impersonate a supervisor, and wreak havoc. He moonlighted as a swatter, someone who can call in a SWAT team to a person’s house in an act of revenge. (“You called me names? Have fun when the cops show up to your house, guns drawn, and drag your ass off to jail.) Lots of fun, in other words.
His progression was pretty predictable: the kid spent all day in his bedroom participating in telephone party lines; made friends, made enemies, swatted every now and then; helped take down someone for the FBI; got caught himself when he was over 18, and is now in prison in Dallas.
The lesson? Do all your phreaking before you turn 18.

