A hacked electronic highway sign in northwestern Texas carried an international message that seemed to predate, well, the use of electricity.

The sign Friday briefly flashed: “OMG The British R coming. They R watching you.”

A statement from Austin Bridge & Road says someone “with a questionable sense of humor” accessed the password on the message board. The portable sign that was hacked has since been removed, since a permanent exit sign has been installed. Similar pranks in other states have transportation authorities worried that drivers may miss important information about upcoming road conditions.

In the spirit of Paul Revere, some nefarious souls have reprogrammed (read as: hacked) some road signs to read differently than the warnings they were meant to be displaying. You might remember that Hack a Day informed us earlier in the week that, “…the keypad inside for programming is often still set with a default password of ‘DOTS’”, allowing the sign to read literally whatever you want — get creative.

Here at Deathcarrot.com we don’t in any way condone changing critical road signs, but we admit we would find early warnings of an impending Zombie (or British, for that matter) Apocalypse very important to surviving said Apocalypse with our brains intact.

Bizarre, Funny, Hacks and Mods, News Bizarre, Funny, hacking, hacks, road sign, traffic, warning

As expected, it didn’t take long for the QuickPwn team to jailbreak the iPhone 2.2.1 firmware. QuickPwn is available now for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. [Gizmodo via QuickPwn via Lifehacker]

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Those of you that live in snowier climates will drool over the I-Shovel, a battery powered robot that shovels the snow off your driveway, saving you countless hours of backbreaking labor over the course of a single winter. Its inventors claim that, despite its relatively underpowered motor, it keeps the driveway clear even in heavy snowfall; the trick, apparently, is that the robot constantly monitors the amount of snow on the driveway and springs into action whenever a significant but manageable layer has built up. Unfortunately, the I-Shovel is still a prototype, but with any luck you’ll be able to actually buy one soon. If you’re impatient, of course, you could always try building your own.

I can’t get that song out of my head… “It’s snowing outside… and I’ve got a cold…” lol

[via Hack a Day]

If you have $180 to burn and you love your Xbox 360 a little too much, then have I got a deal for you! The guys over at XIM360.com will mod your Xbox 360 controller so that you can use a Keyboard and Mouse to control your games.

Now you can finally challenge that geek across the hall that always swears he’d whip your ass at Halo 3 if he had his precious Counter-Strike setup from his PC gaming rig. I gotta see one of those videos. Come on guys submit away! Unfortunately, these puppies are only for preorder and way out of my price range… oh, and they are kinda dumb. [via Xbox360Fanboy via Engadget]

Gaming, Hacks and Mods Gaming, hacks, mods, xbox 360