It’s the 5th! Hak.5 episode 8 will be released today. Come join the party in #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca!

I’ve just returned from a trip to Toronto and already I’m missing the T.O. Thankfully I drove back with a trunk full of Canada’s finest Hops and Barley. I did two segments on Call for Help, episodes 340 and 344 which will air March 10th and 23rd respectively, and one live episode of The War Room with Jenn Cutter.

So back in the states and ready for action, Wess, Alli and I are shooting the last segments of Hak.5 episode 8. We hope you’ll join us for the regular online release party on March 5th in #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca. We’re working on setting up a LAN (Or would that be WAN?) party & VOIP madness that night. I’ll keep you posted on game, servers, etc when I get the deets so prepare for a good old fashion Hak.5 fragfest.

As for the forums… FileFarmer has still not responded and I think it may be time to fold our cards. I’m not giving up on retrieving our database but at this point I feel the community has been disrupted for too long and if starting from scratch is what we have to do, we’ll just have to bite the bullet and do it. On that note if you’ve got forum software suggestions other than phpBB I’d love to hear them.

Take care all,
–Darren

After many many emails, support tickets, and voicemails the ISP hosting our Forums, Web Chat, and direct download links for episodes 1 – 5.5 have contacted us. They are aware of the problem (Finally, it only took over a week of bugging them) however they aren’t sure where the problem stems. They have not been helpful at all. At this time I’m just looking forward to getting access to our server so that I can download our PHPBB database and move it to another server. Libsyn has done a great job of hosting our direct downloads and I will be moving episodes 1 – 5.5 there.

FileFarmer, the ISP in question, has not given me an ETA on the server being back up. They claim they’ve got green lights on all of their servers. If you read the forums over at filefarmer.com you’ll see that we’re not the only ones having problems with their service.

I’ve got to say up until lately their service has been great. They were willing to work with our enormous bandwidth requirements and were generally responsive. That level of support has obviously changed. I’ll continue to hound them about the server. If you’d like to give them a little nudge, their email address is filefarmer@gmail.com

I do not want to use the backup copy of the forums DB I have locally since its outdated. Several posts and user accounts would be lost if I were to restore from this backup on another server.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I hope you understand as we work through this bump.

–Darren

We are aware that our forums and web chat are down. Both of those are hosted on our Hak5.tv domain. I have contacted the ISP and that server should be up ASAP. Until then we apologize for the inconvenience.

Keep trusting that technolust,

–Darren

We hope everyone is as excited about the imminent release as we are! We’ll be hanging out in #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca as always for a killer release party. Oh, and supposedly there’s something else happening on the 5th involving pig skin… whatever

–Darren

What better birthday gift could my dear co-host Wess ask for than an appearance in DC’s Adventures of Superman? Yes the above picture is not photoshopped, issue #648 features a cell with a trio of podcast loving metropolis thugs sporting none other than CommandN, TWiT, and Hak.5 attire. For those counting this is the second to the last issue of Adventures of Superman before the conclusion of the Infinite Crisis storyline. Issue #650 the comic will be renamed to just “Superman”. It is quite amazing to be featured in the 67 year running comic book of the super hero legend. Hats off to our DC admirer.

Tonight we wrapped up shooting of episode 7 and post production is well underway. As always we’re excited about the release next week, as well as some spiffy announcements to come .

Great news everyone, after searching nearly everywhere on the Internet we have finally found a suitable host for our video files. The best part is you can now subscribe to Hak.5 on iTunes!

This also means that the RSS feeds have changed. If you are subscribed to the H.264 torrent/direct or the Xvid torrent/direct please update your podcatching application by using the new feed links on the top left of the page.

Hopefully this will be the last time the feeds change since we’re using feedburner now. If you had trouble subscribing to the feeds before (we had some complaints about podcatching apps trying to download the .php file) try again now and let us know your experience.

And finally I would like to say hello to all the new viewers who have found us from Call for Help. It was a blast being on CFH and I hope you all enjoy Hak.5.

–Darren

Episode 6 is well on its way to release. We are planning on releasing no later than (6PM EST / 11PM GMT). Possibly sooner, latest news will be in the IRC channel. We have done minimum configuration of our new dedicated server and hopefully today’s first test of its capabilities will go well. If your direct download experience is sub par please let us know by comment or email. We will probably use the current bit-torrent tracker but that will soon change, along with nice new RSS feeds for iTunes subscriptions.

While you’re waiting for episode 6 you may want to check out some CES footage from our friends at Labrats and WASD.tv.

Remember, as always the pre and post launch party will be in #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca. Supposedly there is a team-speak party brewing which we may make an appearance on as well. Should be a riot.

–Darren

Today’s shoot went better than any of us could have anticipated. We shot a hacking segment with Harrison and Wess both in studio and down town and we’re very pleased with the final cut. With only two more segments to shoot tomorrow we’re all very excited about releasing this episode. Production quality is leaps and bounds above the last and our new set is near completion.

Harrison and Wess break it down on set.

You can tell by the big grin it was a good hack

We are also happy to say that our dedicated server is now up and running. It shouldn’t be long before we move direct downloads and bit torrents to that box. Again, thanks to everyone who has supported us along the way. It’s been nearly 7 months since production first started and we couldn’t have dreamed of better fans.

–Darren

Production Notes:
Episode 6 is on a roll. We took some time off to attend the TechTV Holiday Meetup, do the festive holiday stuff, and give the set and graphics a face lift, but with these last few days we’re cranking out segments left and right. I’m sure the image below will leave you wondering for a few days.

Try saying Cadmium Sulfide five times fast

We’re really excited about this next release; we’ve put a lot of work into each segment as well as the set and graphics.

Easter Egg Hunt Update:
As promised I’m giving everyone who is playing the Easter egg hunt from episode 5 a heads up on the next round. The final round of the hunt will be at 5:00 AM GMT on January 1st, 2006. Yes that’s just as the ball finishes its descent at time square in NYC. Don’t worry, there is only one final question to the hunt and I doubt the extra special holiday eggnog will affect your chances of winning. Incase you have no idea what I’m talking about head over to the episode 5 Easter egg hunt page and watch the video. Winner will be announced on episode 6.

Server Update:
As you are probably all aware for the last few months we have been using our account with filefarmer as our primary direct download spot. While we’ve been happy with filefarmer’s service nothing can make ten thousand downloads fit through a ten megabit pipe in one day. Thankfully we’ve just purchased a dedicated server on a 100mbit connection which should handle the heavy load we receive for the first week and a half of the month. This also means that shortly we will be up on iTunes with a brand new RSS feed. Thank you to everyone who has generously donated and helped us make this important next step.

I wish everyone a safe and happy new year and we’ll see you, hopefully with much faster downloads, on the 5th of January in 2006.

–Darren

What an amazing week it has been. All of Hak.5, sans Harrison due to exams, flew up to Toronto for the December TechTVHolidayMeetup. We had the most amazing time, and got such great footage too. I’m sure you will all enjoy episode 6 due January 5th of course. For flickr pics of the event check out Sean Carruthers, Brian McKechnie, and Andrew Paranczuk. Also keep an eye on Joel Morgan’s site for a video of the event. I’d point you to one of the Hak5 flickr accounts but we were too busy enjoying the event to really take pics. I’ve got a few grainy shots from my camera phone at textamerica for what it’s worth. Here are just a few Hak.5 Toronto highlights:

Darren, Mike (CFH, CommandN), Wess, Ali, Jon rock the meetup

Mubix, Adam (WASD), Frank (techPhile), Jon (Hak.5), Darren (Hak.5), Chad (WASD), Wess (Hak.5) all getting our micro on for Kyle from Pure Pwnage.

Leo Laporte, Darren, Jon, Wess, Ali, and Mubix on the set of Call For Help 2.0 after our segment (CFH Episode 315 for those interested)

The meetup was amazing, so many great people and chatting with the fans we met there rocked. Call for Help was both entertaining and educational; watching how the pros do it was inspiring. Much love and big shoutouts to everyone who welcomed us and took care of us in Canada. Shoutouts go to Frank, Leo, Amber, Mike, Brian, Jeff, Alex, Steve, Bill, Jenna, Chad, Adam, Sean, Andy, Matt, Ringer, Katya, Mohit, Doug, Kyle, Mubix, Branson, and everyone else who made us welcome in Toronto Land.

Now that we’re back from vacation its double time to get this episode filmed and out the door by the 5th!

–Darren

Episode 5 is being uploaded now. We should be releasing it very soon. I’ll just give you a heads up on the crazy weekend we just had. Frank Linhares of the techPhile podcast came down Thursday to guest star in Episode 5 as well as broadcast the live techphile podcast with us. If you missed the live event you can download it over at techphile.ca. A video version will be available soon.

Frank left on the 4th, leaving me just 24 hours to quickly edit the last segments, render, upload, the whole 9-yards. Everything would have gone as planned but unexpectedly my computer started shutting down while rendering. After trying just about everything for a few hours, including building a complete new rendering box, I realized that my computer was running at almost 190′ F. Poor little Athlon. I checked the heat sink and found the biggest dust bunny I’ve ever seen. There was a huge dust bunny infestation that was clogging up the heat sink fan. Yikes!

So now I’m in the process of writing up all of the little files that go along with releasing an episode and we should see it shortly. Head over to #hak5 on irc.techphile.ca to join the party, and again I apologize for the later than normal release.

–Darren