Like it or not, being a gadget geek implies certain responsibilities.  Removing adware from your relatives' PCs, hooking your friends up with wireless access, creating robot life - you never seem to get a break. So when a buddy calls and invites you over for an impromptu bar-b-q, the thought of a Saturday afternoon doing nothing but eating free food and discussing the intricacies of the nice weather cannot be dismissed.

"Oh, I forgot to ask," your friend says. You begin to register that, yes, tasty burger happiness is going to come at a cost. "Is there a way we can watch the new Doctor Who over here?" You are compelled to respond, "sure thing, I'll figure something out," because deep down you know that yesterday you leeched the first two episodes off of your friend Jake, the file trading addict, torrent-master, hell's angel, network administrator. The fact that he is a dirty biker does not diminish your 'pay-it-forward' debt.

Huddling around a 15-inch laptop screen is definitely going to be a bummer, so you need to get these AVIs to display on a TV. What you need is a media player, and fast. You've got 20 minutes, an empty wallet, and nothing in your stomach. What do you do?

In a recent study, a research team purchased roughly 100 hard disks off eBay and found half of them to contain sensitive information, including insurance records, biographical information about children, and even blackmailable material such as evidence of an affair.

Apparently, those folks didn't know that with a Linux boot disk and a little patience, you can securely and easily erase your old hard disks.

Thought we'd mix things up this week with a low tech How-To courtesy of Hack A Day editor Jason Striegel:

I spent the weekend trying to design a small espresso machine that you can make from readily available parts. What has a homemade espresso machine got that an $800 Williams Sonoma special doesn't?  $770 dollars in your bank account, high-design PVC tubing, and a caulk gun.  You probably have a caulk gun anyway, so let's just make that $785 in your pocket and a fine piece of caffeinated gagetry that you can impress your friends with.