Tom Cross, a security technology researcher in Atlanta, received a cease-and-desist letter from TI after merely posting about the hackers on his blog, Memestreams.net. "I didn't include the key in my post," he says. "I linked to a discussion forum where this was being talked about." Cross took down his link, but not without feeling burned. "It's incumbent on Texas Instruments to be responsible with its power," he says, "and I don't think they were responsible."

Lynn Windle, media relations manager for Texas Instruments, declined to comment on the case. "I'd like to refer you to our DMCA take-down notice," she says. "It lays out our position in this matter, and we have nothing more to add at this time."

But while the signing keys are gone, the modding continues. Despite the TI-83 Plus's limited specifications—a Z80 processor running at 6 megahertz, 24 kilobytes of main memory, 160 KB of flash memory, and a 96- by 64-pixel display—calculator hackers are cooking up new homebrewed solutions. Wilson is continuing work on his own pet project, an operating system written in assembly language. "I would like to be left alone and not afraid of being sued just for wanting to do something with my own hardware," he says.