Live data from Hacker News

Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

youtube.com

41–50 of 91 posts

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#41
post #22

Warning: Very rambly and somewhat incoherent video; tried to pay attention due to the topic being of interest, but very quickly gave up. EULAs be damned, even the DMCA has exceptions for RE in the name of interoperability and repair.

You're going to the bathroom at an airport? You pee in a urinal you can't even take home. YOU OWN NOTHING

Before 1984 "take a taxi" meant you could actually take the taxi.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#44
post #12

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

I experimented with disassembling 6502 from the c64 California Games. Claude was very prone to bullshit.

For RE cases where I know the original compiler used (a bit harder on C compilers due to huge number of obscure optimization flags), I give it a feedback loop to write a function that compiles to the original machine code.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#46
post #10

What a coincidence, I just got an email announcing that Breville intend to orphan my Joule sous vide stick: the existing app will stop working, the new app is only available the US and Canada and in parts of Europe. Live in another country? You're s.o.l., it wasn't officially sold there. You need a new account as well, hope you like the TOS. All of this for a device whose core functionality -- setting a target temper…

"With Breville+ Cooking, you’ll get: ... The ability to cook with or without WiFi anywhere, anytime." What has gone wrong with humanity, that we need to advertise that as a feature if you download a new app?

It reads like a sarcastic post from 10 years ago ending in "Stallman was right"

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like satire: The ability to cook with or without WiFi anywhere, anytime.

I'd pay to cook with WiFi. Just imagine the signal strength!

If you can cook with it, just imagine what it's doing to your brain! Forget about 5G...

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#49

The same is true for iPhone apps (.ipa files). You can just unzip them.

Wait till people discover file(1)!

Even better, wait until people discover 7zip's 'parser mode' on Windows (especially). Right click a file -> 7zip -> Open archive -> #:e mode. Really fun way to quickly carve out files and snoop around. I use it like a poor man's binwalk to extract firmware files and updates and etc out of things to usual success.

(#:e Parser mode, ignoring full archives, and checks every single byte position of a file for 'start of archive' bytes to parse archives out of a larger file.)

Post reply on HN