Hacker News Reader

rootw0rmon Memories: First exposure to computers

2nd grade, Apple II at school. I was hooked. Started tinkering with computers everywhere I could. Dad spent like 5k in 1993? getting a 486 DX2/66 with 16mb of RAM, 340MB hard drive and a gorgeous 17" Sony Trinitron monitor. That machine was a powerhouse at the time, I spent as much time as possible on it.

rootw0rmon Activision’s faulty anti-cheat software

Re: metadata, this is very true. Unfortunately it's also more common for it to be encrypted these days.

Even more of a reason to bust out the IDA

rootw0rmon Ask HN: Best books read in 2022?

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell because it's creepy AF

rootw0rmon How thick is a three-sided coin?

dice are regularly made in prison from toothpaste and toilet paper. I've used some impressive examples of such

rootw0rmon Court Orders U.S. Navy to Pay $154,400 in Software Piracy Damages

In the past I have routinely automated PtP downloads...

rootw0rmon Show HN: Run unsafe user generated JavaScript in the browser

Once upon a time there was a private retro gaming BitTorrent tracker called UG. They had a few browser games, one of which was blackjack. I wrote a greasemonkey script to play blackjack for me unattended, folks were not amused =(

rootw0rmon Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

I used to suck with a soldering iron, but if it's something that interests you, just give it a shot.

If you're deathly afraid of making mistakes, get a desoldering iron. If you mess up just suck the solder up, reapply a bit of flux as necessary, and try again.

rootw0rmon Audio CD ripping – optical drive accuracy listing

shout out to OiNK, where i first learned about proper rips

rootw0rmon Barilla passive cooker

that's not really true. i've superheated tap water at least a dozen times. never had a negative consequence from it, besides having to clean up some water, so it's also not something that really bothers me. from my experience the superheated state can be surprisingly stable, a couple times only explosively boiling over while being poured, instead of the moment I grab the container.

edit: as far as 'nobody' using Pyrex, my preferred container for heating water is a big Pyrex measuring cup.

rootw0rmon Crows found to be smarter than we think

My mother does the same with ravens

rootw0rmon The Browser Company’s Darin Fisher thinks it’s time to reinvent the browser

so much this, i can't upvote you enough. i need very little of "core" browser functionality. i would use a browser that is mostly unable to fingerprint me for 90% of my browsing. what's left over I'd use Firefox for.

rootw0rmon Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

you keep valuables in your glovebox?

rootw0rmon Wiby.me: curated search engine for content-first suckless sites

omg, that's awesome, lol

rootw0rmon Much US “recycling” goes straight to the landfill

China does indeed have poor labor standards. However, Chinese factories aren't really forced to uphold their minimal standards.

Here's an article from a week ago:

https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/shein-is-treating-workers-eve...

rootw0rmon Immortal by Default: A brief history of humans and the ginkgo tree

Okay, hold on a second, that's an oddly specific description. How exactly are you familiar with the scent of 'semen that's been sitting around for a while'?

rootw0rmon NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation

Gorgeous, thank you for sharing

rootw0rmon IKEA’s Crimes Against Cartography

Good tip, unless you're buying lumber. You'll invariably end up with some amount of warped trash lumber if you let them pick it out for you.

rootw0rmon Apple II Textfiles

Cracking has changed a lot, but also not so much. I love how the basic form is: let the target program load into memory then dump it to disk. Basically the same idea applies to older software protections like ASPack...find the original entry point (where the original executable is loaded up without protection), steal a few bytes to jump to a code cave, and patch whatever you want to patch from the code cave.

also, memory dumpers that can rebase an exe from memory given the original entry point

rootw0rmon Do you remember Ultima Online?

to those downvoting....that was what you saw when a dead player (ghost) spoke and you lacked spirit speak skill

rootw0rmon Do you remember Ultima Online?

Much love for all things Ultima

rootw0rmon Decompiling x86 Deep Neural Network Executables

OS isn't terribly important, but thanks for the reply. i only have AVX2 on this system tho

rootw0rmon Decompiling x86 Deep Neural Network Executables

there's a million crackmes i can download right now, i don't really feel like chasing dependencies and building it myself. also, no AVX-512

rootw0rmon Crimean bridge: Who – or what – caused the explosion?

Gaza is a concentration camp, there are no legitimate military targets there.

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-...

rootw0rmon Decompiling x86 Deep Neural Network Executables

exe sample?

rootw0rmon False memory implantation in adults is easy

CYA = cover your ass

once upon a time it also meant Califoria Youth Authority, lol

rootw0rmon Lyra V2 – a better, faster, and more versatile speech codec

blog.google.com = blogger.l.google.com = 172.217.14.105

googleblog.com = 172.217.14.65

rootw0rmon Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

back when MechWarrior Online was still pretty new, I reversed the login app (100% .Net, very little obfuscation) which allowed me to access test servers that were testing an unreleased map. Fun times

rootw0rmon Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket

Fond memories of my Nokia N900, still have it somewhere