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hi, and thanks! I'm the author of this post and I'm a little bit conflicted where I stand in this discussion. In general, I agree that the world would be a bet

hi, and thanks! I'm the author of this post and I'm a little bit conflicted where I stand in this discussion. In general, I agree that the world would be a better place if corporations would release documentation. But my life would be much less fun then. Reverse engineering scratches a certain itch like nothing else does! So I'm kinda happy that mysteries like this exist and gladly spend my time on something like this :-)

rowanG077 5y ago
Well it's not like you couldn't scratch that itch. Biology and medical sciences are the most hardcore reverse engineering club there is.
beckman466 5y ago
> But my life would be much less fun then. Reverse engineering scratches a certain itch like nothing else does! Totally, yet at the same time I'm worried that knowledge workers aren't aware enough of just how privileged they are to have been able to 'climb the ladder' to be able to do work like that, and how, unless you're 1) well off and 2) living in the global north, gaining such skills has been made nearly impossible because the ladders needed to climb up are often not available, despite humans having been gifted digital technology (and therefore a zero-marginal cost of information reproduction). As an example: I'm not technically skilled enough to reverse engineer the things I'd like to, and because of the way knowledge is controlled by big companies as trade secrets and patent claims [1], it's near impossible to gain these skills in an affordable way. I also cannot take apart the technology I already own since it is not modular, it voids the warranty or is it is damaged (since I'm not skilled because I didn't realize early enough how important technology is). So yes, it sounds super fun for you to reverse engineer this stuff, yet when are we going to seriously admit that this IP system has become a massive problem, and that the people who came before are literally 'kicking away the ladder' they used to climb up themselves? That when people say that the only thing people need to do to succeed is to 'work hard', that that is a lie, since information is made artificially scarce by human systems/institutions, and thus only available to a select few [2]. Edit: I just saw on your twitter that you are a console hacker, thanks for the awesome work! [1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-purge-elon-musk-just-another-hypocritical-tech-billionaire/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur... [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 5y ago
  I don’t want to diminish your personal efforts, but gaining reverse engineering skills is something you can largely do on your own for free: it is, after all, a popular hobby of children who have nothing but time on their hands and access to the Internet. You certainly don’t need to buy hardware or have access to special training to get started. And, to be clear, I do think the current situation of closed systems is not great, and I do think that we do have a lot of engineers who grew up on open systems that they could tinker on going on to design things like iPhone for their children to use. These are real problems, but I just wanted to say that blog posts like these are not the problem; in fact I think they are beneficial as they allow more people to have access to this kind of information.
  - svenpeter 5y ago
    > it is, after all, a popular hobby of children who have nothing but time on their hands and access to the Internet. You certainly don’t need to buy hardware or have access to special training to get started. yup, that's how I learned all of this! > And, to be clear, I do think the current situation of closed systems is not great, Agreed! > and I do think that we do have a lot of engineers who grew up on open systems that they could tinker on going on to design things like iPhone for their children to use. These days there are also more open system like, say, the Raspberry Pi. Back in my day (oh god, I'm growing old!) we had to first exploit video game consoles to get something comparable :-) We made a slightly related argument when we didn't really feel like driving the WiiU homebrew scene almost 8 years ago (stop making me feel old!) [1] [1] https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso/ https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso/
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      I think the situation is complicated. For hobbyists it certainly seems like the situation has gotten much better: there's lots of well supported, cheap microcontrollers and little boards for people to play with. But I think for the average user, the situation has regressed. I've heard of many an engineer who got into programming because they played around with BASIC and system extensions on their home computer, because those systems were open and easy to get started on doing that sort of stuff. These days, a child's computing device might be an iPad, or a Chromebook; they're certainly fine for getting work done, but they don't feel like they "invite experimentation" in the same way as systems of the past might've.
m4rtink 5y ago
I still think there would certainly still be plenty interesting things to reverse engineer even if mainstream computing hardware would be open as it should be. Some obscure HPC stuff, vintage mainframes, old games with long lost source code, historic military computing harware, CNC controllers & industrial SCADA devices, consumer device MCUs, advanced radio hardware - lot of stuff to dive into without really knowing what to expect. :)

rowanG077 5y ago

Well it's not like you couldn't scratch that itch. Biology and medical sciences are the most hardcore reverse engineering club there is.

beckman466 5y ago

> But my life would be much less fun then. Reverse engineering scratches a certain itch like nothing else does! Totally, yet at the same time I'm worried that knowledge workers aren't aware enough of just how privileged they are to have been able to 'climb the ladder' to be able to do work like that, and how, unless you're 1) well off and 2) living in the global north, gaining such skills has been made nearly impossible because the ladders needed to climb up are often not available, despite humans having been gifted digital technology (and therefore a zero-marginal cost of information reproduction). As an example: I'm not technically skilled enough to reverse engineer the things I'd like to, and because of the way knowledge is controlled by big companies as trade secrets and patent claims [1], it's near impossible to gain these skills in an affordable way. I also cannot take apart the technology I already own since it is not modular, it voids the warranty or is it is damaged (since I'm not skilled because I didn't realize early enough how important technology is). So yes, it sounds super fun for you to reverse engineer this stuff, yet when are we going to seriously admit that this IP system has become a massive problem, and that the people who came before are literally 'kicking away the ladder' they used to climb up themselves? That when people say that the only thing people need to do to succeed is to 'work hard', that that is a lie, since information is made artificially scarce by human systems/institutions, and thus only available to a select few [2]. Edit: I just saw on your twitter that you are a console hacker, thanks for the awesome work! [1] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-purge-elon-musk-just-another-hypocritical-tech-billionaire/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur... [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
saagarjha 5y ago
I don’t want to diminish your personal efforts, but gaining reverse engineering skills is something you can largely do on your own for free: it is, after all, a popular hobby of children who have nothing but time on their hands and access to the Internet. You certainly don’t need to buy hardware or have access to special training to get started. And, to be clear, I do think the current situation of closed systems is not great, and I do think that we do have a lot of engineers who grew up on open systems that they could tinker on going on to design things like iPhone for their children to use. These are real problems, but I just wanted to say that blog posts like these are not the problem; in fact I think they are beneficial as they allow more people to have access to this kind of information.
- svenpeter 5y ago
  > it is, after all, a popular hobby of children who have nothing but time on their hands and access to the Internet. You certainly don’t need to buy hardware or have access to special training to get started. yup, that's how I learned all of this! > And, to be clear, I do think the current situation of closed systems is not great, Agreed! > and I do think that we do have a lot of engineers who grew up on open systems that they could tinker on going on to design things like iPhone for their children to use. These days there are also more open system like, say, the Raspberry Pi. Back in my day (oh god, I'm growing old!) we had to first exploit video game consoles to get something comparable :-) We made a slightly related argument when we didn't really feel like driving the WiiU homebrew scene almost 8 years ago (stop making me feel old!) [1] [1] https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso/ https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso/
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    I think the situation is complicated. For hobbyists it certainly seems like the situation has gotten much better: there's lots of well supported, cheap microcontrollers and little boards for people to play with. But I think for the average user, the situation has regressed. I've heard of many an engineer who got into programming because they played around with BASIC and system extensions on their home computer, because those systems were open and easy to get started on doing that sort of stuff. These days, a child's computing device might be an iPad, or a Chromebook; they're certainly fine for getting work done, but they don't feel like they "invite experimentation" in the same way as systems of the past might've.

m4rtink 5y ago

I still think there would certainly still be plenty interesting things to reverse engineer even if mainstream computing hardware would be open as it should be. Some obscure HPC stuff, vintage mainframes, old games with long lost source code, historic military computing harware, CNC controllers & industrial SCADA devices, consumer device MCUs, advanced radio hardware - lot of stuff to dive into without really knowing what to expect. :)