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If you have money to spend, spend it on an instance of the console that you are interested in, then open it up and start figuring out how it works. (Google is y

by femto 12y ago

If you have money to spend, spend it on an instance of the console that you are interested in, then open it up and start figuring out how it works. (Google is your friend here.) One of the biggest barriers to learning about reverse engineering is fear of the expense of breaking the system you are working on. Being afraid of breakage makes one's exploration timid. In buying a system specifically for the purpose, you've removed the major barrier. Pulling something apart and figuring out how it works has to be the best way to learn about engineering. Every child (and curious adult) should do it, with children having the advantage of all the time in the world to do things. As you pull lots of things apart, you begin to learn about the full spectrum of current engineering techniques, eventually ending up with the knowledge to design your own stuff. It would be cool if there was a "Wikipedia" of reverse engineering, whereby every consumer item out there has a web of articles, and an army of the curious has fun by stripping devices down and collaboratively documenting innards to the lowest level possible. It would be extra cool if the community extended to a means of obtaining broken reverse engineering targets, that would otherwise be thrown away, or a way of spreading the cost of purchasing sacrificial devices. Such an effort would directly feed into Free Software efforts, by providing the knowledge required to rewrite replacement software, from scratch, for the devices in our lives. (For example, Free Software for your phone's modem processor, your washing machine, your fridge, your TV, ...?) Free Software for consumer appliances will come into prominence as every appliance in our lives, and their associated sensors, joins the "Internet Of Things".

Nursie 12y ago
Such an effort would likely lead to a lot of lawsuits from multinationals like Sony. For an example, look at what happened to various members of the ps3 hacking scene.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Sounds like a good use for a .onion.
  - luke-stanley 12y ago
    Maybe even the ole Freenet? All this talk of onion's could have one crying ;)
- crististm 12y ago
  For this and other related reasons, I specifically filter out any Sony products when I'm buying stuff. I also remind my friends to avoid Sony for their involvement in SOPA/PIPA/rootkits
RubyPinch 12y ago
tangential rant/vent > Google is your friend here and then you find people who do writeups consisting of "And I'm gonna skip over this part, since if you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't be doing it", or "I reverse engineered X, but I'm not going to tell anyone because it would be bad if this was widespread" (though, my personal focuses were more towards specific games (though not for uncompetitive advantage sake, the tools resulting from the RE mentioned are public n' stuff, and known by the devs for a long time now)) one of the tools was in python so it was easy enough to decompile that, but it still doesn't teach thought process or methods for finding relevant items in the code (like hooking into a function that processes in game market data so it can be saved to a text file)
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  TBH they may be skipping certain parts because they're afraid of the legal departments of the companies whose stuff they're reverse-engineering - iirc Sony wanted to sue everyone after the PS3 encryption key was found and published.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    When all else fails, lawyers bomb them to insolvency...
tomkinstinch 12y ago
> It would be cool if there was a "Wikipedia" of reverse engineering, whereby every consumer item out there has a web of articles, and an army of the curious has fun by stripping devices down and collaboratively documenting innards to the lowest level possible. Not to be too shameless, but I was excited to see someone else explicate the idea. A few buddies and I are building a platform for precisely that[1]. Images can be annotated with hover-over notes with linked components, and it is possible to search for things by component (ex. c:msp430). We have also been bringing e-waste to Maker Faires to give kids the opportunity to get comfortable disassembling things and identifying components and basic engineering concepts. 1. https://www.takeitapart.com https://www.takeitapart.com
- DarkLinkXXXX 12y ago
  THANK YOU!
- raphman_ 12y ago
  Nice idea. However, you might want to make it clearer what the value of your service over other services is. I do not really see a big advantage over Flickr or Wordpress. Having a nice editor is enough, given the following issues: It is also not clear to me how you want to earn money from this service. Therefore, I would hesitate to put my content on your site without knowing whether it will still be online in a few years, and how you will monetize my contribution. The lack of open licensing options (Creative Commons, GNU FDL, whatever) and obvious export formats immediately put me off. I would guess a large part of your target demographic (of content creators) would be hesitant to put hard work into content that is not freely shareable and modifiable. Given the focus of your site, this is also an interesting requirement in the TOS: > [You agree] Not to decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any of our software or Site;
  - tomkinstinch 12y ago
    The value is simple: It makes it easier to tell a narrative, and it is a central repository with a common goal and central theme. It is easy to bulk upload a set of images, crop, rotate, sort, and annotate them into a composite disassembly guide that includes photo notes, required tools, and a Bill of Materials of consituent components (with links to Octopart). I invite you to create a guide and see how much easier it is to document disassembly, than by using something like Flickr (which is great, but less specific in application). As for the TOS clause, that's standard legal protection. The terms also explicitly permit derivative works within the site. We're evaluating open licenses for the future, but for now it is easier to let content owners retain copyright.

by femto 12y ago

Nursie 12y ago

Such an effort would likely lead to a lot of lawsuits from multinationals like Sony. For an example, look at what happened to various members of the ps3 hacking scene.

nitrogen 12y ago
Sounds like a good use for a .onion.
- luke-stanley 12y ago
  Maybe even the ole Freenet? All this talk of onion's could have one crying ;)
crististm 12y ago
For this and other related reasons, I specifically filter out any Sony products when I'm buying stuff. I also remind my friends to avoid Sony for their involvement in SOPA/PIPA/rootkits

RubyPinch 12y ago

tangential rant/vent > Google is your friend here and then you find people who do writeups consisting of "And I'm gonna skip over this part, since if you don't know how to do it, you shouldn't be doing it", or "I reverse engineered X, but I'm not going to tell anyone because it would be bad if this was widespread" (though, my personal focuses were more towards specific games (though not for uncompetitive advantage sake, the tools resulting from the RE mentioned are public n' stuff, and known by the devs for a long time now)) one of the tools was in python so it was easy enough to decompile that, but it still doesn't teach thought process or methods for finding relevant items in the code (like hooking into a function that processes in game market data so it can be saved to a text file)

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
TBH they may be skipping certain parts because they're afraid of the legal departments of the companies whose stuff they're reverse-engineering - iirc Sony wanted to sue everyone after the PS3 encryption key was found and published.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  When all else fails, lawyers bomb them to insolvency...

tomkinstinch 12y ago

> It would be cool if there was a "Wikipedia" of reverse engineering, whereby every consumer item out there has a web of articles, and an army of the curious has fun by stripping devices down and collaboratively documenting innards to the lowest level possible. Not to be too shameless, but I was excited to see someone else explicate the idea. A few buddies and I are building a platform for precisely that[1]. Images can be annotated with hover-over notes with linked components, and it is possible to search for things by component (ex. c:msp430). We have also been bringing e-waste to Maker Faires to give kids the opportunity to get comfortable disassembling things and identifying components and basic engineering concepts. 1. https://www.takeitapart.com https://www.takeitapart.com

DarkLinkXXXX 12y ago
THANK YOU!
raphman_ 12y ago
Nice idea. However, you might want to make it clearer what the value of your service over other services is. I do not really see a big advantage over Flickr or Wordpress. Having a nice editor is enough, given the following issues: It is also not clear to me how you want to earn money from this service. Therefore, I would hesitate to put my content on your site without knowing whether it will still be online in a few years, and how you will monetize my contribution. The lack of open licensing options (Creative Commons, GNU FDL, whatever) and obvious export formats immediately put me off. I would guess a large part of your target demographic (of content creators) would be hesitant to put hard work into content that is not freely shareable and modifiable. Given the focus of your site, this is also an interesting requirement in the TOS: > [You agree] Not to decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any of our software or Site;
- tomkinstinch 12y ago
  The value is simple: It makes it easier to tell a narrative, and it is a central repository with a common goal and central theme. It is easy to bulk upload a set of images, crop, rotate, sort, and annotate them into a composite disassembly guide that includes photo notes, required tools, and a Bill of Materials of consituent components (with links to Octopart). I invite you to create a guide and see how much easier it is to document disassembly, than by using something like Flickr (which is great, but less specific in application). As for the TOS clause, that's standard legal protection. The terms also explicitly permit derivative works within the site. We're evaluating open licenses for the future, but for now it is easier to let content owners retain copyright.