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LoganDarklast Friday at 6:15 PM2 repliesview on HN

These cybersecurity safeguards are really annoying. There are ethical reasons to reverse-engineer and binary-patch software; for example Rewind got acquired by facebook and, as a gift to all their customers, implemented a killswitch in their software to ensure it will eventually stop functioning. I kept using a version without the killswitch, but the macOS 27 update killed it, and I needed binary patching to fix it. I should be allowed to repair software I purchased (I did purchase it like a month before they sold out), but unfortunately this overlaps significantly with cybersecurity.


Replies

dingalingyesterday at 7:52 AM

You don't need AI to patch binaries, people have been doing it by hand for decades.

It's this accelerating reliance on AI to do 'hard boring things' that really concerns me; it's now passed the tipping point and people are saying that anything slightly esoteric is impossible without AI.

I can guarantee that if you spend an afternoon shifting through binary grot with a hex editor you'll have a real sense of accomplishment when you find the place to put a JMP.

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Footprint0521last Friday at 7:18 PM

Switch to K3 and you won’t look back, I promise!! I got so fed up with Claude and finally bit the bullet to switch and it’s amazing

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