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Posted by abadar 2 days ago

.apks are just .zips; semi-legally hacking software for orphaned hardware [video](www.youtube.com)
35 points | 12 comments
morsch 49 minutes ago|
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 temperature, getting the current temperature and checking for error states -- is both trivial and has no inherent need for internet connectivity.

I suppose I should be grateful they're still supporting a device that's like 10 years old. Caveat emptor (I got it as a gift).

https://community.chefsteps.com/discussion/78615/joule-sous-...

JimDabell 1 hour ago||
The same is true for iPhone apps (.ipa files). You can just unzip them.
zekica 19 minutes ago||
.docx and .xlsx are also just zip files with XML and attachments. The bad thing is that the XML is Word's internal document structure serialized and behavior for some values is only defined in Microsoft's code.
godman_8 14 minutes ago||
Even pk3 files from the id Tech engine are just zip files.
HelloUsername 57 minutes ago||
For many things. Change .epub to .zip for example, you get html text and jpg images
charcircuit 2 hours ago|
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.
egeozcan 1 hour ago||
Interesting, I'd have assumed the guardrails would disallow them from doing anything like that, regardless of legality. Do you need to "convince" it to do it or no questions asked?
charcircuit 1 hour ago||
It is no questions asked. Even if you are reversing things like anticheats (I wanted to know the privacy implications of running the anticheat modules).
geon 18 minutes ago|||
I experimented with disassembling 6502 from the c64 California Games. Claude was very prone to bullshit.
fendy3002 1 hour ago||
huh, iirc this already exists long before LLM
colechristensen 1 hour ago|||
Claude is quite skilled at using Ghidra, for example.
charcircuit 1 hour ago|||
It required a lot of manual work and for large apps like Minecraft it took teams of people to figure out what the symbol names should be slowly contributing a little bit every day.