Reverse Engineering DOS Software as If It Were 1990
Jonas Santoso,Last updated at Sun Nov 19 2023•7 min read Quick Start The video above shows a speed run of what’s being done in the How to Build and Install section. TL;DR: This is about running SoftICE, a popular DOS and Windows debugger, in an emulated MS-DOS environment. And about overcoming a limitation of Bochs […]
Gary Bowser and gaming’s most infamous piracy case
In April 2023, a 54-year-old programmer named Gary Bowser was released from prison having served 14 months of a 40-month sentence. Good behaviour reduced his time behind bars, but now his options are limited. For a while he was crashing on a friend’s couch in Toronto. The weekly physical therapy sessions, which he needs to […]
Show HN: filippo.io/mlkem768 – Post-Quantum Cryptography for the Go Ecosystem
filippo.io/mlkem768 is a pure-Go implementation of ML-KEM-768 optimized for correctness and readability. ML-KEM (formerly known as Kyber, renamed because we can’t have nice things) is a post-quantum key exchange mechanism in the process of being standardized by NIST and adopted by most of the industry. The package amounts to ~500 lines of code, plus 200 […]
Nano-scale inks could lighten airliners by hundreds of kilograms
Kobe University researchers have created a new “structural color ink,” just 100-200 nanometers thick, that shows bright colors from wide viewing angles, without fading, while weighing less than half a gram per square meter (0.002 oz per square foot). Regular paints and pigments absorb certain wavelengths of light and reflect others, but this tends to […]
Computer and Network Security
Note for instructors using these slides/notes: It is not uncommon for the instructors who use these notes/slides to want to know how exactly I use them in class since there is much more information on a typical slide than you will usually find in a powerpoint presentation. Here is the answer: When I teach […]
Study finds that once people use cargo bikes, they like their cars much less
Enlarge / It’s not likely to totally replace your car, nor will it probably be your only bike. But access to a cargo bike can reduce car trips, and even car ownership, a study from Germany suggests. John Timmer Cargo bikes started as something you’d see in images from Europe—bakfiets loaded up with groceries or […]
Fiber Optics Bring You Internet. Now They’re Also Listening to Trains
Stretching thousands upon thousands of miles under your feet, a web of fibrous ears is listening. Whether you walk over buried fiber optics or drive a car across them, above-ground activity creates a characteristic vibration that ever-so-slightly disturbs the way light travels through the cables. With the right equipment, scientists can parse that disturbance to […]
A Man Who Invented VR Goggles 50 Years Too Soon
30 Nov 2016 2 min read Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Science fiction as we know it would not exist without Hugo Gernsback. He coined the term “science fiction” as the editor and publisher of Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted to the burgeoning genre, which he launched in 1926. The Hugo Awards […]
The Undercover Generalist
Since starting out as an independent contractor, I’ve always felt a tension between being a generalist software engineer, yet having to market myself as a specialist. I’ve been wanting to write about it for years and even have kept some notes for that purpose. Recently I came across an article by Ben Collins-Sussman, which gave […]
Check Out These Self-Soldering Sleeves from World War II
Imagine you’re a commando, doing some big secret mission on the continent in the midst of World War II. You need to hook up some wires to your explosive charges, and time is of the essence. Do you bust out the trusty Weller and see if those petulant Axis chaps will let you plug it […]