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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • That assembly is for a DOS application. It would be more verbose for a modern Linux or Win32 application and probably require a linker script.

    But python turns that cute little line up top, into that mess at the bottom.

    Technically, not quite. Python is interpreted, so it’s more like “call the print function with this string parameter” gets fed into another program, which calls it’s own functions to make it happen.


  • I’m probably completely insane and deranged, but I actually like assembly. With decent reverse engineering software like Ghidra, it’s not terribly difficult to understand the intent and operation of isolated functions.

    Mnemonics for the amd64 AVX extensions can go the fuck right off a bridge, though. VCVTTPS2UQQ might as well be my hands rolling across a keyboard, not a truncated conversation from packed single precision floats into packed unsigned quadword integers.






  • From a theoretical point of view, emulators of modern consoles may actually be illegal. Under the DMCA, emulation for preservation is protected as a periodically-renewed exemption list defined by the library of congress. But, (paraphrasing) “creating or distributing any hardware or software device—or component of such—designed to circumvent DRM technology” is still illegal irrespective of any exemptions. A reasonable (and bullshit) interpretation of that means that any emulator which is capable of bypassing any DRM features (such as decrypting ROM using user-provided keys) is a violation under the act.

    I say theoretical because it hasn’t ever actually been tested in a court. Nintendo v. Tropic Haze LLC nearly gave us the answer, but the latter chose to settle instead.