• Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    2 years ago

    For people interested in the difference between decompiled machine code and source code I would recommend looking at the Mario 64 Decomp project. They are attempting to turn a Mario 64 rom into source code and then back into that same rom. It’s really hard and they’ve been working on it for a long time. It’s come a long way but still isn’t done.

    https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64

      • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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        2 years ago

        There is still some stuff that needs documenting, but the original goal of recompiling the created source code into the ROMs has been achieved. People are still actively working on it, so in that sense it’s maybe never done.

  • just_ducky_in_NH@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Okay, boomer here, be gentle.

    So back in the ‘70s I dabbled in programming (now called “coding”, I hear). I only did higher-level languages like Fortran, Cobol, IBM Basic, but a friend had a job (at age 13!) programming in assembler. Is assembler now called assembly, or are they different?

    • fidodo@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      It’s still called programming, coding is the same thing. Assembler more commonly refers to the utility program that converts the assembly code to machine code while assembly refers to the code itself, but the term assembler code is also valid. It’s uncommon to simply call the code assembler because it would be easily confused with the utility program.

      • bamboo
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        2 years ago

        Easier to say than “at age 6227020800”

    • Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I thought that the assembler is a specific program that translates mnemonics into the corresponding machine code. Perhaps in early computing this was done by hand so a person was the assembler (and worked in assembler), but now that is handled by software (and supports various macros). So programming in assembly would generate a stream of text that must be assembled by an assembler. (Although I have heard people refer to programming in assembler as well, just not often.)

      • lhamil64@programming.dev
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        2 years ago

        I hear people say “program in assembler” but IMO that’s wrong. I’d say you write the code in “assembly language” (or better yet, the actual architecture you’re using like “x86 assembly”) but you “assemble” it with an “assembler”. Kind of like how you could write a program in the “C language” and “compile” it with a “compiler”

        • amki@feddit.de
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          2 years ago

          A compiler and an assembler do wildly different things though. An assembler simply replaces mnemonics while a compiler transfers instructions to a whole other language.

          • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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            2 years ago

            Depends on the language, really… C maps pretty closely to assembly language, it’s not as simple as one mnemonic to one machine code byte, more like tokens get mapped to sequences of machine code, a function call translates to some code that sets up a stack frame, a return tears it down…

    • Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz
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      2 years ago

      I was too young/poor to afford an assembler for my 6502 so I wore out the assembly long hand on a legal pad and then manually converted each operation to machine code.

      Needless to say my programs done this way were exceptionally simple, but it’s interesting to understand the underlying code.

    • perviouslyiner@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      It was a staple of Asimov’s books that while trying to predict decisions of the robot brain, nobody in that world ever understood how they fundamentally worked.

      He said that while the first few generations were programmed by humans, everything since that was programmed by the previous generation of programs.

      This leads us to Asimov’s world in which nobody is even remotely capable of creating programs that violate the assumptions built into the first iteration of these systems - are we at that point now?

      • amki@feddit.de
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        2 years ago

        No. Programs cannot reprogram themselves in a useful way and are very very far from it.

        • legion02@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Eh, I’d say continuous training models are pretty close to this. Adapting to changing conditions and new input is kinda what they’re for.

          • Bjornir@programming.dev
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            2 years ago

            Very far from reprogramming though. The general shape of the NN doesn’t change, you won’t get a NN made to process images to suddenly process code just by training it.

  • Southern Wolf@pawb.social
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    2 years ago

    It’s honestly remarkable how few people in the comments here seem to get the joke.

    Never stop dissecting things, y’all.

  • oldfart@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    IDA Pro (a disassembler) is closed source but came with a license that allowed disassembly and binary modification. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

  • kamen@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Joke aside, that’s kind of like claiming that any web frontend is open source because you can access the built, minified and often obfuscated source of it.

    • Jocker Black@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      So true! I have been “hacking” some chrome extensions recently, do you know of a tool for reverse engineering JS?

    • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      And so you add a hashing check. But then that can be removed.

      So you need one in the OS but that can be removed.

      So you need one in hardware.

      In other words no matter how clever you are there’s always a way to monkey with something unless you have absolute control from silicon on up.

      Here’s a really interesting video the Xbox team did on the challenges of trying to make sure that the content running wasn’t pirated.

      https://youtu.be/U7VwtOrwceo

      While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.

      • grue@lemmy.ml
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        2 years ago

        While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.

        Nah, when the user wants to ensure trust and integrity in his own system, it works just fine. The problem comes when the user who needs to be able to access the data is simultaneously the adversary who needs to be stopped from accessing the data.

        In other words, it’s one of those situations where the fact that it’s hard to manage is a gigantic clue that it’s wrongheaded to try to do so in the first place.

        • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          I agree. I mean when doing secure channel communications or weapons systems or health biometrics.

          There are cases where you need to be sure of the integrity of the data and environment