Friend who is not a software person sent me this tweet, which amused me as it did them. They asked if “runk” was real, which I assume not.

But what are some good examples of real ones like this? xz became famous for the hack of course, so i then read a bit about how important this compression algorithm is/was.

  • @quixotic120
    106•1 month ago

    She is kind of a shithead tbf and fwiw it’s more like she’s the only person who is willing to do it. granted cracking denuvo is something that is extremely difficult and only a small subset of people can do but it’s not like she’s literally the only person on the planet who can. There was that guy who would just release the yearly update of football manager, for one.

    It’s far more likely the people who have that skill set just don’t really want to bother with cracking videogames and the potential legal issues that come with distributing them online.

    • @[email protected]
      42•1 month ago

      True, but being the only person willing to do something is kind of laudable in it’s own right. Like all of the open source projects relied upon by millions that are sometimes developed primarily by one person in their free time.

      • @quixotic120
        37•1 month ago

        but my (not really my) conspiracy theory for this is the opposite of open source: when someone is good at cracking games companies like denuvo track them down and offer them jobs to harden their product and take another cracker out of the scene. like I bet denuvo is just filled with nerds that spent their teenage years in sketchy irc rooms with handles like -DooMSlAyEr- and used to actually be members of razor1911 before they realized they could get game companies to pay them 200k a year

        • @[email protected]
          15•1 month ago

          It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s exactly what Malus did and why it’s harder to root iPhones nowadays (but the EU is seeing to that by forcing them to start opening up their walled garden).

          Can’t remember where I read it, but I think it’s the dude who started AsahiLinux that shared part of his story in the scene. And a few dudes were tracked down and had the choice between a lawsuit and employment. Makes the decision pretty easy.

          Doesn’t help that they did their thing on Github and other public platforms instead of I2P or something.

          Anti Commercial-AI license