Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | hw-f3nter's commentslogin

Thank you for your feedback! The Discord server serves as a platform for feedback and discussions about hardware hacking and HardBreak. Do you have any suggestions for alternative ways to offer these features?


I like IRC, but that seems to be an unpopular opinion these days (but maybe appropriate for a bunch of hardware hackers, since you could probably host it on an ESP32 if you were so inclined lol). There is also Matrix, which is somewhat more modern, or Zulip as another commenter has mentioned.

Ultimately it's your decision, and I guess Discord is probably easier to manage. Just consider that with Discord the discussions and knowledge that build up on the server don't really belong to you.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685138 is the one I always post in any mention if Discord or Slack because they are both walled gardens

In your specific case, you may have to self-host or pay because I don't believe your project would qualify under their open source hosting offering but it wouldn't hurt to ask


You are right! I encountered the same problem. Unfortunately, I didn't find a setting in Gitbook to change the preview text, just the preview image. It seems like it just takes the name of the first page 'Welcome to HardBreak' and adds the site name 'HardBreak' at the end. So I'd have to change the name of the first page, but a name like 'HardBreak - a Hardware Hacking Wiki' or something similar would look weird on the website, I think. I haven't found a good solution for that yet.


I think having it in the homepage title is fine. I do it for most sites I build for exactly this reason.

“HardBreak - Open-Source Hardware Hacking Wiki”

Looks fine as a title, and helps for embeds/sharing.


I was thinking about it, but the Guidelines include this:

>Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.

so I made a regular submission, as I think HardBreak is reading material. @Mods feel free to move my post, if this is considered a Show HN post.


I think you are right! I stand corrected.


I just don't want anyone to copy the content and sell it. It's meant to be freely accessible to everyone.


That's fine. It's just not open source. Don't call it open source if it's not.

Definition: https://opensource.org/osd


Not everyone agrees with this definition. If the source is open to read, for me it's open source. The website you linked is an opinionated view on what open source is.


> If the source is open to read, for me it's open source

Not everyone agrees with the OSI definition but I'd say almost noone agrees with that definition there.

I think most people understand what you are describing as "Source Available". Could even be a commercial project.


> If the source is open to read, for me it's open source.

That’s called “source available”. Open source colloquially implies open license.


It's not. Open Source has its own definition.

You can define however you want, but it's not Open Source. What you mean is "source available".


I mean, there's not a lot we can do to stop you using the phrase in this way. But you should know that you will cause confusion. The phrase "open source" is, to an awful lot of people, a technical term with a specific meaning and has been so for decades now.


I think you misunderstand the debates happening around open source. They exist, but not for what you mean.


This reminds me of the discussion of whether if open source AI models are open source or not, when the training data is not available to the public.


I mean this lists MIT license as opensource license, when it's clearly not, because it doesn't at all mention source code. The license just talks about "software".

Anyone is free to publish only binaries+docs under this license, if they wish.

So the website is not very accurate.


that definition is wrong, really by just common sense


This is a shallow dismissal, which is against the HN Guidlines.


>Free and open-source software (FOSS) or free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) is openly shared source code that is licensed without any restrictions on usage, modification, or distribution. Confusion persists about this definition because the "free", also known as "libre", refers to the freedom of the product, not the price, expense, cost, or charge. For example, "being free to speak" is not the same as "free beer".

I generally think of open source as where I can see the code and freely modify it, not necessarily freely commercialize it on my own.


I think I'm about where you are in all this, I see NC (restrictions that activities are non-commercial; like CC-NC) as being 'open source'.

Sure, I can't take your work, cut you off, then sell that work as if it were my own... but without explicit encouragement to do that (*), honour should inhibit that.

(* I'm aware some licenses give explicit encouragement to commercially exploit -- I just don't think that is the boundary for open source)


the FSF/OSI are big on emphasizing that "free/open" means more than exposing the designs and mechanisms; it means guaranteeing certain freedoms and rights to the users of your software.

what you're describing is usually called "source-available".


If open source doesn't specify a license that is it under then you should only assume that the source has been made available. Both GPL and Apache licensing are considered open source, even though apache is more permissive for commercial derivatives. No one calls GPL "source-available" in common conversation regardless of OSI's opinion.


As well as some variants of BSD licenses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses

>Two variants of the license, the New BSD License/Modified BSD License (3-clause), and the Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License (2-clause) have been verified as GPL-compatible free software licenses by the Free Software Foundation, and have been vetted as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative. The original, 4-clause BSD license has not been accepted as an open source license and, although the original is considered to be a free software license by the FSF, the FSF does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL due to the advertising clause.


Have you thought of a Creative Commons license? You can have a Non-Commercial clause, while letting others to cooperate with you and remix the information in your site. CC licenses are IMHO better suited for documents than things like GPL, BSD or MIT.

https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/


Note that the CC -ND licenses are not Open Source either.


That's a fair comment, maybe OP should change the Open Source part after all, even if the license is changed.


For context, this drone was reversed back in 2018 as part of my bachelor thesis. At the time, the SDK hadn’t been released yet I believe, so reversing was the only available option. Recently, I revisited this work and decided to include it on my new hardware hacking wiki - HardBreak.


Hmm. Parrot has had SDKs for their drones years (at least 5) before 2018. Maybe it happened during the few months between the moment they shipped the Anafi and the moment they shipped the corresponding SDK, then.

But anyway, for educational purposes it's interesting to reverse engineer anything you want!


I think I searched for the corresponding SDK back then, but couldn't find anything. Maybe I was just too stupid haha

Yeah I learned a lot doing it!


Sounds good! I just wasn't sure if I was missing something. Good work otherwise!


Hey everyone! I’ve been working on HardBreak (https://www.hardbreak.wiki/), an open-source Hardware Hacking Wiki that aims to gather all the essential knowledge for hardware hackers in one place. Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced, I hope you’ll find it useful!

Here’s what’s already in: -Methodology (How to approach a hw hacking project) -Basics (common protocols,tools) -Reconnaissance (Board Analysis) -Interface Interaction (How to find, connect to, and exploit UART, JTAG, SPI, etc.) -Bypassing Security Measures (An introduction to voltage glitching techniques) -Hands-On Examples ---Case study on hacking an Asus router (led to a CVE update) ---Reversing drone communication (land it with your PC) -Network Analysis and Radio Hacking (in progress)

If you’re curious, check it out at hardbreak.wiki! Feedback is very appriciated —this is my first project like this, and I’m always looking to improve it. If you’re feeling generous, contributions over Github (https://github.com/f3nter/HardBreak) are more than welcome—there’s way more to cover than I can manage alone (wish I had more free time, haha). Thanks for reading, and happy hacking!


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: