#retrocomputing
4 posts
2026 - October
1 post2026 - September
2 posts2025 - May
1 post2026 - October
1 postAI Reverse Engineering: Is Adobe Dead?
In the same week, a dev dropped seven Adobe clones built with Claude, REA passed 100K stars promising to 'reverse engineer anything', and retro gaming got a new port every day. The viral conclusion: no binary is sacred, Adobe is dead, programmers are dead. I explain what each of these things actually does: PhotoCraft is an alpha with 800 open issues, REA is a toolbox that requires the binary and Ghidra, and retro moves fast because an 8 MB ROM turns into 135K lines of C. Rewriting Bun cost US$ 165K with the author and 64 agents; Photoshop doesn't even have an open binary in the parts that matter. Reverse engineering got easier. Magic still doesn't exist.
2026 - September
2 postsThe Limits of LLMs: Good at Reproducing What Exists. Expensive for What Doesn't
Every LLM was trained only on what's public, but 81.5% of GitHub activity happens in private repositories, and the source code of every proprietary software never made it into training. In my retrocomputing projects I felt firsthand where the machine stalls: with no reference and no oracle, it spins in directed brute force.
AI Challenge: Converting NES ROMs to the Master System/SMS
I tried using frontier LLMs to convert NES ROMs into Master System games. I explain the architecture, why translating 6502 to Z80 runs slow, the emulator as a feedback oracle, and where the mappers stall everything.
2025 - May
1 postComputing History and Retro Dev on YouTube
A curated list of YouTube channels on computing history and retro development that every dev should watch.