cutter VS lmms

Everything Hiew can do, Rizin[1] can do too, and is completely free and open source[2] under LGPL3 license. Moreover, it supports more architectures, platforms, and file formats, as well as GUI in Qt - Cutter[3][4]. If something is missing in Rizin but presented in Hiew, please let us know by opening the issue with details.

[1] https://rizin.re

[2] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin

[3] https://cutter.re

[4] https://github.com/rizinorg/cutter

Okay, so, your comment about a "Dasher + Guitar Hero music theory/improvisation practice program" just sent me down a huge rabbit hole...

Well, rabbit hole(s) plural, I guess, most not directly related. :D

Largely because I made the "mistake" of looking at your HN profile & discovering you're also in NZ & we seem to have somewhat overlapping interests (and an affinity for "bacon" in account names, apparently), so, some thoughts[0]... :)

# Topic 1: Nissan Leaf VSP hacking

After reading your recent posts (https://ianrrees.github.io//2023/07/03/vsp-hacking.html & https://ianrrees.github.io//2023/08/05/voltage-glitch-inject...) on this topic & noting your remark about wanting to try reverse engineering a firmware image, I found the following thesis PDF (via a brief google search for `"reverse engineer" "firmware" "Renesas"`):

* "AUTOMOTIVE FIRMWARE EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES" by Jan Van den Herrewegen https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/11516/1/VandenHerrewege...

Not really what I was anticipating finding but seems relevant to your interests--I don't think it was already in your resource list.

While the thesis addresses the Renesas 78K0 rather than the Renesas 78K0R, from a brief look at the "Flash Protection" PDF Application Note in your resource list it seems there's a large overlap.

Perhaps most significantly the author presents "novel methods" that combine bootloader binary analysis with constraint-based power glitching in an effort to improve on the results described in "Shaping the Glitch".

While I haven't read the entire 186 pages :D they theorize that using their approach extracting 8kB firmware might only take ~10 hours.

And, most helpfully, they even published their source code under the GPL here: https://github.com/janvdherrewegen/bootl-attacks

So, an interesting adjacent read even if it turns out not to be directly applicable to your situation.

Given I have an interest in & a little experience with firmware reversing my original thought was to maybe provide some hopefully helpful references that more generically related to firmware reversing but more specific is good too, I guess. :)

In terms of reverse engineering tooling, I've used Rizin/Cutter/radare2 previously: https://rizin.re https://cutter.re

On the CAN tooling/info front, you might be interested in taking a look at my "Adequate CAN" list which I originally wrote-up for a client a couple years ago: https://gitlab.com/RancidBacon/adequate-can

Some other probably outdated reverse engineering tooling links of mine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200119074540/http://www.labrad...

In terms of how to approach RE, other than just "getting started & digging in" & learning by doing, I've sometimes found it informative to read other people's firmware reverse engineering write-ups to learn about potentially useful approaches/tools.

Anyway, hopefully some of this is helpful!

[0] I have a tendency to be a little... "verbose" and/or "thorough" (depending on one's POV :) ) so I'll probably split this over a couple of comments, in case I run out of steam while writing and for topic separation.

In Cutter[1][2] we have an idea to implement thes same feature[3] as a plugin, but our priorities lie elsewhere die to the lack of enough hands. Contributions are welcome.

[1] https://cutter.re

[2] https://github.com/rizinorg/cutter

[3] https://github.com/rizinorg/cutter-plugins/issues/3

For this kind of task, using low-level debugger tools is probably better. Rizin[1][2]/Cutter[3][4] could help. We also have GSoC participant this year who works hard on improving debuginfo and debugging support[5]. I personally also like Binary Ninja, they recently made their debugger stable enough[6].

[1] https://rizin.re/

[2] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin

[3] https://cutter.re/

[4] https://github.com/rizinorg/cutter

[5] https://rizin.re/posts/gsoc-2023-announcement/

[5] https://binary.ninja/2023/05/03/3.4-finally-freed.html#debug...

Something like https://cutter.re/ or https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dll_export_viewer.html Could possibly give you some insight. I guess the question though is, what are you trying to do with it?

Rizin[1] (and therefore Cutter[2]) supports interactive disassembly and analysis (but not decompilation) of the Python bytecode[3][4]. Apart from that it also supports Java and Lua bytecode for different versions.

[1] https://rizin.re

[2] https://cutter.re

[3] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin/tree/dev/librz/asm/arch/py...

[4] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin/blob/dev/librz/analysis/p/...

cutter is quite nice though

So, I saw the other day the release of the ep-133, and it happens that I want to get started doing that kind of stuff (e.g., creating simple beats). I have zero knowledge about DAW/sampling and music in general (my background is in soft. engineering), so the first thing that I searched on Google is "open source daw" and I found LMMS (https://lmms.io/). I'm going through the documentation right now.

Do you know which kind of books/articles/blogs I can follow to get started in this world of DAW? I would like to get the fundamentals first and then start experimenting (e.g., not sure if the analogy is correct, but "it's like I don't want to learn JavaScript, but I want to learn data structures, algorithms and programming in general")

# Topic 2: Dasher + Guitar Hero style music theory/improvisation practice program

Back "on topic": I remember being quite enamoured/fascinated by dasher when I first encountered it. It's quite a unique interaction paradigm with the constant "forward movement" and "intelligent" pre-filtering/constraint of options with size-based prioritization.

Your suggestion to extend this interaction style for use in the music theory domain immediately appealed to me, as it intersects with some musical things I've been thinking about/playing with recently.

Over the past couple of years I've been playing around with ("rules based" rather than ML) procedural music generation primarily in the context of games.

This has been motivated by a couple of things: partly a procgen project is helpful as a driver for gaining an deeper understanding of music theory which I would like to develop for my own composition/production; and, I'm really interested in exploring ways of providing people with the experience of actually composing/creating their own music--which is something I think many people perceive as something only "musicians"/"composers" can do.

The latter is driven my own music composition/creation/education experience: I learned piano as a kid for about a year until it was "mutually agreed" that if I wasn't going to practice perhaps it would be best to stop. :D But I've always really enjoyed music, particularly electronic/dance/EDM, and wanted to also create it & not just consume it--over the years I played around a tiny amount with creating some but gravitated toward DJing as my primary means of musical expression.

Then a few years ago I started "more seriously" creating tracks with LMMS (a FLOSS DAW https://lmms.io) and while progress was slow it was still nice to be able to enjoy the results.

But I grew frustrated/dissatisfied by the fact that I didn't really know how to add more of a melodic component to my music. (I'm an Anthemic Trance guy from way back. :D )

Over a couple of years after butting my head up against Music Theory a few times and bouncing off again (not unlike my experience with Rust :D ) one day I suddenly somehow "saw" some of the (simplified) Music Theory patterns/rules that I'd not internalised/understood previously.

And then I could add melody to my tracks! :o I mean they weren't masterpieces but it sounded like music! It blew my mind. :)

Not long after I realised something I found quite profound: it felt like music, instrument skills & music theory had only ever been presented to me as a thing that you did so you could play other people's music but I never wanted to play other people's music, I wanted to create my own!

Which then triggered a period of "Why didn't anyone teach me years ago when I was a kid that you could create your own music by starting with a few simple rules & building on them? Here I was "many" years later voluntarily learning about music theory, trying to apply it and even practising scales! :o

Anyway, that experience made me wonder if other people have experienced music & its creation in the same way and what opportunities there might be (particularly within a game/casual context) to provide those people with their first taste of creating music through a "guided" experience of just playing (in both senses of the word).

So, yeah, the "Guitar Dasher"/"Piano Dasher" concept aligns quite nicely with that. :)

Not that anyone asked me. :D

Couple of related things:

* Your suggestion also reminded me of another FLOSS DAW I played around with called Helio which has a "chord tool" (https://docs.helio.fm/tips-and-tricks.html#chord-tool) which appears as a pie-menu pre-populated with chords that fit with the current scale/root. I seem to recall that there are commercial DAWs that also have a similar UI.

* While I'm not particularly happy with its current state (really need to upload the most recent version of the code, which I'm fractionally happier with) here's my first foray into music procgen for a game jam entry (with a "debug quality UI" for controlling the output), if you're interested in checking it out: https://rancidbacon.itch.io/the-conductor

* And from a different angle here's another game jam entry where the concept I was playing with was essentially using music theory concepts as the basis for creating combat interactions/patterns (e.g. "Oh, no, how am I going to harmonize with whatever that was that the boss just played?!") and it all takes place on the "Grand Staff"/"Great Stave": https://rancidbacon.itch.io/stave-off

(Unfortunately as often seems to be the case I ended up spending more time fighting with a Unicode music engraving font/standard than I did writing game play for that last one. :) )

Of course, you need some kind of DAW software in your PC that receives MIDI (from LPK), creates the audio data and sends them to Volt. If you have zero experience with this, start with some kind of simple and self-contained DAW, like e.g. "LMMS" (free download). Later you can graduate to more complex (and expensive) DAWs and separate VST plugins.

song made in lmms by me

For music making, it kind of depends on what you use normally but LMMS is a decent free DAW.

Give a try to Ardour, LMMS, MusE and Rosegarden.

LMMS