Hacker News: ktkaufman

New comment by ktkaufman in "Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser"

ktkaufman — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 05:08:50 +0000

TL;DR: it's in a gray area, but nobody with power actually cares (at least for now), so it's effectively fine.

As I understand it, Lego is aware of the project (there's been a significant increase in interest in Lego Island in the past few years, with attempts to obtain the original source code) and simply does not care. It's an ancient IP and can't realistically compete with anything new, at least not in a way that would significantly affect Lego's revenue. This is not unlike the way several other companies have acted when their respective older games have been given the same treatment; if a fan project is not actively causing problems (reputational, financial, etc.), most companies will just leave it alone. For companies that actually seem to care about public opinion (as opposed to, say, Nintendo), I think it's fair to assume that the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project, however legally justified it might be, far outweigh any possible benefits.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Google to buy Wiz for $32B"

ktkaufman — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 16:35:18 +0000

I can tell you from firsthand experience that people - including people I have personally worked with at large organizations - have absolutely heard of Wiz. Yes, it is a relatively new player, but the people there have been putting out high quality research for years and have also demonstrated a very compelling approach to securing cloud environments. They get a lot of praise, and they've earned it.

Second, I have no idea what you're doing to get Wix results from a search for Wiz. When I search for Wiz, I get a whole bunch of results about Wiz, including links to discussion threads where random people (i.e., not high-rep HN users) also talk about how much they like the product.

Finally, something to consider: would Google actually pay $32B for a company that "nobody has heard of" and doesn't provide any value? Probably not. I would hope not.

Macintosh Factory (1980s?) [video]

ktkaufman — Sat, 18 May 2024 19:27:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk306ZkNOuc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40401368

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by ktkaufman in "Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?"

ktkaufman — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 01:07:22 +0000

https://ktkaufman03.github.io/

I don't post a lot, but when I do, I try to make it interesting. So far I've covered:

- a creative use of Rust's type system (https://ktkaufman03.github.io/blog/2023/04/20/rust-compile-t...)

- taking a deep dive into some obscure, closed-source scanner drivers, and ultimately creating new ones (https://ktkaufman03.github.io/blog/2022/09/04/pakon-reverse-...)

I do have some more posts planned for the not-so-distant future, which I think will be interesting!

If for some reason you want to subscribe, I have an RSS feed set up: https://ktkaufman03.github.io/feed.xml

New comment by ktkaufman in "Bringing runtime checks to compile time in Rust"

ktkaufman — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 03:00:26 +0000

I was annoyed by having to write the same boilerplate code over and over again to handle "failures" that would never actually occur, so I took matters into my own hands and came up with what I think is a pretty elegant (if slightly complicated) solution. As it turns out, the architecture of this solution can be applied to other issues!

Bringing runtime checks to compile time in Rust

ktkaufman — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 02:58:18 +0000

Article URL: https://ktkaufman03.github.io/blog/2023/04/20/rust-compile-time-checks/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35635842

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by ktkaufman in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2023)"

ktkaufman — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 22:07:52 +0000

Location: Worcester, MA

Remote: Yes, potentially open to hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: C#, C/C++, Java, Rust, Python, Go

Résumé/CV: Available on request

Email: ktkaufman AT wpi DOT edu, include "HN February 2023" in the subject line

LinkedIn & GitHub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kai-kaufman & https://github.com/ktkaufman03

I am a college sophomore studying cybersecurity with several years of practical experience in software reverse engineering, malware analysis and the automation of binary analysis tasks. I am also familiar with computer forensics tools such as Volatility. Some of my past projects include reverse engineering, fixing and updating legacy scanner drivers [1] as well as writing deobfuscators to handle software in various languages. While I was in high school, I uncovered and reported vulnerabilities in various ed-tech software packages.

I am looking for an internship in the cybersecurity field, ideally in a role that involves software reverse engineering. I'm open to other roles as well, including penetration testing work. If you think we'd be a good match, please do reach out!

[1] Reviving the Pakon film scanner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32714806

New comment by ktkaufman in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2023)"

ktkaufman — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:02:46 +0000

Location: Worcester, MA

Remote: Yes, potentially open to hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: C#, C/C++, Java, Rust, Python, Go

Résumé/CV: Available on request

Email: kaufmank03@gmail.com

LinkedIn & GitHub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kai-kaufman & https://github.com/ktkaufman03

[1] Reviving the Pakon film scanner: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32714806

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 02:44:21 +0000

The way the scanner deals with dust is by complaining that there's dust :-) (It doesn't have a special dust error, AFAIK, but it does do some checks that will end up failing if too much dust has accumulated.)

The way to avoid dust accumulation is to keep it covered when it's not being used. That works nicely and is a reasonable thing to do anyway.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 02:27:13 +0000

In theory it's unnecessary. The problem is that one of the main selling points of the Pakon is its convenience - then again, if somebody wants to do things the hard way, who am I to stop them?

I don't have any plans to develop a cross-platform client, but I will be publishing more technical information about the scanner so people aren't left wondering what I know.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 02:02:48 +0000

I had help, but yes. I think it's worth the cost to give people peace of mind that they won't have to disable some of the most important security features available to them in order to use a scanner.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:36:37 +0000

Oddly, there are files on the CDs that are dated after the date on the packing slip - several months after, in fact. So I'm not quite sure exactly how old my kit is...

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:09:03 +0000

The custom drivers will be released soon :-) If you're not in the Pakon Facebook group, I recommend requesting to join it, since there's a lot of useful information there.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 00:08:16 +0000

>I think it's still nightmare because Windows require driver signature verification by default

I've taken care of that already :) My custom drivers are properly signed and basically ready to release once I tidy up some loose ends.

I'm not entirely sure if this really needs to run at the kernel level. In the future I might investigate converting it to a user-mode driver, but for now I think a signed kernel-mode driver will suffice.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 21:27:05 +0000

I've added a picture of my scanner to the article :-)

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 21:21:29 +0000

By popular demand, the article now has a picture of the scanner I have access to - an F135 Plus - with a bit more information about how it's used. For those who wish to see an F235 and/or F335, I recommend Google Images, since I'm not going to use someone else's pictures without their permission.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 21:00:38 +0000

I've addressed this a couple of times in response to others, but the main problem is that there are multiple models that look quite different from each other. I could pick one, but that wouldn't be telling the whole story, or I could show them all and add extra clutter to the page.

That being said, I'll probably just pick a model and add a picture to the article. Google Images is good for finding the others.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 20:58:56 +0000

A more accurate title would be "Reviving the coolest scanner you've probably never heard of", but it was already a bit long.

I make no claims about my own coolness :-)

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 20:52:02 +0000

Good point about the Cypress acquisition. While I was investigating part of the driver code recently, I realized it was based on FX2 sample code. The development kit that I got, on the other hand, was pre-FX2. The article notes that Cypress acquired Anchor Chips, the original creator of EZ-USB, in 1999, which would seem to line up perfectly with the time frame in which the Pakon scanners were developed.

New comment by ktkaufman in "Reviving the Pakon film scanner"

ktkaufman — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 19:52:06 +0000

TIL about PCI-X. Northlight looks like a pretty cool piece of hardware! It's cool to see what other obscure stuff is out there - that's why I like Hacker News :-)