With newer iPods and the iPhone 2.x firmware, Apple decided to implement a new hash scheme for iTunesDB to prevent third-party apps from managing the iPod database. Stupid. They decided to make it part of the FairPlay codebase, including its obfuscation. Very Stupid. But just in case that weren’t enough, then they went ahead and tried to take down the iPodHash project which was attempting to reverse engineer the (annoyingly obfuscated) algorithm. Completely Stupid.

I had previously patched the check out in the MusicLibrary binary, and forgot to write it up. However, I just looked at it again, and it turns out that you can get it to work just by changing a simple XML file. I guess they didn’t really care if jailbroken iPhone users used third-party software.
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And most of us are back home! 25C3 has really been a blast and I’m sure most of us will repeat next year.

We had a huge table and still managed to fill it up entirely. Just look:

Since taking photos of the public without permission is forbidden at the Congress, and I didn’t obtain explicit permission from the people on the left, I’ve blacked them out. Oh yeah, that guy at the back is crediar. I hear he doesn’t mind if I post his photo

The iPhone Dev Team guys also sat with us. We even worked together on several occasions, and it was really cool to have these two teams meet together and learn from each other.
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In an ideal world, in a few hours, a plane will depart from Madrid Barajas International Airport and with destination Berlin-Tegel Airport. Hopefully, I will be inside that plane. This isn’t an ideal world, however, so chances are the flight will be delayed. But one way or another, I hope to find my way to Berlin today (or tomorrow, going by my sleep cycle).

Pack up has been interesting. Behold:

Standards vary, but I think this is somewhere between “reasonable by 25c3 standards” and “completely insane”. This should be fun though. See if you can spot the key components. FYI: My Wii lives in that 56K modem box.

In an attempt to keep this blog from developing a severe case of cobwebs, I’ll try to keep you posted on what goes on at 25c3. Here’s the vital information:

• 25C3 opening is Dec 27th at 10:00AM CET
• Our talk (Console Hacking 2008: Wii Fail) is on Dec 28th at 9:45PM CET
• We’ll have a 12-seat table near the middle left of the Hackcenter

I’ll be arriving there on the 26th, a bit after Erant and bLAStY. Hope I can make it to the hotel with zero knowledge of German.

I finally broke down and set up a proper blog. Ooh! Aah! Boo!

I think the first time I started to do this blogs weren’t even popular. 2000 or so. I guess I succeeded 8 years later.

So why on earth would I want a blog anyway? ‘Cause it’s the trendy thing to do? Well, over the years, I’ve amassed a relatively large amount of personal projects and tidbits. However, up until now, I haven’t had a single place to collect references to them. Sometimes you’ll find a few in some dark deep corners on my webserver, and sometimes you’ll stumble upon them on forums or other sites, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s just sitting somewhere on my hard drive entirely unknown to the world. Googling for “marcan” doesn’t help either – especially when the word happens to (coincidentally) be a Spanish word too. It’s kind of sad to see all of this old and not so old stuff just sit there and do nothing, so I’m setting this blog up with the hope that someone, somewhere, will find some of it useful. And maybe it’ll inspire me into working on some old unfinished projects.

Some may say, what about HackMii? Well, HackMii’s name is pretty self-descriptive, but to clarify: HackMii is about hacking the Wii. Unlike many people seem to believe, my life isn’t solely devoted to Wii hacking (thankfully). Instead, here you’ll find everything else, including some possible Wii-related posts that aren’t strictly related to the topics at HackMii.

So in this blog I’ll try to post about what I’m currently hacking, making, or otherwise screwing around with, and about what I’ve hacked, made, and screwed around with in the past. You may also find an occasional tidbit or two about my life, but I’ll try not to bore you with it.