Thread

Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month

422 points · 290 comments · ADevWithAnIdea

MoltenMonster · 1789511027 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1whecn1/comment/pa1spia/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1whecn1/comment...
> The author was banned from Asahi Linux for hiding his extensive use of LLMs from us in another attempted contribution, and (more importantly) for concealing that he is a former Apple engineer with direct contacts to the people involved in Apple Silicon development. Make of this what you will.
1. ADevWithAnIdea · 1789514814 · focus · HN ↗
  > concealing that he is a former Apple engineer with direct contacts to the people involved in Apple Silicon development
  This is false. I am a former Apple engineer. I did not conceal it (it's the top item of my resume and my LinkedIn and I made my PR from my public Github with my name attached, as opposed to a pseudonym which is expressly allowed by Asahi policy). I also had no exposure, at all, to any internal information or code about macOS, SPTM, or Apple Silicon during my time there.
  I also don't have connections to people involved in Apple Silicon development (and I'd add that this does not mean someone cannot contribute, the question is were they exposed to tainted information, which is absolutely not true in my case). I have many friends who work for Apple (I'm a Stanford alum) but none in Apple Silicon directly.
  I disagree with the phrasing of this entire thing, but this statement is demonstrably false.
  1. thrwy19940314 · 1789519818 · focus · HN ↗
    At least according to your own accounts on the Asahi IRC rooms, you were very aware of SPTM (which is part of the AS platform) and knew the people working on it: <a href="https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763" rel="nofollow">https://oftc.catirclogs.org/asahi-dev/2026-06-04#35383763
    politician · 1789521887 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you work for Apple?
    bigyabai · 1789522258 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably not. Clean room RE is serious business, projects like Dolphin have to carefully vet contributors to remain legal.
    15155 · 1789537961 · focus · HN ↗
    Everyone says this, and then exactly zero cases are cited in support of or against this creative legal theory known as "clean room RE."
    No statute defines "clean room RE" and there's basically no relevant litigation establishing case law.
    bigyabai · 1789538289 · focus · HN ↗
    Who volunteers to be the shmuck that fights Nintendo's lawyers in court? Who's funding the defense against Apple?
    It's safest to err on the side of plausible deniability, any proximity to OEM software increases liability if things go wrong.
    charcircuit · 1789543680 · focus · HN ↗
    Nintendo doesn't care. There's been proprietary Nintendo SDK code in libogc (open source library for making GameCube homebrew) for years. And more recently the various decompilation process have made recreations of linked code from the SDK that compile match byte for byte. In practice the legal risk of being sued into oblivion for this is not there. If anything there would be a DMCA takedown / cease and desist.
    literallywho · 1789549624 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, but they are one of the biggest DMCA abusers. They killed many fan projects. They killed game renting in Japan as a concept. They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator). And they could change their mind at any time.
    charcircuit · 1789552640 · focus · HN ↗
    >They killed Yuzu (a Switch emulator).
    For the record Yuzu included code for circumventing Nintendo's DRM they had on game carts. It violated the DMCA.
    Akronymus · 1789557112 · focus · HN ↗
    yuzu also sold access to more recent builds which allowed people to play unreleased nintendo games early, afair
    mitxela · 1789558894 · focus · HN ↗
    Which also isn't illegal
    Akronymus · 1789559546 · focus · HN ↗
    charging for it brings a whole lot more heat than not doing so
    realusername · 1789566029 · focus · HN ↗
    > For the record Yuzu included code for circumventing Nintendo's DRM they had on game carts. It violated the DMCA.
    It doesn't, this is what Nintendo claimed but it's false. The community learned their lessons from the Wii emulation era and you are supposed to bring your own keys, nothing is included in the emulator.
    And yes, they also wrote this lie on their DMCA takedown against Suyu (which also doesn't have any keys), so they officially lied on a DMCA takedown.
    charcircuit · 1789575024 · focus · HN ↗
    >you are supposed to bring your own keys
    Just because you have to bring your own keys that doesn't make it not a circumvention measure.
    realusername · 1789578918 · focus · HN ↗
    There's no "circumvention mesure" in there, the emulator can only read unencrypted games by default. You won't find anything in the source code, if the game is encrypted, it cannot read it.
    charcircuit · 1789614033 · focus · HN ↗
    >You won't find anything in the source code
    Here's the code that breaks the DRM.
    <a href="https://github.com/Fabi/yuzu-mirror-mirror/blob/master/src/core/file_sys/content_archive.cpp#L49" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Fabi/yuzu-mirror-mirror/blob/master/src/c...
    realusername · 1789626791 · focus · HN ↗
    I disagree, this doesn't break anything, even the comments tell you so. This code does nothing by default.
    Also I may mention that the support of external keys is there for you to get games for your own switch, pirates can just share decrypted games anyways.
    charcircuit · 1789636194 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you not see the references to decryption and decryption keys? This code is explicitly written to break the DRM of switch carts. If you mean by default you mean they don't provide a key, that doesn't matter in regards to it being considered corcumvention.
    realusername · 1789637065 · focus · HN ↗
    No that matters. As is, the emulator cannot be used to circumvent nor break any protection. Feel free to try it yourself, boot up the emulator, give it an encrypted game and see what it does.
    Nintendo didn't want to get in court and also had to basically lie in a DMCA, I think that tells it all on their legal standpoint, they were afraid of creating a precedent.
    Don't worry that if they were so sure to win, they would be in court already like they did with the R4 cartridge.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.