GNOME contributor uses AI agents to reverse engineer Linux hardware

Christian F.K. Schaller describes using Claude Code with a Windows VM and usbmon captures to reverse engineer a Plustek film scanner that lost Linux support after a chipset change, then to fix MIPI camera bugs on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. He open-sourced hw-harness to record a vendor Windows session, capture USB on the Linux host, and diff traces against a Linux driver. He also shipped Negative Vibes, a GNOME app for negative scanning, and kernel plus libcamera patches. Upstream SANE gained scanner support while he worked, so he published a comparison instead. On Hacker News (96 points, 107 comments), there is no consensus. The top thread is a pro audio maker saying Claude one-shot decompiled competitors' DSP algorithms, sparking a large debate on whether hardware IP moats are gone versus whether firmware encryption was always the real moat. Others shared wins reversing printers, smart devices, and phone apps. A smaller camp urged encrypting firmware or patents. Another asked for smart TV and printer reverse engineering. Some warned against publicly admitting competitive reverse engineering. Sorted take: for unsupported Linux hardware, a capture-and-diff harness plus an agent is now a realistic path. If you ship firmware-heavy products, assume motivated people can recover cleartext algorithms unless the hardware is locked down.