Q&A with the man behind the SE: Dark Alex

This is the latest from Dark Alex: not an app, or the sequel to that wonderful 2.71 SE, but this interview with Playstation Now Underground! Well, the interview was written en Español, but lucky for us, dcjoedog of the Homebrewcast Forums, who emailed this tip to us, was also kind enough to translate the interview for us.

Back to topic. When PNU asked Dark Alex of his opinion of the scene, this is what he had to say:

It’s good, many interesting things have happened these last few months with the discovery of exploits in 2.5-2.71 and the dawn of custom firmware. I suppose that the direction the scene must take is to keep this momentum, to continue discovering exploits that allow to load unsigned code, to continue decrypting firmwares, etc.

Cool. Of course, beyond 2.75 and 2.8+ is Da Big F-W 3-Oh, and on that Alex had this to say: “No matter how difficult (to crack) they (Sony) make it, it’s just code that can be decompiled. They cannot make magic, their archives must decrypt somehow, and that way is somewhere in their code.”

And from one dev to another, when asked, Alex dropped a couple of news bits on what Booster is up to. First is that there’s a DevHook beta running on 2.80, that also works for 2.81 (2.82 not tested yet), but it doesn’t have ISO support, and it kinda hangs the PSP a lot. And that Booster was also “keeping himself occupied” with a Nintendo DS.

Okay, on to other fronts. Alex’s working on improvements for 2.71 SE-C, which should include DAX format support, usbhost, and an option to change the CPU speed. And if Alex could squeeze more time from the hours of the day, he could also work on HEN-C for TA-082 motherboards.

Finally, if you don’t know yet, wanna know Alex’s background? He tells PNU that he’s 23, currently a student of technical engineering in computer science, and his interests are computer science and cats. And the guy seems to gravitate to portables: he’s done Java for mobile phones (but that had too many problems, he said) and for the PocketPC.

This is the latest from Dark Alex: not an app, or the sequel to that wonderful 2.71 SE, but this interview with Playstation Now Underground! Well, the interview was written en Español, but lucky for us, dcjoedog of the Homebrewcast Forums, who emailed this tip to us, was also kind enough to translate the interview for us.

Back to topic. When PNU asked Dark Alex of his opinion of the scene, this is what he had to say:

It’s good, many interesting things have happened these last few months with the discovery of exploits in 2.5-2.71 and the dawn of custom firmware. I suppose that the direction the scene must take is to keep this momentum, to continue discovering exploits that allow to load unsigned code, to continue decrypting firmwares, etc.

Cool. Of course, beyond 2.75 and 2.8+ is Da Big F-W 3-Oh, and on that Alex had this to say: “No matter how difficult (to crack) they (Sony) make it, it’s just code that can be decompiled. They cannot make magic, their archives must decrypt somehow, and that way is somewhere in their code.”

And from one dev to another, when asked, Alex dropped a couple of news bits on what Booster is up to. First is that there’s a DevHook beta running on 2.80, that also works for 2.81 (2.82 not tested yet), but it doesn’t have ISO support, and it kinda hangs the PSP a lot. And that Booster was also “keeping himself occupied” with a Nintendo DS.

Okay, on to other fronts. Alex’s working on improvements for 2.71 SE-C, which should include DAX format support, usbhost, and an option to change the CPU speed. And if Alex could squeeze more time from the hours of the day, he could also work on HEN-C for TA-082 motherboards.

Finally, if you don’t know yet, wanna know Alex’s background? He tells PNU that he’s 23, currently a student of technical engineering in computer science, and his interests are computer science and cats. And the guy seems to gravitate to portables: he’s done Java for mobile phones (but that had too many problems, he said) and for the PocketPC.