Ivy: So, someone just got Claude 3.5 Sonnet to spit out the source code for a proprietary Wi-Fi chip... just by feeding it the compiled file.
Marcus: This is Marcus.
Ivy: And I'm Ivy.
Marcus: And you're listening to Broke It, bringing you the latest in AI for Friday, October 16th, 2026.
Ivy: We've got three stories for you, and one of them literally flies.
Marcus: We're starting with how Anthropic's new model just blew the lid off hardware security.
Ivy: Then, we'll cover Meta and Apple getting surprisingly cozy with a new model that runs on Macs.
Marcus: And yes, we have to talk about it. Tesla put SpaceX thrusters on a Roadster and made it jump over a line of cars.
Marcus: Alright Ivy, let's start there. That cold open... an AI decompiling firmware? Seriously? That sounds impossible.
Ivy: Not impossible, just... wildly unprofitable for a human to do. A dev on Hacker News posted their experiment: they took a totally obscure, proprietary firmware binary from some networking gear...
Marcus: Okay, so like, the machine code that tells a chip how to be a chip.
Ivy: Exactly. No source code anywhere. They just fed the raw binary to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and asked it to translate it back into human-readable C.
Marcus: And... it worked?
Ivy: It worked. And get this: the developer said the code it spat out wasn't just functional, it was commented and clean. It even explained the purpose of the most obscure parts.
Marcus: No way! That's a superpower. Think about it! All the legacy systems, the black boxes... we can finally crack them open!
Ivy: Or, you could think of all the intellectual property that was only protected because it was unreadable. Your hardware 'moat'? It's now a puddle.
Marcus: So any company that thought their secret sauce was safe because it was compiled down to ones and zeros... is now exposed?
Ivy: Looks like it. The dev's takeaway was, quote, 'security through obscurity is officially over.' If an LLM can do this for pennies, any motivated person can too.
Marcus: This is huge for right-to-repair, for interoperability... but yeah, the security implications are... wow.
Ivy: So the takeaway here is that the line between hardware and software is basically gone. The value isn't your secret code anymore; it's the system you build around it and how fast you can move.
Marcus: Because someone—or something—is about to figure out your secrets.
Ivy: Alright, let's talk about a partnership I did not have on my 2026 bingo card: Meta and Apple.
Marcus: I know, right? But here we are. Meta just dropped a new model, Muse Spark Open, and it's built to run locally on Apple Silicon.
Ivy: Well, let's be specific. It's 'open-weight,' not really open-source. Meta's giving out the model weights, but keeping the training data and methods under wraps.
Marcus: Still, this is a big deal! A powerful, multimodal model that can run on your MacBook? And it's from Meta, not Apple?
Ivy: TechCrunch says it's a 10 billion parameter model. So, small enough to run on your laptop, but big enough to actually be useful for creative stuff like generating images or code.
Marcus: So this is Apple's strategy? Instead of building one giant 'Apple Intelligence' monolith, they're letting other players run on their hardware, optimized for the M-series chips.
Ivy: Seems that way. Apple avoids having to moderate every model, and it makes their hardware the best place to run AI, no matter who built it. It's a classic platform play.
Marcus: And for Meta, they get distribution. They bypass the App Store review process for a foundational model by having it run on-device. It's... brilliant, actually.
Ivy: Is it? Or is it letting a fox into the henhouse? Apple has built its entire brand on privacy. Now they're promoting a model from a company whose entire business model is data harvesting.
Marcus: But it runs locally! The data doesn't leave your Mac. That's the key. That's the compromise.
Ivy: For now. Let's see what the first update to the terms of service looks like.
Marcus: Okay, fair. But for the average person with a new Mac, it just means you're about to get some seriously powerful, free, and local AI tools from a very strange team-up.
Marcus: Okay, our last story... Ivy. IVY. The car can FLY.
Ivy: It 'hopped.' Let's use precise language. Tesla did not repeal the laws of physics.
Marcus: It used cold gas thrusters, just like on SpaceX rockets, to leap over a whole line of other Teslas! That is not a hop!
Ivy: At a demo in Texas, yes. The new Roadster—the one that's been 'coming soon' since 2017—showed off its 'SpaceX package.' It launched itself a few feet in the air and came back down.
Marcus: It fell with style! It wasn't just a brute force launch, it was controlled. It's a flying car, even if just for a second!
Ivy: Is it a car, though? Or is it a registered aircraft? What's the insurance on this? Can you legally trigger this on a public road? How much does the thruster package weigh?
Marcus: Oh, come on, don't be such a buzzkill! This is the future! Even Elon called it 'falling with style'!
Ivy: I'm sure the regulators will appreciate the pop culture reference when they try to figure out how to certify this thing. This feels like a solution in search of a problem.
Marcus: The problem is traffic! The problem is boring cars! Look, is it practical? No. Is it legal? Probably not yet. Is it the coolest thing I've seen all year? YES.
Ivy: The TechCrunch article was pretty light on the details that matter—price, availability, regulations. It was a PR stunt, Marcus.
Marcus: Of course it was a stunt! A glorious, ridiculous, amazing stunt. It's about pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
Ivy: So, what this means for you, our listener? Absolutely nothing. Unless you're a multimillionaire daredevil who's best friends with the FAA. For the rest of us, our next car will have its wheels stuck firmly on the ground.
Marcus: But for a few seconds, we can dream it won't.
Ivy: Alright, let's recap.
Marcus: An AI can now read the secret code on your computer chips, Meta and Apple are frenemies, and Tesla made a car that can jump.
Ivy: A very succinct, if slightly over-enthusiastic, summary.
Marcus: Okay, one last thing on that flying car. Someone on X already used an AI to mock up the FAA warning label for the Roadster's 'hop' button.
Ivy: Oh no. Let me guess.
Marcus: It's got icons for 'Don't use in a tunnel,' 'Don't jump over traffic,' and my favorite, a crossed-out cat with the text 'Check for pets on roof before launch.'
Ivy: Okay. That's... disturbingly plausible. I'd add one for 'Ensure vehicle is not currently inside a garage.'
Marcus: And on that note, we're out of time. Thanks for listening to Broke It.
Ivy: We'll be back tomorrow with more AI news. Until then, maybe don't try to decompile your microwave's firmware.
This show is made with AI: the hosts’ voices are synthetic and the scripts are AI-assisted. Every story links to its original source.