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Worth Doing Badly
Personal blog · worthdoingbadly.comprogrammingsystemssecurity
Worth Doing Badly is a personal blog at worthdoingbadly.com about programming, systems and security. Since 2018, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Hardware-accelerated Linux virtual machines on jailbroken iPhone 12 / iOS 14.1”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for technical deep dives on Apple platform internals: hypervisors on jailbroken iPhones, AppKit compatibility hacks, and VoWifi/IPSec. Mostly cited as support in Apple and Windows compatibility threads.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter called the VoWifi post "a really good read"; another called a VoWifi explainer the best resource they found on how it works.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Programming experiments by @zhuowei.
Most-linked posts?
- Hardware-accelerated Linux virtual machines on jailbroken iPhone 12 / iOS 14.18 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-06-06
- Apps for which macOS applies compatibillity fixes5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2018-05-21
- Jailbroken iOS can't run macOS apps. I spent a week to find out why5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-06-07
- Learning VoWifi, VoLTE, and IMS: because I'm too Millennial to make a phone call3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-12-09
- Crash Chrome 70 with the SQLite Magellan Bug2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-12-15
What Hacker News says?
For someone more curious, I tried to learn more about this tech, and this [1] is the best resource I found about someone explaining how it works. Essentially VoWifi connects to your ISP via a IPSec VPN using secrets derived using your sim card as a smart card, then connects to a internal SIP server and voila. I spent a lot of time trying to connect to the IPSec server from a computer, but couldn't figure out how to…
Comment linking /vowifi/
on ““It’s time for Apple to fix texting””Submitted Booting a macOS Apple Silicon Kernel in QEMU as a story · 262 points
HN discussionEven Apple, who is notorious for not caring about backwards compatibility, does these kinds of backwards compatibility fixes in the OS https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/ But the lengths to which Microsoft has historically gone to for backwards compatibility have been legendary - if decades-old internal corporate apps for which the source was lost 10 years ago don't work on the latest Windows, they don't get a…
Comment linking /appkitcompat/
on “How Wine works 101”Submitted Apps for which macOS applies compatibillity fixes as a story · 256 points
HN discussionZhuowei Zhang (@zhuowei) published a proof of concept that crashes Chrome 70: https://worthdoingbadly.com/sqlitebug/
Comment linking /sqlitebug/
on “Remote code execution vulnerability in SQLite”Submitted Hardware-accelerated Linux virtual machines on jailbroken iPhone 12 / iOS 14.1 as a story · 243 points
HN discussionRelated: https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/ (Hardware-accelerated virtual machines on jailbroken iPhone 12 / iOS 14.1)
Comment linking /hv/
on “Virtualizing iOS on Apple Silicon”Submitted Jailbroken iOS can't run macOS apps. I spent a week to find out why as a story · 182 points
HN discussionThey aren’t actually too similar. They both use XNU, but the memory model is completely different. On macOS memory can be paged to/from disk. On iOS it isn’t and applications must free memory when asked or be terminated [0]. iOS applications are sandboxed by the kernel, with no opt out. macOS applications are not sandboxed by default and are opt in. Then there are the API and UI differences. EDIT: That linked blog p…
Comment linking /macappsios/
on “Virtualizing iOS on Apple Silicon”Submitted Almost booting an iOS kernel in QEMU as a story · 121 points
HN discussionThe most recent hardware actually do support ARM hypervisor extensions so you can actually run raw linux on iOS hosts :) https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/
Comment linking /hv/
on “Running GUI Linux in a virtual machine on a Mac”Submitted A kids' novel inspired me to simulate a gene drive on 86M genealogy profiles as a story · 94 points
HN discussionNo, not yet (not without jailbreak, at least). https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/ mentions that M1 iPads "already have Hypervisor support unlocked in the kernel" so they might be planning something for someday…
Comment linking /hv/
on “iPadOS 16”Submitted Crash Chrome 70 with the SQLite Magellan Bug as a story · 75 points
HN discussionI work on some Mac applications that, at times, try to exceed what MacOS applications are capable of doing. They almost always break between MacOS releases. Usually the cause is that Apple improved various security restrictions in Gatekeeper. What tends to happen is that older builds work fine, but any new builds don't work well. But, what's interesting is that the page at https://worthdoingbadly.com/assets/blog/app…
Comment linking /assets/blog/appkitcompat/appkit_processed.html
on “Apps for which macOS applies compatibillity fixes”Submitted Mac Accepted Any Root Cert, Making Code Signing Useless as a story · 74 points
HN discussionA14/M1 and higher all have the hardware for virtualization, nothing is fused off for "devices". iOS and iPadOS don't ship Hypervisor.framework but the kernel still recognizes the entitlements for using it. Apple will never sign provisioning profiles with those entitlements, of course; but on at least one particular OS version with a jailbreak you could set up hardware virtualization. See https://worthdoingbadly.com/…
Comment linking /hv/
on “Xcode Cloud overview”Submitted VoLTE/VoWiFi Research as a story · 46 points
HN discussion> They never cared about backwards compatibility before This is not true. While they may not have the slavish devotion to backwards compatibility that Microsoft has, even Apple implements app-specific hacks to keep non-compliant software compatible with newer versions of macOS https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/
Comment linking /appkitcompat/
on “Big Sur is both 10.16 and 11.0”Submitted Get root on macOS 13.0.1 with CVE-2022-46689, the macOS Dirty Cow bug as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAh I see, so I did find someone that tried to do this here [1], but it seems like they were not even able to connect to the SIP server. Bummer, I wonder if someone else has had success. 1. https://worthdoingbadly.com/vowifi/
Comment linking /vowifi/
on “Build Your Own Mobile Proxy for Web Scraping”Submitted Tutorial – emulate AIX 7.2 in QEMU (2018) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionApple actually has implemented manual compatibility fixes for several third party apps. https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/
Comment linking /appkitcompat/
on “The Secret Apple M1 Coprocessor”Submitted Learning VoWifi, VoLTE, and IMS: because I'm too Millennial to make a phone call as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYou need to jailbreak the ipad and the path you will tread will be a bit unsupported, but its possible. https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/
Comment linking /hv/
on “Apple Approves iDOS Emulator”Submitted Tutorial – emulate an iOS kernel in QEMU up to launchd and userspace as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis looks to be a follow up of: https://worthdoingbadly.com/vowifi/ Which was a really good read! I noted this however: > However, VoLTE’s implementation is not compatible with our everyday VPNs and VoIP software. This report from Sysmocom shows that it would take months to modify Ubuntu Touch for VoLTE support. I wonder why that is? I am using a Pinephone with Mobian right now, and a Librem 5 with PureOS, and both…
Comment linking /vowifi/
on “VoLTE/VoWiFi Research”Submitted Jailbroken iOS can't run macOS apps. I spent a week to find out why. (2021) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionEven Apple, the company that is usually seen as not caring about backwards compatibility, is known to do this in macOS! https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/
Comment linking /appkitcompat/
on “Windows 95 went the extra mile to ensure compatibility of SimCity, other games”Submitted Learning VoWifi, VoLTE, and IMS as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
