5 ms·

> Why else would they design it for the xbox, of all things? If you really want to know the answer, here's the lead engineer explaining it en detail: https://w

by qayxc 6y ago

> Why else would they design it for the xbox, of all things? If you really want to know the answer, here's the lead engineer explaining it en detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quLa6kzzra0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quLa6kzzra0

GeekyBear 6y ago
Dave Cutler was even more explicit about what was intended with the design of the XBox. If the user attempts to modify the system, it will brick itself. https://youtu.be/SVgSLud50ss?t=3500 https://youtu.be/SVgSLud50ss?t=3500
azalemeth 6y ago
He says in pretty much literally the opening sentence that it's for DRM: "we want to prevent the piracy of games", and then goes on to justify that their business model involves making a loss on each xbox sold, and wants to ensure that the CPU only runs Microsoft code against the wishes of the Xbox owner. A later direct quote is "the fundamental difference between Windows security and Xbox security is that the owner _is_ the bad guy". That's not something I want in my general-purpose computing device where I am the owner.
- api 6y ago
  Then don't buy stuff like that. None of this stuff will change unless people vote with their wallets. Companies have the idea that nobody cares. I've actually heard "nobody cares about privacy and security" repeated as a mantra in multiple circles.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    There are two meaningful options for CPU. If they both adopt the tech...
    - api 6y ago
      ... they create a niche for a third ... provided there are enough people who care. If nobody cares nobody cares.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        I don't have infinite resources to care with. Even if everyone is willing to spend an extra $100, a duopoly can ignore them and lose no money. That's not enough money to bootstrap a competitor desktop/laptop CPU.
      - square_usual 6y ago
        You make it seem like anybody can make a competitive CPU and take it to market. You need billions of dollars of R&D to make a good CPU, and if everyone who can afford that R&D signs on to taking your freedom away, there is no alternative.
        mrmonkeyman 6y ago
        Yet billionairs don't invest in this, they make rockets and fancy cars. Fancy phones.. You don't care, just admit it. They know it.
      - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
        You downvote this, HN, but this is spot on. You keep gobbling up this shit, you all drool over the toys Intel and MS push into your faces. Shoveling this manure up your own asses for decades. Now you are complaining and claiming you have no choice. Yeah, _now_ you don't anymore, but there is still wiggle room to influence the future. If we all go belly up and give up dystopia will come sooner than you are comfortable with.
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    As time goes on, we don’t have a lot of choices in a lot of these sorts of cases. There are dozens of hardware and software things I would love to replace if there were a viable alternative Speaking of, I heard the librem phone just started shipping
  - azalemeth 6y ago
    I personally don't. I haven't bought a single Sony product since their rootkit fiasco 15 years ago [1]. I don't buy products with DRM on them: I buy classical music DRM free from an excellent record label called Hyperion (many of my friends in the choral music circuit have been recorded by them); I don't buy DVDs; I legally format-shift media freely streamed on OTA TV broadcasts, and I don't buy DRM encumbered things online. My indie games come from itch.io and my "indie" games come from gog.com. The trouble is, (a) doing this is a bit of a giant PITA, and (b) companies never know that you're not there. Sony doesn't know, and doesn't care, that I don't buy their products because of their aggressive pro-DRM stance. I am one consumer, many sigma away from mu, and slowly but surely I look like an antiquated relic: streaming has been so successful, and Widevine so ubiquitous, that it's almost impossible to join the "normal world" without being subjected to (unwanted) DRM. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
- qayxc 6y ago
  > That's not something I want in my general-purpose computing device where I am the owner. Consoles aren't general computing devices, though. Apple disagrees with your idea of ownership, too ;) and so do the customers who Pluton is targeted at - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/windows10-secured-core-computers https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/windows10... The whole project isn't targeted at end-users. It's IoT, businesses, hospitals, government agencies, utility companies, etc. We need to stop seeing us (as private end users) as the centre of the world and start to acknowledge that there's hundreds of millions of PC devices out there that don't serve private end users. It's the security needs of these organisations that are addressed by this technology, not yours, not mine. The unfortunate truth is that Windows is still the backbone of many government agencies, power plants, hospital IT, businesses and so on. It's also a fact that most of these machines are not well managed, lack updates , aren't hardened or secured in any way and are targeted by cyber criminals on a daily basis; sometimes with grim consequences. It gets even worse when you look at IoT and the mess that manufacturers get us into (default passwords, unsecured data transfer, ...). I see this chip in the same area as Intel's vPro, TPM 2.0, AMDs ASP (in their Ryzen PRO line), and so on; not necessarily aimed at end users (aside from the occasional buzzword) and more aimed towards businesses and government users (as part of their Zero-Trust initiative).
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > The whole project isn't targeted at end-users. It's IoT, businesses, hospitals, government agencies, utility companies, etc. > It's the security needs of these organisations that are addressed by this technology, not yours, not mine. It's perfectly fine to let a sysadmin lock down a computer to reduce what the end user can do. None of these use cases or security benefits require taking power away from the sysadmin. And that's what the argument is about: not whether the end-user is losing control, but whether the sysadmin is losing control. With the obvious note that lots of home users are their own sysadmins. > I see this chip in the same area as Intel's vPro, TPM 2.0, AMDs ASP (in their Ryzen PRO line), and so on; not necessarily aimed at end users (aside from the occasional buzzword) and more aimed towards businesses and government users (as part of their Zero-Trust initiative). Those are basically fine, as long as they can be disabled when not needed. But if I'm forced to give someone else special beyond-root access to my device for DRM purposes, that's not acceptable.
- blackearl 6y ago
  Is that on the newest Xbox? Saw articles earlier that you can simply switch to dev mode and run retroarch emulators already.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Dev mode apps run under a hypervisor (so do retail games), so there's still a security platform underneath everything protecting apps from each other (and the OS from the apps)
  - rand49an 6y ago
    All apps on Xbox run in as VMs in a modified HyperV environment so that should be pretty straightforward.
- musicale 6y ago
  > "the fundamental difference between Windows security and Xbox security is that the owner _is_ the bad guy". That's an amazing quote that should be preserved for posterity. ;-)

by qayxc 6y ago

GeekyBear 6y ago

Dave Cutler was even more explicit about what was intended with the design of the XBox. If the user attempts to modify the system, it will brick itself. https://youtu.be/SVgSLud50ss?t=3500 https://youtu.be/SVgSLud50ss?t=3500

azalemeth 6y ago

He says in pretty much literally the opening sentence that it's for DRM: "we want to prevent the piracy of games", and then goes on to justify that their business model involves making a loss on each xbox sold, and wants to ensure that the CPU only runs Microsoft code against the wishes of the Xbox owner. A later direct quote is "the fundamental difference between Windows security and Xbox security is that the owner _is_ the bad guy". That's not something I want in my general-purpose computing device where I am the owner.

api 6y ago
Then don't buy stuff like that. None of this stuff will change unless people vote with their wallets. Companies have the idea that nobody cares. I've actually heard "nobody cares about privacy and security" repeated as a mantra in multiple circles.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  There are two meaningful options for CPU. If they both adopt the tech...
  - api 6y ago
    ... they create a niche for a third ... provided there are enough people who care. If nobody cares nobody cares.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      I don't have infinite resources to care with. Even if everyone is willing to spend an extra $100, a duopoly can ignore them and lose no money. That's not enough money to bootstrap a competitor desktop/laptop CPU.
    - square_usual 6y ago
      You make it seem like anybody can make a competitive CPU and take it to market. You need billions of dollars of R&D to make a good CPU, and if everyone who can afford that R&D signs on to taking your freedom away, there is no alternative.
      - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
        Yet billionairs don't invest in this, they make rockets and fancy cars. Fancy phones.. You don't care, just admit it. They know it.
    - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
      You downvote this, HN, but this is spot on. You keep gobbling up this shit, you all drool over the toys Intel and MS push into your faces. Shoveling this manure up your own asses for decades. Now you are complaining and claiming you have no choice. Yeah, _now_ you don't anymore, but there is still wiggle room to influence the future. If we all go belly up and give up dystopia will come sooner than you are comfortable with.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  As time goes on, we don’t have a lot of choices in a lot of these sorts of cases. There are dozens of hardware and software things I would love to replace if there were a viable alternative Speaking of, I heard the librem phone just started shipping
- azalemeth 6y ago
  I personally don't. I haven't bought a single Sony product since their rootkit fiasco 15 years ago [1]. I don't buy products with DRM on them: I buy classical music DRM free from an excellent record label called Hyperion (many of my friends in the choral music circuit have been recorded by them); I don't buy DVDs; I legally format-shift media freely streamed on OTA TV broadcasts, and I don't buy DRM encumbered things online. My indie games come from itch.io and my "indie" games come from gog.com. The trouble is, (a) doing this is a bit of a giant PITA, and (b) companies never know that you're not there. Sony doesn't know, and doesn't care, that I don't buy their products because of their aggressive pro-DRM stance. I am one consumer, many sigma away from mu, and slowly but surely I look like an antiquated relic: streaming has been so successful, and Widevine so ubiquitous, that it's almost impossible to join the "normal world" without being subjected to (unwanted) DRM. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
qayxc 6y ago
> That's not something I want in my general-purpose computing device where I am the owner. Consoles aren't general computing devices, though. Apple disagrees with your idea of ownership, too ;) and so do the customers who Pluton is targeted at - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/windows10-secured-core-computers https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/windows10... The whole project isn't targeted at end-users. It's IoT, businesses, hospitals, government agencies, utility companies, etc. We need to stop seeing us (as private end users) as the centre of the world and start to acknowledge that there's hundreds of millions of PC devices out there that don't serve private end users. It's the security needs of these organisations that are addressed by this technology, not yours, not mine. The unfortunate truth is that Windows is still the backbone of many government agencies, power plants, hospital IT, businesses and so on. It's also a fact that most of these machines are not well managed, lack updates , aren't hardened or secured in any way and are targeted by cyber criminals on a daily basis; sometimes with grim consequences. It gets even worse when you look at IoT and the mess that manufacturers get us into (default passwords, unsecured data transfer, ...). I see this chip in the same area as Intel's vPro, TPM 2.0, AMDs ASP (in their Ryzen PRO line), and so on; not necessarily aimed at end users (aside from the occasional buzzword) and more aimed towards businesses and government users (as part of their Zero-Trust initiative).
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > The whole project isn't targeted at end-users. It's IoT, businesses, hospitals, government agencies, utility companies, etc. > It's the security needs of these organisations that are addressed by this technology, not yours, not mine. It's perfectly fine to let a sysadmin lock down a computer to reduce what the end user can do. None of these use cases or security benefits require taking power away from the sysadmin. And that's what the argument is about: not whether the end-user is losing control, but whether the sysadmin is losing control. With the obvious note that lots of home users are their own sysadmins. > I see this chip in the same area as Intel's vPro, TPM 2.0, AMDs ASP (in their Ryzen PRO line), and so on; not necessarily aimed at end users (aside from the occasional buzzword) and more aimed towards businesses and government users (as part of their Zero-Trust initiative). Those are basically fine, as long as they can be disabled when not needed. But if I'm forced to give someone else special beyond-root access to my device for DRM purposes, that's not acceptable.
blackearl 6y ago
Is that on the newest Xbox? Saw articles earlier that you can simply switch to dev mode and run retroarch emulators already.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Dev mode apps run under a hypervisor (so do retail games), so there's still a security platform underneath everything protecting apps from each other (and the OS from the apps)
- rand49an 6y ago
  All apps on Xbox run in as VMs in a modified HyperV environment so that should be pretty straightforward.
musicale 6y ago
> "the fundamental difference between Windows security and Xbox security is that the owner _is_ the bad guy". That's an amazing quote that should be preserved for posterity. ;-)