3 ms·

Certainly it did not cost $25 to develop the modchip. If you put in the labor and software related cost it's not $25.

• nine_k 4y ago
  It may cost $25 to deploy the hack after it has been developed. It's mere $25k to deploy 1000 instances of it, or even cheaper due to the economies of scale.
  • hunterb123 4y ago
    Since you need physical access, it's plus the cost of the dish and one month of service, either by stealing or buying them. The former would be quite illegal and difficult to scale, the latter would be quite expensive.
• unixbane 4y ago
  I have quit the software industry and now get paid what people _should_ get paid for software which is a small fraction of what I was being paid before. By choosing to work on actual real problems, instead of partaking in the pseudo-intellectual clout chasing contest that is the tech industry, I have discovered the real value of software which was never much to begin with as I assumed it was when I was a kid. tl;dr yep, he could have been shoveling CRUD shit and making more money, or implementing high end algorithms within broken operating systems, or implementing high end algorithms with insufficient education or time to prove them, while getting dumber scratch that he got a bug bounty for his work so his net gain is equal. check mate
• TheDong 4y ago
  I'm confused what you're even arguing against. The article specifically uses the phrasing "uses off-the-shelf parts that cost around $25". It doesn't say anything about the cost to develop, it doesn't say anything even slightly misleading or ambiguous about this. Like, what should the article have done instead? How could it possibly be clearer and more explicit about what $25 referred to here?