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> it can become more than just a gaming console First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be goin

> it can become more than just a gaming console First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon". I've little interest in gaming or PS5 hardware TBH. But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. IN 2022, with what we know about climate change, pollution and e-waste, locking devices is simply spiteful and must be made illegal. Well done to the team that cracked PS5

chuckSu 4y ago
rosnd 4y ago
>First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon". This is delusional. In the real world a jailbreak won't meaningfully extend a consoles lifetime. >But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. People aren't going to take PS5s and reuse them as general purpose devices at any meaningful scale.
- Fargren 4y ago
  Maybe not in wealthy countries. In Argentina hacked PS2s are still pretty commonly used, and repair shops service them (OK, maybe not anymore? I left six years ago). Jail-breaking absolutely extends the lifetime of consoles.
- yamazakiwi 4y ago
  Not with regulations preventing this market from realization obviously. People are not going to take PS5's and reuse them but if it was legal to build products around PS4's reuse you can bet your ass a sizeable amount of PS5 users would love to make use of their old hardware. It would take a while for killer apps/products to release but stifling it before there's a chance seems like a huge waste to me. I understand your pessimism but in this case I ask you to dream a little more.
  - prvit 4y ago
    > if it was legal to build products around PS4's reuse you can bet your ass a sizeable amount of PS5 users would love to make use of their old hardware The fact that people aren’t already doing so with regular general purpose computers seems to entirely discredit this theory, no?
    - ajford 4y ago
      What rock are you under? There's a massive second-hand market for many general purpose computers. Plenty of people, myself included, buy used hardware almost exclusively. Beyond that, many people are creating home theater PCs, home labs, home automation systems, arcade cabinets, custom car audio head units, drink robots, and more using commodity hardware. Often times these are reused hardware, which cuts the cost on hardware by a significant margin. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean it's not happening.
- ajford 4y ago
  Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news. If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC". People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw, thanks to jailbreaking. With root access users are able to patch the games so they can be pointed at community servers to replace the deprecated XBox Live servers that used to power the online multiplayer. Similarly, we're seeing a bunch of games from the last couple of generations that reach out to company servers that are now being shut down. Jailbreaking provides life extension in some of these cases as well.
  - prvit 4y ago
    >Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news. The PS3 was built on very exotic hardware, PS5 is just a regular x86 computer. Playing with Linux on a PS3 at least had a bit of a novelty factor, with PS5 there’s none. Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not. > If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC". The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore. > People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw A handful of hardcore enthusiasts.
    - ajford 4y ago
      > Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not. In our analysis at the time, it was an economical supercomputer that could hit our needs. It doesn't have to be the best investment, just a decent one at the time. You seem to entirely discount the fact that sometimes the journey is just as important. In this case, half the purpose behind the grant proposal was education and outreach engagement. The novelty of using PS3s was enough to get some traction with local highschool students and introduce them to computing topics in new ways. > The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore. And who's to say people experimenting with the PS5 won't be creating something new we'll be talking about in 10 years? These are powerful machines, why artificially restrict what they can do? Homebrew alone gives people ways to play with hardware they wouldn't normally be able to experiment with. > A handful of hardcore enthusiasts. ~5k active participants in the Insignia community is more than a handful. Sure, it's not hundreds of thousands but it's not exactly public yet either. And there are thousands in similar communities for the PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii to name a few. Either way, these communities directly demonstrate that jailbreaking hardware does indeed extend a console's lifetime.
mildmotive 4y ago
As long as there are poorly regulated countries to dump the e-waste in arbitrary limitations are working just fine.
deaddodo 4y ago
> I've little interest in gaming or PS5 hardware TBH. But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. I don't mind the idea of a closed platform for 5-10 years. But I do feel there should be legislation to sunset all devices as open. It's a shame we still have reverse-engineering efforts on 40+ year old computing devices.

chuckSu 4y ago

rosnd 4y ago

>First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon". This is delusional. In the real world a jailbreak won't meaningfully extend a consoles lifetime. >But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. People aren't going to take PS5s and reuse them as general purpose devices at any meaningful scale.

Fargren 4y ago
Maybe not in wealthy countries. In Argentina hacked PS2s are still pretty commonly used, and repair shops service them (OK, maybe not anymore? I left six years ago). Jail-breaking absolutely extends the lifetime of consoles.
yamazakiwi 4y ago
Not with regulations preventing this market from realization obviously. People are not going to take PS5's and reuse them but if it was legal to build products around PS4's reuse you can bet your ass a sizeable amount of PS5 users would love to make use of their old hardware. It would take a while for killer apps/products to release but stifling it before there's a chance seems like a huge waste to me. I understand your pessimism but in this case I ask you to dream a little more.
- prvit 4y ago
  > if it was legal to build products around PS4's reuse you can bet your ass a sizeable amount of PS5 users would love to make use of their old hardware The fact that people aren’t already doing so with regular general purpose computers seems to entirely discredit this theory, no?
  - ajford 4y ago
    What rock are you under? There's a massive second-hand market for many general purpose computers. Plenty of people, myself included, buy used hardware almost exclusively. Beyond that, many people are creating home theater PCs, home labs, home automation systems, arcade cabinets, custom car audio head units, drink robots, and more using commodity hardware. Often times these are reused hardware, which cuts the cost on hardware by a significant margin. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean it's not happening.
ajford 4y ago
Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news. If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC". People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw, thanks to jailbreaking. With root access users are able to patch the games so they can be pointed at community servers to replace the deprecated XBox Live servers that used to power the online multiplayer. Similarly, we're seeing a bunch of games from the last couple of generations that reach out to company servers that are now being shut down. Jailbreaking provides life extension in some of these cases as well.
- prvit 4y ago
  >Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news. The PS3 was built on very exotic hardware, PS5 is just a regular x86 computer. Playing with Linux on a PS3 at least had a bit of a novelty factor, with PS5 there’s none. Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not. > If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC". The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore. > People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw A handful of hardcore enthusiasts.
  - ajford 4y ago
    > Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not. In our analysis at the time, it was an economical supercomputer that could hit our needs. It doesn't have to be the best investment, just a decent one at the time. You seem to entirely discount the fact that sometimes the journey is just as important. In this case, half the purpose behind the grant proposal was education and outreach engagement. The novelty of using PS3s was enough to get some traction with local highschool students and introduce them to computing topics in new ways. > The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore. And who's to say people experimenting with the PS5 won't be creating something new we'll be talking about in 10 years? These are powerful machines, why artificially restrict what they can do? Homebrew alone gives people ways to play with hardware they wouldn't normally be able to experiment with. > A handful of hardcore enthusiasts. ~5k active participants in the Insignia community is more than a handful. Sure, it's not hundreds of thousands but it's not exactly public yet either. And there are thousands in similar communities for the PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii to name a few. Either way, these communities directly demonstrate that jailbreaking hardware does indeed extend a console's lifetime.

mildmotive 4y ago

As long as there are poorly regulated countries to dump the e-waste in arbitrary limitations are working just fine.

deaddodo 4y ago

> I've little interest in gaming or PS5 hardware TBH. But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me. I don't mind the idea of a closed platform for 5-10 years. But I do feel there should be legislation to sunset all devices as open. It's a shame we still have reverse-engineering efforts on 40+ year old computing devices.