3 ms·

I mean, yeah you are right calling those out, but there is a plethora of vulnerable drivers from e.g. mainboard and GPU manufacturers, very often installed by d

by xvinci 3y ago

I mean, yeah you are right calling those out, but there is a plethora of vulnerable drivers from e.g. mainboard and GPU manufacturers, very often installed by default on new machines. I would distinguish between an Anti-Cheat actively doing shady stuff (like it seems to be the case here) and companies simply shipping crappy software - because that's too often the case in many areas.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
That's no excuse. I call those manufacturers out too. The truth is these hardware manufacturers treat software as a cost center, don't invest in it and make shitty software as a result. Honestly they shouldn't even be writing software at all, they should be publishing specs so that better people can write it and mainline it on Linux where it belongs. At least they aren't literally in the business of making malware designed to own people's computers with the express purpose of denying them their computing freedom. That's ultimately what "cheating" is: an exercise in computer freedom. The game is running on my computer, of course I can modify it if I want. Any attempt to prevent me from doing so obviously requires that the computer not obey me anymore. The only thing that separates this crap from malware is some terms of service document nobody reads. I've always been aware that all proprietary software is potential malware but I always gave these developers the benefit of the doubt until the actual vulnerabilities started surfacing. I remember my very first comments on reddit years ago were on a news post about some flight simulator software exfiltrating your browser's saved username and passwords directly to the game company. Let me see if I can dig up that thread. Edit: found it, here it is: https://old.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/7yh4zu/deleted_by_user/?limit=500 https://old.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/7yh4zu/deleted_b... https://www.pcmag.com/news/flight-sim-labs-fights-piracy-by-installing-malware https://www.pcmag.com/news/flight-sim-labs-fights-piracy-by-... > These idiots sent the passwords over HTTP to a machine running RDP on the public internet!! WTF, this stupidity has to be criminal! Can't make this shit up.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  You hit it with "they shouldn't be writing software at all, they should be publishing spec". I've been wanting to roll my own board for a long time (not the hardware, the boot and os side) but haven't outside of a raspi or arduino. I'd LOVE to be able to write my own motherboard code to have a better boot experience (somewhere between Apple Mac's and uSplash Linux) that's fast to user-land. There have been some companies that recently announced this kind of approach (at least with linux) but overall, we need our computer industry to be more open, we need more accountability of shady practices (exfiltrations!) and modern laws to allow people to protect themselves from these corporations that mean to steal our data.

by xvinci 3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago

That's no excuse. I call those manufacturers out too. The truth is these hardware manufacturers treat software as a cost center, don't invest in it and make shitty software as a result. Honestly they shouldn't even be writing software at all, they should be publishing specs so that better people can write it and mainline it on Linux where it belongs. At least they aren't literally in the business of making malware designed to own people's computers with the express purpose of denying them their computing freedom. That's ultimately what "cheating" is: an exercise in computer freedom. The game is running on my computer, of course I can modify it if I want. Any attempt to prevent me from doing so obviously requires that the computer not obey me anymore. The only thing that separates this crap from malware is some terms of service document nobody reads. I've always been aware that all proprietary software is potential malware but I always gave these developers the benefit of the doubt until the actual vulnerabilities started surfacing. I remember my very first comments on reddit years ago were on a news post about some flight simulator software exfiltrating your browser's saved username and passwords directly to the game company. Let me see if I can dig up that thread. Edit: found it, here it is: https://old.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/7yh4zu/deleted_by_user/?limit=500 https://old.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/7yh4zu/deleted_b... https://www.pcmag.com/news/flight-sim-labs-fights-piracy-by-installing-malware https://www.pcmag.com/news/flight-sim-labs-fights-piracy-by-... > These idiots sent the passwords over HTTP to a machine running RDP on the public internet!! WTF, this stupidity has to be criminal! Can't make this shit up.

gabereiser 3y ago
You hit it with "they shouldn't be writing software at all, they should be publishing spec". I've been wanting to roll my own board for a long time (not the hardware, the boot and os side) but haven't outside of a raspi or arduino. I'd LOVE to be able to write my own motherboard code to have a better boot experience (somewhere between Apple Mac's and uSplash Linux) that's fast to user-land. There have been some companies that recently announced this kind of approach (at least with linux) but overall, we need our computer industry to be more open, we need more accountability of shady practices (exfiltrations!) and modern laws to allow people to protect themselves from these corporations that mean to steal our data.