4 ms·
Just for history’s sake: I wrote iPHUC (and yes I was 19 and came up with that name lmao) and a guy with the nic “nightwatch” who I loved working with was respo
by ixtli 3y ago
Just for history’s sake: I wrote iPHUC (and yes I was 19 and came up with that name lmao) and a guy with the nic “nightwatch” who I loved working with was responsible for the initial jailbreak and coining the term itself. I believe he was also responsible for pdf or tiff exploits that unlocked the PSP, too. He worked and lived in South America possibly at a university … but that’s all I know.
It was a really fun time and I learned a lot.
Also, George Hotz endangered the welfare of a few people who had kindly gotten us access to some documentation in Japanese despite repeated pleas not to do so. Very frustrating and why the dev team all eventually stopped working on the project.
- ixtli 3y agoOh, I just remembered one of the people who helped us understand the ARM architecture (it was somewhat new at the time) had the nic “pineapple” which is why many of the early UIs had pineapples on them. Again, great people and it’s a shame we never kept in touch
- epcoa 3y agoARM32 was nearly 15 years old by that point (the ARM700, the first 32 bit core dates to 1993). Maybe not exciting but the ARM32 had the bulk of its life before the iPhone, ARM64 came shortly after. Old and boring for the original iPhone ISA was also intentional.
- ixtli 3y agosorry i shouldn't have said "arm architecture" there obviously arm32 wasnt anything new: i figured that was implied. we wanted specifics on the S5L8900 and they were (and still are) quite hard to come by. this contributed to the discovery and instrumentation of DFU mode, iboot, etc that contributed to jailbreak
- 95014_refugee 3y agoLess “intentional” and more “unavoidable”. There was limited runway to fix the S5L8900 design, the Cortex A8 wasn’t ready at tapeout, and so the ARM1176 was it. If Broadcom hadn’t looked like they were fumbling the BCM2730 it would have been an ARM1132 instead, and history would have been a little different.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- epcoa 3y agoAnd yet those are all 32 bit ARM cores. Which in some way was "unavoidable" as I don't know what viable alternatives existed for a phone SoC in 2007, though someone can correct that. ARM1132? That is not a core I have ever heard of nor can find any reference to. I assume it would be some ARMv6 ARM11 though, a uarch that was already quite mature by the time the iphone rolled around.
- reaperman 3y ago> Also, George Hotz endangered the welfare of a few people who had kindly gotten us access to some documentation in Japanese despite repeated pleas not to do so. Very frustrating and why the dev team all eventually stopped working on the project. Would love any elaboration on this that you can provide which wouldn't expose you to a libel suit.
- ixtli 3y agoHonestly I just remember careful coordination about what information / code / artifacts to release from the private IRC channel and when. He ignored the consensus a bunch of times which lead to demoralization and people leaving. I’ll never know how real the threat to peoples jobs were but I don’t think they were being overly cautious.
- 95014_refugee 3y agoThe “private” IRC channel was not as private as you thought it was…
- ixtli 3y agoi earnestly hope thats the case. someone should really publish the chat transcripts because they are an important part of computing history.
- IntelMiner 3y agoGiven his later actions with the Playstation 3 where he watched Fail0verflow's CCC presentation, then immediately pushed the first "Hello World!" firmware patch just so he could say he did. Immediately landing the entire team in hot water as Sony (understandably) assumed they were related parties Geohot seems to have a history of throwing other people under the bus to score "victories" for attention
- ixtli 3y agothis was my experience so i was not surprised to read about the ps3 stuff. about 8 or 9 years ago i made a comment somewhere in the depths of HN with more information. honestly i dont really care about GH so much as I wish other people who were kind and brilliant got the attention and credit they deserve