7 ms·
It's sad to me how exciting it is to run <your own software> on <your own hardware>
by love2read 7mo ago
It's sad to me how exciting it is to run <your own software> on <your own hardware>
- basilgohar 7mo agoThis has always been the hacker spirit. Make things designed to do one thing do another thing. If it's against the hardware maker's intentions or just completely outside their expectation, even better!
- tw04 7mo agoI don't think he's making a comment on the hacker spirit. He's making a comment on the fact that it has somehow become not just commmon, but accepted that a vendor can tell us and force us to use something in the way they want. Imagine, for instance, if you bought a flat head screwdriver, but the manufacturer told you that you could never, ever, under any circumstances use it to pry something open. It was stricly to be used for installing or removing screws. We would all laugh that vendor out of the room and tell them they're insane. Somehow we stopped doing that with all sorts of newer technologies.
- irishcoffee 7mo agoClearly, no “we” did not, as evidenced by running Linux on a ps5.
- tw04 7mo agoSo society laughed at Sony for restricting the OS on the PS5 and refused to buy it? Because I'm pretty sure one person going through a ridiculous effort to install linux isn't reflective of society rejecting the restriction. 92.2M units sold, as of today 1 unit? running Linux.
- irishcoffee 7mo ago“Society rejecting the restriction” huh? Someone proved you wrong, you need more than one person to do it now? Goal posts, moved. Not everything needs to have political, teenage angst applied to it.
- tw04 7mo agoPolitical teenage angst? Is English not your native language? One person taking an action isn’t reflective of society collectively rejecting something. This isn’t an opinion up for debate. 90M+ consoles sold is proof society has completely accepted the idea of a locked ecosystem with hardware they don’t get to control.
- irishcoffee 7mo agoYou’re bitching about society accepting something. Teenage angst. You’re nailing it.
- piva00 7mo agoYou are quite grating on how you reply to people. Be more respectful, even more when insulting someone as having "teenage angst" while acting like someone suffering from teenage angst when replying.
- dylan604 7mo ago> as of today 1 unit? running Linux. I think you are misinterpreting that number. It would be better read as "as of today, the first PS5 running Linux". There were people running racks of PS3s as Linux servers back in the day not as gaming stations but compute using its hardware. People will do crazy things. Do not write them off.
- Uvix 7mo agoThose PS3s were sold with official Linux support, so running racks of them wasn't quite as crazy as it might have sounded at first.
- dylan604 7mo agoUntil Sony revoked the ability to do that, so people went back in to hack them so they could go back to running Linux
- musicale 7mo agoThey shut it down due to (likely valid) concerns that it could potentially be leveraged to jailbreak the regular PS3 OS and/or run unlicensed commercial games.
- 3form 7mo agoThe former being a fairly weak argument, and the latter I can't say I understand at all. Why would they care whether your software is licensed?
- musicale 7mo agoYou omitted the important "commercial" part. The reason they care whether your commercial software is licensed is that their business model is charging for software licenses for that software. Once there were indications that people were very much interested in, and working on, running rips of commercial games on PS3 Linux, and/or leveraging OtherOS to jailbreak a stock PS3, it was basically game over for OtherOS/PS3 Linux, in spite of the fact that it had been advertised on the box (of the original "fat" PS3) as a feature of the system. Piracy (in the running unlicensed commercial games/copyright infringement sense) had long been the killer app for jailbreaking, including mod chips (and other schemes for playing CD-R "backups") for the PS1 and PS2, as well as PSP jailbreaks and custom firmware; homebrew notwithstanding, the most popular use was playing commercial games without paying for them. Sony also nerfed the original 5-console installation (aka "game sharing") for PSN games after players organized public game sharing web sites to split the cost of games 5 ways. "No one could have predicted this!" as they (don't) say.
- mschuster91 7mo ago> Imagine, for instance, if you bought a flat head screwdriver, but the manufacturer told you that you could never, ever, under any circumstances use it to pry something open. It was stricly to be used for installing or removing screws. Try filing a warranty claim if it bends, the manufacturer will go and tell you to kick rocks.
- figassis 7mo agoThat is fine, they're not required to support unexpected use cases. Not the same as forbidding you from using it as you see fit. It's simple really, they can do what they want with their resources, you can do what you want with yours, especially those you paid for.
- LoganDark 7mo agoBut you only have a license to use the screwdriver, it's still their property. You aren't entitled to free use of someone else's property, of course. Just because it's in your possession doesn't mean it's yours! (This is supposed to be satire but feels scarily accurate anyway.)
- knollimar 7mo agoEverytime I use an Autodesk product (6days a week) I lament this court case. The whole set of software IP rules seems like mental gymnastics to justify a career (that I like, support, and benefit from) rather than rules that come from axioms or ethics that make sense.
- jonhohle 7mo agoIsn’t OP doing just that? A few more hoops through, but it’s not like Sony is going to sue… oh, wait, if he tells anyone else how to do it they might.
- basilgohar 7mo agoI totally understand. But I think these artificial restrictions inspire that rebellious spirit in hackers to circumvent and see what's possible.
- lopis 7mo agoBut this has always been the case. The circumvention protections certainly became more sophisticated as hardware and software evolved.
- advael 7mo agoYes, now they involve calling the cops to enforce a law that microsoft lawyers wrote and then sent lobbyists to bully or trick most of the world into signing. The corruption of the rule of law in modern nation-states into effectively brutal mafia-style enforcement of otherwise untenable business models certainly has facilitated quite a shift in the hardware multinationals use to secure their various unfathomably excessive bags
- TurkTurkleton 7mo ago> it has somehow become not just commmon, but accepted that a vendor can tell us and force us to use something in the way they want. The PS5 is a games console and is marketed as such, not a general-purpose computer. Of course they want, and "force", you to use it to play PS5 games. I have a hard time seeing this as coercive when computers still exist, even if architecturally a PS5 is virtually identical to a general-purpose computer in most of the ways that matter, because at least since the Fairchild Channel F, it's always been the case that consoles are just constrained computers. > Imagine, for instance, if you bought a flat head screwdriver, but the manufacturer told you that you could never, ever, under any circumstances use it to pry something open. It was stricly to be used for installing or removing screws. > We would all laugh that vendor out of the room and tell them they're insane. Somehow we stopped doing that with all sorts of newer technologies. Imagine, for instance, if that flat head screwdriver had a means to prevent you from using it to pry things open. Some kind of magical negative mass in the handle that kicks in to cancel out leverage but not torque, or an explosive charge that blows your hand off if more than a certain amount of force is applied non-rotationally, or something. It might seem a little less risible then, and you would probably just opt to buy a screwdriver that doesn't have such restrictions (especially if those restrictions were explosively enforced). Like, I get it. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the argument that we should be able to do whatever we want with hardware that we own. At the same time, being upset about the PS5 making it impossible to run arbitrary software without hacking feels a little like being upset that your washing machine doesn't clean your dirty dishes as well as it cleans your dirty laundry: it's not made for that, and it's not really reasonable to expect it to be able to do that well if at all.
- MarsIronPI 7mo ago> At the same time, being upset about the PS5 making it impossible to run arbitrary software without hacking feels a little like being upset that your washing machine doesn't clean your dirty dishes as well as it cleans your dirty laundry: it's not made for that, and it's not really reasonable to expect it to be able to do that well if at all. Except that's so completely not like what's going on with modern hardware. They're taking general purpose computers and restricting you from doing general purpose computing on them. Like, a dishwasher is made to wash dishes. It has a shape and a design made for washing dishes. You would need to make physical modifications to get it to wash clothes. This is like taking a machine that could wash both dishes and clothes and intentionally stopping it from washing clothes. This is not OK. This needs to stop. Soon they'll come for our general-purpose computing with "features" for DRM.
- pkilgore 7mo agoIt's sad to see someone running doom on a pregnancy tester?
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoNo, people might be misreading his comment. (To me) it seems that, he is saying how bad the situation of hardware/lock-in is that we are being excited over being able to run our own software on said hardware in the first place (Aka the reason why we are here) Being able to run doom on pregnancy tester is actually good. If I paid for the tester, I am gonna use the whole tester to run doom (LOL) So I think this is what they meant.
- threetonesun 7mo agoOr to put it more concretely in this context: Sony used to let you run Linux on PlayStations! There were all kinds of interesting uses for PS3s outside of gaming that they (initially) supported.
- LeFantome 7mo agoI do not own any Sony products and I am not a corporate cheerleader. But “we” have to own that the reason that Sony stopped selling/supporting Linux in their machines is because “we” used it to circumvent copyright on closed-source games. It is the problem with “our” ethics, not theirs that led to Linux getting pulled.
- mschuster91 7mo agoThat's BS. Linux/OtherOS on the PS3 only existed so that Sony could evade European tariffs on pure gaming consoles that were markedly higher than on general-purpose computers. Once the tariffs went, so went OtherOS support. In any case OtherOS didn't have access to the full system resources and, on top of that, Sony actually lost money on PS3s because it was priced as a loss-leader, with game purchases being supposed to earn the actual money.
- 7mo ago
- jsemrau 7mo agoWe need to bring back this culture.
- LeFantome 7mo agoDid it go somewhere?
- dylan604 7mo agoRight? They're asking that question on a forum dedicated to the subject that has been around for nearly two decades. The entirety of Silicon Valley was born in people's garages. Not really sure where it's meant to come back from
- rvz 7mo agoThe problem is that the 'developers' you are seeing today are not the same from the 90s that have that hacker mindset and curiosity. Instead, it has been hijacked by those who have never opened a PC before or were never interested in the field to begin with and saw it as a VC vehicle get-rich-quick scheme infiltrated by tons of grifters. Once the money dries up post-extraction then they (grifters) abandon the field to the true 'hackers' still in the field doing clever projects like this one.
- dylan604 7mo agoTo me, the difference is that "hackers" has become focused on software. The early days in SV they had to invent the hardware. Now, hardware is commodity, and it has a novel idea for a hardware hacker to make the news. The Zuck hacked his first iterations of what became Facebook together. Apps like Snapchat and what not are just software hacked together using the hardware in novel ways. Things like Flipper0 are interesting hardware from hackers. Some interesting things find their way to the crowd funding sites that ultimately die on the vine. Sites for 3D printing show there are still some mechanical hardware types that still tinker. Overall, it just shows that the hacker ethos never went any where. It's just younger people being exposed and thinking it's something new.
- charcircuit 7mo agoMost computers in the world don't need the ability to have their operating system changed or run custom user built software. Consumers will be fine with the preexisting software and such a feature is unneeded complexity that almost no one will use.
- realusername 7mo agoIf consumers are fine with the pre-existing software and will never try to use anything else, why do we lock them out though? Something doesn't add up.
- charcircuit 7mo ago>why do we lock them out though? It reduces security, expands attack surface, reputational damage from people complaining about their phones bricking doing something unsupported.
- tavavex 7mo agoThat's how all these vendors justify their actions once they decide it's time to kill off their competition and impose arbitrary limitations. But how real is this "damage", actually? How big do you think the overlap between 'users who want to install custom operating systems', 'users who have no idea what they're doing' and 'users who would loudly complain after an obvious mistake on their own part' is? The #1 source of reputational damage for vendors is people breaking something within their controlled environments. The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector, just because of how niche it is. We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years, custom firmware for phones goes back at least 25 years, and despite all of this, the world hasn't gone up in flames yet. The security pressure exists, but it's minimal compared to everything else. The real reasons are profit-driven.
- charcircuit 7mo ago>The bar to run a custom OS is already so high for average people that it will never matter or be a social engineering attack vector >We've been able to run anything on PCs for over 40 years And the PC platform has had terrible security. Do not use it as an example of everything being fine. You are forgetting the malware for PCs which would spread by writing a custom operating system on a removal media. Then that removable media is plugged into another PC and when that PC boots up it boots that operating system which goes ahead and infects the OS installed to the hard disk along with any other removable media.
- LeFantome 7mo agoI get what you are saying. But this always would have been exciting. This is like a post saying someone got Apple Basic running on their Commodore 64.
- SecretDreams 7mo agoAgree with both you and OP. Hardware we buy should be open to be modified easily with a common open source scheme - but any modifications should void warranty. At the same time, we don't live in that world and so this post and the work done is still cool and exciting.
- andai 7mo agoMore like if Commodore used to sell an official Apple Basic package and then stopped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2
- buran77 7mo agoPlayStation 3 similarly had the option to run alternative operating systems, virtualized [1]. I remember running Yellow Dog Linux on a couple of PS3s. (edit. just found the YDL 5.0, 6.0, and 6.2 buried somewhere on my NAS). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS
- dmoy 7mo agoAnd sadly it's only going to get harder and harder. More stuff is going to get locked down - not just PCs and PC-adjacent stuff like PS/XBox/etc. It's already somewhat involved to get new firmware on a lot of network connected home devices you buy, but it'll become even more difficult. 3D printers are about to get pushed over the edge via legislation. Tractors.... gestures wildly at Deere You can't fix software problems in your dishwasher or fridge. Liability lawsuits drive a lot of this :/
- wolrah 7mo ago> Liability lawsuits drive a lot of this :/ That's the official line a lot of the vendors responsible will push, but the evidence for that is...lacking. Compare that to the simple reality that doing this is more profitable and devices that can't be easily repaired lead to more consistent sales. Capitalism gonna capitalism.
- dmoy 7mo agoYea I don't doubt that capitalist greed goes into it too. And in the case of true fear of liability lawsuits, even that also has capitalist greed undertones: Imagine you're building random-iot-device-with-a-lithium-battery. You could: 1. Build the whole thing so it's easily hackable Your lawyers point out prior art in liability cases around exploding/burning lithium-powered-devices and won't really approve release without some precautionary measures 2. Properly isolate and test the battery and related systems, ensure they can't possibly overheat even in the face of arbitrary input from the rest of the system, if modified. Lock down the battery parts, leave everything else open. 3. Do some testing on the whole-ass system to assuage your lawyers, and then lock the whole thing down 3 is typically cheaper, a lot of companies then open door 3 instead of 2. Capitalism and liability lawsuits tag teaming here imo Side note, the reason we have a litigious society imo is because most companies reach for door #4 4. Yolo, release unsafe product even with company's own firmware, fires and explosions ensue, people are maimed and die, lawsuits follow. Because lawsuits are the only recourse, we don't hold the companies criminally liable or anything.
- 7mo ago
- RobRivera 7mo agoWhy sad?
- stavros 7mo agoBecause it should be a given and super boring.
- sejje 7mo agoParticularly when we were already doing this in the late 90s with the original Xbox. I ran debian on mine. I would have thought we'd have soft-mods to allow this within a couple weeks of any new console launch, and perhaps the hardware vendors would even be supporting it by now.
- stavros 7mo agoYeah, but alas, since they sell the hardware at a loss, they really don't want you using it for anything that's not "buy games from us". I was really looking forward to the Steam Machine but the RAM shortage ruined their plans.
- jama211 7mo agoIt’s pretty rare that you actively cant, but it makes sense a lot of businesses wouldn’t bother to try and assist you with doing that. But some definitely don’t want you to, and I get that that’s sad. Always makes space for a competitor though!
- 6SixTy 7mo agoIt's unfortunately par for the course for something like a console to be like this. Consoles are often subsidized by licensing and publishing costs of games, so preventing you from running your own software is within their best interest.
- nickysielicki 7mo agoI mean, the hardware is sold at a loss so it makes perfect sense.
- whycome 7mo agoI absolutely hate the design of the "app store" which means that you can't revert to an older version when you find out the new one changes a critical feature that you used previously.