3 ms·

Thanks, I have updated the comment. I had thought that it was 200 but its actually 1700 and also for the official link. From the link that you shared: It's cu

Thanks, I have updated the comment. I had thought that it was 200 but its actually 1700 and also for the official link. From the link that you shared: It's currently the seventh-greenest computer in the world, he said. "This particular system is about half a petaflop, or capable of about 500 trillion calculations per second," he said. "In the current time that we can measure it, it's about the 35th- or 36th-fastest computer in the world, and with some things that are going to be changing in the next eight or nine months with some upgrades, we could boost it to maybe the 20th-fastest computer in the world, and at the same time make it, at that moment in time, the greenest computer." Do you feel like something like this can again be possible with Linux being ported to PS5 now? I don't quite understand why sony would remove the linux feature from ps4 if this was something that the govt. was benefitting from. I assume that the govt. must have put some pressure to still allow linux on ps4/ps5 given that it was benefitting from it in the past?

LeFantome 7mo ago
Sony removed Linux as an option because people used it to pirate games.
- sunaookami 7mo ago
  No they didn't, you couldn't run games since you had no access to the GPU. The whole exploiting and homebrew CFW shenanigangs followed after Sony (illegally) removed the option for OtherOS.
  - ndiddy 7mo ago
    OtherOS originally existed so Sony could claim the PS3 was a computer, which put it into a lower tariff category than a game console in Europe. They never offered it on the PS3 Slim (launched in September 2009) because by that point Sony had gotten the price on the system down enough that the difference in taxes didn't matter to them, but they continued supporting it on the PS3 Fat. This was all legal because Sony never advertised OtherOS support on the Slim. Sony only removed OtherOS on the Fat after George Hotz discovered and published an exploit that allowed users to break out of the OtherOS sandbox and gain full control over the PS3. This allowed running custom firmware and pirating games with a bit of additional work. Sony judged that they couldn't patch the exploit without disabling access to OtherOS entirely, so that's what they did. Hotz announced his exploit in January 2010 (https://web.archive.org/web/20100129034435/http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/01/hello-hypervisor-im-geohot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100129034435/http://geohotps3....), the Yellow Dog Linux team posted a rumor that Sony was getting rid of OtherOS in February 2010 (https://www.xtremeps3.com/2010/02/20/rumor-alert-otheros-to-be-removed-in-next-firmware-update/ https://www.xtremeps3.com/2010/02/20/rumor-alert-otheros-to-...), and Sony officially announced the removal of OtherOS due to security concerns in late March 2010 (https://blog.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-update/ https://blog.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-u...). As you say, this removal was later found to be illegal in court.
- hamdingers 7mo ago
  They removed it because they lost money on every console sold unless you also bought some games. When governments/universities started buying thousands to use in compute clusters without buying a single game, it stopped being worth it. They added it to avoid game console specific tariffs, so they must have run the numbers and realized paying those would cost less than subsidizing a bunch of clusters.
  - mikkupikku 7mo ago
    My recollection / impression was that Sony was quite happy to lose game sales on thousands of PS3s because "used to make super computers" was a marketting win for them. They were used in this role for several years until Sony started trying to roll it back immediately following the publication of game piracy related developments that in part used OtherOS vulnerabilities.
    - ronsor 7mo ago
      And all Sony got in return was people exploiting their consoles harder and pirating games more.

LeFantome 7mo ago

Sony removed Linux as an option because people used it to pirate games.

sunaookami 7mo ago
No they didn't, you couldn't run games since you had no access to the GPU. The whole exploiting and homebrew CFW shenanigangs followed after Sony (illegally) removed the option for OtherOS.
- ndiddy 7mo ago
  OtherOS originally existed so Sony could claim the PS3 was a computer, which put it into a lower tariff category than a game console in Europe. They never offered it on the PS3 Slim (launched in September 2009) because by that point Sony had gotten the price on the system down enough that the difference in taxes didn't matter to them, but they continued supporting it on the PS3 Fat. This was all legal because Sony never advertised OtherOS support on the Slim. Sony only removed OtherOS on the Fat after George Hotz discovered and published an exploit that allowed users to break out of the OtherOS sandbox and gain full control over the PS3. This allowed running custom firmware and pirating games with a bit of additional work. Sony judged that they couldn't patch the exploit without disabling access to OtherOS entirely, so that's what they did. Hotz announced his exploit in January 2010 (https://web.archive.org/web/20100129034435/http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/01/hello-hypervisor-im-geohot.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100129034435/http://geohotps3....), the Yellow Dog Linux team posted a rumor that Sony was getting rid of OtherOS in February 2010 (https://www.xtremeps3.com/2010/02/20/rumor-alert-otheros-to-be-removed-in-next-firmware-update/ https://www.xtremeps3.com/2010/02/20/rumor-alert-otheros-to-...), and Sony officially announced the removal of OtherOS due to security concerns in late March 2010 (https://blog.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-update/ https://blog.playstation.com/2010/03/28/ps3-firmware-v3-21-u...). As you say, this removal was later found to be illegal in court.
hamdingers 7mo ago
They removed it because they lost money on every console sold unless you also bought some games. When governments/universities started buying thousands to use in compute clusters without buying a single game, it stopped being worth it. They added it to avoid game console specific tariffs, so they must have run the numbers and realized paying those would cost less than subsidizing a bunch of clusters.
- mikkupikku 7mo ago
  My recollection / impression was that Sony was quite happy to lose game sales on thousands of PS3s because "used to make super computers" was a marketting win for them. They were used in this role for several years until Sony started trying to roll it back immediately following the publication of game piracy related developments that in part used OtherOS vulnerabilities.
  - ronsor 7mo ago
    And all Sony got in return was people exploiting their consoles harder and pirating games more.