5 ms·

I wish people would take statements in relative terms along with the whole context before attempting to refute them with a quick gotcha in absolute terms. Obvi

I wish people would take statements in relative terms along with the whole context before attempting to refute them with a quick gotcha in absolute terms. Obviously nothing is ever unhackable, not even Fort Knox, given infinite time and resources, and Microsoft never made such claims, this is just media editorializing for clicks and HN eating the bait, but Xbox One was definitely the most unhackable console of its generation. Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack a 499$ consumer device from 2013. PS4 and iPhones of 2013 have also been jailbroken long ago. Therefore, even the click-bait statement with context in relative terms is 100% correct, it truly was unhackable during the time it was sold and relative to its peers of the time.

devmor 8mo ago
> Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack it. Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? I'm not very familiar with the Xbox scene, but I would assume that there was a lot less drive to achieve this given that Xbox has never really had many big exclusive titles and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). As an aside, I wonder if Microsoft's extra effort into securing the platform comes from their tighter partnership with media distributors/streaming platforms and their off-and-on demonstrated desire to position the Xbox as a home media center more than just a gaming console.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  >and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). TF are you on about? The xbox one of 2013(competitor of the PS4 who got hacked long before) had a ~46% market share in the US and ~35% globally. Hardly insignificant. And any Microsoft Product, even those with much lower market share, attracts significant attention from hackers since it's worth a lot in street-cred, plus the case of reusing cheap consoles as general PCs for compute since HW used to be subsidized. And of course for piracy, game preservation and homebrew reasons. I again tap the sign of my previous comment, of uring people to stop jumping the gun to talk out of their ass, without knowing and considering the full context.
  - devmor 8mo ago
    Can you provide a source for those statistics? They don’t match up with any numbers I’ve seen, and in fact look ludicrously unrealistic.
    - joe_mamba 8mo ago
      >Can you provide a source for those statistics? Google Gemini > They don’t match up with any numbers I’ve seen, and in fact look ludicrously unrealistic. Well can you post your numbers and sources, or are we supposed to read your mind?
      - devmor 8mo ago
        > I asked a machine to make it up for me. I don't come here to argue with an LLM. Use your brain and ability to research if you want to argue with me.
- debugnik 8mo ago
  I too forget sometimes that Wii U existed.
  - platevoltage 8mo ago
    I forgot that my Wii U existed until I remembered, hooked it up, and the NAND had gone bad. So I replaced the NAND by soldering in an SD card, got it working again, and put it back in its box until I decide I need to play Wind Waker again.
  - devmor 8mo ago
    Wow. I really did forget it existed. I was still thinking of the Wii.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- deadbeef7f 8mo ago
  > Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? The person who hacked the original Xbox wrote a book on the topic, which they've since made free: https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf
  - devmor 8mo ago
    Oh that’s the best source I could ask for, thank you!
scottyah 8mo ago
This goes against information theory as a whole, and the point of words. How are you going to convey all this extra context to people who don't follow the space, and what word(s) do we use for something that is actually unhackable? Literally unhackable? XD
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  Firstly, who made the claim that it was guaranteed to be "unhackable"? Was it Microsoft themselves when they sold it, or slop journalists looking to create false contrarianism in order to legitimize their own PoV and drive traffic to their articles? If it's the latter the we're just wasting our breath ehre over made up BS. Secondly, this is HN, not some generic town corner shop newspaper. It's assumed the readers who come here often and comment with no green profiles, have at least some basic technical know-how that nothing is ever unbackable, least of all a console from 2103, and therefore process information through that context lens, instead of feigning complete ignorance and arguing from the false pretext they gobbled up from editorialized titles created by slop journalists.

devmor 8mo ago

> Case in point, it took 13 years of constant community effort to hack it. Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? I'm not very familiar with the Xbox scene, but I would assume that there was a lot less drive to achieve this given that Xbox has never really had many big exclusive titles and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). As an aside, I wonder if Microsoft's extra effort into securing the platform comes from their tighter partnership with media distributors/streaming platforms and their off-and-on demonstrated desire to position the Xbox as a home media center more than just a gaming console.

joe_mamba 8mo ago
>and remains the least popular major console (with an abysmally tiny market presence outside of the US). TF are you on about? The xbox one of 2013(competitor of the PS4 who got hacked long before) had a ~46% market share in the US and ~35% globally. Hardly insignificant. And any Microsoft Product, even those with much lower market share, attracts significant attention from hackers since it's worth a lot in street-cred, plus the case of reusing cheap consoles as general PCs for compute since HW used to be subsidized. And of course for piracy, game preservation and homebrew reasons. I again tap the sign of my previous comment, of uring people to stop jumping the gun to talk out of their ass, without knowing and considering the full context.
- devmor 8mo ago
  Can you provide a source for those statistics? They don’t match up with any numbers I’ve seen, and in fact look ludicrously unrealistic.
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    >Can you provide a source for those statistics? Google Gemini > They don’t match up with any numbers I’ve seen, and in fact look ludicrously unrealistic. Well can you post your numbers and sources, or are we supposed to read your mind?
    - devmor 8mo ago
      > I asked a machine to make it up for me. I don't come here to argue with an LLM. Use your brain and ability to research if you want to argue with me.
debugnik 8mo ago
I too forget sometimes that Wii U existed.
- platevoltage 8mo ago
  I forgot that my Wii U existed until I remembered, hooked it up, and the NAND had gone bad. So I replaced the NAND by soldering in an SD card, got it working again, and put it back in its box until I decide I need to play Wind Waker again.
- devmor 8mo ago
  Wow. I really did forget it existed. I was still thinking of the Wii.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
deadbeef7f 8mo ago
> Can you attempt to quantify this effort in comparison to other game consoles? The person who hacked the original Xbox wrote a book on the topic, which they've since made free: https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf
- devmor 8mo ago
  Oh that’s the best source I could ask for, thank you!

scottyah 8mo ago

This goes against information theory as a whole, and the point of words. How are you going to convey all this extra context to people who don't follow the space, and what word(s) do we use for something that is actually unhackable? Literally unhackable? XD

joe_mamba 8mo ago
Firstly, who made the claim that it was guaranteed to be "unhackable"? Was it Microsoft themselves when they sold it, or slop journalists looking to create false contrarianism in order to legitimize their own PoV and drive traffic to their articles? If it's the latter the we're just wasting our breath ehre over made up BS. Secondly, this is HN, not some generic town corner shop newspaper. It's assumed the readers who come here often and comment with no green profiles, have at least some basic technical know-how that nothing is ever unbackable, least of all a console from 2103, and therefore process information through that context lens, instead of feigning complete ignorance and arguing from the false pretext they gobbled up from editorialized titles created by slop journalists.