> PS5 User: hey can I install a SSH server on my PlayStation? > Sony: NOOOOOO YOU CAN'T DO THAT THAT'S' ILLEGAL WE'LL SUE YOU FOR VIOLATING TOS
> Steam Deck User: hey can I install a SSH server on my Steam Deck? > Valve: It's already included. Have fun.
Do want to clarify, I personally don't think it's the right play overall, but it's the play Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have been making for years. Now let's look at Valve.
Valve took their distribution platform, which already runs in lawless country on the largely unrestricted platform of PCs, and made a console experience for that with Steam Deck. Valve isn't incentivized to lock down the Deck any more than a PC is locked down, which is to say not very much at all. As a result, they can much more easily advocate for Right to Repair, modding, software customization, the works, because their existing market dominance as the biggest PC games distributor gives them that weight to throw around.
I'm happy that Valve isn't locking down Deck to customization in anticipation of shifting winds to get folks to target the platform, but we really can't call this an apples-to-apples comparison. Two very different companies with two very different histories of deal making with game publishers having latitude to do two very different styles of hardware control.
They got me. I went and bought a new TV. Not a Sony, but aggregate demand still affects prices.
An IGN article breaks down the replacement kit parts that were, presumably, offered with a profit baked in. https://www.ign.com/articles/ifixit-replacement-parts-steam-...
This is only the case for when the console gets released. The hardware stays fixed through it's life span and the cost of old tech either gets more efficient, the manufacturing process becomes more efficient, or the parts get cheaper. (With exceptions to disasters that spike ram production or halt chip production)
Hardware Refreshes: I'm sure someone is going to mention that. Those are pretty much entirely new console releases .. but you rarely ever get to take advantage of the new performance improvements.
No one, not even Sony, can build PS5-class hardware and sell it at a profit for $500 at retail... not at launch time, and not on the last day of the product life cycle. Attach rate isn't everything in the console business, it's the only thing.
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2014/5/23/5744344/ps4-a...
> From a profitability perspective, PS4 is also already contributing profit on a hardware unit basis, establishing a very different business framework from that of previous platform businesses.
[1] - https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/playstation-5-refresh-boas...
There were consoles, for example the original Xbox, that while inferior to the counterpart had success only because the modding community and homebrew software that you could have used on them. To the console manufacturer opening up (like how Microsoft is slowly doing) to homebrew software is in the end a good thing, not a bad one.
After it took Sony way too long to get PS3 sales profitable, they said "no more" and made sure PS4 and PS5 sales were profitable within a year of release, just like the PS1 and PS2 were.
Xbox is sold "at a loss" only because Microsoft is still accounting for the massive cost incurred by RRoD failures, not that they're losing money per-unit.
Nintendo only ever sold the Wii U and 3DS at a loss for any real amount of time (and the Virtual Boy was a money pit if you count that.)
So yeah, that's basically only true for the 7th gen consoles, because the PS3 was overdesigned and Microsoft was willing to spend money like water to break into the market, then not sour their lead because of RRoDs.
Or rather it's weird to call the platforms plagued by barely legal artificial deprivation of digital liberty 'lawful'.
It seems like the biggest reasons we have such restrictive business deals around media (movies/music/etc) is because of the gigantic publishing companies that got the chance to grow throughout the media boom and who are now absolutely terrified by the fact that they are not needed.
As gaming budgets and revenue have been increasing over the past couple decades, I think what I just realized is that we might be seeing game publishers following the exact same trajectory.
That in another decade or two it could be game publishers who are sitting on top of piles of contracts, using their lawyers to try to sterilize the gaming landscape because they are terrified of losing their positions. They could even make deals with “the old guard” and lock down all entertainment under one umbrella...
Terrifying thoughts.
That's not a fair assessment. Linux used a whitelisted shim, which only included accepted entries in an easy-to-edit/hack EFI variable. Imagine writing your secret password on a normal VFAT partition that any OS can boot/read/change. This is the equivalent.
The proper way is to enroll the private keys with the bios, and sign the payloads yourself (or let your distribution handle that), which is way more secure and can be automatized if you select the custom secureboot.
Happy to be corrected if things have changed since the last time I looked at things.
But a method of doing that wasn't included in the UEFI standard for obvious Microsoft reasons, so few vendors support it and those that do usually don't do it correctly, let alone in a standardised way.
Not always possible. Depends on firmware support and we all know how shitty proprietary firmware can be.
When you control the keys, SecureBoot is a good thing at least as good as encryption!
There are things that are fair to complain about, but on this, I don't see how Microsoft or anyone could have done any better to be playing nice with Linux while helping customers.
I have computers that don't have this feature.
> When you control the keys, SecureBoot is a good thing at least as good as encryption!
I agree. It's all about who owns the keys to the machine. If we do, then it's all good.
2022 - Year of the Linux Desktop?
last week i installed the same OS on an old machine for a relative, on a "fresh SSD" so no dual boot nonsense and it had problems right out of the box. Like memory leaks and printers wont install because apparently sane-devel cannot be found by HP install utility. Long story short, the printer is still not installed on that machine, it works but i had to install some alternate software like system monitors instead of supplied ones. Dunno, maybe that one was a dud but i definitely feel the pain points as are being described across the spectrum. the problem is, if i cannot set up the machine in say half an hour without any tinkering, that is a win and i expect someone else to follow the on-screen commands but we do have a lot to cover and that is not in a bad way. i am a full time linux user so i am a part of this community but its not prime-time ready yet. I have installed windows 7 thousands of times, it always works. unless there is a hardware issue, out of the box the system works. that is not true on our side.
i have to say it but the last years linus-linux challenge needs to be appreciated and we need to do more tests like these and keep fixing those small and big issues.
As for why, here is one example: backing up and restoring saves and other game data.
That's why...
"All-in-one portable PC gaming"
There is a great interview with one of the designers of the Steam Deck here that covers this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdX11KOP2tg
Seems pedantic, but I think it's important to the discussion in the way we think about the Steam Deck.
> Let's see if we can get back to good computing and gaming, where you give up a little convenience for a ton of power and possibility.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain.
And then eject the CD-ROM drive.
Anyway the fun thing was combining it with the (surprisingly not locked down) netsend command, so my little remote execution script would pop the cd drive tray open, and then they would get an “alert” from netsend saying “Feed Me!!!”
I wasn’t the sort of kid that pulled a prank like that on a teacher or the whole class, but it did get some laughs with the small circle of fellow computer nerds that would spend lunch or afternoons in the library using the computers to fool around learning Visual Basic, or play 90s online games, or for the few that new me… play proper LAN games… since I was the gatekeeper of by way of my perpetual habit of trying to lift the hood and work out how everything was setup, so I found all the fun network admin failures like group policy mistakes that left the empty second hard drive on a batch of computers as public read/write for anyone with local admin permissions on any computer on the network, or setting a local machine folder I had sufficient permissions to, to be network accessible if you had the machine IP, or telling them which computers I had left the burned cd copies of the games in (which were fully portable!, bless the pre-network connected DRM days)
Ahh youthful fun!
The whole drive??? Man, you guys played hardball.
By not forbidding things like this, it can become more than just a gaming console. For example, you might end up buying one second-hand with a broken screen and using it as a home server - it even comes with its own UPS battery!
First thing I thought reading this headline... "That's a few thousand metric tons of e-waste that won't be going into a landfill soon".
I've little interest in gaming or PS5 hardware TBH. But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me.
IN 2022, with what we know about climate change, pollution and e-waste, locking devices is simply spiteful and must be made illegal.
Well done to the team that cracked PS5
This is delusional. In the real world a jailbreak won't meaningfully extend a consoles lifetime.
>But the entire conceit of locked-down appliances that could be reused as general purpose devices, but are deliberately hobbled, is abhorrent to me.
People aren't going to take PS5s and reuse them as general purpose devices at any meaningful scale.
People are not going to take PS5's and reuse them but if it was legal to build products around PS4's reuse you can bet your ass a sizeable amount of PS5 users would love to make use of their old hardware. It would take a while for killer apps/products to release but stifling it before there's a chance seems like a huge waste to me.
I understand your pessimism but in this case I ask you to dream a little more.
The fact that people aren’t already doing so with regular general purpose computers seems to entirely discredit this theory, no?
There's a massive second-hand market for many general purpose computers. Plenty of people, myself included, buy used hardware almost exclusively.
Beyond that, many people are creating home theater PCs, home labs, home automation systems, arcade cabinets, custom car audio head units, drink robots, and more using commodity hardware. Often times these are reused hardware, which cuts the cost on hardware by a significant margin.
Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean it's not happening.
If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC".
People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw, thanks to jailbreaking. With root access users are able to patch the games so they can be pointed at community servers to replace the deprecated XBox Live servers that used to power the online multiplayer.
Similarly, we're seeing a bunch of games from the last couple of generations that reach out to company servers that are now being shut down. Jailbreaking provides life extension in some of these cases as well.
The PS3 was built on very exotic hardware, PS5 is just a regular x86 computer.
Playing with Linux on a PS3 at least had a bit of a novelty factor, with PS5 there’s none.
Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not.
> If you've ever used Kodi, it started as the "XBox Media Center" project. So Kodi would probably not be what it is today without people jailbreaking the OG XBox so they could use it for a media "PC".
The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore.
> People are still playing Quake Arena, Doom, and other og XBox games on real hw
A handful of hardcore enthusiasts.
In our analysis at the time, it was an economical supercomputer that could hit our needs. It doesn't have to be the best investment, just a decent one at the time. You seem to entirely discount the fact that sometimes the journey is just as important.
In this case, half the purpose behind the grant proposal was education and outreach engagement. The novelty of using PS3s was enough to get some traction with local highschool students and introduce them to computing topics in new ways.
> The market has moved long past that. The OG Xbox had something to offer that you couldn’t easily get elsewhere, that’s not the case anymore.
And who's to say people experimenting with the PS5 won't be creating something new we'll be talking about in 10 years? These are powerful machines, why artificially restrict what they can do?
Homebrew alone gives people ways to play with hardware they wouldn't normally be able to experiment with.
> A handful of hardcore enthusiasts.
~5k active participants in the Insignia community is more than a handful. Sure, it's not hundreds of thousands but it's not exactly public yet either. And there are thousands in similar communities for the PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii to name a few. Either way, these communities directly demonstrate that jailbreaking hardware does indeed extend a console's lifetime.
I don't. I very much acknowledge that the PS3 was a very novel piece of hardware, but the same doesn't apply to consoles in general.
>And who's to say people experimenting with the PS5 won't be creating something new we'll be talking about in 10 years? These are powerful machines, why artificially restrict what they can do?
They might, no doubt. But there's nothing novel about developing on a PS5, at least the original Xbox offered a unique form factor in its price bracket.
>Homebrew alone gives people ways to play with hardware they wouldn't normally be able to experiment with.
Yes, but PS5 hardware is just regular PC hardware. It's not exotic and exciting like the PS3 or Xbox were.
>~5k active participants in the Insignia community is more than a handful. Sure, it's not hundreds of thousands but it's not exactly public yet either. And there are thousands in similar communities for the PS Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii to name a few. Either way, these communities directly demonstrate that jailbreaking hardware does indeed extend a console's lifetime.
These are communities consisting of some thousands of people, but we're talking about hardware that sells 100+ million units.
I don't mind the idea of a closed platform for 5-10 years. But I do feel there should be legislation to sunset all devices as open. It's a shame we still have reverse-engineering efforts on 40+ year old computing devices.
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
You can kick off download of a game through the official app. Which will also notify you when the game is ready to play and then when it is fully downloaded. You can also see which games you have installed already and free up space by deleting some of them. And the last thing, you can also use the app to download the recent screenshots and video clips you took of your gameplay on the console.
All of this works from anywhere, as long as both your phone and the console have access to internet (they dont need to be on the same network though).
What kind of new-fangled hack is that? Here in Switch-land we just use a bit of tinfoil for our piracy needs.
I believe the hardmod is a voltage glitching exploit, as described for the Vita here: https://yifan.lu/images/2019/01/Injecting_Software_Vulnerabi... . It is able to inject code through the onboard memory then load a payload from a memory card rather than USB.
I didn't borrow it, I bought it. I pay for the power that lights it up, I pay for the network it connects to, I get to say what it does and when and how.
Yes it was advertised as a gaming console, yes it came with some games installed and it's very good at that, but it's also a whole-ass computer with the potential to do whole-ass computer things. I'm offended by having a computer sitting right there that can't be used to do some task that it might otherwise be capable of.
We'd never stand for arbitrary restrictions on other everyday items. Imagine if the can of soda I'm drinking could only be used as a drink. Oh you spilled some chemicals on yourself and you want to use this to rinse off quickly on your way to the shower? Sorry, drink output can only connected to mouth input, too bad about your arm. Like, what?
Objects are versatile and using that versatility is the essence of humanity. It's why we have opposable thumbs. It's why we're the dominant species on the planet. Backsliding from that in the name of copyright or some shit is inane, counterproductive, and offensive to the very core of my being.
I wonder if you misunderstood the GP's question.
I don't think they were asking, "Why, as the manufacturer, should we consider your desire reasonable?".
I think they were asking, "As a fellow computer user, I'd like to better understand something interesting, and it sounds like you might be up to something interesting."
For Sony's customers, part of the appeal of a console is the locked down nature. Cheating in multiplayer games is far less prevalent in newer consoles because of this, and even when the consoles do get cracked wide open, the barrier to entry is usually high enough to make cheating a pretty rare occurrence. This is all accomplished without making the user install a kernel-mode driver on the same computer they likely use to file their taxes.
I'll also point out that unlike what the GP insinuated, Sony won't actually sue you for running an SSH server on your PS5.
> Sony won't actually sue you for running an SSH server on your PS5.
But they might ban your console or try to brick it in some way. (i've heard of network bans but not bricking.. but I wouldn't put it passed them)
You own the device. Whatever you do with it is up to you. (Despite their whining about how "you only own a license to posses the device")
I can also easily transfer files between systems that way. I do this with my phone, it's so easy to connect via the network and copy files, no need to deal with USB stuff. Ever tried to transfer a video or screenshot from PS4 to any other device? Easiest method I found was making a PSN chat group, asking the other person to leave the group and then using it to share the data to myself so I can see it on my phone at a lower quality. It's so stupid.
I started playing games back when you had to mess with and resolve IRQ and DMA conflicts in DOS so I love having a console I can use as an appliance. You don't need SSH on every internet connected device you own.
Other devices do need some level of local access because bad software is often the limiting factor of usefulness.
You can use SSH to run commands to automatize things, for example turning off the console, launching an update, installing new software, etc, while not being in front of the TV.
Finally you can use it to diagnose problems on the console, for example you can connect to run a diagnosis, from which you may find out that the hard drive is causing problems and you should replace it, or the console is overheating and thermal throttling, etc.
Not even talking about tinkering in general as that one should be obvious.
Apple's macs are also fairly open. You can install your own bootloader, and boot whatever you want on them. There's a secureboot, but it can be disabled.
Of course, apple's iPhone are very similar.
I think I can see why it hasn't been used much, especially given that UWP app framework has been deprecated not that long ago.
Still a pain in the ass, and I never did it because there’s a big button that _does_ erase all your data in the process of switching that you can click by accident.
EDIT: After reading the Wikipedia page like the two people that replied to me, it is now clear to me that a meme is not necessarily a joke.
A meme is NOT necessarily a joke. An "internet meme", a subset of memes, is generally a joke, but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture, and includes many non-funny things
I would argue also that all jokes are memes: that all jokes ultimately have a core meme to them.
Yup. It's not a coincidence that it sounds like "gene". The idea was precisely to treat it like that - memes get passed from generation to generation, get mutated, mix with other memes.
> We are all pawns, controlled by something greater: Memes. The DNA of the soul. They shape our will. They are the culture — they are everything we pass on. Expose someone to anger long enough, they will learn to hate. They become a carrier. Envy, greed, despair… All memes. All passed along.
Yes, as per Richard Dawkins.
Wiktionary documents this usage since 2018:
> (Internet, slang) A myth circulating as truth, such as ineffective practices presented as effective.
> it’s a meme degree
> jogging is a meme
Or disinformation:
A: $GROUP_I_DONT_LIKE is doing $BAD_THING
B: dude, that's literally just a meme
Also jogging is quite literally a meme, from the 60s and 70s. That's when the pairing of the term and activity became popularized and spread through the population.
Basically, it's the smallest unit of cultural information. In the same sense as Gene it's the smallest unit of genetic information.
That's why it's pronounced Meme as in Gene.
None of this necessarily implies a joke.
For better or worse, that ship has sailed. Convincing people otherwise is going to go about as well as convincing them to not use "literally" in a figurative sense.