genuine curiosity: why would you need an SSH server on a gaming console?
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")
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.
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...
"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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
As for why, here is one example: backing up and restoring saves and other game data.
That's why...
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 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.
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.
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.
Not even talking about tinkering in general as that one should be obvious.
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).