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Comment by giobox | Hacker News Reader

The other major incentive for hacking the console Microsoft removed was for the first time on a modern mainstream home console to allow side loading of homebrew code/emulators etc. The console supported a developer mode that allowed side loading of third party applications, so folks could get emulators and other traditionally "banned" content on the console through an officially supported route.

There's a great presentation by Tony Chen on the Xbox One's security features:

> https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/

Examples of the kinda software you can put on the Xbox One in developer mode:

> https://xboxdevstore.github.io/

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"side loading", I know this term is the one used but I think should be pushed back against with just using the standard "installing"/"install". It makes the control point clearer and (should be) unsettling when you can't "install" software on hardware you own.

Yeah I listened to a podcast with Corey Doctorow (inventor of the term "enshittification") and he made this point quite well, to the point where I have completely removed "side loading" from my vocabulary. It's installing software on the computer I own.

It's a great point. As a geek I used to think those details don't matter, but it turns out language shapes society and how humans think way more than I understood.

We need to catch up on this because the people who know how to use language for propagandizing don't have the best intentions in mind.

But using the original term is not enough. We need to combat their word-twisting by upping them. We need a way to convey "their way of installing stuff by default is inferior and an attack on liberty".

Something like:

- direct install: installing as we always did

- caged install: installing through a locked store.

Maybe somebody better at marketing can find a good way to do this. In fact, we should have a whole site and community to organize together and shift the narrative on all nerdy things: formats, open web, DRM, patents, etc.

We have been weak on these points for so long because we care much more about solving tech problems than selling them. But openness is being eaten away under our noses. Has been for years.

Sideloading should be called installing, and installing from the store should be called jailloading.

Jailoading is quite catchy, although it does have a "Micro$oft" and "Microslop" feel. Like more an insult than a word made to be used daily.

Agree. I recommended Stremio to a friend on an iPhone and it turns out it has to be "side loaded". My response is "so you can't install it?"

I think sideloading is a fine term when it is a consumption device. No one buys a video game console expecting to be able to install anything they want. As a matter of fact, there is an argument that restricting what can be installed is a feature. By maintaining control of the hardware, they can eliminate entire classes of problems that someone might run into. That is to say, when you let your kid play on the switch, you don't want to have to troubleshoot how they got the thing borked from installing malware.

That said, I do think words matter and I always point out that the reason these systems are locked down is because of Digital Restrictions Management. I also refuse to buy anything from Sony because they changed their mind about letting me install linux on the PS3.

I just think side loading is good way to describe installing custom software on a non-general purpose computer, and that not every computer needs to be general purpose. It's significantly better than the previous terms of hacking, cheating, stealing, and voiding your warranty.

I tend to draw a distinction - side loading usually infers a supported but not mainstream way of installing applications - this xbox for example cannot side load without you paying a small fee to enable the developer mode, and the vast majority of software will be obtained via retail discs or the Xbox store. It's not a generic "install" mechanism native to the out of the box experience for the console - you have to do some extra work for this avenue to open.

When I think of "install" I think of general purpose OSes which can install software from almost any source no questions asked, or use the native out of the box support for software installations.

The similar distinction exists with android and iOS, and is probably why the term is popular in those communities too.

If nothing else, the term sideload makes very clear on platforms with native appstores or locked down distribution channels (consoles, phones...) that the install did not come from the native channels. Installs from game discs or the xbox store are inherently different from developer mode software and using the same term "install" for both disguises this fact.

I'm very much of the opinion that PS3's linux support massively delayed its exploitation. And not just because it provided a path for homebrew/linux.

A lot of the early hacking focused on trying to breach the hypervisor from otheros. The hypervisor turned out to be quite secure, people smashed their heads against it for years until it finally fell to a memory glitching attack.

But turns out it was so much easier to just attack gameos with a USB exploit. The hypervisor did nothing to prevent it, and would then just decrypt games for you (because gameos was trusted)

You are 100% correct but they started clamping down on people using Dev mode strictly for emulators and homebrew. So here we are.

This is what killed Linux support on PS as well, Sony was disappointed with what was being done with PS2Linux, instead of indie titles.

Hence why PS3 Other OS no longer did hardware acceleration.

The PS3 was incredible value dollar-to-flop, given that it was sold at a loss. This resulted in universities and other research institutes buying them en masse to create supercomputer clusters. Naturally buying thousands of consoles but not a single game puts sony in a difficult position. Although I think it's sad the hardware got locked down in later revisions, I fully understand why they did it.

The US Department of Defense went quite a bit further. They created the Condor Cluster in 2010 which was comprised of 1760 PS3s. At the time it was placed 33rd worldwide for a supercomputer.

https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...

At the time, entire PS3s were cheaper than what it cost to get the CPU from IBM.

at some point it was claimed that the reason sony removed the ability to run linux was because, literally, Saddam Hussein (maybe not) was using them to pilot jets or somesuch.

I haven't looked, but I am pretty sure that Saddam was dead before the ps3 launched. At the very least, his 2003/2004 ouster was before the ca 2007ish (I think) launch date.

Ok, I looked it up; Saddam Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006 and the ps3 launched on Nov 11, 2006 in Japan and Nov 17, 2006 in the US. So, technically, he was alive for the launch.

That factoid has the ingredients for an awesome conspiracy theory ;-)

in case you don't check up again, i did find this https://web.archive.org/web/20041120084657/http://arrakis.nc...

And in my mind the whole story was a publicity stunt, considering the political wind at the time and the place that broke the story; which was then quoted at me in college.

I said the word claimed. in the past. And it was more like: thousands of PS2 because sony/japan marked them dual use because they "were so powerful." So probably astro-turfed or even native advertising (considering the place that "broke" the story.)

buuuuut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster the US government went ahead and did make a supercomputer out of PS3s.

anyhow thanks for helping me confirm my memory is functioning perfectly.

ETA: https://web.archive.org/web/20041120084657/http://arrakis.nc... probably where this "wacky" idea came from...

they couldn't have gone for 1776 of them?

I would be curious to know more precise numbers. My intuition suggests that when Sony sells millions of them, the number diverted for non-gaming purposes is maybe thousands or tens of thousands.

Nearly 90 million units by the time it was discontinued, but I'm not sure how many were sold at the point they removed Linux support.

The marketing win of being able to say "these are so poweful, the military literally uses them in supercomputers" certainly more than makes up for a hundredth of a percent of consoles having a zero attach rate.

> Although I think it's sad the hardware got locked down in later revisions, I fully understand why they did it.

The PS3 was coincidentally locked down after it was jail broken (broken in Jan, otheros patched out in Mar.

Linux on playstation was a play by Sony not to have customs like on a toy but as a more favorable computer merchandise. They didn't care.

Nope, that was with YA BASIC.

There were different customs for different countries targetted with different tactics.

Ya basic was only one front in that war.

Sure, if we disregard that PS2 Linux came almost two years later, was only sold via Internet, added an extra 500 euros on top, although it got discounted into 300 euros at the end of PS2 lifetime.

I own one such kit.

That doesn't factor into it, because the tariffs, bans, etc they were trying to circumvent weren't dependent on the software shipping with the device in that case, nor the separate price of the software, nor were they even necessarily primarily targeting Europe.

Each of these schemes had different sets of regulatory checkboxes they were trying to tick, and so had very different end products.

Sure as you wish, I was a PlayStation fanboy back then, since Yaroze, and surely remember YA BASIC for PS2 and Other OS for PS 3, being the only ones.

Yaroze and PS2 Linux never had anything to do with tariffs.

Not sure where you're coming from on that since it was a well-known and somewhat mocked at the time fact when Sony argued with UK customs

https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/playstation-2-is-...

Linux on Playstation was the final hubris of Ken Kutaragi to have his insane CPU design take over computing. Kutaragi envisaged the PS3 becoming a standard hardware platform similar to the PC but fully controlled by Sony. That was their goal with the PS3, they said so themselves time and time again. The second Kutaragi was removed from power over at Playstation, they closed the Other OS function.

It was the last time that a Japanese company made a fundamentally Japanese move.

> fully controlled by Sony.

And Toshiba and IBM, it was a three-way collab. There was even a second-generation Cell (PowerXCell 8i) released in IBM Q Series blade-servers.

Yeah. pretty much PowerPC part two. PowerPC the business move, like the oroginal one.

> It was the last time that a Japanese company made a fundamentally Japanese move.

What do you mean by this?

It's certainly an extremely bizarre and false statement. Curious what he meant as well.

In their defense, they clamped down following lobbying (and pressure) from Nintendo IIRC.

Part of me also thinks that Microsoft were so forward with offering what was basically a test kit because they were confident in their security.

Why Nintendo? Far as I know, they've never released anything on an xbox console.

Nintendo doesn't want users emulating Nintendo systems in the Xbox is my guess.

Nintendo is notoriouslg very aggressive with their IP. I bet they weren’t happy you could emulate a switch or something.

No, and theyd like to keep their games off of any Xbox.

I've seen this argument, but I strongly suspect that it's a cope argument. "We couldn't get in... because... we didn't care to! Even though we've hacked literally every other object on the planet just because."

The proof in the pudding of this will be when the Nintendo Switch 2 reaches 2035 with no cracks. That's my prophecy; that this time around the cat actually will catch the mouse. Between NVIDIA's heavily revised glitch-resistant RISC-V security architecture and Nintendo's impeccable microkernel, there's nowhere left to hide. DRM may turn out to have been a very slow long battle to "victory," not a "this will always be defeated."

Well, and these systems are also designed with ratchet-type measures in place from the get-go, where holes are plugged, fuses are burned, and newly released titles will only decrypt/run on the latest OS.

So even if Switch 2 doesn't make it all the way to 2035 with zero cracks, there's a strong likelihood that any exploits found will be short-lived.

Which incentivizes people to hold on to exploits for as long as possible, ideally past the console life cycle, just to make sure it can be used, which already is a thing

I have my doubts. I suspect that Nvidia have made mistakes.

Anyway, situations like the one you describe are one to be solved by legislation requiring certain devices be sold as open devices that put power in the hands of the owner.

my nintendo switch is "rootable" by shorting two pins in the controller interface, with a previously set up SD card inserted with the homebrew bootloader.

My PS3 and PS4 were both jailbroken/rooted. I don't remember the ps3 routine, but the PS4 was loading the "system -> help" page while connected to a ESP32 wifi AP running a simple web server that replied to requests with the jailbreak for PS4.

I give it about a year, especially if nintendo has to change the specs or otherwise tampers with customer expectations. there's bound to be some way to reload firmware on a "dead" device without pulling chips, and that's all it takes.

The shorting two pins is a heavy oversimplification of what happened.

The two pins were installed by design from Nintendo to activate the Tegra RCM mode. RCM mode meanwhile has a USB buffer overflow which is the real bug.

In modern NVIDIA chips, this RCM mode no longer exists. The new recovery modes meanwhile are running across multiple physically separate CPUs verifying each other (glitch one, the other notices), all running formally verified firmware written in SPARK (the thing you use for nuclear reactors and avionics).

As for the OS itself, according to a maintainer who rewrote the kernel twice for open source, it has zero bugs. None. The microkernel is tiny, has no drivers, and almost no attack surface. This is born out by WebKit exploits being a dime a dozen on Switch, but all of them are useless.

> In modern NVIDIA chips, this RCM mode no longer exists. The new recovery modes meanwhile are running across multiple physically separate CPUs verifying each other (glitch one, the other notices), all running formally verified firmware written in SPARK (the thing you use for nuclear reactors and avionics).

I guess that, when you absolutely want zero surprises, Ada is the language of choice.

> it has zero bugs. None.

This is hyperbole. We have 1 switch that routinely "won't power on" without a ritual of button holding & timing. My original switch used to hard lock, but i stopped trying to play the sorts of games that were causing the OS to crash.

Both of these disprove the zero bugs claim, unless we move the goalposts.

That's obviously hardware failure, loose solder connections, or RAM failure, not bugs. For that matter, I was talking very specifically about kernel security bugs in context, not any bugs someone could experience.

That's like saying "I plugged in my phone's charging cable, and unplugged it, 20,000 times, and now it's sometimes showing the charging symbol inconsistently, obviously a software bug proving the charging circuit driver has a security flaw."

When you extrapolate out the political economy consequences of your hypothesis being correct the future looks very dark indeed. If you can make an unhackable game console it should be obvious to people on this site what sorts of dystopias you could also create.

unhackable subscription ignition interlock device?

unhackable brain-computer interface required for most daily activities (like phones are today) and with a killswitch "for the public safety" and 24/7 cloud monitoring. Obviously this is pretty out there science fiction today but will it remain so in a century? And if it doesn't, what kinds of political systems are likely to dominate? What will happen to those political systems that for one reason or another decline this capability? I leave these questions as an exercise for the reader.

Before we even get there, within 5-7 years new PCs will be Xbox-like, locked down devices. Only approved OS and apps may be installed, as it is a felony to run an OS that doesn't meet federal and state KYC ID requirements or even own a copy of one without a license, and no PC manufacturer wants the liability risk of being found complicit in the commission of such crimes. General purpose computing will be a thing of the past for the masses (who didn't really want it anyway). Server hardware will be exempt from these requirements, but to purchase it you need a D-U-N-S number and a statement of intended use in the purchase agreement.

Even if it were possible to find a vulnerability in the hardware, doing so without attracting the attention of law enforcement will be profoundly difficult, as Windows sends telemetry back to Microsoft about every instruction that runs on your hardware. Apple will claim to be more privacy-focused, at least for a year or two, but the M9 chip's NPU will just perform local inference on your activity and report you to Apple and the FBI if it detects attempts to break security.

2035 for Switch 2 piracy to get started sounds nice, as someone invested in the platform.

Maybe we should think about this like the concept of public domain. Locked down for X years in order to protect the artist, then opened up for everyone to benefit society.

Now if only Sony would let us even have a smidgen of our own code on our Playstations. But nope, Sony would rather gatekeep that one to Hell and back.

Instead, they keep stripping stuff off the console. I'm still so annoyed that PS5 doesn't even have an integrated web browser anymore (especially trying to troubleshoot network issues from the console itself).

But hey, Sony can leave bullshit exploit vectors open like PPPoE clients on the console itself (why? just use a router?)...

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