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Liliputing reports
Hacker group fail0verflow recently showed off a PlayStation 4 running Linux[1] at the Console Hacking 2015 conference, marking the first time someone has managed to install a full-blown, desktop operating system on the game console.
Although others have tinkered with the PS4 in the past, including a Brazilian hacker group that used a Raspberry Pi to break into Sony's Orbis operating system, fail0verflow is the first group to successfully install a full version of Linux on the PS4.
Sony's flagship gaming console has had a tumultuous relationship with the DIY community. The third-generation PlayStation came stock with "OtherOS", which was a feature that allowed users to upload Linux to the operating system, which the company eventually removed.
The PS4 has been much less hacker-friendly in the 2 years since the console launched... at least until now. Fail0verflow took advantage of an exploit found by another hacker earlier this year, which allowed them to get around Sony's content protections.
They fiddled with a WebKit bug discovered by the programmer to trick the browser into freeing the processes from the core of the operating system. This hack essentially turns the PS4 into a fully operational PC.
[...] The group noted that some of the differences between the PS4 operating system and a PC are "crazy" and some are "batshit crazy". Oh, and the Marvell Tech engineers that designed the PS4's southbridge chip were "smoking some really good stuff".
[1] The nugget is an embedded video in an iframe, apparently. Link to the video
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @05:58AM
... is to never touch anything Linux-related with a ten foot pole, ever again, because there are too many damn zealots* who, like a spurned lover, would hold a grudge for years and years. Trying to gain better word-of-mouth advertising from those zealots just ain't worth it, and most of those who kept nagging about the "OtherOS" all these years probably never bought any gaming console anyway.
* - what else would you call someone who keep badmouthing a product they never bought and would never use?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @06:15AM
Google definition
If the free software movement is full of zealots, then so is the copyright industry.
The OtherOS fiasco convinced me that free and proprietary software does not mix well: for the same reason.
With free software, you want to be sure you are in control of your machine. Any proprietary software "taints" it, leaving open the possibly that your data is tampered or leaked to third parties.
Similarly, Sony and Apple do not want free software running on their machines. Any free software "taints' it, leaving open the possibility that you can make lossless copies (which is how general-purpose computers work).
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday January 04 2016, @08:53PM
That's the understatement of 2016.
Sony doesn't believe in free software, because it doesn't believe in free hardware. We almost need a version of Glass-Steagall to prevent intellectual property portfolio owners (owners that are not directly creators of content) from getting anywhere near hardware, distribution (Internet), and cryptographic systems to protect content. The government is wholly and irreparably corrupt, so it also goes without saying we need a law to prevent regulatory capture by Sony as well. Sony's position is really simple: You have our copyrighted content?! You fucking slimy piece of shit (yes, we see you waiving the receipt), don't you dare even think for one second about thinking of doing *anything* with that content without seeing if you need to pay us first! You are REQUIRED to run ALL of our software without modifications on OUR hardware so we can be sure you're not a dirty stinking fucking pirate!! Ohhh, and we love you, and keep buying our overpriced shit. Love Sony.
Apple never believed in anything close to freedom. Jobs was very clear about how he felt the world of computing should be: It's my fucking world, you're the passengers on the trains I build, and the Internet is merely my train yard to do what I want to do. That's more or less verbatim too. I can't remember the interview, but that was me paraphrasing how Jobs felt about personal computing. Meaning, he felt personal computing wasn't about freedom at all, but merely the activities we undertake to enjoy *his* products, *his* world, and *his* application stores. He refactored the Internet away from being free exchanges of data amongst machines, to be roads no longer free to just any travel, but only free to travel via his trains, and their modes of operation.
Free computing has been under attack the moment executives and marketing departments got serious about it, and saw potentials beyond the business use cases that built computing in the first place. Bill Gates ended up doing far more for free computing, and that's mind blowing quite frankly.
The road towards free computing, via FOSS and Open Source, is mutually exclusive with the interests of executives, marketers, and shareholders. In a very real sense, our battle is about a lot more than freedom in computing. It's our freedom in cyberspace, which we are quickly and painfully finding out, does have very tangible effects in our real world, aka, Meatspace. When computing is free, there are no manufactured and artificial reasons for upgrades or extra purchases. When computing is free, there are no captured audiences powerless to change their fate, but free groups of people ready, and more than willing, to exchange information, ideas, and *code*. When computing is free, executives, marketers, and shareholders cry bitterly like little bitches that their worlds are no longer free, our economy is no longer based on freedom and its poster child Capitalism. Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My, indeed.
Free computing is the only path to our mutual survival at this point if we all don't want to be just heads of cattle to governments and corporations, or as it increasingly is, just corporations with great influence.
The greatest idiocy is that Sony isn't forced to acknowledge (regardless of their freely chosen loss leader business model) that hardware belongs to the consumer that paid for it, and they can do whatever they want with it. This is a fundamental ethical fact beyond reproach, including weak arguments that the economy would suffer, or that Sony would make less money. I've never heard anything close to a decent ethical argument that Sony, or Apple for that matter, can maintain control over a hard product after the point of sale. That's utterly ridiculous, and the first place we can start. Yet all the arguments around here are business ones, and not ethical ones...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 03 2016, @06:21AM
They're called product Jews, because Jews badmouth everything. And, judging from the leaked SONY e-mails, there are an awful lot of Jews behind SONY.
Sure, those consoles are good for the usage they're approved for playing the games they're approved to play, but are they really worth it? Don't you think the latest generation is even crappier than the last, guaranteed to sell only because the whiny kids asking for them under the Christmas tree want to keep up with the Joneses? They roll out the same fucking games as the last generation, implement some smoothing algorithm it took one programmer a week to implement, and slap an extra couple-hundred dollars on the price. Hooey!
If my kid was a product Jew and wanted a PS4, I'd buy them an Atari 2600 and a few games. When they inevitably cry seeing the graphics they will be referred to the Wikipedia page where they will learn about all those cool graphics tricks and they will be reassured that it is an investment and will be worth a million dollars in 2 years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @06:22AM
a product they never bought
US Air Force connects 1,760 PlayStation 3's to build supercomputer [phys.org]
They bought them specifically to run Linux.
(Hinted at strongly by martyb in the dept. line.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @08:53AM
So, are you saying that all the posters who had been bad-mouthing PS3/4 here and in the green site for the OtherOS were all from the US Air Force?
Do you have any citation of criticism of Sony from the US Air Force? No? Kind of proved the point.
(Score: 3, Informative) by q.kontinuum on Sunday January 03 2016, @10:55AM
What is it with this AC stupidity infestation? This is clearly not what parent was implying. He dis-proved thread-starter by giving a good, prominent example [engadget.com] of lots of Linux users on PS3. Therefore parent post is falsified, end of story, no need for a complete list of all disappointed Linux PS3 users.
I still kept reading AC comments because they appeared to be on average as useful as the others. It's really getting worse now. Hopefully it will get better once vacation-season is over and bored trolls go back to school/work.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @01:30AM
Look at the context, the original AC wrote:
* - what else would you call someone who keep badmouthing a product they never bought and would never use?
To which it was chopped up with this reply, note that important "badmouthing" part was omitted:
a product they never bought
US Air Force connects 1,760 PlayStation 3's to build supercomputer
Now, either you take this reply as an irrelevant non-sequitur, OR take it to mean the US Air Force were the badmouthers. The AC you were replying to picked the latter interpretation. So what's your pick?
P.S. But of course, from the replies it is already obvious enough that the poster never bought a PS3/4 himself, which also proved the point about people badmouthing products they never bought and never used.
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Sunday January 03 2016, @08:07AM
Too bad they missed the much more obvious lesson, "People get mad when you sneak in and break their shit".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @08:56AM
Yes, which is saying the same thing -- Sony would have been better off had they NOT offered OtherOS from the start.
Making the OtherOS option wasn't free for Sony, it costed them money and manpower. It would served Sony better had they spent the money simply on advertising instead of messing with Linux, the exact same point made in GP.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @11:39AM
The problem is that Sony's PS3 was doing so pitifully bad at the start due to the hideously high pricetag that they HAD to find ways to encourage people to even LOOK at their console. OtherOS did in fact do that, although Sony didn't really stop to think that the people buying the hardware for OtherOS wasn't buying it for PS3 -software- which is what they actually needed. But I guess Sony needed hardware sales numbers beefed up to convince developers to make games on their system in the first place, which was another thing they had a problem with at the time.
Although it's worth pointing out that nobody was seriously attempting to hack the PS3 until after OtherOS was taken away, and the main reason they were trying to hack it was to get OtherOS back, as well as to unlock the full power of the console in OtherOS at that point. Since then the PS3 has had it's fair share of attempted jailbreaking resulting in this very firmware war we've been seeing for the last decade.
Which is why I wonder why the hell hackers bother revealing their successful system hacks while the console is still actively supported. As we all know it's just going to cause another forced firmware update.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Sunday January 03 2016, @04:09PM
it's worth pointing out that nobody was seriously attempting to hack the PS3 until after OtherOS was taken away, and the main reason they were trying to hack it was to get OtherOS back, as well as to unlock the full power of the console in OtherOS at that point. Since then the PS3 has had it's fair share of attempted jailbreaking resulting in this very firmware war we've been seeing for the last decade.
Just to clarify, it was a hacking attempt that prompted Sony to remove Other OS. That hack was an attempt to open up the graphics hardware to Linux so that a desktop OS would be more useful (it was barely be able to play DVD quality video with the stock hypervisor limitations). Of course, even if that hack was successful (required glitching the hardware manually each startup), it would not have had any impact on the game OS or made it easier to copy games in any way. Sony responded to that with the nuclear option of blowing away Other OS entirely, thereby making themselves a target. That hit the news and kicked off all of the efforts to actually hack the console (and company in general) to bits.
Now if Sony had taken a different tack and responded by allowing full graphics card access, that would have likely garnered a little good will with the hackers and they wouldn't have had a target on their backs for every major hack since. I wonder how much money they could have saved by simply not pissing people off by intentionally breaking their stuff?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Sunday January 03 2016, @09:51PM
so in response to people who wanted to use their computer to its actual specification limits, beyond the limits put on it by the creators, said creators stole features that were used as a selling point for said computer. what i don't get is how so many people still actively defend sony for doing this, along with all their other criminal, anti-customer, and anti-human rights bullshit. i did not lease my cell-based computer from sony, i bought it - sony has no control over what i do with my computer after i purchase it from them, they can have no say over what i do with my own property. if they request that people only use the original firmware to participate online, thats fine, but many of us have no wish to participate in anything online. that so many people don't seem to grasp this simple concept of "ownership" blows my mind, its especially egregious that sony has actually managed to win in court, punishing people for modifying their own property in ways that the creator doesn't agree with - a direct violation of human rights (the right to own things).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 03 2016, @10:19PM
The really amazing part is the number of people who adamantly oppose communism because it defies the right of ownership but are more than happy to allow private entities to defy personal ownership rights.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday January 03 2016, @10:46PM
it really doesn't. you can own anything you want privately - you can own all the land, property, cars, personal items, wtf ever you want - you just can't own your own business and keep all the profits to yourself. that is communism, everyone co-owns the means of production (corporations), but all your private belongings are yours and yours alone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @12:25AM
you just can't own your own business
Under Cuba's brand of "socialism", you -can- own a business and hire non-owner employees.
The gov't doesn't allow you to make it into a chain|franchised operation, however.
At a national level, Cuba is about as close as any place has come to Marx's ideal--and it's still quite far off.
and keep all the profits to yourself. that is communism
Under Communism in its ultimate expression, there is a commonwealth and there is no need of money.
Everyone has his needs met from the common pool of resources.
The Shakers (starting before the USA existed) and the Iroquois (again, long before the USA existed) were useful examples of this organizational paradigm.
When you know that in the USA there are 20 individuals (new number for 2015; the previous year it was 40) whose collective wealth equals the collective wealth of over 50 percent of the populace of 320 million, you realize that there is plenty of wealth--it's just hogged by a few (who will never actually spend it into the economy).
everyone co-owns the means of production
Yes.
More specifically, the workers involved in the production of the good|service collectively own the factory|vehicle fleet|whatever.
(corporations)
That's a term commonly used by Capitalists.
In an egalitarian society, the concept that replaces it is a worker-owned cooperative.
but all your private belongings are yours and yours alone.
Yes, your toothbrush belongs to you. See also "common pool", above.
N.B. Done properly, the USA could get by quite comfortably with far fewer vehicles (which currently sit idle for a huge percentage of the time).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Sunday January 03 2016, @11:49AM
Not the same. Thread-Starter puts the blame entirely on unreasonable expectation by zealots. Your point is they didn't consider the consequences when adding and advertising ,the "other OS" feature and failed to deliver and might have been better of not delivering/advertising the feature in the first place. It's totally out of question to blame the customer for expecting an advertised feature to keep working, so TS is wrong. It's absolutely legit to discuss if it was a good idea to add a feature. That point of yours is right.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 03 2016, @07:33PM
Actually, it says quite a different thing. The problem for them wasn't Linux. The problem is that they created a feature that didn't support their business plan out of desperation for positive buzz. They got their buzz, but then didn't want to pay the price so they reneged. Anyone who had a half decent moral compass and actually paid attention in kindergarten could have guessed how that would go, so naturally they were taken totally by surprise.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Hyperturtle on Sunday January 03 2016, @04:47PM
Yeah but people are still installing Windows 10.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday January 03 2016, @11:06AM
...too many damn zealots* who, like a spurned lover, would hold a grudge for years...
But they worked so hard [wikipedia.org] to earn that grudge - shouldn't they be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their endeavours?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 03 2016, @03:35PM
>be me
>buy car
>comes standard with hook for trailer, it is advertised
>i take car to change filters
>car returned with hook sawed off
>no warnings
>car company execs had decided camper better than trailer for me, without bothering to ask
>avoid said company because i want bought things not to lose features over time
>moron calls me zealot for that and invite execs not to touch hooks
welcome to 2016 "we stopped trying" trolls
Account abandoned.