Something that I don't think folks consider the perspective of is that the big console manufacturers often act in the same vein that third party DRM/Anti-Tamper firms like Denuvo do in establishing relationships with publishers. Part of the value proposition with releasing on a console is that the platform provides a reasonable duty to protect sales, and they incentivize that themselves by the sales structure. Most consoles are sold at a loss, with revenue being made up largely through title sales. This puts the game publisher and the console manufacturer on the same team in ensuring that sales are protected, and as such decisions are made to tightly control what software can run on these otherwise incredibly powerful, compact machines.

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.

FWIW, Valve is probably also selling the Steam Deck at a loss. $400 for an Xbox One-tier AMD chipset in a nice-feeling controller case? Something tells me they're not banking on hardware margins to sell this console any more than Nintendo did with the Switch. Valve's real boon (IMO) is that they're teaching the rest of the industry how they should operate - first-party app stores can charge whatever fees they want for convenience, as long as third-parties have the same degree of control over the hardware. And guess what: it worked! The fact that Valve is talking about Steam Deck successors means they're not losing too much money, and I think it makes sense financially. If Valve takes 10-30% of every game bought on Steam, the amount they're making from Deck users must be monumental. I'd bet anyone 10:1 that there's a dashboard internally at Valve tracking how much money they've made from purchases directly on Deck hardware.

I think they might have been taking a small loss on the 400 USD unit, though with bulk production maybe it was closer to 0% margin initially. Just a gut feeling as someone not in the hardware fabrication specialization.

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-...

You’ve sparked a realization that I am suddenly very uncomfortable with...

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.

Sony has other monetization levers too, like that time on PS4 they pushed a mandatory, irreversible update that dropped support for a bunch of HDMI codecs, effectively downgrading millions of TVs overnight.

They got me. I went and bought a new TV. Not a Sony, but aggregate demand still affects prices.

> Most consoles are sold at a loss, with revenue being made up largely through title sales.

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.

I seriously doubt this. The most expensive parts like CPUs and GPUs don't get cheaper. Their pricing for the entire life cycle is most likely negotiated and locked in at design time, in fact.

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.

PS4 units were profitable to sell after roughly a year

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.

They've been selling them at profit since the middle of last year [1], following the trend set the previous gen of consoles making profit on hardware in less than a year. Things in gaming, both in terms of prices and how consoles approach the business, has changed quite radically in the past ~decade.

[1] - https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...

This is completely false. They just did a die shrink to make the CPU/GPU cheaper.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/playstation-5-refresh-boas...

> Most consoles are sold at a loss

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.

> This puts the game publisher and the console manufacturer on the same team in ensuring that sales are protected, and as such decisions are made to tightly control what software can run on these otherwise incredibly powerful, compact machines.

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.

It's a bit of a weird spin to call the PC platform 'lawless'.

Or rather it's weird to call the platforms plagued by barely legal artificial deprivation of digital liberty 'lawful'.

It kind of is, there's a lot of demand now from console gamers to disable cross play with PC due to the abundance of cheaters. This was pretty evident in the Modern Warfare 2 beta.

seems to be a case of "tell me you're extremely biased without saying you're extremely biased" :)

more like steam deck user: hey can i nuke steam os, install windows and play games and dual boot and and add a water cooled nvme drive and water cooler and replace broken parts with aftermarket parts? valve: lol, go ahead. its your machine, do whatever you like

PC user: hey can i nuke windows and install a mainstream elf/linux distro (or your own)? microsoft: ofc, you just need a phd in software to workaround all the efi nasty blockades we did put in place _for you security ofc_, that with the help of hardware manufacturers. Go ahead, but don't fool yourself, we already got your money and since you are not the default install on any mass sold PCs, you'll stay at 0.00001% (scientifically insignificant).

Props to Dell on this front. I just installed Mint on a 2018 Latitude and it was easier than installing Windows. Everything just works including things like shortcut keys for volume and brightness. With what Valve is doing with proton and Linux gaming support, I'm as bullish as ever on the linux desktop.

Please dont recommand dell. They are easily bricked (for an average user). I use many model daily and a new 13' xps pro was bricked by... splitting the main partition in two. "Oh so the efi was borked and could no longer boot because it was choosing the wrong partition?" Nope the bios would NOT allow me to reach the F12 so I could boot to a usb drive or anything to fix this. I had to open the laptop then format the nvme drive (and they are not making it easy). Extremely dumb.

My not very technically apt parents have been using Manjaro with the RedmondXP theme for a few years, with much fewer problems than Windows.

2022 - Year of the Linux Desktop?

my anecdata. i have been running debian derivative on my machine for like years now and and only had to reinstall once because i fucked up a driver install.

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.

2022 was finally the year for me

> microsoft: ofc, you just need a phd in software to workaround all the efi nasty blockades we did put in

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.

> The proper way is to enroll the private keys with the bios

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.

Seems fair to me when your alternatives are install a signing key (for your Linux os) yourself to the EFI, disable secure boot, or allow MS to be the gatekeeper of what software can run on your PC, including the distro getting itself OK'd by MS with their separate OS key that might or might not be included by the OEM.

Happy to be corrected if things have changed since the last time I looked at things.

> The proper way is to enroll the private keys with the bios

Not always possible. Depends on firmware support and we all know how shitty proprietary firmware can be.

I have yet to see a firmware that doesn't allow me to enroll private keys. It's a basic UEFI features, and IIRC Microsoft requires that to be possible for intel hardware: if you don't, no Windows.

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 yet to see a firmware that doesn't allow me to enroll private keys.

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.

Except if you count Android and servers, then Linux is the most deployed system in the world.

genuine curiosity: why would you need an SSH server on a gaming console?

Because I bought the hardware, end of story. I shouldn't have to justify what I do with it after that. Not to Nintendo, not to Sony, not to you, and not to a court of law.

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.

> Because I bought the hardware, end of story. I shouldn't have to justify what I do with it after that. Not to Nintendo, not to Sony, not to you, and not to a court of law.

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."

Personally, I use SSH to poke around. 99% of the time, I look at the directory structure, maybe learn something and then shrug with a “that was cool” and never look at it again. But there’s always that 1% where I find something truly interesting…

This is also how I interpreted it, perhaps because I am also intrigued and want to know (my Steam Deck just shipped earlier today).

I would argue that you just shouldn't buy a PlayStation.

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.

I don't think he said he planned on exploiting the network play.

> 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)

So the problem is, once you detect a user is running arbitrary unsigned code on their system, how do you differentiate between them using that capability for cheating or running the world's most convoluted SSH server? Once the system is compromised, you don't really know what the user is doing, and as such any network traffic cannot really be trusted.

Prevent them from logging into your network. (You own your network)

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")

This is essentially what they do. A console detected running modified software gets banned from PSN.

If you were a game dev who had toiled for years on a game you hoped to sell, you wouldn't be talking this way

I would and I am.

Well the other day my 6yo daughter was playing on the Deck and I SSH'd in from my phone, installed espeak, and started making a voice of god say whatever I wanted as she played.

Reminds me of remotely connecting to my friend's Mac and using 'say' to say things.

And then eject the CD-ROM drive.

I remember working out how to do this over the network with some combination of the utilities on the windows install when I was a student at school, I forget which windows exactly given it could have been any of the outdated 9x sort or even 2k at high school…

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!

> And then eject the CD-ROM drive.

The whole drive??? Man, you guys played hardball.

Long ago my GF bought a linux laptop. She asked me install something, it was just an "apt-get install" away. I told her I had to type a few commands. She said she was busy now. Ok, ssh'ed into it and installed what she needed.

I literally laughed out loud that this would be the ‘example’…omigosh, too funny - I’m actually going to share this comment with a couple friends.

Allowing SSH/OS access can allow fun and interesting things other than gaming. Back when you were allowed to run Linux on a PlayStation 3, you could potentially wire up bunch of these for some serious computing power (at the time).

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

It's not a gaming console. It's a portable PC. That's the design philosophy behind Steam Deck. It's even marketed that way:

"All-in-one portable PC gaming"

https://www.steamdeck.com/en/

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.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted because that was exactly what drew me to the Deck. I use their client, I buy their games, but I also have a work environment setup on the desktop side, and I can still play the games I bought off GOG. I also bought a pass-through power USB3 hub off of Anker's store on Newegg to use as a dock that fits nicely in the case.

Sure, but also, I'd love to get regular people buying these things, which is why I think "gaming console" is important. 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.

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make sense within the context of "why do you need an SSH server" on a computer?

> 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.

I'm very old. So good gaming/computing means devices that are very open by default. "SSH server" can kind of be shorthand for "I can get in the guts of the thing and do whatever I want to it"

Consoles have never been open by default.

Yup, thus the PS5 jailbreak being a cool thing. However, the steam deck is open by default, which is a much bigger deal in the console world and far more exciting IMO.

Because you can.

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!

> it can become more than just a gaming console

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'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.

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.

>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".

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.

Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news.

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.

>Before Sony stripped Linux from the PS3, they were being used to build super computers. Heck, my undergrad program tried getting on that hype train and we got two PS3s running YellowDog linux and were starting to put together a grant proposal for a small compute cluster when Sony broke the news.

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.

> Did those PS3 supercomputers end up being a good investment? Probably not.

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.

>You seem to entirely discount the fact that sometimes the journey is just as important.

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.

Maybe not in wealthy countries. In Argentina hacked PS2s are still pretty commonly used, and repair shops service them (OK, maybe not anymore? I left six years ago). Jail-breaking absolutely extends the lifetime of consoles.

Not with regulations preventing this market from realization obviously.

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.

> 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

The fact that people aren’t already doing so with regular general purpose computers seems to entirely discredit this theory, no?

What rock are you under?

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 long as there are poorly regulated countries to dump the e-waste in arbitrary limitations are working just fine.

The better question is why not.

As for why, here is one example: backing up and restoring saves and other game data.

Literally YESTERDAY used ssh to pop my favorite emulated games onto my Steam Deck from my main computer. Didn't have to touch the Deck.

The deck has a suite of apps that will install and configure whatever emulator you'd like. Then, you simply scp over roms and it'll also automatically add the relevant game entries to the steam library.

That's why...

This is very handy as someone who plays randomizer ROMs, I have a script that can generate a bunch of new Super Metroid runs for me and automatically upload them. Prior to the Deck, this process involved manually fiddling with SD cards across devices.

On the Nintendo Switch, it allows you to mount your console as an SFTP device and wirelessly transfer your screenshots without even turning on the console. Pretty fun stuff, especially in the motley years of 2017-2019.

What's it with Nintendo and fucking up basic use cases anyway? Seriously, are they expecting USB-based jailbreaks or why not even include something a lot of players have been shouting on the web for years now?!

Yes. It's defense in depth; the 3DS was hacked dozens of ways over its lifetime. Via specially crafted saved games in some cases. There were a few media-based buffer overflow hacks too, iirc. The DS before that could get hacked by certain sounds via Bangai-O Spirits level transfer.

>USB-based jailbreaks

What kind of new-fangled hack is that? Here in Switch-land we just use a bit of tinfoil for our piracy needs.

I thought that vulnerability was gone since at least September 2019 with the 2nd revision?

It is, but the core vulnerability of the chipset (Tegra X1) still exists AFAIK. Granted, you need to hardmod to jailbreak a Mariko model (launch models can be softmodded), but that's basically the same thing that happened with the 3DS.

It's a different exploit. The original exploit is an issue with the Tegra's recovery mode (RCM), requiring a USB payload to be sent to the Switch at boot every time.

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.

Same reason I need a terminal on Linux: to have access to everything in the computer, not just the stuff exposed in the GUI.

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.

Allows easy file access with sftp and sshfs, can be used to kill a misbehaving program from your phone or PC if you're stuck on a black screen, can be used to monitor resource usage from another machine.

Modding comes to mind. By having an ssh connection, you can potentially do remote debugging of a mod, among other fun stuff.

A lot of things. For example you can use it to copy files (moovies, music, etc) on the drive of the console to watch them. Or you can download data from the console itself (screenshots, video recordings, etc).

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.

If it can run an SSH server, it doesn't just have to be a gaming console.

Need is the operative word, there isn't a need, sure there are technical people that want to poke around or the "because its mine/I can" crowd but for the vast majority of console players they don't even know what SSH is.

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.

Game consoles have a very strong case for being closed because cheating ruins their primary function. And players absolutely will cheat even if it means spending thousands.

Other devices do need some level of local access because bad software is often the limiting factor of usefulness.

Same reason someone would install Linux on a Playstation 2 or a PS3. Sometimes its just because you can, not because its actually a good solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS

That's the easiest and fastest way to copy files across computers, for example. I use it regularly between my laptops, phones and Deck.

Not even talking about tinkering in general as that one should be obvious.

I can think of many cases where you would want to do that. Remotely start download of a game, pull save files of it, Add a movie or series to watch, turn off remotely in case you forget and many others.

Not disagreeing with the overall premise that having SSH on PS5 is pretty cool, but a lot of those things you mentioned are available without SSH on it already.

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).

An app is very different from ssh. I can ssh from my laptop. From my friends laptop. Until recently I didn't even own a smartphone. Apps are a terrible way to encapsulate this in.

It isn't app-only. You can also login into PSN in your web browser and trigger game downloads from there too. Iirc Steam allows it too, so you can trigger the download on the go from any web browser, and it starts downloading on your machine at home.

If the console is properly designed, it's more of a want than a need. Even if the focus here is more on startups, this website is called hacker news after all.

Well, I for one want to see if I can enable a god mode for Returnal. 25 hours in I still haven't made it past the third boss!

Rewrite the question as "Why would you need an SFTP server". File transfer, of course.

Similar user experience with the Remarkable tablet. Love it.

That's not a meme, that's a joke.

That's not the joke, Sony's approach to their hardware is.

How does Sony's approach differ from Microsoft or Apple?

Microsoft has yet to totally lockdown their hardware. They usually provide a way to disable secureboot or to enroll your own keys (with a few specific exceptions).

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.

Apples and oranges. Microsoft's gaming consoles are very locked down, though I haven't been paying too much attention since the Xbox 360.

While not a completely open experience, Microsoft does let you do a lot more on the newer consoles, e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/703443/how-to-put-your-xbox-series...

> With developer mode enabled on a Microsoft console, it’s possible to install and run UWP apps. When developer mode is enabled, retail games and other services won’t work.

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.

I don’t remember with complete certainty, but I’m pretty sure developer mode on the Xbox can be turned back off relatively easily. You can use it like a dual boot and keep your games and data.

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.

A meme is something that becomes popular and gets passed around. A joke can be a meme

A meme is necessarily a joke but a joke is not necessarily a meme. A meme often, but not always, has a visual component to it. A meme is a cultural phenomenon. It is shared virally and evolves in the process.

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.

I strongly disagree. Meme is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, defining the idea of unit of cultural knowledge.

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.

You've got the technical definition correct, but the vast majority of usage of the term meme today is the colloquial usage, which is centered on humor, and has only a passing similarity to Dawkins' idea. Really, it's used today as a replacement term for what used to be called an "image macro", but also extends to cover video content.

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.

And unfortunately, that is literally impossible :P

From my online gaming experience, Gen Z seems to be adopting new usage of ‘meme’ that is decoupled it from virality. It’s used to discredit something as being a joke, falsehood or myth.

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

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/meme

An idea circulating through the population is more than sufficient to qualify it as a meme. "Virality", meaning prolific spreading, was never a necessary condition. Some memes are popular but some aren't, that has always been recognized.

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.

Meme seemed to be evolving to simply mean an image with some text on it. I’m glad for this new direction. At least it is related to the original meaning.

That definition is already antiquated, since that shift had already mostly happened by around 5 years on most internet platforms (internet culture evolves quick these days). As other commenters have mentioned, it's now "evolving" to be more or less synonymous with "joke"

> it's now "evolving" to be more or less synonymous with "joke"

Or disinformation:

    A: $GROUP_I_DONT_LIKE is doing $BAD_THING

    B: dude, that's literally just a meme

Which, thinking about it, is back around to almost the original definition.

Opposite.

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.

> but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture

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.

Ironically enough, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance videogame from 2013 had a villain character who went on a monologue about memes, and a lot of people were confused by the way he used that term. But he described that original Dawkins definition really well.

> 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.

> but "meme" itself is a singular unit of culture

Yes, as per Richard Dawkins.

A joke that doesn't get repeated virally isn't a meme.

Not exactly. Memes are just cultural bits that get passed around, and virality is more like a measurement of how much they get passed around. Jokes have intrinsic memetic qualities (like this innate desire to get told again, for comedic value), which makes them great memes.

Check out the book "There Is No Antimemetics Division". A brilliant tour of all things meme (and anti-meme).

The meme is the format, the joke is how that format is appropriated for humor.

Certain others can elaborate further but back during the tenure of the PS3 Sony did attempt to prosecute individuals for publishing research into exploiting it. So not entirely a joke/meme.

How is a joke not a meme, in the original sense of the word ?

It's not a joke in the sense that it's actually true. Not just SSH, you can install practically any Linux piece of software on it.