I'm struck with how long the history of Apple's earliest iPhone has shaped and produced long-term damage to the concept of digital ownership. Apple originally didn't allow anybody but Apple to create software for the 1st gen iPhone, and only later was forced "opening" it my market forces.
People who realized they actually owned the thing they bought wanted to do what they wanted, which required circumventing Apple's control or "jailbreaking". This differentiator stimulated Google to "allow" installing on Android without "jailbreaking" the device aka "sideloading", giving the illusion of the kind of freedom that was never in question on normal computers.
It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles or other embedded computing devices where the controls against arbitrary applications is even stronger.
The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for (and hence allow anybody to just install what they want) is kind of wild IMHO. Why hasn't the kind of ferver that created Linux driven engineers to fix their phones? Is Android and iOS just good enough to keep us complacent and trapped forever? I can't help but think there might be some effect here that's locking us all in similar to how the U.S. healthcare system can't seem to shake for profit insurance.
I'm sometimes surprised at the plethora of cheap handheld gaming systems coming out of China that support either Linux, Android, or sometimes both, and seem to be based on a handful of chipsets. If anybody ever slapped an LTE module and drivers onto one of those things we'd have criminally cheap and powerful, open phone ecosystem.
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles
Historically, when the first game consoles with game cartridges existed, the hardware was much more niche than the available personal computers. Game system developers designed hardware specifically for games, and game developers developed for those specific systems. Also, physical media for games provided an ownership model and DRM.
In 2003, Apple released the iTunes Music Store partnering with music labels to counteract the prevalence of music pirating. That was the first major digital marketplace with DRM and way before the App Store in 2008!
In 2005, digital distribution for video game consoles came with the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii. Being game consoles with unique hardware, they kept their restricted licensed development model of previous generations.
The iPhone and App Store just followed that pattern. Unique hardware and a licensed digital marketplace to go with it.
Now, the hardware between video game consoles, smartphones, and personal computers are mostly unified; and the only real difference is software, but the restricted marketplace model still remains.
---
> The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for (and hence allow anybody to just install what they want) is kind of wild IMHO. Why hasn't the kind of ferver that created Linux driven engineers to fix their phones?
DRM. There are already devices where you can unlock the bootloader and install any OS on it. But then you won't be able to install apps that use the Play Integrity API to ensure DRM. Companies/developers want revenue and develop apps that require Play Integrity.
Any device that doesn't have DRM will never support a paid digital marketplace or paid content streaming.
> Is Android and iOS just good enough to keep us complacent and trapped forever?
Probably. Microsoft tried a DRM supported OS with Windows Phone and that failed.
---
That being said, digital marketplaces and DRM have there place to prevent piracy and allow developers and creators to make a living.
If someone has a solution to prevent piracy without a root of trust that would be ideal.
"That being said, digital marketplaces and DRM have there place to prevent piracy and allow developers and creators to make a living.
If someone has a solution to prevent piracy without a root of trust that would be ideal.'
This is the equivalent statement to inspecting everyone's bag at any point because they might have something illegal. It's not an acceptable move from google.
> If someone has a solution to prevent piracy without a root of trust that would be ideal
and that someone is named Gaben, and the solution is called Steam. He has done more to solve piracy than any media empire who proportedly spent billions in law suits, lobbying and anti-circumvention ever did.
And Steam implements its own DRM and takes 30% from game publishers. Also, they don't stop game developers from providing their own DRM which require root-of-trust, like CoD or BF6 which require Secure Boot.
> And Steam implements its own DRM
Which is entirely optional. In fact there are plenty of games on there without DRM at all.
> and takes 30% from game publishers.
They could always use other stores. And they do, however their customers use Steam because it is so much easier than other stores, and big picture mode is so much easier than piracy.
Those are mostly to prevent cheating (which is pretty bad for an online game) rather than piracy.
Which is the same as root-of-trust attestation.
Which is better:
- Having applications provide kernel-level software to provide attestation.
- Or having the OS provide root-of-trust attestation, but also requiring signed binaries, and preventing global root privilege escalation.
The third option would be neither, but players want some sort of anti-cheat.
What about Ubisoft with ubisoft connect
Ubisoft Connect is separate from the DRM on their games as I understand it, it's a game launcher, achievements tracker, friends system, advertising method, etc.
How is that steam's fault?
Gaben like all of us isn't going to be around forever, nor Steam is guaranteed to keep being what it is without his leadership.
Don't ask lawyers for what the best solution should be, because its always "lawsuits!"
I think it's more equivalent to when game consoles check the license on disc media.
It used to be via hardware in the disc reader, then online license checking. And now it's fully digital, media and license.
The fucked up part is the fact that we can't transfer digital ownership of purchases. But at least I can use my purchases across multiple devices. Maybe this is what we should use blockchains for, but it would still require a locked device with root-of-trust.
---
> It's not an acceptable move from google.
By all means, you can have an unlocked Android device with a non-Google sanctioned OS and not use Google Play. That way you can use any app that doesn't require Google Play Protect.
Companies are OK with it because it makes them money. The majority of users are OK with it because they can use those companies' apps.
> Any device that doesn't have DRM will never support a paid digital marketplace
Yet here am on linux buying games on steam
Steam is a bit different, since that originated as a PC digital marketplace before complete root-of-trust DRM from HW->bootloader->OS->SW.
If anything, I would bet on a shift where Steam on Linux requires a signed OS like Windows Secure Boot. Call of Duty and Battlefield 6 already require Windows Secure Boot.
Wait, a signed Linux OS with Secure Boot already exists. It's Android Play Protect.
Also on Linux, you only get Widevine L3, which limits video and audio quality for DRM web content.
Pirating is more of a problem of mismanaged price versus revenues. In the '90 in East Europe everybody was pirating because we couldn't afford any software not because "we wanted to steal". As soon as I got a decent salary I just bought the damn stuff and spared me of the headache of dealing with pirated things.
The people pushing for drastic technical measures to "prevent pirating" are probably accountants, that have no other idea of how to generate value and they imagine all "pirated content" will be converted to paid - which is not the case.
I live in Nigeria and I hate piracy, yet books her are so darn expensive that the average middle class citizen resorts to piracy. I think regional pricing will really help out with this.
> spared me of the headache of dealing with pirated things
Without any sort of DRM and today's internet speeds, pirating digital media would probably be like Napster
Greenheart Games famously purposely released a different version of Game Dev Tycoon for pirating. You can read the blog post here: https://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when...
Most of the software I use depend on centralized functionality. Example: convenient online invitation, sharing of resources and integrations (for productivity), accomplishments, ladders and updates (for games).
For music media, there are a lot of people (67%) using streaming (random source: https://ifpi-website-cms.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/IFPI_GMR...) which is a totally different service than having a list of songs on your device then struggling with organizing/synchronizing/keeping up to date.
Media and software do not "work" like physical goods. Value should be extracted from them but a lot of earth population is poor and could still "use" the media/software (example: 57% of world population has less than 10$ income per day source: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$mountain$enc...)
Regional pricing based on Purchasing Power Parity could be a solution. However, perhaps too many customers would use VPNs and pretend to be from the poorest countries on Earth.
Some technical solutions could be implemented, but I wonder if it is worth it? My claim is that probably 80-90% of the people that can pay, already do, because they get things they want in return (as mentioned with the online services connected to various things). We shouldn't make it completely easy to copy software, but the focus of companies would be to develop new useful things not to restrict platforms to police poor people or the few that like to steal.
In the end, I suspect that the platform companies know that - as an example Google probably gave Android without asking a lot in return - but what they need are excuses to restrict competition when they reached a dominant position.
Rather than proposing technical solutions to fix this invented issue, I would rather find the next challenger - that will start by being nice (same as Google did).
Ironically the drm measures are a huge part in why I tend to go for pirated content, as its more convenient to me AND of higher quality.
I went 100% legit on VST plugins years ago and regretted that decision so much when I had to change systems. It literally takes weeks to transfer hundreds of these, there are so many different DRM schemes and installer systems, it drives you insane.
Shifting goalposts: you said there's no marketplace, I pointed out a highly prominent one, and your counterargument is… they don't count because other different things exist.
I wish I could edit my original post, but I meant to switch the causality around.
What I’d meant was, a paid digital marketplace will end up with some form of DRM.
And furthermore, economic incentives will drive devices to implement some form of trusted computing.
Indeed. The complement of No Tux No Bux is If Tux Then Bux.
It's less likely that game consoles and smartphones will become fully unlocked like personal computers. I would bet on the opposite where personal computers have the same HW/SW model as smartphones. We are already almost there with macOS SIP and Windows Secure Boot. The only thing missing is removal or isolation of root privilege escalation.
> Now, the hardware between video game consoles, smartphones, and personal computers are mostly unified; and the only real difference is software, but the restricted marketplace model still remains.
Not really in regards to consoles, the hardware is still tailormade for game development, even if some components seem common.
> Any device that doesn't have DRM will never support a paid digital marketplace or paid content streaming.
None of the attestation stuff actually works for that.
For streamed content the pirates only need one person to crack one device and then everything is on The Pirate Bay. Notice that it's all still available in such places despite the DRM and the people still paying for it are still paying for it despite its availability there.
And apps are the same. If you put some attestation in your app, the pirates would just disable it in the copy they distribute, because attestation does nothing to prevent copying.
What it's nominally supposed to be for is so that a server can verify that the device is approved before providing some service. But that only works if a) the thing the server is providing is individualized rather than generally available, and b) the attacker can't get an approved device. The first is what makes it useless for copy protection. The second is what makes it useless for e.g. a bank app, because the attacker will just steal the user's credentials on a compromised device that never even attempts attestation because it's only connecting to the attacker's servers, and then put the stolen credentials into an approved device in order to transfer the money.
The only party to benefit from any of this is the incumbent platform if they can fool useful idiots into using it in order to lock customers into their platform.
> For streamed content the pirates only need one person to crack one device
Thus the push for locked devices.
> What it's nominally supposed to be for is so that a server can verify that the device is approved before providing some service.
Which is why Neflix wont work with a device failing Play Protect.
> The first is what makes it useless for copy protection
Not if you require a locked device to download the artifact in the first place to prevent copying.
I feel like you're not understanding the problem:
> Which is why Neflix wont work with a device failing Play Protect.
And yet the pirates still have all of their content, because DRM doesn't work. One pirate cracks one locked device and can download their entire catalog with it. That one pirate needs to know something about computer security and side channel attacks etc., but none of the people downloading it do.
It can't prevent the first copy from being made because the devices are only secure against amateurs but not professionals, and it can't prevent any of the subsequent copies because the pirates aren't using any DRM to distribute them.
> And yet the pirates still have all of their content, because DRM doesn't work. One pirate cracks one locked device and can download their entire catalog with it.
I know and I'm saying what we are seeing is a push to plug all those holes. iOS, Android, macOS SIP, Windows Secure Boot. All root-of-trust systems, so that only operating systems that prevent copying can download it in the first place.
Those pirates aren't using locked devices to copy content. They are using devices lacking copy protection.
The pirates still have the media which is only distributed to locked devices. Nobody really knows how to secure a device against a professional who has physical access to the device for as long as they want.
Xbox, post-360, has been very successful at doing so.
Xbox games are cracked all over the place. You're referring to jailbreaks. The incentive to jailbreak an Xbox is pretty low because if you did it, it would be basically a PC and anyone who wants "basically a PC" would just get a PC.
I've had this conversation with other people before. It generally goes like this. They say DRM would work if only it was the One True DRM where all the world is their chattel and their killbots have wiped out all the resistance fighters. I ask why it is that even the systems that work the way they want them to are still unable to prevent copying. They ignore the vast majority of these systems that are known to be broken and point to some outlier without considering why it is one. And it's typically something like, the same content is also distributed in a parallel system which is already cracked and then there is little reason to crack both of them, or there is less incentive to crack a system when the content it's used on is unpopular, or there is a statistical variation in how long it takes for someone to get to it and then choosing the longest one is effectively cherry picking or P-hacking.
The implication is supposed to be that if only we used that system for everything then nobody would be able to crack it. But if you used that system for everything then that's the system they would have cracked because it's the one you're using for everything. That's how it works. It's not that anybody has impenetrable security, it's that people rob banks because that's where the money is.
Except that in this case it's not gold, it's bits, so anyone who gets their hands on a single copy can make unlimited more.
> Xbox games are cracked all over the place. You're referring to jailbreaks. The incentive to jailbreak an Xbox is pretty low because if you did it, it would be basically a PC and anyone who wants "basically a PC" would just get a PC.
Those are the PC versions of the games. There is an incentive to jailbreak Xbox consoles as evident by the Xbox 360 jailbreak. You can download and play any Xbox 360 game for free.
The incentive is games for free and the ability to cheat. The incentive is more on the later now that console exclusives are less of a thing.
There’s an economic push to get the console model of digital distribution to personal computers which (un)fortunately goes hand in hand with trusted computing.
> Those are the PC versions of the games.
They're not. People crack the console-exclusive versions of a game and then play them on a PC.
> There is an incentive to jailbreak Xbox consoles as evident by the Xbox 360 jailbreak.
The current Xbox shipped less than a third as many units as the 360. Of the top 10 highest selling consoles ever, the three newest are 8, 12 and 19 years old. Consoles are kind of dying in general and Xbox is dying the most. Why is no one jailbreaking this thing that only 1% of people have?
> The incentive is games for free and the ability to cheat. The incentive is more on the later now that console exclusives are less of a thing.
Pirates are humans and humans are lazy so when it's easier to get the same game for free and run it on their PC they do that. And people cheat with custom controllers etc.
> There’s an economic push to get the console model of digital distribution to personal computers which (un)fortunately goes hand in hand with trusted computing.
The only thing that's happening is that Microsoft is hoping to get the same 30% of the game developer's money that Apple does. The question is whether the world is going to destroy them faster than they can destroy the world.
Windows market share keeps going down, and that was before Microsoft just caused there to be about a billion fairly recent PCs that can run Linux but not any supported version of Windows.
The subset of the market which is most likely to stick with them for a while is the same subset they can't do that to, i.e. the corporate market, because they're the ones who use Windows because they need to run their unsigned legacy line of business software. The home users are already sick of dark patterns and ads in the start menu and are starting to notice that Steam runs on Linux.
> People crack the console-exclusive versions of a game and then play them on a PC.
Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC? Why isn't Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, or Halo 5 available on PC?
> Pirates are humans and humans are lazy so when it's easier to get the same game for free and run it on their PC they do that.
So should we make it easier or harder to get games for free?
> The home users are already sick of dark patterns and ads in the start menu and are starting to notice that Steam runs on Linux.
And game studios/publishers will start to demand trusted computing for Steam on Linux. There's a reason why the majority of the top 10 games on Steam by player-base are not playable on Linux.
It's the same reason there's a Netflix app for Chrome OS, but not some random Linux distro. And why the Netflix app doesn't work in an Android Emulator.
> Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC?
https://x.com/XWineOne/status/1884670205701374063
People make translation layers for the console APIs and then you can play whatever game as long as they've implemented the APIs it uses. It's certainly not because they can't get a copy of the game out of the console.
And then how long it takes depends on demand. If you needed to implement this to run half of all games, it happens fast. If it's for an unpopular console with few exclusives, it still happens, but takes longer.
> So should we make it easier or harder to get games for free?
The real question is, should you willingly enable the likes of Microsoft to insert themselves between you and your customers? Requiring one pirate to do a little extra work isn't worth losing 30% of your income.
> And game studios/publishers will start to demand trusted computing for Steam on Linux.
Which would be useless the same as it is on Windows.
> It's the same reason there's a Netflix app for Chrome OS, but not some random Linux distro. And why the Netflix app doesn't work in an Android Emulator.
Netflix works fine on Linux. It runs in a browser and uses some DRM nonsense that doesn't work any better than it does anywhere else but satisfies Netflix's contractual requirements to use some DRM nonsense. It would also work fine if they would stop requesting that because finding someone to supply you with snake oil when you demand it doesn't mean that snake oil actually works.
> https://x.com/XWineOne/status/1884670205701374063
> People make translation layers for the console APIs and then you can play whatever game as long as they've implemented the APIs it uses. It's certainly not because they can't get a copy of the game out of the console.
That's not a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive. Peggle 2 is an Xbox 360 game. The game data on Xbox 360 discs can only be read from the Xbox 360 DVD drive. Xbox 360 was jailbroken so that the games can be extracted and downloaded from the discs. They can then be played for free on modified Xbox 360s or emulators.
Xbox One has yet to be jailbroken. PS4 and PS5 depend on the firmware version.
Every game shown by XWine1 has been a game that was on the 360 or also already available for PC.
> And then how long it takes depends on demand.
I'm sure some of the top selling exclusives on PlayStation and Xbox have had high demand to be played on PC.
> Which would be useless the same as it is on Windows.
It's only useless on Windows because Windows hasn't fully committed to trusted computing yet. The end goal is NGSCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...).
> Netflix works fine on Linux. It runs in a browser and uses some DRM nonsense that doesn't work any better than it does anywhere else but satisfies Netflix's contractual requirements to use some DRM nonsense.
It works as intended. Free Linux can only decode Widevine L3, so you are limited to a lower quality stream. Chrome OS supports L1.
On Windows, Netflix uses PlayReady, and on Apple OSes it uses FairPlay.
> That's not a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive. Peggle 2 is an Xbox 360 game.
It's a game that was originally released for Xbox One and is still a console exclusive.
> The game data on Xbox 360 discs can only be read from the Xbox 360 DVD drive. Xbox 360 was jailbroken so that the games can be extracted and downloaded from the discs.
They can only be read from a drive with the right firmware to read them. It doesn't have to be done on the official console and it works for the newer Xbox consoles too:
http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=Disc_Dumping_Guide_(M...
> Every game shown by XWine1 has been a game that was on the 360 or also already available for PC.
This is because the number exclusive games is so small.
> I'm sure some of the top selling exclusives on PlayStation and Xbox have had high demand to be played on PC.
It's about aggregate demand. Someone has to implement that console's APIs on a PC, at which point it can play all the games, or if they implement part of the API then all the games that use that subset of the API. This happens quickly if there are thousands of exclusive games that everybody wants and not quickly if there are tens of exclusive games and people only really want like two of them.
> It's only useless on Windows because Windows hasn't fully committed to trusted computing yet.
It's still useless because "trusted computing" doesn't actually work. Any vulnerability in any part of the system can be used to extract everything, and new vulnerabilities are discovered on a regular basis. Several of the vulnerabilities have allowed extracting the keys from the TPM in popular hardware, so pirates can already get as many hardware keys as they want from any of those devices and patching them after the fact doesn't deprive them of any of the keys they've already extracted. And the vulnerable devices are essentially all of them, so if you tried to block every model that could have had its keys extracted your actual customers won't be able to view your content.
> It works as intended. Free Linux can only decode Widevine L3, so you are limited to a lower quality stream. Chrome OS supports L1.
And the pirates have both the L3 and L1 streams. If that's working as intended then it's useless, isn't it?
Unless its actual purpose is to lock people into platforms from megacorps so the megacorps can extract a thick percentage from the actual content creators by monopolizing the distribution path.
This is all a farce, because eventually the content must be decoded. Because our eyeballs must view it.
It doesn't matter if the OS doesn't prevent copying. The stream, in plaintext, exists and can be copied. Which is what pirates do.
The only way around this is skipping the TV and projecting the encrypted stream into your brain where it is then decoded by a Netflix Approved neurolink module.
For music and movies, yes. Though with movies, you even have HDMI HDCP and DisplayPort DPCP to make it harder.
For games though, the game binary is the media. Game console developers have been very successful at preventing pirating.
More locked device, more difficult obfuscation -> more motivation for certain people to break it and share it with everybody.
There is no way, you can plug all holes, iPhone couldn't do it with their golden cage and they spend ridiculous amount of money so their phone cannot be rooted, but you still have rooted iphone.
It took years before Apple relented and allowed the concept of a file be exposed to end users.
To be fair, initially Lisa also had the same document concept from Bravo, and that they took into iOS.
So Apple has been through this before.
Don't prevent piracy
> In 2005, digital distribution for video game consoles came with the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii.
Or at least ten years earlier with a Japanese SNES:
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview
> I'm sometimes surprised at the plethora of cheap handheld gaming systems coming out of China that support either Linux[...]
Do you have examples?
All the ones I see that "support Linux" are locked to a single kernel build, and so aren't much better than a hacked Android ROM, which is because the SoC manufacturer makes a "sort of working" version and dumps it over the wall, and this is exactly the same thing they do with the crappy Android phones which are never mainlined.
There are massive projects to bring all of these in mainline such as SunXi, which makes AllWinner look supported even though they actively work against it.
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles
Yes, there needs to be a lot more uproar for these cases as well. One of the most appalling cases is that of macOS. To distribute your app (as a .dmg for instance), you need to sign up and pay for a Developer ID, sign the app with a Developer ID certificate and then notarize it, EVEN if you don't intend to use their App Store.
You can self sign without a developer account and self distribute and all it does is notify the user that the software is from the internet the first time they run it. They can still use the app. If it is completely unsigned, users may have to bypass gatekeeper, but that is just a setting.
If you want to sign using a cert trusted by apple, and distribute on their infrastructure, you do need a paid account.
This seems like a reasonable compromise, quite honestly. That is based on remembering the bad old days of just having to trust that the software you downloaded from some random shareware site hadn't been modified maliciously.
99% of users are not going to understand why they can't just double click the app to run it. And the second they see macOS gaslight them into thinking self-signed applications are radioactive biohazards via scary warnings, they aren't going to take additional complicated steps to run the app they wanted to run in the first place.
Users will just assume the app is broken, a virus or that you're a hacker, all because of the way macOS treats apps from developers who didn't pay the Apple tax or submit the app to Apple's panopticon for approval.
Users should not have to know some cursed and arcane ritual to run the apps they want to run.
I think a little informative friction letting novice users know they are choosing to load/launch without Apple Store protections is reasonable.
However, any attempt by Apple to scare vs. just inform/confirm would be a dark pattern we don’t need.
Wait, do you need to do that? I've never attempted distribution, but I've created multiple local apps with Electron and Tauri for myself, and they are just a .app on my Applications folder. Wouldn't it be as easy as sharing this file with anyone else if I wanted to distribute them?
No, macOS treats your machine's self-signed certificates in a special way so that running apps signed with them is transparent to you, but a nightmare to anyone you dare to distribute the apps to without Apple's approval.
They need to try to open it, visit Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down quite a bit, hit Open Anyway, try to open it again, and confirm one last time.
(Might be quicker for some in Terminal if supported.)
I think it used to be Right Click > Open, then confirm.
> that was never in question on normal computers.
One of the things that really worries me is that this seems to be creeping in to desktop OS's as well. It's still possible, for now, to install software on Windows 11 without going through the "Microsoft Store", but I remember having to tweak some security settings to make that possible... and was really alarmed the first time I tried to install software on a fresh install and got blocked and directed to the Microsoft Store.
I've always had mixed feelings about RMS and FSF, mostly due to their hardline attitudes (I'm not opposed to proprietary closed-source software even if I have a preference for FOSS... I think there's room for both) but this trend of software installation gate-keeping that came from mobile has me really worried (and I've never been much of a mobile user either, so any creep from mobile into desktop is always unwelcome and alarming to me).
You're talking about "S mode" on Windows. This is not the default mode for a new Windows install but it is sometimes chosen by the device manufacturer or controlling organization for.. reasons? It can easily be disabled
> It's still possible, for now, to install software on Windows 11 without going through the "Microsoft Store", but I remember having to tweak some security settings to make that possible... and was really alarmed the first time I tried to install software on a fresh install and got blocked and directed to the Microsoft Store.
I’ve done several fresh Windows 11 installs lately and haven’t seen this at all.
As the other comment said, you must have used a machine that had a special mode set.
The first time this really hit for me was when i had to jump trough so many hoops to get the at the time most popular controller (ps3 controller) at the time to work with a windows pc due to microsofts hardware signing bullshit.
I could order the most random stuff from aliexpress and it would work but not the competitions controller at the time.
> I can't help but think there might be some effect here that's locking us all in similar to how the U.S. healthcare system can't seem to shake for profit insurance.
Yup. The Amish have had no trouble implementing a single payer healthcare system in the USA. It can be done, where the people want it. But, by and large, the people really don't care. In the back of their minds they might think it would be nice to have in the same way they think it would be nice to have a muscly six pack, but when it comes down to putting in the effort to see it happen...
I understand what you're saying, but I still think it's wrong to blame the people "not wanting it". The corporations and politicians are really powerful and they go far and wide to protect their profits and interests.
Yes, the people could care more and could stand up for it, but it's so easy to blame them and that's exactly what the corporations & politicians want.
Maybe in some magical AGI future computers can do the work, but until then where else is the effort going to come from? It isn't going to randomly appear out of thin air, that is for sure. There is nothing else to "blame" but them.
It's not the "corporations"[1] keeping you from that six pack, nor it is it keeping you from building a single payer healthcare system. Not wanting to put in the toil to make it happen will certainly get in the way, though. We all understand why nobody really wants to put in the hard work and suffering to make the necessary changes, but that doesn't change the fact that it won't happen until you do it.
[1] Which, in this context, is just another way to say people. And in this case often the very same people. ~40% of US corporate stock is held by Average Joe retirements savings account (IRA, 401k, etc.). Ask these people if they'd like a single payer healthcare system and the answer would almost certainly be "Yes!". But if you then ask them to do the work to see it through: "Never mind. What we have will do.".
I can get a six pack by doing exercises in my house everyday with some weights and resistance bands for 20 minutes a day and by spending 5 minutes a day tracking my food for a year. I don't think that there is a place I can go to make single payer health care happen, even if I spent 40 hours a week for a decade at a 60% pay cut.
> I don't think that there is a place I can go to make single payer health care happen
Being generous in assuming you mean while remaining in the USA: The Amish are quite prevalent in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. They've already done the hard work. Joining them may take some small amount of personal sacrifice, perhaps — there is no such thing as a free lunch — but is quite doable for someone who wants it. Like the six pack, all you have to do is jump in and do it.
Alternatively, you can produce your own metaphorical weights and food supply that is to your exact liking, but that is obviously going to take singificantly more input for you to setup and is going to be heavily dependent on other people to buy into your exacting specifications. This route would not allow you to just jump into building the metaphorical six pack at your leisure. It could take many years before you are even able to first produce weights/food, let alone starting to apply them to your six pack journey. But the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, as they say. It will never happen if you don't do anything, that much is certain.
Move to the UK
> "Corporations," in this context, is just another way to say people.
No, I think its referring more to the systems that describe how the group of people behave. It is an important distinction.
Also, the idea that effective and lasting change requires significant personal sacrifice and enduring hardship is yet another thing that corporations and politicians would like you to believe. It's great for causing inaction through human nature. Its effectiveness can be seen in anti-riot measures like tear gas or less-certainly-lethal munitions, asking people the question of "do you believe enough to endure THIS?" It's a rhetorical question.
There's been plenty of politicians trying to get single payer going, people don't vote for them. You can blame propaganda and stuff but at the end of the day people choose freely who they vote for.
This is unreal, do you think people who face the choice between lifelong debt and the loss of a loved one really are comparable to people wanting a six pack? Do you think people really don't care about literal life and death situations?
I'd argue the fact a significant minority of US citizens are cheering on the assassination of healthcare executives (something that does not happen in countries with socialized healthcare systems) mean they are quite motivated for changes but can't find a political outlet for this motivation.
> The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for (and hence allow anybody to just install what they want) is kind of wild IMHO.
It is worth mentioning that the push against open phones never came from big tech but from governments everywhere in the world. Tightly controlled communications was and still is the status quo. People sometimes forget that e.g. in Germany telecommunication used to be a government authority and it was prohibited by penal law to even open a telephone. Things like weak encryption standards and tightly closed down proprietary communication chips inside phones were always intentional.
None of this justifies or explains Google's actions but it puts things into perspective. Personal computing is an outlier, and if home computers had been connected to a network from the start they would probably have been as tightly controlled as all other communication devices have always been.
Unfortunately, the control authorities still exist and seek to gain more power over computing devices and their goals mostly align with the commercial interests of large tech companies, who have basically just become alternative telco providers. So, I estimate that personal computing will be more or less eradicated relatively soon.
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles
This is part proprietary pedigree too.
You had to buy Nintendo cartridges to play Nintendo games, so no one ever questioned the Nintendo seal.
> The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for (and hence allow anybody to just install what they want) is kind of wild IMHO.
It's because the "killer app" of phones is that they are a phone, aka a remote communications tool that relies on a subscription payment to access someone else's infrastructure. People don't care that phones are not general purpose platforms, because the point of having a phone is to communicate with others, which currently requires paying for that privilege.
If you didn't have to pay for access to a network, and the phone still worked as a phone, then you might see a change.
But the vast, vast majority of that communication is done over IP and has been for the past decade. It's not a "phone" at all. It's a computer with an Internet connection.
and you are welcome to buy a hackable tablet to run a browser or desktop app and use that for all your comms. This is not how most people work though :)
The far far worse issue is that public utilities (i.e. governments) and entities like banks force you to use an app only available through one of 2 privately owned distribution channels to interact with them. IMO this is a far worse and pervasive issue than phones being locked hardware.
You're actually not free to do that, because of arbitrary limitations created to siphon more money from your pocket.
And I agree that number 2 is worse, but it doesn't mean that phones being locked is chill so long as banks give you a Windows app.
No, it's still bad. They're general computation devices. I don't care what anyone says - they're not a washing machine. They're indistinguishable in hardware from any other general purpose computer.
> It's because the "killer app" of phones is that they are a phone, aka a remote communications tool that relies on a subscription payment to access someone else's infrastructure.
My computer's killer app is to be a remote communications tool that relies on a subscription payment to access someone else's infrastructure.
But you can. I don't even use telephony anymore; it just works like crap here. I have all my calls over IM. At that point the phone is literally just a normal PC with an Internet connection, it just so happens the connection is wireless.
See my other reply to sibling. If this is how you operate, you are welcome to purchase or build hardware that better reflects your needs. Forcing a private company to modify their product, which people are happily paying for, because you personally disagree is a stretch. The better argument is that other entities whom you pay (government; tax, bank; fees) shall allow non Play or Apple store interfaces to their services, and not supporting this is an abdication of their responsibility to you.
>Forcing a private company to modify their product
You have it backwards. The consumer is the one who pays for the product, he's the ones who should get a say of what does or doesn't run on it. You would not accept the same restrictions of any other kind of device. You would think it's an overreach for a printer manufacturer to design its printers so they only accept ink cartridges it approves.
Yes - and the consumer is choosing to buy this product. You can't claim that the vendor should change the product after it has been purchased.
No I don't think it is overreach, I think it is good business. Other institutions (usually, ideally) put constraints on capitalism, through e.g. mandating USB-C, which could also be applied to printer cartridges. A printer company could even do a Patagonia, and make the most environmentally friendly, reusable, printer system available and make it part of their branding.
>You can't claim that the vendor should change the product after it has been purchased.
The vendor is changing the product after it has been purchased, by removing features through software updates.
> The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for (and hence allow anybody to just install what they want) is kind of wild IMHO. Why hasn't the kind of ferver that created Linux driven engineers to fix their phones?
It's because each phone SoC is essentially its own bespoke architecture. You can't build one arm64 Linux ISO that will work on all phones like you can an x86_64 ISO on a PC. Each and every model of phone requires 0) unlocked bootloaders and either 1) full support from the vendor for Linux or 2) dedicated hackers willing to reverse engineer the board to get it to boot Linux in the first place & then developers willing to write missing device drivers & then maintainers willing to keep the fork up to date or mainline the changes.
It will always be cheaper for phone manufacturers to develop bespoke SoCs than it is for them to implement protocols and interfaces that make booting and hardware discovery standardized like they are on the PC. Making a phone as accessible as a PC to booting generic operating systems inherently means increasing costs at every level from the design up.
> I'm sometimes surprised at the plethora of cheap handheld gaming systems coming out of China that support either Linux, Android, or sometimes both, and seem to be based on a handful of chipsets. If anybody ever slapped an LTE module and drivers onto one of those things we'd have criminally cheap and powerful, open phone ecosystem.
On the surface it seems like that, but all of those devices suffer from the same issues I described above. There will be thousands of devices that "support" Linux, but only nominally.
What happens is, if the manufacturer even releases the kernel source, you get a git dump of a forked kernel that was never modified to be upstreamed with the vanilla mainline kernel. That essentially means you are stuck using that fork unless you have the time, knowledge and skill to port that fork over to the mainline, which is a lot of work. This applies to every SoC, and SoC modification, in gaming systems. Barely any of this work crosses over or can be standardized like it is on a PC.
None of that makes a platform a real open ecosystem.
Source: I'm involved in porting and maintaining a Linux distro for those cheap Chinese handheld gaming systems. The only reason Linux runs on them is because weird nerds spent time getting it to run on them. When they get bored, your Linux "support" ends.
The best we can hope for is for ARM servers to scale down to the point we can use them in small form factors, as ARM servers implement the same standards PCs do to run generic Linux ISOs. We aren't going to get this from the mobile hardware ecosystem, there just are no incentives to make such an investment. Maybe we'll get them if ARM PCs truly take off.
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles or other embedded computing devices where the controls against arbitrary applications is even stronger.
The conversation takes place all the time, there are tons of people who want to, and do, run homebrew and Linux on their consoles, same thing with embedded devices. Getting Linux or Doom to run on an embedded device is a rite of passage.
One of the interesting history of the PC was when Microsoft started selling their OS to clone makers. To hear Balmer tell it, it was frighting as IBM was making their PS2 machines more proprietary. They won and IBM os2 lost. I figured android was Google’s MSDos for mobile, but it seems the temptation of ad revenue is too strong (even showing up on windows..)
Linux is the answer though on mobile it’s just starting to be a little competitive.
“Steve Ballmer: We said ooh, IBM's probably not going to like this. This is going to threaten OS 2. Now we told them about it, right away we told them about it, but we still did it. They didn't like it, we told em about it, we told em about it, we offered to licence it to em.
Bill Gates: We always thought the best thing to do is to try and combine IBM promoting the software with us doing the engineering. And so it was only when they broke off communication and decided to go their own way that we thought, okay, we're on our own, and that was definitely very, very scary.”
https://www.pbs.org/nerds/part2.html
That Balmer quote can be read in Trump's voice and it fits perfectly lol.
Trump embodies an archetype IMO
> It's because each phone SoC is essentially its own bespoke architecture.
Right, but that's a choice from manufacturers, not a requirement of building a mobile platform.
> It will always be cheaper for phone manufacturers to develop bespoke SoCs than it is for them to implement protocols and interfaces that make booting and hardware discovery standardized like they are on the PC.
This... seems suspect? I'm not doubting you, but I do wonder if it's a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul; perhaps it is cheaper to design a bespoke chip than it is to develop a standard for it, but over the course of many generations the benefits of standardizing would kick in?
I do know that RISC-V can support UEFI, so perhaps that's where we need to look to see how developments work out in the long run.
> Right, but that's a choice from manufacturers, not a requirement of building a mobile platform.
Yup, it's a cost thing.
Standardizing busses, protocols, discovery etc is costly, it adds a cost to every SoC, just wiring up components on PCBs is quick, cheap and takes up less space. All three are important in mobile.
The reason you'd implement the standards is for interoperability, which is not what mobile devices are going for. You're getting the OS the manufacturer chooses and that's it, the hardware doesn't have to support anything else.
Standards are also a commitment, and that commitment can be a cost in the future. It's not free for PCs to support all of the legacy hardware they do, for example. A lot of work goes into that.
The reason I bring up ARM servers and PCs is because both have a long legacy of standardization, and to be a real player in either space, you need to meet those expected standards, which ARM ISAs have. Mobile has no such legacy. If PCs had no such legacy, I think we'd see the same issues mobile does today (which we kind of already do on tablets, Chromebooks, etc).
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles or other embedded computing devices ...
Well that is the consumers choice. A friend who has no desire to mess with computers and said hands down he will spend money on a console any day of the week because all he . He has a desktop and a laptop but rarely games on them.
Me, I don't buy game consoles because it kills me to own a powerful compute device that is crippled by the manufacturer to only run certain blessed software. No thanks. I prefer to game on open platforms like my Linux PC running open source games (e.g. gzdoom), DOSbox, Steam games and so on.
> The fact that mobile phones aren't yet just a standard type of portable computer with an open-ish harware/driver ecosystem that anybody can just make an OS for
Such phones exist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
> criminally cheap and powerful, open phone ecosystem.
It wouldn't, you need drivers for your modem, gpu, gps etc. It's encumbered with patents and "prohibited" software circumvention techniques, you're right about one thing it would be regarded as criminally offensive by our current legal system.
Speaking of android, if iOS had jailbreaking, maybe we need a bigger prisonbreaking from Google
Did you hear about Pinephone?
>It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles or other embedded computing devices where the controls against arbitrary applications is even stronger.
Far less technical people from my perspective
Not fun if you work I.T. whatever you role is
I don't know - the iPhone came with some "bundled" native apps like Safari and Mail - and webapp support. Apple later changed this - but in some ways the iPhone 1 was more open - in the sense that all third party apps were just webapps.
> Why hasn't the kind of ferver that created Linux driven engineers to fix their phones? Is Android and iOS just good enough to keep us complacent and trapped forever?
I obviously can't speak for all "Linux driven engineers", but only about myself, as someone who's daily driven linux for a long time and who enjoys tinkering with computers.
I consider phones in the same category as a gaming console: a "single purpose" device.
I find they're not practical for much more than mindless scrolling and the occasional text (and even that's a pain, to the point I usually do it from my computer). I just hate staring at a tiny screen and obscuring half of it with my hand when I need to interact with it.
I'm all for geeking out on things, and love to tinker. But the phones are simply not attractive to me. I used to have Android phones with custom roms, but that was only because samsung had atrocious support for older devices. My current iphone is supported until it can't be used anymore and does everything I need.
Whenever I get the itch to tinker, I'll do it on a computer with a full keyboard and big screen.
> Is Android and iOS just good enough to keep us complacent and trapped forever?
I think they are, especially since us "linux driven engineers" are a tiny fraction of the market. Basically nobody but us cares about these things. Just like almost nobody wants a small phone, or thick phone. Even with regular computers, most people didn't tinker, they would just install a few programs, which would have been on an hypothetical app store anyway.
> I can't help but think there might be some effect here that's locking us all in similar to how the U.S. healthcare system can't seem to shake for profit insurance.
Yeah. It's called capitalism, where the reasoning behind everything is "How can businesses make a profit?". And in the U.S., it's also, if the business doesn't make a profit I'll starve.
> It is interesting though how this same conversation doesn't exist in the same way in other areas of computing like video game consoles or other embedded computing devices ...
Well that is the consumers choice. I have a friend who is a hard core gamer and said hands down he will buy a console any day of the week because all he wants to do is play a game. He doesn't want to deal with Windows updates (or god forbid, fiddling with Linux), driver issues, things suddenly not working, and so on.
Personally, I don't buy video game consoles because it kills me to own a powerful compute device that is hamstrung by the manufacturer to only run blessed software. No thanks. I game on open platforms like my Linux PC running open source games like gzdoom, classics on DOSbox, emulators for classic consoles/arcades, Steam games and so on. And I can run whatever I damn well please.