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Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

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Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#301

Post by chii »

greysphere wrote: post #297
gorjusborg wrote: post #17

This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices. If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period. I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day…

If you bought a physical disk version, why not just reinstall it?

iirc, the way PS works is to enforce an update if your PS detects that you got an out-of-date game (unless you don't connect to the internet).

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#302

Post by WheatM »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #77
gorjusborg wrote: post #17

This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices. If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period. I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day…

Why don’t the customers use a tablet resting on the treadmill or wall-mounted TV to watch whatever they want?

No post body was provided.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#303

Post by makeitdouble »

vlunkr wrote: post #217
gorjusborg wrote: post #17

This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices. If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period. I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day…

It's a tangent, but it's incredible to me that people used to ship video games and other software on physical media and it worked fine. Now you can drop a big turd on the steam store initially and it's just business as usual. Cynicism aside, I really do admire the dev and QA teams that pulled this off. It's such a different world now.

It cuts both ways, games would take half decades to get done or only cover a thousandth of the ground current games cover. Imagine what Minecraft would be, shipped on physical media.

We also wouldn't get games like Goat Simulator who basically set a low expectation bar in exchange for low cost, best effort game play. I'm kind of ok with more "garbage" if we also get more weird/low budget games that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#305

Post by detaro »

makeitdouble wrote: post #303
vlunkr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tangent, but it's incredible to me that people used to ship video games and other software on physical media and it worked fine. Now you can drop a big turd on the steam store initially and it's just business as usual. Cynicism aside, I really do admire the dev and QA teams that pulled this off. It's such a different world now.

It cuts both ways, games would take half decades to get done or only cover a thousandth of the ground current games cover. Imagine what Minecraft would be, shipped on physical media. We also wouldn't get games like Goat Simulator who basically set a low expectation bar in exchange for low cost, best effort game play. I'm kind of ok with more "garbage" if we also get more weird/low budget games that wouldn't exist oth…

There was a time in the gaming market were quickly developed, cheap, often not-so-good games on physical media were a thing: 8-bit home computer era. So it's possible to imagine that coming back in more modern times, in a timeline were internet wasn't the obvious alternative.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#306

Post by makeitdouble »

pryelluw wrote: post #247
gorjusborg wrote: post #17

This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices. If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period. I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day…

Can’t imagine buying a spoon that will only work with Campbell’s soul. Of course, some tech bro will say that their spoon2.0 is specially engineered for the best soup flavor …

That's a different debate IMO. Not so long ago we had external storage that only worked with Sony products. We now have headphones that only work with Apple phones.

Exclusivity always existed at weird levels, here the issue would be more about having the option to freeze/protect a product's software state to get out of the update treadmill.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#307

Post by not2b »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #256
brokenmachine wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. TV updates are another thing. They change things with abandon and you can't revoke the updates. Sometimes they break stuff and then you have to pray and wait until they hopefully fix them at their leisure. IMO, it should be illegal to issue unrevokable updates so you can't get a product to have identical features as it did at the time of purchase. You should always be able to wipe it back to stock. Same w…

It already is illegal to do so. Just claim damages against the TV manufacturer, likely the whole price of the TV or a comparable replacement.

Looks like this was partly successful against Sony but it took six years in court and people didn't get the whole price back when they removed Linux support from the PS3:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/if-you-used-to-r...

Litigation is expensive, pretty much the only way it can be done in the US is as a class action where the number of people ripped off is large.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#308

Post by pabs3 »

gorjusborg wrote: post #17

This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices. If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period. I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day…

One option is to never buy hardware where you haven't installed the OS/software yourself and therefore have control over updates. This is kind of limiting though since lots of hardware doesn't support installing your own OS and Linux/BSD/etc don't support various hardware.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#309

Post by vl »

beloch wrote: post #254

"NordicTrack says it supports right-to-repair rules. However, because of its equipment’s moving parts, the spokesperson says, it believes that restricting access to its operating system is important for safety. " The real reason they don't want people using other apps or watching third party videos is because anyone doing that is not spending money on iFit. Or, at least, not as much as they could be. NordicTrack like…

NordicTrack treadmills are quite expensive actually. Full incline model are $3000 and $4000, and there is no competition for them.

Re: Locked out of 'God Mode', runners are hacking their treadmills

#310

Post by m463 »

I bought a proform pro 2000 treadmill at costco.

On the box, it mentioned "one-year iFit membership included (then says wifi and registration required for ifit)"

I didn't want to use iFit, I just wanted to use the treadmill.

However -

You can't use the treadmill without connecting it to wifi, except for "manual mode". ZERO workouts. This involves dark patterns for setting up your treadmill and avoiding a wifi connection. then you can select manual mode - which can ONLY set the speed or incline manually.

Oh yeah, this treadmill has an embedded camera and microphone.

The description is a dark pattern, the UI is a dark pattern. pro-form has a horrible reputation from my direct experience.

so I use it in manual mode. I don't use the 10.1" touchscreen except to start it moving.

I suggest folks who want a treadmill just go to somewhere like Dick's and look at the treadmills and buy one after checking out the UI in person.

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