Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

331–340 of 477 posts

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

#331

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…

[deleted]

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

#332

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…

I agree. Perhaps the U.S.'s legal framework reasonably allows this kind of behavior, but IMHO it's a sign that the framework needs legislative correction. The first time I encountered this was when Sony advertised Linux-compatibility for the PS3, which I bought expressly for that purpose. I was shocked when a judge upheld Sony's post-sale removal of that capability.

Absolutely agree.

I bought a couple Hue bulbs a while back and a (somewhat) recent update to the Hue app removed the ability to control them via by watch. Completely pointless feature removal. Part of the selling point is that level of control, and yet they just removed an entire feature I frequently used. That's simply straight up removing something that I've paid for, which I don't view as any different from theft.

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

#333
This is why I don't buy specialty hardware devices anymore. I jumped off the smart device treadmill with the fitbit.

The only thing in my house that gets access to the internet are my computers and phone. Nothing else. If I turn it on and it complains about no internet - it gets returned as defective.

I have a car charger (Juice Box) that have a smart app to control it. Nope not for me. Last thing I want is a hacked device fucking with my car's charging.

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

#335
post #334

Is the difference between a $500 treadmill and a $4,000 really just an Android tablet? A fool and money.

No. If you run on a good treadmill you can immediately feel the difference. Motor smoothness, the weight of the machine, the give and bounce of the platform, all of it adds up to a nicer running experience.

That said, I still hate treadmills and prefer to run outside, but there’s a huge difference between a cheap one and a good one.

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

#336
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would work equally well with LTE. It's not happening because it would increase cost.

Oh no, in fact, it’s just around the corner. https://aws.amazon.com/fr/private5g/

Private 5G is like an alternative to wifi for a large industrial complex or something. No one is going to cover your house in it. You should be more worried about Sidewalk. https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why I personally try to stay away from as many of these things/devices as I can reasonably do. TV: just don't buy an actual TV. Buy a monitor and hook it up to a Linux box with something like Kodi. You can hook up your cable box if you have that or stream from Netflix and such. Sure, even Netflix makes it hard as you can't get 5.1 surround but I'll take that and 2.0 -> 5.1 upmix over buying a Smart TV…

> TV: just don't buy an actual TV. Buy a monitor and hook it up to a Linux box with something like Kodi. You can hook up your cable box if you have that or stream from Netflix and such. Sure, even Netflix makes it hard as you can't get 5.1 surround but I'll take that and 2.0 -> 5.1 upmix over buying a Smart TV any day! I've looked into this, but this option is really not great, either: - Large Monitors are unavailabl…

[deleted]

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

#338
post #307
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those damages were assigned with the assumption that most people didn't buy a PS3 to run Linux on it. If you opted out of the class action I have no doubt you would have gotten a full refund.

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

#339
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.

Take a look at the games from that era and the games you get right now. Sure, more has changed than just being able to update things, but the ability to fix issues later and continually update games has lead to much much better games with way more content. And you can always chose to wait a year for everything to settle.

I actually think that may not always be for the best. Games are released in beta, and qa takes place in the months and years after release, if ever.

Updates can be issued, but it increasingly means that things are released in a state where updates NEED to be issued

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

#340

The method to get into "God Mode" is the same, except now it prompts you for a code. Someone has figured out how to calculate it and actually created a website to generate codes for you. http://getresponsecode.com Apparently the algorithm is very simple according to Reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/nordictrack/comments/ozkp8v/privile... >long responseCode = new Random((long) Integer.parseInt(iFitCode)).nextInt(999999)…

DHCP advertise an http proxy to it with a PAC file and block non-proxy communications. It should do the right thing eventually, at which point you can catalogue the usual traffic exchanges and then block anything not in them and/or just the software update URLs (which requires inspection over time, as there may be many).
Post reply on HN