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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

#381

Post by dotancohen »

lmarcos wrote: post #374
alex_smart wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Government should mandate the ability to downgrade the software to versions that were previously available on said hardware. What about devices that are connected to the internet and need security patches? As a software engineer can you imagine supporting every version of your software you ever released? Sounds like a nighmare.

> As a software engineer can you imagine supporting every version of your software you ever released? Sounds like a nighmare. Perhaps we (developers) need to get better at this. We care so much about pushing features and being agile and all, but when it comes to supporting old releases: "umm, no. It's a nightmare".

That's what new releases are for. The "support" is a replacement version.

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

#382

Post by mastazi »

fragmede wrote: post #344
mastazi wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is that undesirable for you? Why is it undesirable having to go find my phone? Because I'm relaxing on the couch I guess?

Fascinating. For better or worse, my phone's basically glued to me, so casting and using my phone keyboard is preferable vs an on-screen keyboard.

I see. Pre-Covid I used to have my phone with me more often, with the whole WFH situation I don't really see a reason to use it since I have other devices in my home that give me a better experience (larger screen, physical keyboard, good speakers etc).

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

#384

Post by dotancohen »

amatecha wrote: post #205
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…

Yeah, I completely agree. Vehicle manufacturers can't just come and change out the steering wheel and dashboard in your vehicle, for example. Why can software vendors change out the total functionality of a piece of software you paid for? Especially irreversibly, in the case of DRM-laden platforms like game consoles, iOS, etc. where you cannot undo an update once it's installed, or cannot refuse an update if you want…

  > Yeah, I completely agree. Vehicle manufacturers can't just come and change out the steering wheel and dashboard in your vehicle, for example.
Actually, they can. There was a huge airbag recall a few years ago, affecting maybe half a dozen automobile manufacturers because they all bought their airbags from the same supplier. In at least one case, the dash had to be modified in order to fit a replacement airbag because drop-in replacements could not be procured quickly without disrupting new car production. It would not surprise me if some of the cases also required modifying or replacing the steering wheel.

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

#385

Post by mastazi »

ttty wrote: post #342
mastazi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices I tried several alternatives in terms of smart TV (Apple TV, Google/Android TV, Fire TV), and I could not find any platform that let me use all of the apps that I needed without resorting to casting from my phone. And in some cases there was a long process to follow in order to get the device to do what I needed[1], which involved activating developer mode, sideloa…

I have an LG TV for 2 years and it never showed any ads. Everything works great so far. Where do you see ads

LG uses WebOS which is not among the ones I tried. In some of the other systems the ads generally cover the upper half of the home screen, then you have the app icons below that.

This screenshot shows the home screen in Google TV and gives you an idea of what I'm talking about https://phandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Chromecast-...

And this screenshot is the home screen in Fire TV: https://cdn.mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Firet...

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

#386

Post by dotancohen »

adreamingsoul wrote: post #360
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…

I similar avoid purchasing devices that I can’t have full ownership of. I’ve often thought about starting a hardware company that provides all the source code, schematics, bill of materials with the sale of a product. This is a dream and a desire I have for the things that I do buy. For example, I have several digital cinema film cameras that I do not plan to upgrade or sell. Unfortunately they are showing their age…

  > I’ve often thought about starting a hardware company that provides all the source code, schematics, bill of materials with the sale of a product. This is a dream and a desire I have for the things that I do buy.
Hardware in the old Soviet states came with all the blueprints and engineering schematics to fabricate replacement parts in the field.

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

#387

Post by lodovic »

emteycz wrote: post #373
matheusmoreira wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it even matter if we read these contracts? No one's going to negotiate terms with the billion dollar company and only lawyers will have a full understanding of the implications of what's written in these things anyway. This last fact alone should be enough to invalidate any consent. I mean, we're actually talking about "buying" games here. That's how insidious these things are. The few people who read this fine…

It matters. You can click decline. If more people read the contracts and clicked decline, perhaps they'd have to change the contract.

I don't assume that companies track how many people reject their TOS, since they are not users of their product.

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

#388

Post by emteycz »

lodovic wrote: post #387
emteycz wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters. You can click decline. If more people read the contracts and clicked decline, perhaps they'd have to change the contract.

I don't assume that companies track how many people reject their TOS, since they are not users of their product.

Of course they do track, with their profits (and conversion rates).

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

#389

Post by dotancohen »

politician wrote: post #276
suifbwish wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear god don’t get me started on mobile terraria. They completely ruined the gameplay. Common sense would tell any product team to at least provide the option to switch back to the old interface (they didn’t add or take away anything that would disallow this) but NO. I started playing it because it was fun, simple and easy to learn/play, now the controls have been completely ruined for mobile.

I just bought Terraria a couple days ago to see what it was all about. After 20 minutes of futzing about with it on my iPad, I deleted it because it was so terrible to control. Now to learn that the developers only recently released an update to a 9 year old game that broke once working controls. Wild!

You're not buying new games if you're enjoying nine-year-old games.

Did you know that before The Phantom Menace, then-20-year-old Star Wars would compete with new movies at rental shops? I personally believe that this is why Star Wars was "updated": it was too resilient to being replaced. The rental place didn't need to buy so many new copies of new movies when they could keep making money on old Star Wars. So the studios needed a way to make Star Wars less appealing.

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

#390

Post by Tor3 »

tharkun__ wrote: post #249
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…

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.

I simply bought a non-smart TV. I just made sure it had a number of HDMI ports. I plug my various media sources into the HDMI ports.

A "smart" TV must be the most un-smart TV possible - you're stuck with whatever's there. The "smart" part (say, a Pi or a Chromecast or both) must be detached from the display device (the TV), not a part of it.

"smart" TVs remind me of back when I bought a webcam with integrated Skype, for my old parents. It did make it easy for them to skype with their grandchildren, using the TV. But of course Skype, or MS at the time, plugged the pull on the version of Skype used by the webcam and then it became a brick. Never again.

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