What we talk about when we talk about sideloading • Hacker News Board

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#601

Post by grishka » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #598

BrenBarn wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember, back then, developers and users often had no after-sale communications at all. They often had no pre-sale communications either, indeed no communication of any kind. It was just like buying a spatula or a pair of shoes. You went to a retail outlet and bought the software; the developer wasn't involved in the transaction at all. It was just the consumer and the retailer. Sometimes there was a postcard you…

> but many people never registered. Which leads to things not getting patched, more bugs, and more computers getting hacked. A great system... I'll also add that if it was a big enough bug that it'd end up on the news and that's how people got informed. Otherwise, like you suggest, good luck. But it was possible. It is baffling to me that we are having this conversation on Hacker News of all places. Aren't we a commu…

> How in the world does any programmer think for a hot second that code is bug free?

If you stop bloating the scope of your product by endlessly adding features no one ever asked for, you'll eventually run out of bugs.

Also, while it does not make you "omniscient", working with a known stack instead of following fashion does help a great deal with preventing bugs.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#602

Post by kuhsaft » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #590

kuhsaft wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

> 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.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#603

Post by kuhsaft » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 7:54 PM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #592

kuhsaft wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

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.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#604

Post by grishka » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 8:10 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #599

grishka wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are not omniscient writers who can foresee all problems, fix all bugs, and write software that is unhackable We can come close to that in all other areas of engineering, but somehow not software? We can build buildings and bridges and be certain that they won't collapse. We can engineer machines that work reliably and safely. But for some reason we can't do the same for software? I call bullshit. > Hardware chan…

> We can come close to that in all other areas of engineering, but somehow not software? I worked as an Aerospace Engineer before I moved to software. What the absolute fuck are you talking about? Physically engineered stuff fails all the time. Look, March of * THIS YEAR* (2025) SpaceX had a rocket * EXPLODE* [0]. Rapid unscheduled disassembly[1] does not indicate we can "foresee all problems and fix all bugs". In fa…

> Look, March of THIS YEAR (2025) SpaceX had a rocket EXPLODE[0].

It's a Starship. It's still in development. It's not a finished product like Falcon. And it's not an unexpected outcome either — after all, SpaceX is doing something that no one has done before, so there does not exist any prior knowledge about the behavior of rockets this huge, and especially reusable. They aren't failing, they are making this knowledge so they could build a rocket that does not explode.

But then again, comparing rockets to software is unfair. Rockets have a finite scope. They go up to safely put things or people into space. In case of SpaceX, they also preferably come back down in one piece to be reused. The more specific requirements only change as a response to new discoveries in the development and testing process — not because some manager has nothing to do, or infinite exponential growth needs to be shown, or investors are demanding AI to be shoehorned into every product, or some designer is desperate for promotion.

> no changes were made, but now the program doesn't work

Some changes for sure were made, because otherwise that would violate the core principle of computer science that the same algorithm executed with the same inputs will always yield the same exact result.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#605

Post by mordnis » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 8:57 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #563

PanoptesYC wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it would be nice to break away from the google ecosystem and install GrapheneOS on whatever device I like- GrapheneOS has official production support for the following devices: Pixel 9a (tegu) Pixel 9 Pro Fold (comet) Pixel 9 Pro XL (komodo) Pixel 9 Pro (caiman) Pixel 9 (tokay) Pixel 8a (akita) Pixel 8 Pro (husky) Pixel 8 (shiba) Pixel Fold (felix) Pixel Tablet (tangorpro) Pixel 7a (lynx) Pixel 7 Pro (cheetah) P…

The GrapheneOS project is working to correct the problem. For more information see this comment written 18 days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1o32gpg/b/nivsx...

Useful info. Thanks for sharing!

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#606

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 8:59 PM UTC

kuhsaft wrote: post #602

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#607

Post by n3t » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #588

n3t wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most (some sources say ~80%) Linux contributors are paid by their employer.

I hope that's true. Do you have a source?

"About 80% of kernel contributors are paid – by their employer!" -- https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-linux-is-buil... (from 2025)

Check out "Most active 5.10 employers" table (it's from 2020) on https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/

"Seventy-five percent of all kernel development is done by developers who are being paid for their work" -- https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/the-linu... (from 2012)

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#608

Post by kuhsaft » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #606

kuhsaft wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 gener…

> 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.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#609

Post by blackcatsec » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

BlackFly wrote: post #526

blackcatsec wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah screw it, it's late and I'm unable to sleep and gonna rant a little more. Microsoft made changes to force consumer users to create Microsoft accounts to login to their PCs and you can go on Youtube and see 500 videos on how to use some bespoke tool to bypass this that has racked up thousands of views because some 'nerd' who literally walks around with a Macbook and an iPhone told them that it's the most evil thin…

DMA in Europe required Microsoft to enable offline accounts without special tricks. When a government is doing their job properly they patch up holes in the laws that allow behavior that the majority consider to be against the prevailing norms. You can also uninstall Edge and all the other Microsoft bloatware. Google on Android is actually one of the worse offenders in Europe for not being able to uninstall software…

Sure, but that isn't the prevailing norm anymore? What hardware doesn't effectively make you sign up for an account? Even Google does this under the hood with devices managed via Android Enterprise. Managed Google Play devices just create a device-specific account under the hood that isn't visible to the user. But it's still there. The requirement for this and the software infrastructure is still there.

Hell, even internet-of-shit devices make you sign up for an account to manage the hardware you buy (Ring, Nest, smart LEDs, etc.)

I'd give that on pure number of raw technical devices deployed to the internet today, some form of account and/or internet connectivity is a requirement moreso than not.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#610

Post by blackcatsec » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

le-mark wrote: post #522

blackcatsec wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah screw it, it's late and I'm unable to sleep and gonna rant a little more. Microsoft made changes to force consumer users to create Microsoft accounts to login to their PCs and you can go on Youtube and see 500 videos on how to use some bespoke tool to bypass this that has racked up thousands of views because some 'nerd' who literally walks around with a Macbook and an iPhone told them that it's the most evil thin…

Nice rant, I’m here for it. This is what I miss from the early internet, a good old fashioned rant. It may go off the rails from time to time, but consistent in its frustration. Note some companies give Mac books with admin, smaller companies though. It can be a real shock to go to a large company and get a locked down windows machine. What the boss can now see how much time I really spend working!?!

Thanks! Happy to oblige! lol