Clock Blocked: Well this is alarming
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
The irony here is MS were roasted back in 2014 when they wanted to go all in with always online, yet Sony seems to have sneaked some form of required online DRM through the back door, which just goes to show what a difference good PR can do.
As I understand it, the issue only arises if 1) the CMOS battery is replaced and 2) the console is unable to connect to the official servers. Both of which will happen to 100% of PS4s eventually since CMOS batteries don't last forever and as Sony themselves are proving right now with the PS3, such servers are eventually taken down.
IIRC the thing with the ExBone (or whatever they ended up calling it) was that MS actually touted it as a feature. The PS4 thing just seems like passive negligent design, as the only reason it happens at all is to do with the trophy tracking. With all the fuss that's being kicked up there's a half-way decent chance that Sony may actually bother updating the firmware to rectify the problem.
Still, it's all an excellent example of why it's a really bad idea for any otherwise independent device to need an active connection to operate offline functions. See also all that "internet of things" tat that'll not only be useless but an active liability to your home network's security.
IIRC the thing with the ExBone (or whatever they ended up calling it) was that MS actually touted it as a feature. The PS4 thing just seems like passive negligent design, as the only reason it happens at all is to do with the trophy tracking. With all the fuss that's being kicked up there's a half-way decent chance that Sony may actually bother updating the firmware to rectify the problem.
Still, it's all an excellent example of why it's a really bad idea for any otherwise independent device to need an active connection to operate offline functions. See also all that "internet of things" tat that'll not only be useless but an active liability to your home network's security.
I always thought IOT was more a marketing thing than anything truly useful. Anything can be put on the internet even a toaster but it's a pointless gimmick IMHO. Now goes off to find where the battery is in my PS4
Yeah the IOT may be just a dumb gimmick, but in the long run it has the potential to be VERY harmful. There's already been cases of these things being hijacked by hackers to serve as ping bots for DDOS attacks, because of course their security software was 1) programmed by the lowest bidder, and 2) never updated, ever.
Personally it baffles me why so many people have an Alexa in their house...by choice! Call me paranoid, but a hot mic running through a speech recognition program, a search engine AND an always internet connection just spells "very easy to abuse for market research purposes." And that's a best case scenario. Never mind when the encryption (assuming it has any) gets cracked and any idiot can tap in.
Mind you I still don't know what prat thought having car keys that passively broadcasts it's car's unlock codes ALL THE TIME was in any way a good idea. Because that won't make it AT ALL trivially simply for a couple of jokers with and RF scanner and the right software to nick your car just by waving an antenna in the general direction of your house at 2am. I mean if your security design requires the customer to store their keys in a Faraday cage to prevent theft, not of the keys themselves but the thing they're meant to keep LOCKED then it's a shitty design. I mean what's next? A debit card that yells your pin number at 100 decibels every 10 second in case you forget it? On the plus side though, at least they don't need a constant broadband connection...yet.
So much of this stuff COULD be useful if done right and utilised wisely...but unfortunately the big decision makers for how these products are made are evidentially entirely ignorant as to how technology actually works. And I'm sure it was probably the same way the situation with the PS4 came about. Some exec handed down some edict to make it impossible to fiddle with the in-game trophies because something-something-micro transitions-something-something-online service! But rather than spending actual time and money on it and create a software solution, their tied it to a piece of hardware the customer can't access; the CMOS clock! Genius! Now only people that jailbreak the whole system will be able to cause shenanigans! Oh wait...
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This is why I'd never buy an alexa unless it was just for a day or two to muck around with it. You can't use it offline, same for the Google home hub which monitors your sleep if you give consent. Sorry I love tech but not this kind of tech. IOT plus corporate capitalism sorry no thanks.
We have four of them. I seriously don’t care if Amazon wants to listen to me scratch my ass.
It's not Amazon you should be concerned about.We have four of them. I seriously don’t care if Amazon wants to listen to me scratch my ass.
I really don't care if the government wants to listen either. Privacy is an illusion.
Nor those idiots either.
The problem will come from either some random chucklefuck creep breaking through the net security and getting up to god knows what, or some hacker group cracking these things enmasse and using them as ping machines for DDOS attacks. Which of course at your end of things just means they've essentially been bricked...and probably had every login protocol in your house pulled out of it for good measure, so you better hope your two factor authentications don't all run through that thing too, because identity theft is a fun time for all!
I love Sony's arrogance in all this. Even the Ps5 has the clock bomb
Yeah because long conversations with the bank about your now frozen and/or empty account(s) is but a minor vexation and well worth the convenience of being able to tell your house to google "do I got net security?" and have it play "purity by slipknot" instead...Would be a pain in the ass? Yes. But life would go on.
The PS5 has another timebomb with that fixed to the Mobo SSD because it seems that some of PS5 OS is stored on that SSD, so if it fails the whole console is dead, and you can't replace it yourself with a new one due to it being fixed to the mobo, and the fault SSD can't be bypassed to boot from the add-on SSD because of how security works on the console, so this fixed SSD could start to be a bigger issue in say 1/2 years time.
That was deliberate on their part I think.
@Haggis and tatties this is a lot worse then planned obsolescence. This is just deliberate intention knowing if your product fails it is bricked and the user has to spend more money on brand new product to replace bricked product, knowing it can't be fixed.
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Yikes. That's very bad.
Does anyone really think trophy hacking is a big deal anyway?
Trophies don't get you any real world prize, they're just numbers people can show off. If people want to hack up their numbers and show off, what do I care?
Trophies don't get you any real world prize, they're just numbers people can show off. If people want to hack up their numbers and show off, what do I care?
I agree that's why there's a program called steam achievement hacker.....
I've only used it once for one multiplayer achievement that would not pop because the particular game had shut down its servers.
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