alt Hacker News> At the same time, being upset about the PS5 making it impossible to run arbitrary software without hacking feels a little like being upset that your washing machine doesn't clean your dirty dishes as well as it cleans your dirty laundry: it's not made for that, and it's not really reasonable to expect it to be able to do that well if at all.
Except that's so completely not like what's going on with modern hardware. They're taking general purpose computers and restricting you from doing general purpose computing on them. Like, a dishwasher is made to wash dishes. It has a shape and a design made for washing dishes. You would need to make physical modifications to get it to wash clothes. This is like taking a machine that could wash both dishes and clothes and intentionally stopping it from washing clothes.
This is not OK. This needs to stop. Soon they'll come for our general-purpose computing with "features" for DRM.
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> They're taking general purpose computers and restricting you from doing general purpose computing on them.
But so much tech hardware is commodified. A pregnancy test probably isn't using hardware dissimilar to your laptop. It just has less of it.
I don't think there's an expectation that every electronic is user programmable. But anything that is general phrpose should be punished as such for trying to put in excessive restrictions. There are arguments for game consoles on both aisles, but I don't agree with the mentality of "anything with general hardware needs general programming ability"
Most appliances have fairly general-purpose microcontrollers inside them, but expose a fixed-function interface. Hopefully things like safety interlocks for microwave oven doors are implemented in hardware rather than software.
> Soon they'll come for our general-purpose computing with "features" for DRM.
You... haven't noticed all of the existing DRM features?