John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-pushes-out-unlocked-os-for-defunct-oculus-go-headset/

by JaimeThompson • 5 years ago

817 305 5 years ago

adamhearn• 5 years ago

This is awesome!

nicolaslem2• 5 years ago

allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down.

This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the same because of locked down hardware.

rchaud2• 5 years ago

The same is true of some of the best work being done on the web, such as the NYTimes interactive infographics.

Because they are so JS-heavy, and reliant on CI/CD pipelines for deployment, on custom CMSes, there is no way to archive them in the way that static pages containing just text and images can be archived on the Wayback Machine. Heck, even Flash projects from 15 years ago still run fine when compiled on Ruffle or some other Flash player.

dzuc• 5 years ago

https://conifer.rhizome.org/ can do it

brundolf3• 5 years ago

Huh? JS can be cached and preserved just like anything else. Even the (presumably JSON or CSV) data could be cached, though I don't know if the Wayback Machine follows API endpoints by default

afavour• 5 years ago

I don’t know why CI or a custom CMS would be the problem here, the output is still static HTML. IMO the problem compared to years ago is that the client side dependency trees are so much more complex, involving third party domains and such. But dependencies are still a problem even in Flash: it can load external JSON data for example, and it’s a lot more difficult to sniff all that out than it is with JS.

Don’t get me wrong, the web is still miserable in this regard. But IMO it’s the mobile apps that are going to be a giant hole in history: we’ll just have some screenshots to look back on.

CarelessExpert6• 5 years ago

Because they are so JS-heavy, and reliant on CI/CD pipelines for deployment, on custom CMSes, there is no way to archive them in the way that static pages containing just text and images can be archived on the Wayback Machine.

Welcome to the world of digital archiving. It's an enormously complicated space, and even for just my own personal projects and content, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to ensure things are future proof and can be archived easily.

As a simple example, building my personal website atop Markdown ensures that, even if the formatting can't be preserved, the core content will be since it's simple ASCII (yes, that's ignoring issues of long-term digital storage and access and so forth, but at least it's not also a bunch of binary blobs or database formats or whatnot).

Equally alarming is that fact that so much of our digital lives aren't even in our control. A historian used to be able to rely on family archives, public libraries, etc, to understand our past. A hundred years from now they'll be looking back and hoping someone somewhere preserved the contents of an S3 bucket before Amazon decided to delete it on a whim...

sorry_outta_gas• 5 years ago

At least the artifacts can be saved and distributed, things like iOS apps have a short shelf-live, hell it only takes a year or two before they can't even be compiled again without modification

causi4• 5 years ago

Damn I miss being able to drop a URL into HTTRACK and then just having a whole website locally archived with everything working.

Asmod4n2• 5 years ago

Just wait for the first big JS Framework which uses the canvas for everything.

lgas• 5 years ago

I don't see how JS, CI/CD, or CMSes impact archivability, but something like dependence on API availability instantly ruins archivability.

kingcharles13• 5 years ago

I just got out of jail after 8 years. Went through my del.ici.ous bookmarks. 99% of the sites either dead or can no longer be viewed properly.

Lochleg• 5 years ago

I have to point out that Ruffle falls shorts on the Flash games that used certain animation or ActionScript features. It's going to be a challenge to fully recreate Flash in a supposedly secure manner. I am also wondering if Flash was always bound to be resurrected and if the company wanted to let it die a natural death or just put it out to pasture.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 5 years ago

This goes against the idea that software is "art" in the sense that most works of art are created to physically endure over time.

jacquesm• 5 years ago

I've always been of the opinion that to allow third party content to be embedded in an HTML page was a mistake. URLS within a page that embed content should have been relative to the page itself, never to another host. Of course the current one is much more powerful but both archiving, bitrot and security would have been a lot better served if it all got served from the same host.

pabs3• 5 years ago

IIRC IA archives full WARCs so replaying all the requests will be fine. The main issue will be browser compatibility with old HTML/CSS/images/JS.

supermatt• 5 years ago

Interesting (semi-related) video here from the graphics editor of NYT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=860d8usGC0o

metagame4• 5 years ago

It's pretty likely they will; they'll just have to crack them first. Pretty much everyone does it with retro consoles today, since CDs are inconvenient and expensive for the core audience of that wants to play video games and DRM is always breakable. It'll probably be easier though, because it almost assuredly won't require you to take out a soldering iron, like you have to with most legacy consoles.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

As systems get more complex, cracking/emulating them gets more effort.

We already see this in old stuff. DOS games run great in dosbox, because the IBM PC was pretty simple. Same with the gameboy, snes, etc.

When you get to more modern things like Windows 98 games, PS3 games, xbox360 games... Most of those are much harder to emulate/crack/archive. They have more complex copy protection schemes, interact more deeply with their OS and hardware, and emulating them is generally more effort.

The next gen of stuff will interact with closed source now-defunct servers. Re-implementing those servers is very much possible... but a massive amount of effort. Effort that won't happen for most products ever.

AdmiralAsshat2• 5 years ago

This is why I still try so hard to buy physical copies of games, and if there is a GOTY Edition, to have the DLC be on-disk, as opposed to being a bunch of download vouchers.

I wanna be able to play the freaking game in ten years without worrying about whether the game/console's online service is still available to do some mandatory authentication or version check.

dewey• 5 years ago

This is why I still try so hard to buy physical copies of games

Aren't these also subject to disk rot?

mywittyname5• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, a lot of new releases need a 0-day patch to be playable. It's basically an anti-piracy/anti-early release measure.

So if you really want to preserve a game on disk, you pretty much have to pick up another copy stamped at a later date to include all of the patches.

touristtam• 5 years ago

I stopped this the day I had to try an emulate a DOS environment to run a simple game.

gonehome• 5 years ago

This is part of the reason I'm excited about Urbit - it's the only project I've seen that has a hope of resolving this.

5faulker• 5 years ago

Carmark is a legend in so many ways.

samstave3• 5 years ago

Remember setting IRQ with dip switches on your 300 baud modem....

Computers are becoming (already are) 'black-boxes' -- non serviceable by the mainstream.... Thank Tim Apple

erickhill• 5 years ago

This is precisely one of the key reasons I stick with Nintendo consoles for gaming. Sure, they sell plenty of connected games and online experiences, too, but I purchase all new games as physical "cartridges." This way in 20 years my son will be able to relive Breath of the Wild and a very large library of other Switch classics should he so desire.

maximedupre4• 5 years ago

Do you mean locked-down software?

Do you have examples of hardware that the next generation might not be able to boot 30 years later?

I'm curious and ignorant :D

nicolaslem2• 5 years ago

I was thinking about the Xbox One. Someone opening a shrink wrapped version in 30 years will have a useless brick because it needs to connect to Microsoft servers for the initial setup. I am not exactly sure what it does during this first exchange and how much of it is hardware/software but I'm pretty sure none of it is done in the final user's best interest.

selfhoster113• 5 years ago

Lots and lots of IoT requires internet access and servers to stay up and running for even initialising a device after a reset. Some require these servers to control the device once it's as up. I already own a smartwatch that cannot be enabled because the application that used to initialise it has patched out support for that model.

registeredcorn• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if there's already a term for this, but the "lack of permanency" is going to be an absolutely massive problem for future genealogists.

Here's an example of how genealogy research looks in the modern day:

* Newspapers (Headlines, Obits, Engagement/Marriage announcements)

* Handwritten letters

* Census records

* Physical photographs

* [Depending on century, location, and religious denomination] Baptism records

* Family Bibles

* Military enlistment paperwork [assuming that it wasn't destroyed in a fire.]

* White & Yellow pages

Much of this physical information has been digitized, but for information that was birthed digitally is precariously susceptible to complete loss once a website goes offline, or a hard drive fails, or any other number of issues that happens to things over the centuries. War, the elements, material shortages, etc.

There's other sources, of course. A big one is first-hand accounts of the past, but even such verbal interviews should be conducted with objects or photos to help jog the interviewees memories of the event.

The majority of how personal memories are being stored are on phones, in hard drives, and other various media that are susceptible to bit rot, proprietary encryption methods, technology or social media platforms that have already gone defunct. This is a trend which is quickly increasing too. If some serious solutions aren't proposed and adopted very soon, it seems highly likely that there's basically just going to be a giant void from the late 90's to at least the 2030's.

Heck, just think about how 10 to 20 years ago, the most common way to get a PC game was on CD. Now it would be an inconvenience because very few people even have a headphone jack, let alone a CD/DVD drive.

flyinghamster• 5 years ago

It is refreshing indeed to see a move like this. Too many times, companies have just obsoleted products, turned off the servers and/or yanked the app (or had it yanked for them by $GATEKEEPER) needed for them to function, and left the buyers in the lurch. Speaking for myself, it's a huge factor in my disillusionment with tech. It was also the reason I've never bought a VR headset in the first place, even before Facebook wormed its way into Oculus.

Is it too much to ask for vendors to do the right thing?

emiliosic• 5 years ago

I made the mistake of buying a Chumby clock (With Firmware signed by Sony, which likely maintained a VM somewhere to boot their clocks until they decided it wasn't worth the effort) without realizing that it needed an internet connection tho even boot and show the time of the day.

charcircuit7• 5 years ago

I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the same because of locked down hardware.

This seems pointless. My old phone is obsolete. There is literally no reason I would want to use it over my current phone. I could care less if it was bricked.

doublepg23• 5 years ago

I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the same because of locked down hardware.

I worry about this too. It's been a great experience collecting and _using_ devices that were made a while before I was born. It's sad future generations might not be able to use the tech I'm enjoying now.

KronisLV3• 5 years ago

Honestly, it feels like there should be a law about drivers and source code being made available after the end of life/support for any product, much like there should be right of repair laws.

Anything else is essentially like renting hardware and letting the manufacturer forcefully make it into e-waste whenever they like.

eatonphil5• 5 years ago

Oculus CTO (and former id Software co-founder) John Carmack

I thought Carmack stepped down from being CTO a few years ago? [0]

[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/oculus-cto-john-carmack-to-...

jjulius• 5 years ago

The sub-heading of your link says:

Carmack says he's transitioning to the role of "consulting CTO" at Oculus.

So he can still be called CTO.

eatonphil5• 5 years ago

But that was also 2 years ago. I assumed by this time they'd have found a permanent CTO? Maybe not.

freediver• 5 years ago

Imagining that future is about people wearing VR devices on their head (even as minimal as a pair of glasses) is hard to grasp.

"In their head" would be a different matter but that is not what the current technology is focusing on (apart from Neuralink).

Edit: not propagating for any such vision the future! just noticing that wearing stuff on head would be clunky and impractical for true immersion.

InitialLastName3• 5 years ago

Leave it to the advertising-surveillance industrial complex to explore every possible route to inject outrage into subjects' brains (whether they want want it or not).

Arrath2• 5 years ago

I'm just waiting for a lightweight pair of AR glasses that I can wear while wrenching on a hobby car that give overlays, labels, disassembly instructions akin to car mechanic simulator.

If they can automagically tell me what size wrench/socket i need to grab, even better.

jessaustin2• 5 years ago

As hard as it is to find any service manual at all for old machinery, and then when you spend $100 to order a used manual off ebay find that the really useful pages are ripped out or covered with grease, I think a product like you describe is waiting on AGI more than it's waiting on nice AR glasses. Very few people need this product, so the intellectual labor to produce it will need to be nearly free.

I've gotten to where I can identify most bolt head sizes on sight... I very rarely have to pick up more than two wrenches and usually the first one is right. Also I find that bolt sizes are typically fairly standardized on a particular machine. I occasionally work on a mini-excavator that has 10mm, 13mm, and 19mm bolts (and 8mm allen-heads), but nothing else I've found so far.

rob742• 5 years ago

A VR world controlled by Facebook sounds dystopian enough already - now imagine the same with neural implants...

barkingcat• 5 years ago

imagine if other people's "likes" and "angry face" are broadcasted into your neurons directly

t-32• 5 years ago

As a person who wears glasses, I'm very excited for AR devices. A great input device* and incremental improvements in the battery tech and energy efficiency would make them ideal for on-the-go computing, reading, and note taking.

* https://wefunder.com/tapwithus looks promising, and facebook bought up companies doing similar things. A ring with a touch slider, gyroscope, and a button would be interesting.

crowbahr• 5 years ago

I e purchased and learned how to use a tap strap. Unfortunately it doesn't really live up the the hype and after a few frustrating months of practice and work it now lives in a drawer collecting dust.

nickmolnar2• 5 years ago

Wasn’t he supposed to be developing AGI?

snek_case• 5 years ago

He seems to be working on AI / deep learning related projects if you follow him on twitter.

savanaly• 5 years ago

He remains part-time CTO for Oculus. I am talking out my ass but I believe the arrangement is something like 80/20 time split between his AGI project and Oculus.

schaefer• 5 years ago

The thought of Facebook having telemetry on real time eye tracking data for a future popular Oculus VR headset in a few years is horrifying.

I’ll never get over the sale of Oculus to Facebook.

aaroninsf• 5 years ago

Me neither.

Haven't touched their hardware since and won't; would pass on jobs if that becomes an aspect.

charcircuit7• 5 years ago

Why? Can you rationally explain what you are afraid of them doing?

SV_BubbleTime3• 5 years ago

Have you considered how much VR is used for porn? Totally unrelated side note, but virtamate is um, probably risky for someone who feels like they could become obsessed with porn.

lukeschlather• 5 years ago

Eye tracking is biometric data. It can reliably be used to detect various neurological conditions.

dyingkneepad• 5 years ago

John Carmack working for Facebook is such a huge loss for mankind :(. It makes me sad every time I think about it.

ComodoHacker• 5 years ago

Maybe he could push it to the better, who knows.

lostmsu• 5 years ago

This move already does IMHO.

pengaru• 5 years ago

Maybe he'd be doing something more useful elsewhere, who knows.

One thing is certain though; Carmack is an inspiring role model for many developers. Facebook is not a great direction to lead smart people towards.

monkeytaco• 5 years ago

He only does light consulting for them currently. He stepped back a couple years ago to focus on his own AI research.

mertd• 5 years ago

He does not need the paycheck. He must think this endeavor is the most worth his while, which is fine.

amackera• 5 years ago

I admire and respect John Carmack for his role in the history of computing (and his ongoing contributions), but I don't see how making 3D video games was really helping humanity more than this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sillysaurusx3• 5 years ago

Carmack made multiple fundamental breakthroughs in 3D graphics. Not only that, but he consistently positioned himself to commercialize those, which is not easy. His Quake 3 engine was the bread and butter of Id Software, generating billions in revenue.

In recent times, he's done coronavirus simulations (I don't know anything else about that), and is doing AGI research.

He's also a true hacker through and through. Simply having an example like his, as a model to follow, is helping humanity. I happen to be human, and I distinctly remember his .plan files influencing my decisions in a positive way since I was 13 or so.

(The line about getting a hotel and accomplishing as much as possible in 2 days of focused effort was particularly impactful.)

sillysaurusx3• 5 years ago

People keep talking like he's focused solely on Facebook.

He does AGI research. He's sent me screenshots of his experiments.

baby6• 5 years ago

Really? I see this as a huge win for VR, but different opinions I guess.

spicybright6• 5 years ago

I'm actually pretty nervous of how few Carmack's we have.

Not at all saying they don't exist, but the job market favors engineers hopping around instead of staying at one place a while to become experts in things.

elric2• 5 years ago

the job market favors engineers hopping around instead of staying at one place

Does it? That's a fair description of the consulting space, but I don't think it's an accurate representation of the job market as a whole. When product companies hire software engineers, they tend to aim for the long haul.

spicybright6• 5 years ago

You'd think. Most career advice I get is you need to jump ship to get an actual pay raise. Maybe stay 3 or 4 years.

Not enough to build up deep knowledge, at least compared to older engineers imo

charcircuit7• 5 years ago

I'm actually pretty nervous of how few Carmack's we have.

Just because they aren't celebrities it doesn't mean they don't exist.

buildbot• 5 years ago

This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported devices to still be utilized. I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair?

Take for example digital backs for medium format cameras - these things are built in low numbers, with high end FPGAs and camera sensors, with JTAG interfaces ready to go and everything - but then forgotten about a few years later. Why not enforce the creation of some document on how one would build their own OS for it? Or how the bus from the sensor ADCs works? This all existed at one point internally, but now is lost, and most of this backs will slowly die and go to waste, even though they could easily be repurposed or repaired.

CarelessExpert6• 5 years ago

This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported devices to still be utilized.

Not at all. This is precisely on point, and directly intersects with the Right to Repair as well. It's about damn time we, as a society, put a stop to black box devices over which we have no ability to inspect, repair, or repurpose after the vendor decides to end support.

horsawlarway• 5 years ago

Could not agree more.

At the bare minimum a vendor should not be allowed to sell a device that has digital locks if the user is not also given a copy of the keys.

You can lock the device, but if I don't get a key at time of purchase, then I don't own the damn thing.

sbarre3• 5 years ago

I wonder as we (slowly) march towards "greener" laws and more climate-conscious ways, if some of this will tie into that?

I feel like you could get good traction on right-to-repair if it was framed around waste reduction and a cleaner future.

Which means we might not get there for a generation still, but these things feel related to me.

gibbonsrcool• 5 years ago

What if we required lifetime warranties for everything? By lifetime I mean human lifetime, not lifetime if the device. It sounds crazy when thinking how it’d work out in practice, especially with electronics, but we need drastic action like this to respond to climate change.

CobaltFire2• 5 years ago

This would completely close markets to new entrants.

As an inventor I can't financially hope to support a device for a human lifetime and break even, much less profit.

Right to repair and allowing these things to be legally opened and hacked by the end user is the right way, not burdening every manufacturer with unrealistic support laws.

For an example, look at military equipment costs. 20 year support is often built into those to give you an idea of the cost of this. Spoiler: things will cost 10-20x what you think they will for a business to hope to profit.

jjk166• 5 years ago

I don't want a warranty. I want my relationship with the company to end as soon as our transaction is complete. If something is worth repairing, I want to be able to pay whoever I want a reasonable price to repair it, regardless of what condition its in or how it got like that. I don't want a company dictating how I utilize and maintain my property potentially decades after I purchase it, and I don't want to pay an absurdly high amount for something I'm going to replace in a few years just because somebody may want to utilize it for far longer.

foxfluff3• 5 years ago

I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair?

Something like right to use would be nice. If you need specs or docs or source code for the software/hardware to be usable, then it should be provided. And IMO that should include not gating essential functionality behind online services unless it is inherent to the function.

entangledqubit• 5 years ago

I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair?

Definitely goes beyond it. This should be able to get traction as an anti-electronics waste policy.

Designs and relevant documentation should be packaged up and handed over to the Library of Congress (or alternate entity) as soon as any design goes into mass production. LoC may release them when the product is no longer supported by the manufacturer or the company has gone out of business -- which could be fairly automated on the LoC side.

One side-effect of this may be that companies will be incentivized to support hardware longer, if they believe that these designs have notable design elements that they do not wish to disclose.

I'd settle for something non-retroactive. Since I don't think that'd be tenable technically at this point anyway.

One of the cruxes in this are things like GPUs and wireless chips which are pretty unfriendly in terms of getting documentation but even providing a subset of functionality would be great.

plebianRube• 5 years ago

I agree. Electronic waste is only getting worse over the last decade, with everyone getting a new phone every year, new laptop etc. Even if everyone optimally buys/sells used, the devices still end up in landfills because the hardware is no longer supported. Not acceptable anymore.

userbinator• 5 years ago

Right to modify --- i.e. what the automotive industry has had for around a century now.

It's why you can still get parts (aftermarket, usually) for vehicles many decades old. I wish companies like Tesla weren't trying to change that, however.

formerly_proven• 5 years ago

Does this mean you get a blob image where you can have root, or more like Carmack of old, GPLing / open sourcing the prev-gen tech? I'm asking basically: Is this free as in beer or as in freedom?

Macha2• 5 years ago

Accessing or using the unlockable software (“Software”) is subject to the Oculus Terms of Service or, if you use your Facebook account to access Oculus Products, the Supplemental Oculus Terms of Service and Facebook Terms of Service (the “Applicable TOS”). For clarity, Oculus Products (as described in the Applicable TOS) include the Software. We provide the Software to you for your personal and noncommercial use only on your personal Oculus Products. Installing the Software voids all warranties, express or implied, applicable to Oculus Products. In no event shall Facebook, its affiliates or any of their respective directors, officers, employees or agents have responsibility or liability arising out of or relating to making the Software available to you.

https://developer.oculus.com/licenses/go-unlock-tos

Free as in beer

kactus• 5 years ago

I hope they do the Oculus Rift CV1 next. I'm trying to sell mine because it's useless without my deleted Facebook account.

arthurcolle• 5 years ago

that would be dope - no chance though

roody15• 5 years ago

John Carmack is a living legend. Seriously impressive career!

InitialLastName3• 5 years ago

He's truly had an incredible run, but it's a shame he's let the finale be "enabled Facebook to mix eyeball tracking with advertising".

imron• 5 years ago

Finale?

bdastous• 5 years ago

This assumption strikes me as ageist.

kreddor• 5 years ago

I'm looking forward to the day he does it for Oculus Quest 1. I haven't used mine in a year because Facebook.

baby6• 5 years ago

time to get the Oculus Quest 2 my friend!

generalizations• 5 years ago

Don't those things need a facebook account also?

asim• 5 years ago

This will be a massive unlock for a Metaverse funded by Zuck with no affiliation with Facebook. Thanks for the hardware Zuck. Now we'll build the new world without you.

croes• 5 years ago

Not with a 3DOF headset

ralmidani4• 5 years ago

Massive props to John Carmack! We also need laws to protect consumers when they don’t have an enlightened champion on their side.

Part of the reason I buy Apple devices is because Apple is unlikely to get acquired or go out of business for the foreseeable future. I wish there were viable alternatives. Android devices are not an option for me, as they are more likely to be abandoned and/or contain Google/manufacturer/carrier malware, and I need to use banking and work apps.

In that same vein, I have a preorder for a Framework Laptop because, at least for actual computers, I have the option of not splurging on a non-upgradeable, non-customizable Apple device.

We really shouldn’t have to wait for Librarian of Congress-granted exemptions, which can be rescinded at any time and are meaningless with locked-down devices anyway.

soylentcola• 5 years ago

Oddly enough, this is why I stopped buying iOS devices. With my old Android phones/the one Android tablet I got I was able to install something useful and pared-down once they became older and unsupported. They work fine as readers/browsers on my home network or as "fancy" remotes and local-network media players.

The only old iOS device I haven't sold/tossed is an iPad 2 which is unbearably slow for most things, and I can neither downgrade the OS or install some lighter alternative. Plus it needs a new 30-pin power cable but I haven't gotten around to buying one because all the other old devices just use one of a pile of USB cables I have stashed around.

As far as I'm concerned, at least in terms of repurposing older devices, iOS is like the old consoles where it's essentially stuck once there are no more "official" updates. If it boots Android, there's a decent chance I can install something custom on it years later.

ralmidani4• 5 years ago

All valid points. But I’ve made the mistake of trading in or losing all of my old Android phones which had unlocked bootloaders.

Also, installing a phone OS is more intimidating to me than, say, putting Debian on a laptop/desktop. I’m happy to go into a BIOS, play with voltages, overclock, etc. but please don’t ask me to hold some combination of buttons to start a process that can easily brick my phone.

kall2• 5 years ago

Hm, I have an OG iPad that runs a few excellent apps (TouchOSC, Animoog, Samplr) well enough that it‘s still a worthwhile device with just those. TouchOSC in particular should get massive props. As of last year, it was still able to update and is solid and super responsive. The App Store still works and I can download the last compatible version of any app I own.

m45t3r• 5 years ago

Yeah. I had a LG G Pad 8.3 (2013) that I used as much as last year until the screen separated from its body and started to fail as an effect. Was using it with LineageOS (don't remember the exactly version, but it was either Android 9 or 10), and it also allowed to tweak the scheduler so the CPU would always run at pretty much the maximum speed. The battery life was obviously bad but would still get one day of reading/watching videos (that was pretty much the main usage I had for it), and thanks for the tweaked scheduler the UI was not that laggy (it was laggy, but not worse than an actual low-end device).

Also, different from iOS at least Google still pushes updates for important parts of the system (Chrome, WebView, etc.), so at least for casual navigation it wasn't horrible insecure.

treesknees• 5 years ago

As long as that Android device has an unlocked bootloader, or an exploit to bypass the bootloader. The same thing can be said about iOS devices (other than perhaps a lack of 3rd party operating systems to install in the first place.)

Lammy• 5 years ago

This doesn't invalidate your argument (which I agree with) since it's unofficial and relies on exploits, but you should be able to downgrade your iPad 2 thanks to its unpatchable bootrom exploit and the fact that Apple apparently has to keep iOS 6.1.3 and 8.4.1 signed for that model specifically https://github.com/LukeZGD/iOS-OTA-Downgrader/wiki/How-to-Us...

kingcharles13• 5 years ago

Apple is one of the only companies I dare buy content from because they are too big to be acquired. I (begrudgingly) wrote DRM code to encrypt all the music for one of Apple's competitors and then they got acquired and all the music and video was just dead bytes on the users' hard drives and there were no refunds.

Still, Apple is known to lock people's accounts for a variety of bogus reasons and then all your purchased content is lost.

makeitdouble• 5 years ago

Are current Apple products still worth that trust ?

I had to repair an old Macbook, and while Apple is still in business they won't take repairs for out of support products. Official repair shops seem to have some access to old pieces, but I don't know how long it will last, my laptop got its part from another junk laptop.

Then the current crop of Apple product have unreplaceable parts for third party shops, especially anything touching the secure enclaves.

I kinda doubt Apple being in business will help on the supoort side for 5 or 10 years older products.

ralmidani4• 5 years ago

I agree, and for non-work computers I’m trying to move away from Apple. But for phones and tablets, I don’t see any viable alternatives (yet).

causi4• 5 years ago

I'm really glad for what Carmack did. It's rather sad though, that support was dropped for this headset after only two years. As a reminder, the Oculus Go was released more than a year after the Nintendo Switch.

baby6• 5 years ago

VR is advancing at an incredible pace really, I don't think it's sad.

gokhan• 5 years ago

Can you give some examples? What was not possible and what's possible now?

mappu2• 5 years ago

It was obsolete at launch, though. 3DOF is "poison the well" territory and not good marketing for VR at all.

SV_BubbleTime3• 5 years ago

This is true. I’ve had both the Go and Quest2. The difference is between taping a screen to your face, and VR.

causi4• 5 years ago

True. It also had a garbage Snapdragon 821 in it, even while smartphones had the Snapdragon 845.

ajay-b• 5 years ago

Now do the Oculus Quest

lovelyviking• 5 years ago

How much one can improve a dictatorship working for the dictatorship ? Just thinking ...

TedShiller• 5 years ago

NOT doing this should be illegal

Klimentio• 5 years ago

"but damn, getting all the necessary permissions for this involved SO much more effort that you would expect." srsly?

He choose facebook, the cancer of our society, to persuite his VR dreams.

What did he expect?

maximedupre4• 5 years ago

I love the spirit, but is there any *successful* precedence?

Sure, everything is now open-sourced, but setting up the kind of infrastructure that is necessitated to keep the thing up and running seems non-trivial.

flatiron2• 5 years ago

I don’t believe it was open sourced. This is just a firmware that gives your root access and doesn’t require any Facebook integration.

f311a• 5 years ago

I wish Sony to do the same thing for Playstation 4.

robert_tweed2• 5 years ago

I'm going to give this a try later. One small fly in the ointment is that if like me you do not have and do not want to ever have a Facebook account, it will not be possible to load this onto the device after 2022.

This is because loading the ADB requires putting the device in developer mode, which in turn requires an internet connection and an active login to your Oculus developer account. Oculus developer accounts have been deprecated and will stop working in 2023, after which time a Facebook account is required.

flatiron2• 5 years ago

You sure?

“In part, the unlocking is an attempt to guarantee that Go hardware will continue to be fully functional well into the future, allowing for "a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now [to] be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down," Carmack wrote.”

robert_tweed2• 5 years ago

Yes, I am sure. Look at point 2 in the instructions and follow the link.

The whole process for putting an Oculus device in developer mode is incredibly fiddly and annoying. You need a verified developer account. You an app running on a phone, which in turn requires an online login. You can't just do it from a desktop PC and you certainly can't flip a toggle on the device itself.

Ideally, as a follow-up to this, they will release something that allows putting the device into developer mode without requiring any of that. As of now, that does not exist.

gfodor• 5 years ago

Go is a solid piece of kit. No head or hand tracking, but the benefit is low weight and power efficiency. Basically, it's an all-in-one GearVR, which is a solid minimum viable standalone VR headset for lots of things like anything that involves a large virtual TV screen or spectating things like events in VR. Nice to see that it will be an open platform now, which will provide a nice baseline for apps to target who care about ensuring their content is accessible via cheap, open devices.

foobarbecue• 5 years ago

Cool. Now can we please have that for the Quest 2?

yason• 5 years ago

This is great as such but it really should be the law.

snissn• 5 years ago

i think i threw mine out

pyfan878• 5 years ago

Do you really think that metaverse will gain momentum?

numpad0• 5 years ago

Anyone tried this on an newly unboxed or at least a wiped Go? I think I had to go through pairing and activation before enabling adb on Go, which instruction says is required.

John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

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