PS5 Linux lead quits: "a bunch of noobs using LLMs" that "they don't understand"

arnaudsm

Misleading title, there's another major reason: it's an embargo agreement violation that jeopardizes Linux support on PS5. https://x.com/theflow0/status/2099987019954831744

IslandRebel

> “Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony,” the modder said on social media. “I asked them to at least wait for GTA 6 to come out so that people would have the opportunity to legally purchase the game and also enjoy linux. They agreed to wait, but not a day passed and they decided to waste it instead.” If one user could have found this using AI. Then I would imagine anyone else could have found it.

aleksejs

Fascinating times we live in, when "the last hypervisor bug" in what is presumably one of the most hardened pieces of consumer hardware can be found by "noobs" and "slop kiddies".

Game_Ender

The headline here is off, PS5 Linux relies on bugs for installs, and the project couldn’t keep the last know hypervisor bug secret: > Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony,” the modder said on social media. “I asked them to at least wait for GTA 6 to come out so that people would have the opportunity to legally purchase the game and also enjoy linux. They agreed to wait, but not a day passed and they decided to waste it instead.” So what has really happened is the LLMs have lowered the participation floor for this space enough the dynamics are changing. The new comers would rather have a few dollars vs. the founders who would rather have a project. It’s likely the projects days were numbered either way because Sony could also just take a frontier LLM and examine any released installer for the project and reverse engineer and bug.

0x69420

now imagine how many other devs and maintainers are contemplating this but just haven't been pushed to their personal breaking point yet. or take note of how many, when asked about the spam problem, just nervously go "yeah it's kinda rough haha...". or how many will vent about it on their twitter-like of choice with increasing frequency. remember hacktoberfest 2020? that's just all public-facing source 365 days a year now, except instead of "updated README.md" it's some vaguely-plausible fix... then you read the PR body and someone couldn't even be bothered to, or, just as likely couldn't explain it themselves. and that sort of sinking dread sets in.

eugenekolo

Hobby groups projects like this are less fun for a lot of people who used to enjoy interacting with smart people. It's definitely become a game of just spam claude for answers with zero understanding or care for how anything actually works. That's fine to get things done and fine for a lot of side projects, but it definitely ruins the joy that people have in understanding systems and working with intellectuals.

ChrisRR

This title and the first quote are misleading. A dev found an undisclosed hypervisor exploit using AI that TheFlow0 had been using and keeping secret, but the other dev had informed Sony to collect the bug bounty. It's an issue that the dev attempted to collect the bug bounty, AI or no

blablabla123

It's strange working on Opensource these days. I've mostly worked on my own stuff alone which usually doesn't get much attention/additional contribution. Then I see on Reddit, HN or LinkedIn someone creating a major App or Plugin in a weekend. Sometimes I take a closer look the artisanal quality is effectively unmaintainable, at least for humans. But in the end it's hard to get a good overview, and the sheer quantity seems to dwarf any other efforts. Not to mention how the code can then be sourced by an AI model in an instant without any credit.

freedomben

> it seems that vibe-coders, or “slop kiddies” as the modder dubbed them, used AI to detect a bug that they were using to crack consoles, and reported it to Sony for a bounty. That would indeed be incredibly demoralizing, even crushing. Quite a dick move. Now that said, I imagine it was only a matter of time anyway until Sony found/fixed or someone else did the same thing. It's just a different world now. As much as I'd love a non locked down PS5, anyone buying one knows what they're getting. If you care about user empowerment, PC (Valve hardware, etc) is the place to put your money and time. Sony is actively hostile toward you and wants you locked down, and trying to fight it with exploits is destined to be a nasty cat and mouse game. Go with a vendor that is more aligned to your values.

kmeisthax

> “Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony,” the modder said on social media. “I asked them to at least wait for GTA 6 to come out so that people would have the opportunity to legally purchase the game and also enjoy linux. They agreed to wait, but not a day passed and they decided to waste it instead.” Ever since consoles became moving targets there's been deliberate gatekeeping - specifically, drip-feeding of bugs - to maximize the chance someone can actually use them to break DRM and install Linux. This relies on the fact that most people do not want to have to become FreeBSD kernel experts in order to install non-PlayStation software on their PlayStation. But if everyone is vibe-hacking their PS5s then none of this logic applies. Any bug Claude can find is one Sony also knows about and will get patched, possibly before you even release an exploit for it. How this ultimately plays out depends on if it's even possible to write software without bugs. Maybe this reaches a new equilibrium where people are paying Claude to vibe-code jailbreaks - as I'd initially hoped. But it's equally as likely that this winds up reinforcing DRM rather than weakening it, for a few reasons: 1. Anthropic's AI safetyism culture encourages the prohibition of vibe-coded jailbreaks. The fact that the model runs on a server and people are spying on your chatlogs means Anthropic has actual knowledge of who is actually using their service to find PS5 hypervisor bugs. Letting Claude break DRM is legally risky; DMCA 1201 implies the only lawful way to break DRM is for you to find your own bugs. So it's probably not going to be long until everyone vibe-coding jailbreaks will get banned. 2. Sony will not be getting banned from these services, they will get trusted access as they're big enough for Anthropic to sue if it gets misused. 3. The attack surface of the thing you have to actually compromise to get code execution on any locked-down system is really small. The Xbox 360 had a 15+ year gap[0] of no softmodding because they'd isolated all the memory protection into a hypervisor. Apple learned the same lesson and iPhone jailbreaking went from incredibly commonplace to "if you know how to do it someone at Zerodium will hand you a million dollars to write spyware with it". [0] AFAIK, the only two actual softmoddable bugs on Xbox 360 were the King Kong hack right at launch, which got patched in like a week, and that BadUpdate thing last year .

ltbarcly3

I think the reason to not invest your time in PS5 linux is that sony hates it and will patch it away over and over, and nobody really wants it. It's $200, mediocre hardware. I might be showing a lot of unc energy here, but if you can't afford a raspberry pi or something to play with linux, or a used pc, gaming and having a playstation 5 should be de prioritized for a bit while you get your life together.

random3

There’s also the other side of the same coin where maintainers ignore your contributions. I’m happily forking things permanently and will likely rewrite them on cleaner foundations. I’ve never loved my tools more than I do now when I can get them coded at the same pace I think of them. On the other hand, it’s been clear for a while that software as we knew will end up at a close to 0 marginal value.

catlikesshrimp

Too many people are reading at the momment. Check it here https://web.archive.org/web/20260916123755/https://frvr.com/... Hopefully "people" doesn't mean scrapers

shevy-java

Folks, AI skynet is currently winning the war. LLMs have taken over so many projects already. If I were young, would I want to contribute to projects maintained these days via AI slop? I would not find that interesting at all.

VadimPR

We've solved this in our FOSS project by requiring all PRs to have been tested and manually signed off by a human. It significantly decreased the amount of spammy LLM made PRs, while empowering the core contributors to move faster.

cyberrock

I've seen kiddies take advantage of homebrew developers to develop game piracy many times, but this is the first time I've seen kiddies do it to fix the exploit for the bug bounty. How the times have changed.

gafferongames

Gatekeeping at its finest

1970-01-01

This qualifies as "AI took away my job" but we are dismissing that because the AI influence was indirectly responsible for the job loss.

dmitrygr

TFA seems dead. archived: https://archive.is/ZbsP2

Aurornis

Person 1 finds an exploit the old fashioned way. Keeps it secret because they’re doing some PS5 Linux work and want to keep it unpatched until GTA6 releases in 2 weeks. I don’t have a PS5 but I assume new games might require a firmware update to play? Person 2 uses an LLM and finds the same exploit. Person 1 asks Person 2 not to report it and collect the bounty until GTA6 is released. Person 2 agrees. Person 3 also finds the same exploit independently. Person 2 discovers that Person 3 has found the exploit. Person 2 decides the cat is out of the bag and submits it to Sony while they still have a chance. Now the community is angry that Person 2 didn’t sacrifice the bounty. PS5 Linux effort seemingly falls apart in response? Departing developer directs community to be angry at Person 2, who is taking time away to be with their critically ill mother. Honestly I can’t blame Person 2. They earned the bounty and played by the rules of the bounty program. The PS5 Linux dev who abandoned the project and started deleting things is entitled to do so, but blaming Person 2 for the crash out is too much.