Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/08/every-oculus-rift-headset-bric.html
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Apparently someone didn’t countersign the affected DLL properly, so it failed as soon as the signing certificate expired rather than continuing to be trusted as having been signed with a certificate that was valid at time of signature.
Hopefully the fact that a single component of their software package was handled differently than the others during a rather important step has some sort of innocent explanation.
3 Likes
Just another way of reminding us that a handful of corporations have the power to take away all our toys at the flick of a switch.
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Dang, this makes me think of a grittier dystopian version, where a drug dealer (pharma company?) can dull the active ingredients of a drug remotely if you don’t keep up with your subscription payments, or violate the TOS…
4 Likes
Probably tricky with drugs(though in fiction Rimworld has you covered); but seems like it would be technically feasible, for anyone who wanted to risk the blowback, with implanted devices. Some of those require periodic calibration by a suitable specialist as it is; and going from that to phoning home would be one poorly debugged cellular M2M gateway away.
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When the DMCA came up in the 90’s and I started stomping around and shouting about how in 20 years we wouldn’t be allowed to own or fix anything, and that companies were going to use its provisions to enforce things like planned obsolescence nobody wanted to listen.
And here we are, 20 years later…
Well. Not mine.
Please Drink Verification Can
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