You might think that jailbreaking a PS4 to run unsigned code is a complicated process that takes fancy tools and lots of work. While developing said jailbreaks was naturally no mean feat, thankfully they’re far easier for the end user to perform. These days, all you need is an LG TV.

Of course, you can’t just use any LG TV. You’ll need a modern LG webOS smart TV, and you’ll need to jailbreak it before it can in turn be used to modify your PS4. Once that’s done, though, you can install the PPLGPwn tool for jailbreaking PS4s. It’s based on the PPPwn exploit released by [TheFlow], which was then optimized by [xfangxfang] and implemented for LG Smart TVs by [zauceee]. Once installed, you just need to hook up your PS4 to the TV via the Ethernet port. Then, with the exploit running on the TV, telling the PS4 to set up the LAN via PPPoE will be enough to complete the jailbreak.

There are other ways to jailbreak a PS4 that don’t involve the use of a specific television. Nonetheless, it’s neat to see the hack done in such an amusing way.

Thanks to [eyeoncomputers] for the tip!

Sometimes we get sent a tip that isn’t just a single article or video, but an entire blog or YouTube channel. Today’s channel, [Diy Otaku], is absolutely worth a watch if you want someone see giving a second life to legendary handheld devices, and our creator has been going at it for a while. A common theme in most of the videos so far – taking an old phone or a weathered gaming console, and improving upon them in a meaningful way, whether it’s lovingly restoring them, turning them into a gaming console for your off days, upgrading the battery, or repairing a common fault.

The hacks here are as detailed as they are respectful to the technology they work on. The recent video about putting a laptop touchpad into a game controller, for instance, has the creator caringly replace the controller’s epoxy blob heart with a Pro Micro while preserving the original board for all its graphite-covered pads. The touchpad is the same used in an earlier video to restore a GPD Micro PC with a broken touchpad, a device that you can see our hacker use in a later video running FreeCAD, helping them design a 18650 battery shell for a PSP about to receive a 6000 mAh battery upgrade.

These are the kinds of rebuilds you do to devices you value, and this is only reinforced by restoration videos peppered into the list. This Nintendo DS Lite restoration video is half an hour of [DiyOtaku] taking care of an old legendary handheld, with complete disassembly, cleaning the shell with a toothbrush, and then complete reassembly while not missing a single screw. Here’s a video on restoring a Nokia N73, and the next video is about giving it a USB-C charging port, so you’re not bound by old proprietary charger cabling – the kind of mod you would do for a device that matters to you.

The more we look into this channel, the more it keeps giving, and the level of care put into these devices is heartwarming. If you’re always looking for more videos to play as you solder your latest projects together, this channel is undoubtedly an underappreciated highlight, rarely breaking thousand views, but going on strong nevertheless. If devices getting a second life is what keeps you going, check out a near-hundred articles we have filed away under ‘restoration’.

The PlayStation 2 was a revelation when it hit the market in 2000, and yet by modern standards, it’s almost hopelessly weak. In fact, it’s so under-powered, Rockstar developers had to pull every trick in the book to make Grand Theft Auto III even work on the platform.

The story comes to us from developer [Obbe Vermeij]. He explains that the PlayStation 2 couldn’t keep the entire open-world game map in its tiny 32 MB of RAM. Instead, models had to be streamed from the DVD drive as the player moved around the world. However, even the DVD drive wasn’t fast enough. If the player moved too quickly, they would outpace the system’s ability to load new assets, and the world would fall apart. Roads would vanish, buildings simply wouldn’t appear before the player passed by them.

According to [Obbe], getting around this challenge was the job of one [Adam Fowler]. He notes that even optimizing the layout of data on the DVD wasn’t enough to help. Nifty hacks had to be employed to slow the player down. Road networks were changed to stop the player speeding towards areas that needed lots of new models. In other areas, vehicles in the game would experience a nearly-imperceptible 5% increase in air drag to dull their speed. This was chosen as a more invisible solution; cutting engine power directly was audible to players as the audio changed.

It shows you just how hard developers had to work back when resources were far more constrained than they are today!