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Comment by devsda | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, if/when someone from the manufacturer knows about it their first thought will not be "How do we make it easier for our customers".

It will most likely be "How do we restrict this hack" and will eventually get into more restricted/quirky hardware & software.

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I don't think they'll care about this. Probably only 1% of their customers are capable of "hacking" this. As long as the tablet replace is cheaper than getting a new AC unit from another company it's fine for them.

Not even 1%.

It would be interesting if someone already in AC repair made it part of their business though. That's when you'd see the teeth come out.

Until someone decides to sell their fix at a cheaper price. Then lawyers will get involved and everyone will end up unhappy.

Except the lawyers

Yes, which is very sad. Nearly all things go into this direction. I still remember the old days of jail breaking the iPhone, and the cat and mouse chase with Apple.

They would have to put the condition inside shared library .so and use Android JNI. Make it complicated and hide the string tablet model throughout the code, just enough time to frustrate whoever is decompiling the so file.

If they want to really do it wrong (or right, from their PoV), they require the communication with the base station to be signed with a certificate signed by their root CA, and put the private key of that certificate in the TPM.

I genuinely get the sense nobody there is capable of coming up with this on their own and are likely looking at this thread for ideas

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