Hacker News
Jailbreaking the Switch 2
hturan
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If this is true decrypted `fs` r/w, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing Switch 2 game dumps appear in a few hours. Given the world of recomps/decomps we now live in, that would mean console exclusives playable on arbitrary hardware (a worst-case scenario for Nintendo). We've already seen things like Tears of the Kingdom running at 60fps natively on an iPhone.
Giving LLMs arms and eyes via KVM (or webcam) is a very strong paradigm for this sort of hardware work, as it allows things to be parallelised and run 24/7. Highly recommend people play with this more (to less nefarious ends!) when working on firmware/hardware for external devices.
Worth noting too that this would have easily fetched >$50k via Nintendo's HackerOne (https://hackerone.com/nintendo).
gcoakes
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I would love to give it unattended "hands". I just thought it was more time efficient to do it manually rather than spend days trying to figure out how to automate SD card pull/plug. X and Y are relatively small, and I expect this validation to be too costly to do at a regular cadence in CI. I can trivially use a MCCI USB-C switch for the power though.
Tips would be appreciated if anyone here has thoughts.
mentos
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Long term when someone makes emulating Switch 2 on your Steam Deck a 1-click install I'm not so sure.
joenot443
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Internet nerds like us aren’t really Nintendo’s target market, I don’t think. Installing emulators or jailbreaking a system isn’t something most of their customer base would have the want or need to do, IMO.
m4rtink
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Still seems rather self-enflicted pain for Intendo due to still pushing locked-down consoles in 2026.
hturan
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TuxSH
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More like $30k, no ("system processes allowing piracy")?
voidUpdate
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KeplerBoy
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aarroyoc
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GolDDranks
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ada-h00k
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m4rtink
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Here I guess you could just RMA the device or even sue Nintendo for retaliating after you just used the device you bought ?
joenot443
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I’ve told my friends if you plan on playing online on it, definitely don’t jailbreak.
asimovDev
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Switch 1 hacks bypass this by copying ofw from flash onto the microSD card and patching it there to my crude understanding, so that unsigned code never touches the firmware on the system memory.
Something like this definitely will be needed again for the Switch 2 so I'd only do this if you don't care about being banned.
EDIT: ofw = OFW = official firmware
haunter
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attels33
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enricozb
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Cool to see this happened at Caltech :)
RicoElectrico
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madiling
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Basically, since it wasn’t possible to extract the files from Switch 2 games, fans who wanted to listen to the Mario Kart World soundtrack outside of the game would record the audio output from their console and exploit glitches in-game to prevent sound effects from playing and phase-cancel overlapped recordings of the same song with each recording being interrupted in different parts to isolate the music then crossfade the remaining segments into the complete track.
Velocifyer
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unrented7977
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It turns out that opening locks is a hell of a lot easier when you have a key.
Gigachad
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_imnothere
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I sure looking forward for more people hopping on the AI hacking trend to bring them down.
chocochunks
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And just yesterday I had to use my modded 3DS to rescue a physical 3DS cart that wasn't booting. Luckily I was able to but there's no guarantee a physical game will last forever either.
asimovDev
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cyberrock
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Edit: Switch 2 is also biggest proponent of SD Express. Any supporter of SD cards coming back to phones and other devices should appreciate the stance taken here. Nintendo could've gone the Google/Apple route and just sold 512GB and 1TB models. Instead this effort, like Sony's Xperia phones, are completely unrecognized.
rk06
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options for switch 2: Full game on cartridge, switch 2 edition (including switch 1 support), Game Key Card (half physical), Code in the box.
I don't see why should nintendo be blamed for providing more options. if anythng you should blame the publishers for chosing "Code in the box" (looking at you diablo) when GKC would do. or GKC when full cartridge would do.