In the very strict interpretation probably nothing is unhackable, just not hacked yet. But one should also be pragmatic about what "unhackable" means in context. Without the power of hindsight, a consumer device that stayed unhacked for ~13 years can be reasonably called unhackable during this time.
We don't need to contribute to word inflation. There's "really hard," there's "nearly impossible," there's even "impossible – as far as we know." I don't think it shows a lack of pragmatism to assume a technological claim, made by a technology company, should't be taken at face value. On the contrary, I'd advise more pragmatism to anyone failing to disregard an "unhackable" claim made by Microsoft specially even after fixnum years without known exploits.
I think it's like calling a ship "unsinkable". Yes, you engineered it to not sink, in accordance with strict maritime standards no doubt, but just don't call it unsinkable. If you call it unsinkable you're just begging for a century of snickering at your hubris.
It has no relation to hubris whatsoever if the "unhackable" label is not something self-proclaimed at launch but something descriptively applied by other people who were unable to hack it. Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years.
> Nobody would have snickered if the Titanic were described as unsinkable by people who had been trying to sink it for 10 years.
Pedantic: I'm sure somebody would have snickered about "unsinkable" if the Titanic sank after 10 years. Pragmatic: if the "unsinkable" Titanic lasted 10 years (or at least to profitability) before being sunk by people intending to sink it, that might certainly count as being "unsinkable" for the time it hadn't sunk.
Hubris: Titanic was claimed to be unsinkable before it was launched.
People should use their smarts and common sense to qualify statements. LLMs need a page of context, explanation and disclaimers so they maybe understand the meaning and intention.
> calling a safe uncrackable because nobody showed up with the right tools
The tools used for the hack (like voltage glitching) were there since before the first Xbox but nobody had the skills to apply them in a way that defeated the protections. There was a lot of interest in doing it but everyone who tried even just for the fame failed. I wouldn't fault anyone for calling it uncrackable, same as if a safe stayed impossible to open for decades or more.
If you want the "strictest interpretation", the useless one if you ask me, then only universal laws are immovable (maybe?), everything else is a matter of cost, time, etc. An entire category of words and expressions would have to be wiped from the vocabulary unless their meaning can be proven all the way to the heat death of the universe.
The pragmatism is that when someone calls a console unhackable, they mean it today, within a reasonable timeframe, for all intents and purposes. I don't think anyone realistically expects the "unhackable" console to stay so forever, only in the reasonable proximity of when it was said.
> Most hacks are about cost, not possibility
What about the other hacks which are about possibility? How would you go about proving something is hackable without hacking it? Is something "hackable" if you haven't proved it?
> What changed here is less the existence of the technique and more the instrumentation and persistence.
The instrumentation from 13 years ago is perfectly capable of pulling this off technically. I won't go into the proof that "human persistence" existed prior to 2026 aplenty.
But the discussion wasn't why the Xbox got hacked today, as much as the semantics of whether you are allowed to call something "unhackable" just because at the time of the statement nobody managed despite a lot of time and effort. I wouldn't mind the "linguistic absolutism" if it came from people who never used this kind of expression - one that is interpreted in the strictest sense no matter what. Instead this logic mostly comes from people who want to sound smart correcting without adding to the conversation or understanding the context. Think of all those parroting the "what an idiot to say 640K should be fine for everyone" meme.
> The underlying weakness was probably always there
Probably? You championed precise language. What's the alternative, that the silicon vulnerability developed in time?
