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Until the world sees an Android device get a kernel upgrade, imo, Android is a cruel cruel cruel joke, ecocide-al insanity. The world can not afford to let high tech devices rot away like they do. I too am excited to see something done. Abstracting over the entire kernel is a helluva Extend-Embrace-Extinguish policy, but at least some updates will come. I remain doubtful that we'll see kernel upgrades though. Even though the whole device driver architecture is now abstracted from the kernel, now offered by Treble, I still expect there'll be a lot of compliance cold-feet & general-low-ambitions to support less-than-current devices. The whole idea of kicking out a pervasively connected communications device that has a hard wall for how supported it will be, that no one else can help maintain, is just corrupt & vile. It's sad to see such mal-use of Linux. Post script: I don't blame Google per-se for this all. Trying to applicationize a computing device, turn it from a general purpose system where thing can go wrong into a product that works reliably & can be let onto cellular networks is a difficult challenge, and against the grain of the highly hierarchical systems of power that have flowed in the world. None the less, it is sad to see an un-upgradeable Linux where owners can't get root, their apps will lock them out if they do (Android SafetyNet), where bootloaders are usually locked, and where driver support is only for OEMs. It rather makes me think of the other dominating factor in computing, the de-generalization/specialization of computing as it effervesces into the cloud, an unfortunate juggernaut of a trend I wrote about earlier today[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238376 |