[lucideer]

> Here is a thought experiment for you: Right now, I have a 45 year old rotary telephone working fine in my living room, hooked up to VOIP with an adaptor.

The adaptor in your analogy sounds like it could be analogised by a local transparent proxy.

A more apt formulation of the analogy would be phone companies persisting DTMF to avoid the need for adapters.

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<off-topic> What adapter do you use? I also have a rotary phone & have been struggling to find a good one...

[entropyie]

A local proxy in this analogy would have to be able to MITM the traffic... which is unlikely to work with an Alexa. I'd like to see the EU mandate customer configurable CA bundles, but I won't hold my breath! --- https://www.dialgizmo.com/ A bit finicky, but does what is says on the tin ;-)

[lucideer]

If the definition of "older hardware" is closed saas-supported media products then I guess this is a different discussion than I thought. I'd be surprised if the SaaS support lifespan of things like Alexa would even be long enough for the hardware to be in any way usable after reaching an age considered "old" but... if it does, then I'd suggest the sibling commenter's point about selection criteria fits here.

> * I'd like to see the EU mandate customer configurable CA bundles*

Agree but I'd go broader - right to flash or some kind of general firmware/os/softwate openness mandate would be nice to see.