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Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

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Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key concepts are documented here: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts Some things that Fuchsia was able to do thanks to starting from scratch: - The system is based on capabilities, a security model which is based on explicit tracking of permissions. It wouldn't be possible to change Linux to be capability-based because the ambiant-authority model has been used pervasively since it was conceived 30 years ago…

- Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). Does it? Fuchsia is a brand new OS, at least from the perspective of the world. One reason my interest in it died quite early on, despite being an aficionado of new operating system designs my entire life, was finding stuff like this in the docs: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/components/v2/mi... It's brand new and there are a…

Well, I think it is no surprise that in the beginning things change. Everytime you do something new and big - you do find things that do not work out as designed. So you change the design. Which is allright for me, with a prerelease.

But now with the official release - I do expect some stability.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five years ago, I would have thought you were trolling, but now you are right. With this scorched earth mentality exercised by the big companies, this is a very real possibility. What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. That leads me to believe that Google could via an algorithm's decision disable a Nest thermostat during winter. I don't see IoT as anything but a risk…

> What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. I'm not trying to sway your opinion of Apple, but you should know that Mr. Curtis's Apple ID problem was discovered to be unrelated. Apple doen't disable Apple ID services because of missed Apple Card payments. https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated...

??? Your linked article says the situation is even worse. Not just Apple Card, you can have Apple services disabled if you owe money to any part of their ecosystem.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#313
post #2

10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from…

I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I reall…

I added a bunch of Shelly Wi-Fi relays to my house and I can see temperatures of every room, tell the heater to turn on etc, from anywhere in the world, with full self-hosting if I want it.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#314

What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use. On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years. Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do…

My wild guess is it reduces the amount of privileged code. In Linux the entire kernel (all 20 million lines of it), can do what it damned well pleases, and auditing 20M lines of code is mission impossible. You could think of it in terms of Windows/OSX/Linux Distro vs Android / iOS / WinPhone. In the former, this is nothing stopping one application stomping over anothers data. The result has been endless uninstallable…

> What interaction does happen occurs over interfaces that are very heavily policed by the OS (think: is generally doesn't happen without the user giving some permission). The result has been a revolution: almost no one bothers with anti virus software on the phone OS's any more, and any malware you do install can be uninstalled with the click of a button.

Taken to its extremes (which Google has been moving Android towards), unfortunately it also breaks a number of existing workflows.

If you follow the documentation, any multi-file formats (HTML documents with their assorted resources – JS/CSS/images/links to other HTML files/..., playlists, videos with externally stored subtitles, multi-part archives, ...) are broken on recent Android versions if you need to handle them in an external app, e.g. if you're writing a file explorer which then naturally needs to call out to other installed apps for actually opening those files.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#315
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. You can't just be like "I'm just paid to write code and so will completely ignore any and all ethical issues with what my company does with it." There's a reason the ACM code of ethics has "everyone is a stakeholder" and "avoid harm" as the top two overriding principles. I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to y…

>Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'. >I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to your work and working relationships out but you this isn't that. Where's the dividing line? Wasn't it Basecamp that had a l…

> Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'.

Respectfully, while I don't think that Fuchsia warrants invoking the Nuremberg, I do think that it is highly likely to enable violations of morality and ethics down the line. The way I see Fuchsia, it's basically an effort to undermine the Linux kernel and switch it out for something with an MIT-style license. I see this as objectively immoral.

Linux is the de-facto open source kernel for the majority of people, and the fact that the open source kernel uses GPL (which strongly prefers end user freedoms) is one of the few things that holds the tide of privacy violations, user disempowerment and proprietary tech capture of our infrastructure, institutions and societal conventions. A world without a strong GPL base is a morass that drags down useful developments.

Quite frankly, I see no reason for Fuchsia to exist, and plenty of reasons why it shouldn't exist (not least because Google is in control). It should be boycotted. The society will be better off for it, though it may make a few billionaires cry.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#316
post #126

What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use. On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years. Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do…

It's capability based, so instead of this weird hodgepodge we have in the Linux world that resulted in Docker containers it's natively a part of the OS design. Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade. So it solves a lot of problems for Google and can replace Android/Chrome OS/Cast OS.

> Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade.

That could be prevented by hardware manufacturers manning up and releasing their source code in full. If the community cared about that hardware, it'd eventually get upstreamed into the kernel, or at least actively maintained as a patchset.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#317

I am planning on not purchasing any new google smart home hardware. I am annoyed that my nest thermostat no longer has a way to interface with their API. I purchased it right before the Google acquisition and I would have gone with an Ecobee if I knew the Nest would be inaccessible to a regular user. I believe having an open API is an important part of smart home hardware, even if most users don't use it.

This doesn't have anything to do with Fuchsia though.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#318

Its just a attack on linux. Just like what they did to firefox. Made a superior browser and make it opensource and gain monopoly. Now they have control over os. They can do anything.

Wake me up when they do that "anything". In the mean time they've created useful and successful open-source products which anyone can benefit from.

You must have not noticed that Chrome is the new IE, or that they recently revoked API keys that open source Chromium forks (including ones that just disable certain features, so they are 99% the same as official Chrome) have been using for years to allow them to sync bookmarks and the like.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like in that case a remote control could be placed nearby -- are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ?

> are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ? I happen to have backed a Kickstarter that will hopefully enable me to do just that ;)

If you're interested in getting more quickly and WANT to write software, you can have the Raspberry Pi control most televisions over HDMI-CEC using libcec [0], and then you just need the voice recognition stuff mentioned above (Rhasspy [1]).

I had to do something similar (minus voice controls) to keep my existing remote's volume controls working with an analog volume device [2].

[0] https://github.com/Pulse-Eight/libcec [1] https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy [2] https://rkeene.org/viewer/tmp/cec-volume.cc.htm

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me up when they do that "anything". In the mean time they've created useful and successful open-source products which anyone can benefit from.

You must have not noticed that Chrome is the new IE, or that they recently revoked API keys that open source Chromium forks (including ones that just disable certain features, so they are 99% the same as official Chrome) have been using for years to allow them to sync bookmarks and the like.

> "Chrome is the new IE"

Safari is the new IE. It's stagnated in the same way IE did, which has slowed the progression of web standards. How long did it take to get input type="date"?

Apple's attack on PWAs also shows they wish to neuter the web to encourage use of their app store (where they take a 30% cut) instead.

> "or that they recently revoked API keys..."

The code is open-source, but they aren't obligated to grant access to their services.

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