What's ADB?
Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
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Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. Former facebook research lab twat here. It wasn't one dev. We asked when they shitcanned portal (which was a great product, badly managed) to open it up. Infact one of the kernel devs made a very direct plea to allow the community to adopt the hardware so that we could avoid Ewaste. It was denied because there are keys on t…
> It was denied because there are keys on the device that would leak if meta opened it up. (I'm not an android dev so I don't know the ins and outs of that) Any idea what changed? > neglect and stupidity from zuck meant that the portal was killed Is Facebook really set up such that one person's whim is the single point of failure? Is there really no way for teams to progress projects with value somewhat independently…
> Any idea what changed?
sadly, or fortunately I am not at facebook anymore, so I don't have the inside track on what changed.
> Is Facebook really set up such that one person's whim is the single point of failure?
Kinda. Zuck sets direction, and he has key interests. The thing that really makes him happy is cutting edge research and new features. The thing that passes him by completely is product experience. Oculus is a great example of that. The user experience was/is trash. the time to fun is/was too high and was for a long time. Carmak spent ages saying "we can't compete on hardware specs, we can compete on ecosystem and experience" he lost that argument.
Outside of zuck there are only a few areas that actually make decisions and communicate them properly, one is monetisation/advertising and the other is Infra planning. _Everything_ else relies on people churning initiatives and seeing what sticks. With loose coordination at the centre based on who know who and who manages to convince others that "this is a Zuck priority, or related to one"
It felt very much like having a Boy king. The Boy king liked playing with toys, and if you made a toy for the king you were in favour. The boring parts were handled by "evil advisors" who are there because they don;t threaten the king's power. Everyone around the boy king is there to gain favour.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#73It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. This isn't the repairability and reuseability of old devices mindset people have been begging for. This is some guy using internal privileges to having some fun, and deciding the rest of us should get a piece of the fun as well. This is a "happy story" in the same way it is a "happy story" when some kid successfully fundraise…
> It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. Former facebook research lab twat here. It wasn't one dev. We asked when they shitcanned portal (which was a great product, badly managed) to open it up. Infact one of the kernel devs made a very direct plea to allow the community to adopt the hardware so that we could avoid Ewaste. It was denied because there are keys on t…
> there are keys on the device that would leak if meta opened it up.
Are these keys not functionally leaked as soon as you ship the device to customers?
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#74(it's series of 2018 peak pre-covid facetime deskphones, similar to Amazon Echo Show devices)
We got some good mileage out of them during covid as well. My WFH setup early pandemic had the large portal as my primary visual conferencing setup - it beat the hell out of a webcam on top of a monitor.
In peak covid video chat time I had a call with someone with a Portal connected to their TV. It was so much better than laptops and webcams for family videocalling. I would have bought one immediately had it not been a Meta product.
It's disappointing that 6 years later there's still no solution. The window has passed for my kids - but it would have been really nice to be able to have large format TV based video calls with the grandparents. I tried to set something up with a laptop, but it was always too janky and fiddly to work well.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#75Nice. I have a 3rd gen Echo Show 8 that's collecting dust and I direly wish I could sideload an actually useful UI onto it, but there aren't any methods of doing so yet. Can't wait until Mythos is public so I can set it on pwning the damn thing.
Hopefully you'll be able to root it soon...
Echo Show 5 1st and 2nd gen allow you root already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRlWNrB2dDI
I prefer Echo Show 5's overall size and lack of battery over Portal Go.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#76Does this mean you can update the android version?
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#77It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. This isn't the repairability and reuseability of old devices mindset people have been begging for. This is some guy using internal privileges to having some fun, and deciding the rest of us should get a piece of the fun as well. This is a "happy story" in the same way it is a "happy story" when some kid successfully fundraise…
> It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. Former facebook research lab twat here. It wasn't one dev. We asked when they shitcanned portal (which was a great product, badly managed) to open it up. Infact one of the kernel devs made a very direct plea to allow the community to adopt the hardware so that we could avoid Ewaste. It was denied because there are keys on t…
> They scaled up the team briefly, which meant that lots of weird stuff was tried, but the roadmap was diluted.
Boz never cared for Portal, it wasn't his product. I was one of the original engineers on Portal. The VP running the research lap responsible for Portal was canned in a political coup, and her entire org moved under Boz, merging it with Oculus into the AR/VR team. There was some ham-fisted justification around why a smart home product should be part of AR/VR, but it never really made sense.
Portal had a bunch of other problems, including:
* Massively over-specced hardware, the SoC was the same SoC as the Quest, even though it had no reason to be. The BOM was something like $500. We were selling these units at a huge loss.
* Cambridge Analytica broke right in the middle of development, which completely tanked any remaining trust in the Facebook brand. Everyone knew the product was completely sunk at that point, but nobody wanted to come out and say it. At the last minute we had to stuff a plastic camera cover into the box as a result.
* Boz was convinced we could build a voice assistant for Portal and Quest that was better than Siri, but the Assistant team at FB was completely out of their depth. We ended up right before launch having to sign a deal with Amazon to ship Alexa on the product.
* So much politics. AR/VR had a virtually unlimited budget so there was a massive land grab to hire as many people as possible, with no consideration around what they'd actually work on. Even though Quest and Portal had the same SoCs, they had completely separate Android OS builds and engineering teams, because everyone was trying to build the biggest engineering teams they could. People were constantly leaking shit: I found out we were delaying the project because an executive leaked it to Bloomberg while the executive meeting was still happening.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
We got some good mileage out of them during covid as well. My WFH setup early pandemic had the large portal as my primary visual conferencing setup - it beat the hell out of a webcam on top of a monitor.
In peak covid video chat time I had a call with someone with a Portal connected to their TV. It was so much better than laptops and webcams for family videocalling. I would have bought one immediately had it not been a Meta product. It's disappointing that 6 years later there's still no solution. The window has passed for my kids - but it would have been really nice to be able to have large format TV based video call…
If you have an Apple TV it can use an iPhone as a camera for FaceTime (you put it under your TV temporarily). Works great, presuming you already have some other reason to have the hardware.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#79Makes my blood boil that I have to open ChatGPT, paste the link and ask what the hell is ADB.
Perhaps you're not the target audience for this announcement.
Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was denied because there are keys on the device that would leak if meta opened it up. (I'm not an android dev so I don't know the ins and outs of that) Any idea what changed? > neglect and stupidity from zuck meant that the portal was killed Is Facebook really set up such that one person's whim is the single point of failure? Is there really no way for teams to progress projects with value somewhat independently…
> Any idea what changed? sadly, or fortunately I am not at facebook anymore, so I don't have the inside track on what changed. > Is Facebook really set up such that one person's whim is the single point of failure? Kinda. Zuck sets direction, and he has key interests. The thing that really makes him happy is cutting edge research and new features. The thing that passes him by completely is product experience. Oculus…
> the time to fun is/was too high and was for a long time.
Yup - I got one for the other half as a present... like an hour and a half / two hours into setup/onboarding, they lost interest, it went back in the box and never came out again. :(