Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#111

Post by creaturemachine » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

gertrunde wrote: post #84

objclxt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aro…

We bought two portals for elderly relatives, predominantly for video calling, and I don't think there has been another product, then or since, that fitted that use case as well, especially with people who maybe aren't as familiar with smartphones. So somewhat frustrating when it all started to wind down various bits of functionality disappeared a bit at a time, until finally you had something that would receive calls…

It's insane that you can still buy the things.

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#112

Post by shermantanktop » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

ymolodtsov wrote: post #94

mft_ wrote: post #60

Earlier 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…

I think it'd be pretty weird if people and teams inside a company go just go rogue against the CEO.

What if the CEO is wrong about something?

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#113

Post by norman784 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #96

norman784 wrote: post #95

I was thinking that this or opening the bootloader should be required (by governments) for deprecated devices. Imagine all the Android and Apple devices you could give a second life by installing in them linux with some lightweight window manager (with touch support), or even Ubuntu Touch, etc.

While I totally support such legislation (even for current sold devices, not just deprecated), there's a massive pile of android devices with open bootloader which never got any decent second life support.

Those might be niche devices, I think if were Samsung or Pixel devices, it would be a different story, similar for Apple devices, they are fewer variants, that it would be a lot of developers putting effort on adding upstream Linux support if they were open, like is happening with the Macs with the M series.

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#114

Post by vrganj » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #102

mft_ wrote: post #60

Earlier 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…

> Is Facebook really set up such that one person's whim is the single point of failure? When I was there (pre-Covid) it was sort of a worst-of-all-worlds situation, compared to other firms. On the one hand, Zuck maintains an absolute majority of voting shares, so what he say literally goes, with the board having no real authority to rein him in. If your project is something he takes a direct interest in, you are auto…

I had Zuck once create a ticket against me on the padding of a button because it was on one of his pet projects.

In the middle of the night. During peak Cambridge Analytica scandal times.

I question his priorities.

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#115

Post by realusername » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

norman784 wrote: post #113

realusername wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I totally support such legislation (even for current sold devices, not just deprecated), there's a massive pile of android devices with open bootloader which never got any decent second life support.

Those might be niche devices, I think if were Samsung or Pixel devices, it would be a different story, similar for Apple devices, they are fewer variants, that it would be a lot of developers putting effort on adding upstream Linux support if they were open, like is happening with the Macs with the M series.

Samsung is actually the worst offender in the Android world for making variants.

Each device usually has 5 versions for each market (US, EU, China, Korea, Rest of the world) + individual board revisions.

And that's not counting the massive amount of devices they produce outside the flagships.

Let's pick the Galaxy S10 for example, you have the S10, S10+, S10e, S10 Lite, S10 5G. The US ones are on Snapdragon SOC, the other ones on Exynos SOC and each region has additional quirks...

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#116

Post by avel » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

EquallyJust wrote: post #65

HDBaseT wrote: post #3

Apparently a message prompting users that they can enable 'adb' on their devices by navigating to "Settings > Debug > ADB Enabled" has existed for over a month although majority have been unsuccessful due to the Setting not existing! [0] [1] [0] - https://x.com/PiunikaWeb/status/2053803917910376584 [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookPortal/comments/1t55mee/unl...

For what it's worth, I just fired up my two portal gen 2 in the closet, updated them and the adb setting just worked. The adb UI is a little jank and doesn't appear to enable but it does actually work. Got them set up as Home Assistant dashboards I'm a Meta employee so who knows if I'm in some magic gatekeeper but ADB definitely didn't work on these even as an employee before

Cool cool cool. So to confirm, you just installed the Home Assistant APK and that worked without issues?

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#117

Post by arwineap » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

gertrunde wrote: post #84

objclxt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aro…

We bought two portals for elderly relatives, predominantly for video calling, and I don't think there has been another product, then or since, that fitted that use case as well, especially with people who maybe aren't as familiar with smartphones. So somewhat frustrating when it all started to wind down various bits of functionality disappeared a bit at a time, until finally you had something that would receive calls…

We still use our portals quite a bit, is support for these devices winding down?

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#118

Post by VoidWarranty » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #55

petterroea wrote: post #26

It 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…

I always wondered how they messed portal up. It seemed so natural of a piece of hardware to fit into everything else they do. Tying it to horizon says all I need to know.

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#119

Post by nekooooo » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #77

KaiserPro wrote: post #55

Earlier 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…

> 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 aro…

i had a portal at home for work. great product for VC, i tried using one with my parents and my dad kept it in the trunk of his car outside because that's how negative the facebook brand equity was.

Re: Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]

#120

Post by nekooooo » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #99

objclxt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 aro…

> 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:…

ar/vr, horizon, and boz ruined a bunch of great software products that people were actually using and enjoyed (i've seen the NPS) to shoehorn horizon worlds and ugly 3d avatars into that no one wanted.