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There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

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Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#461

Post by vetinari »

scarface74 wrote: post #452
vetinari wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn't design the hardware - when we are talking about firmware, booting, pci enum, etc, we are obviously talking about hardware. Their partners did and they reused their existing design. Microsoft basically strongarmed the PC vendors - they either did what Microsoft said, or didn't ship Windows with their wares. Windows, which was the only game in the town, if you wanted to sell PCs. Google didn't have such l…

So now almost 10 years later, what "other game is in town" that stops Google from taking more control over the hardware except either incompetence or neglect? You won't sell many Android devices that don't run Google Services in the West.

They do design their hardware now. See how they bought HTC.

However, that does not mean you will get an open device now. When was the hardware openness so important, that it played a major role in purchase decision at statistically significant rate?

For 99,999% of people, it doesn't. They want an appliance that works out of the box, without bothering with alternate firmwares. So that's what they are getting.

There's no motivation to put UEFI and PCI into the hardware, just like there wasn't 10-15-20 years ago, when the first designs were made.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#462

Post by Rotareti »

joelthelion wrote: post #448
Rotareti wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you flash LineageOS onto a well chosen phone? Don't you need something like TWRP?

Yes, you usually flash TWRP, then Lineage.

And how did you build TWRP from source or where do you get a reproducible TWRP build from? When I checked some month ago, there was pretty much no documentation available on how to build TWRP from source for my phone. The pre-build TWRP binaries were not reproducible.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#463

Post by ocdtrekkie »

vetinari wrote: post #406
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not true for Windows Phone 8 , and therefore some carriers interfered with the deployment of the upgrade. It is true for Windows 10 Mobile, however. If a device is supported for Windows 10 Mobile, all updates are carrier independent. The "Upgrade Advisor" app Microsoft released to the Windows Store effectively allowed you to circumvent the carrier and upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile, replacing the Windows Update…

Ah, so that is how it went. I knew some devices WP devices (didn't note version) never received the updates. However, the part about them all being the same Snapdragon devices with slightly different cases, cameras, etc. is still true. Microsoft doesn't have to solve how to make a release for Exynos, Kirin or Tegra devices.

The other neat thing they did which included WP8 was that their Developer Preview would do the same thing with the Windows Insider app. If you signed up for test builds, you'd get updates regardless of model or carrier, to the latest build offered. (And a lot of never officially supported phones can use Windows 10 via this method.)

That being said, this was only kindasorta a good thing, because it didn't always have working third party drivers attached. My old Samsung ATIV SE was super glitchy, particularly in the touchscreen department, when I upgraded my phone absent Samsung's blessing.

But it was one more place Microsoft kinda demonstrated even their mobile OS builds were more or less hardware independent, which is a huge contrast from Android.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#464

Post by joelthelion »

Rotareti wrote: post #462
joelthelion wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you usually flash TWRP, then Lineage.

And how did you build TWRP from source or where do you get a reproducible TWRP build from? When I checked some month ago, there was pretty much no documentation available on how to build TWRP from source for my phone. The pre-build TWRP binaries were not reproducible.

I just use the prebuilt binaries. But saying it comes from "some anonymous haxxor" isn't fair to TWRP. The situation is no different from the vast majority of binaries we run (unless if you run gentoo maybe, but if you don't audit all sources I don't see how this adds value).

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#465

Post by d10r »

CaptSpify wrote: post #171
thatswrong0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it easier for users to run software with unpatched vulnerabilities, even accounting for some extra slowness, isn’t a good thing..

Then manufacturers should fix that problem. The reason people don't like security updates, is that they are tied to feature updates. Most people don't like the new feature updates, and would happily take just the security updates. If users were given that option, I'm betting that a lot of the push-back to updates would drop fast.

Exactly that!

It may be true that "normal" users don't understand security or take it seriously enough, but in my opinion just blaming them isn't fair.

Imagine your car being painted in new colors and handles in the cockpit being re-arranged in unpredictable ways every time you have it serviced.

That's basically what Software updates often do to users.

We constantly force users to re-learn how to use a piece of Software, very often without good enough reason. Additionally updates at some point force them to buy newer hardware, even though they probably neither wished for the changes in the Software nor for new hardware.

That's why I totally understand casual PC users who're not gonna stop using Windows XP as long as it lets them do what they use their PC for.

In my opinion commercial software should be regulated to either provide security updates (distinct from feature updates) or be open sourced.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#466

Post by d10r »

dredmorbius wrote: post #72
thatswrong0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it easier for users to run software with unpatched vulnerabilities, even accounting for some extra slowness, isn’t a good thing..

That "isn't a good thing" is paired against another "isn't a good thing": forcing people along an (expensive, disruptive, often utility-losing) upgrade path simply to drive revenue goals. Perhaps we might look at this as a set of goals: 1. Users shouldn't run software with unpathed vulnerabilitities. 2. Users shouldn't have to discard devices after a small number of years (1-3, from date of purchase, in many cases).…

I think a fundamental problem here is that most information and knowledge goods don't fit well into an economic framework which is based on the assumption of scarcity. Of course you can artificially add scarcity with DRM tech, patent law etc. But what mostly happens in practice is that you need to come up with some kind of indirect business model. Like e.g. Google, developing a lot of great tech, but ultimately being a broker of user attention and data.

This disconnect between business model and products leads to a lot of unaligned incentives between makers and users of product. That's the innocent looking root of evilness - no bad people required.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#467

Post by crzwdjk »

pcwalton wrote: post #158
kuschku wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically yes, but that's often not good enough either. Lots of third party code OEMs end up with in their kernels, unmaintainable, and often incompatible with anything.

Well, it's not true that "ARM has no method to enumerate devices". It does have that; it's just that hardware manufacturers are bad at using it properly . (That's not to say it's not a huge problem; it's just that it's an economic/business/social one, not a technical one.)

I mean, it sort of does and sort of doesn't, but the hardware manufacturers just aren't used to thinking about things in the proper way. Just like the hardware is a black box with no user serviceable parts inside, as far as they're concerned the firmware (because that's still how they think of the OS and everything on it) is a single binary blob with no user serviceable parts inside, even if it's actually just linux and Android. And just like all the hardware parts are designed and qualified for a particular design, the same goes for the software: when you buy your hardware you get a software with it and that's that. As far as they're concerned it's just another component like a screen that gets customized to work with everything else and goes in the box, then is never touched again.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#468

Post by dredmorbius »

d10r wrote: post #466
dredmorbius wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "isn't a good thing" is paired against another "isn't a good thing": forcing people along an (expensive, disruptive, often utility-losing) upgrade path simply to drive revenue goals. Perhaps we might look at this as a set of goals: 1. Users shouldn't run software with unpathed vulnerabilitities. 2. Users shouldn't have to discard devices after a small number of years (1-3, from date of purchase, in many cases).…

I think a fundamental problem here is that most information and knowledge goods don't fit well into an economic framework which is based on the assumption of scarcity. Of course you can artificially add scarcity with DRM tech, patent law etc. But what mostly happens in practice is that you need to come up with some kind of indirect business model. Like e.g. Google, developing a lot of great tech, but ultimately being…

Pretty much, yes.

Market economics works for commodities.

For wages, it tends to subsistence levels.

For public goods (including information) it under-provisions.

For rents (fixed-quantity goods or services, including both land and attention), this tends to absorb surplus valley.

For assets and risk-based elements, I'm still sorting out the dynamics, though they also appear to be poor.

There's various precedent for much of this:

* Adam Smith's classifications of types of goods: commodities, wages, stock (capital), rents, assets (gold and silver), interest, and "expenses of the sovereign" (public goods).

* Various economic-sector classifications. Alexandre Dumas, Simon Kuznets, Clark, and Beniger come up with 3-5 elements, generally: extractive/sourcing, manufacture & construction, transport and distribution, risk and finance (especially FIRE), governance and information. I'm finding these fascinating.

* Industrial classifications including SIC, NAICS, and ISIC.

* A classification of technological methods I've been looking at for a few years, including materials, networks, information, control, knowledge, and power transmission & transformation.

But yes: inoformation and markets play poorly. Software and systems incorporate both information and risk elements. (And probably others.)

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#469

Post by fencepost »

mschuster91 wrote: post #287
fencepost wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your problem may be more your choice of vendors than anything else. HP's big printers (e.g. M600 family) are still pretty nice, but I've started to avoid them for anything smaller, and god help you if you look at the truly low print volume stuff from them.

HP printers are excellent in terms of hardware build quality: the Z2100 plotter in my company is a decade old, of which it stood 6 years around unused - gave it a full cleaning, new cartridges and heads a new carriage belt and it was back to mint condition. Oh, and there are still new cartridges and ink tanks made, and there are still recent drivers. And for most of the consumer gear from HP it's the same: even for r…

The problem I always ran into was customers getting the consumer gear and wanting me to make it print from their server, with drivers only from HP and no support for server operating systems.

My response to anything HP that wasn't good-sized obviously-business-targeted printers became "I can probably make that work, but it's going to cost you more in my time fiddling around with it than just getting a more appropriate printer."

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#470

Post by ekianjo »

pantalaimon wrote: post #350
ekianjo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have no incentives to do so. I would like Samsung to make it into a business. Have folks pay 5 dollars per year if they want to get ongoing security updates for older devices. I would pay in an instant.

There is Lineage OS which supports many Samsung devices with the latest android, completely free of charge. Maybe those little phone repair shops should offer installing it for a small fee as a service. There is also postmarketOS which attempts to bring a standard Linux distribution to old phones, but it's still in an early stage.

LineageOS? you have to download its roms on shady websites. No thank you.
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