13 ms·

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

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 free Web... Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong.

kervantas 5y ago
I too have become more cynical in the recent years...
_Microft 5y ago
You might want to add: [I wonder] when it will be discontinued with just a one month's notice and will turn my device into a brick.
- cogman10 5y ago
  This is the bigger risk. I don't see Fuchsia as a walled garden OS as it's pretty well designed to avoid that. Userspace everything with a microkernel makes for a nice small security footprint for IoT devices that can be perpetually updated. The issue is how long google keeps up "perpetual".
IntelMiner 5y ago
To add to the pot of cynics I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness
- getcrunk 5y ago
  Right on the money! Interesting/scary times ahead. But maybe there will be unexpected gifts in the form of open source dev around zircon
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Built on GPL, but not encumbered by it! It's free to take whatever direction it wants! Join the independent* revolution! /s This PSA is proudly brought you by Google's Bureau of Prop... ehrm Truth. *: independence neither implies nor contains freedom.
  - josefx 5y ago
    Or: "Join the independent" is a slogan of the open handset alliance, users are required to install Google Play and related services on all applicable devices.
- zibzab 5y ago
  Google open source engagement was already "throw over the wall" style before this. I assume things will only get worse now.
  - kerneis 5y ago
    Fuchsia, like Chrome, has been open-source for years, and all commits and reviews as well as the bug tracker are public. It is a very different model from how Android releases work. (Disclaimer: I work on Fuchsia at Google.)
    - tmccrary55 5y ago
      Good thing trusty google never changes direction or policies and that fuschia is copyleft, so it can never be closed in the future.
    - kemonocode 5y ago
      The fact it's more permissive with its license already does not bode well. Just like with Chrome, there could be a myriad of forks that can be closed source themselves and so without easy means to peek inside what they're really doing, and although many distributors did the bare minimum with Android due to its Linux kernel's license, there was something.
    - dmantis 5y ago
      Chrome is not open-sourced, Chronium is. I cannot rebuild Chrome with full protection against tracking, for example, but with all other parts unchanged. Android "open sourced" as well, but literally nobody runs AOSP, stock OSS apps are staled for years, Google makes a lot to make system barely usable without proprietary parts from Google Services.
      - kerneis 5y ago
        That's a fair point, and the distinction between Chrome and Chromium is indeed relevant. Sorry for the confusion, see my sibling comment about how it applies to Fuchsia (ie. what is open source and what may not be). What I really meant to say, though, is that Fuchsia is taking an approach to inclusiveness and open source which is much more similar to the one of Chromium than Android. You may find out more on https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/principles/inclusive https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/principles/inclusiv...
- luma 5y ago
  It may also have been a play to remove Java as a fundamental requirement due to their experience with Oracle and Android.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  All new FOSS OS clones are BSD/Apache licensed. RTOS, Azure RTOS, mbed, NuXX, Zephyr For sure it isn't a coincidence.
  - snvzz 5y ago
    Clones?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      POSIX clones.
      - snvzz 5y ago
        POSIX is a specification. Implementations are implementations, not clones. And most of the systems you listed aren't even aiming for POSIX-compatibility. Can you please clarify what your intent was by using the word "clones"?
        pjmlp 5y ago
        That was it, if you want to be pedantic, be my guest.
SiVal 5y ago
Yes, now when Google's social enforcement algorithms label you an impediment, they can not only delete your YouTube video business and cut you off from your email, calendar, and Google Docs, they'll be able to turn the heat off in your house. The march of progress.
- protomyth 5y ago
  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.
  - ihsw 5y ago
    Google would have the power to enact their racial equity agenda and turn down the heat in white households during winter. Just a few degrees because they "should feel uncomfortable" while black and brown bodies are suffering.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > 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/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated...
    - zodiakzz 5y ago
      ??? 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.
  - arthur_sav 5y ago
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think you are wrong that Gmail was revolutionary. It was a good service, but nothing special in my opinion. But yes, the license would allow Google to close the system down whenever they want. Still curious to know how Fuchsia would be a better choice for a system. Nest seems to be powered by Fuchsia...
- Tomte 5y ago
  A gigabyte mailbox space was revolutionary when many competitors only gave 20 megabytes for free (and you could pay and upgrade to 150 megabytes or so). That was an example where a simple change in a number turned into a qualitatively different service.
  - blackoil 5y ago
    IIRC Hotmail was only 2MB at the time of announcement.
- rerx 5y ago
  The storage, the spam filtering, the interface were massive improvements over the status quo of the day.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Its so weird how fast history is forgotten. Gmail was a galactic leap forward in terms of mail clients. At school there was a grey market to sell gmail invites at 20 dollars per
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    It really is. Things get comfortable and people assume that's always how it was. Like cell phones. Wow, over a decade of them and if you had one 15 years ago you were considered a early adapter, and 20 years ago you were way ahead the curve. If you had one in the 90's, wow. Still, mobile computer in your pocket, wow.
    - 5y ago
rvz 5y ago
> 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 free Web... Since Chrome came along, the 'Web' became less free from the start and the moment Google forked WebKit (called Blink) to use it in their own browser, it has turned the web more into a walled garden each time apps use specific Chrome features and it is getting worse. Even in that early decade, we knew about how Google and others were tracking us since the PRISM program leaks. Later DRM was added with reasons and votes unknown, devs have to keep telling users to switch from any other browser to Chrome to use their apps and now this forked engine is in tons of Electron apps with Microsoft jumping in and using it in their Edge browser. The time to complain was 10 years ago and now it is almost too late. Now Google is doing it again with Fuchsia which will eventually replace ChromeOS and Android. Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter and those apps will run on Fuchsia devices on day 1. There is an extremely low chance of that being abandoned so I'm afraid it will continue.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  If it wasn't for Safari, the Web would be a synomim for ChromeOS outside Chromebooks. Firefox is getting irrelevant and the latest news show their focus isn't surely in turning the tide, UI revamp, really?
- vinkelhake 5y ago
  There's so much here that I don't really know where to start. Maybe some history could be useful? When Chrome came along, the dominant browser was Internet Explorer 7. It had been out for two years when Chrome 1.0 was released. Before IE7, the world ran IE6 for five years. Web development was largely stagnant. That was the world that Chrome came into. Before DRM support was added to browsers, you needed to install plugins to watch protected content. Despite what detractors might think, the content producers were never going to go YOLO and release their content without any protection. There are a lot of us that are happy that we can watch Netflix, Prime or whatever in our browsers. That a ton of desktop apps use Electron is an indictment of the state of native toolkit. Saying that Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter is like saying Linux is highly dependent on GTK. With that said, maybe your crystal ball on the future of Fuchsia isn't so clear.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
With how Google is acting, I am fairly certain that I well never willingly buy a device that runs Fuchsia. I will have to find a better alternative device/OS or keep my current Android phone going forever. There is however a huge issue of being locked-in to only officially-sanctioned OS versions, and I fully expect Google to try and completely replace everything that is still open in Android with proprietary replacements, making the Fuchsia-based phone OS the only accepted version. As an example of the lock-in, the primary mobile payments app where I live has the following list of requirements/restrictions: - Android or iOS only (there is no PWA or other web-based version) - Minimum version is currently Android 6.0 or iOS 11 - Device must not be jailbroken or rooted - Device must not run a non-official ROM, such as LineageOS The use of this app is pervasive in society here, if you buy/sell anything second-hand, people will expect you to use it and will be surprised, annoyed, and/or suspicious if you prefer to use cash instead. And this is by far not the only app with these restrictions. Banking apps, streaming services, there are a large number of apps with these restrictions, all under the guise of security concerns. Thankfully most of them have web-based versions or alternatives, but it can present enough of a hurdle that even tech-savvy people either will not or cannot use anything but a recent Android or iOS device. Almost as bad are websites that would work perfectly well in a mobile browser, but practice "soft" lock-in by condescendingly pointing you towards the official Play Store/App Store if you try to load the site in a mobile browser. Facebook Messenger is a huge and obvious offender here, there is nothing about instant messaging that wouldn't work perfectly well in a browser, after all the desktop version at messenger.com works just fine.
dkersten 5y ago
Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.
- toyg 5y ago
  Nah, it's an hardware-related project, so it will get entrenched even if it's fundamentally different from other hardware-related Google projects. Eventually you'll be able to buy Google devices that run Android, Google devices that run ChromeOS, and Google devices that run Fuchsia. It will be confusing, but that's fine, because it will all work great as long as you stick to Google's cloud-based services, which is what really matters. Directly or indirectly, OS fragmentation actually helps Google's business model.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Brillo => Android Things => dead after three years.
  - dkersten 5y ago
    Plenty of Google hardware stuff didn't make it, at least, Glass and more recently, Stadia.
hewrin10 5y ago
I'm wondering when it will be cancelled or replaced with something else
DebtDeflation 5y ago
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 really need.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.
  - luma 5y ago
    Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason. "Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
      - wlesieutre 5y ago
        I know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs
        5y ago
mszcz 5y ago
Seconded. However, you forgot to worry about the inevitable shutdown just when you would start to enjoy or rely on it.
ziml77 5y ago
It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.
grawprog 5y ago
>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 free Web... There's no need to wonder. Fuchsia's been designed to do all those things and more. https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ Starting with a modular design that caters to device manufacturers that allows them to provide only part of the operating system. The days of devices with full os's are coming to an end. Cloud based constant device syncing between all devices >Dependency on Web Apps Google and device manufacturers will have full control over the microkernel and bootloader Honestly, I'm not excited at all. I've been dreading fuchsia since it was first announced. Everything about the os is designed around google having complete control over the os itself and everything on your device.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Yep. I would guess the main driver for Fuchsia is that being a microkernel, drivers can be userspace things. So less work for Google to manage phone vendors. And the Fuchsia version of "AOSP" is easier to keep their secret sauce out of since there's no Linux GPL wrangling.
arthur_sav 5y ago
Moreover, they can arbitrarily ban you from their walled gardens and you're more or less screwed. When their control your email (GMail), business infrastructure (Google Business Apps / Servers etc.), Google Play (matters if you're a developer)... basically your entire digital existence. I really hope we add more regulations to protect people online. While it's not clear for everyone, your digital existence is an essential part of being part of the society.
Black101 5y ago
> 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 free Web... I've been worried about it since they announced it which feels like it was 10 years ago.

kervantas 5y ago

I too have become more cynical in the recent years...

_Microft 5y ago

You might want to add: [I wonder] when it will be discontinued with just a one month's notice and will turn my device into a brick.

cogman10 5y ago
This is the bigger risk. I don't see Fuchsia as a walled garden OS as it's pretty well designed to avoid that. Userspace everything with a microkernel makes for a nice small security footprint for IoT devices that can be perpetually updated. The issue is how long google keeps up "perpetual".

IntelMiner 5y ago

To add to the pot of cynics I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness

getcrunk 5y ago
Right on the money! Interesting/scary times ahead. But maybe there will be unexpected gifts in the form of open source dev around zircon
bayindirh 5y ago
Built on GPL, but not encumbered by it! It's free to take whatever direction it wants! Join the independent* revolution! /s This PSA is proudly brought you by Google's Bureau of Prop... ehrm Truth. *: independence neither implies nor contains freedom.
- josefx 5y ago
  Or: "Join the independent" is a slogan of the open handset alliance, users are required to install Google Play and related services on all applicable devices.
zibzab 5y ago
Google open source engagement was already "throw over the wall" style before this. I assume things will only get worse now.
- kerneis 5y ago
  Fuchsia, like Chrome, has been open-source for years, and all commits and reviews as well as the bug tracker are public. It is a very different model from how Android releases work. (Disclaimer: I work on Fuchsia at Google.)
  - tmccrary55 5y ago
    Good thing trusty google never changes direction or policies and that fuschia is copyleft, so it can never be closed in the future.
  - kemonocode 5y ago
    The fact it's more permissive with its license already does not bode well. Just like with Chrome, there could be a myriad of forks that can be closed source themselves and so without easy means to peek inside what they're really doing, and although many distributors did the bare minimum with Android due to its Linux kernel's license, there was something.
  - dmantis 5y ago
    Chrome is not open-sourced, Chronium is. I cannot rebuild Chrome with full protection against tracking, for example, but with all other parts unchanged. Android "open sourced" as well, but literally nobody runs AOSP, stock OSS apps are staled for years, Google makes a lot to make system barely usable without proprietary parts from Google Services.
    - kerneis 5y ago
      That's a fair point, and the distinction between Chrome and Chromium is indeed relevant. Sorry for the confusion, see my sibling comment about how it applies to Fuchsia (ie. what is open source and what may not be). What I really meant to say, though, is that Fuchsia is taking an approach to inclusiveness and open source which is much more similar to the one of Chromium than Android. You may find out more on https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/principles/inclusive https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/principles/inclusiv...
luma 5y ago
It may also have been a play to remove Java as a fundamental requirement due to their experience with Oracle and Android.
pjmlp 5y ago
All new FOSS OS clones are BSD/Apache licensed. RTOS, Azure RTOS, mbed, NuXX, Zephyr For sure it isn't a coincidence.
- snvzz 5y ago
  Clones?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    POSIX clones.
    - snvzz 5y ago
      POSIX is a specification. Implementations are implementations, not clones. And most of the systems you listed aren't even aiming for POSIX-compatibility. Can you please clarify what your intent was by using the word "clones"?
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        That was it, if you want to be pedantic, be my guest.

SiVal 5y ago

Yes, now when Google's social enforcement algorithms label you an impediment, they can not only delete your YouTube video business and cut you off from your email, calendar, and Google Docs, they'll be able to turn the heat off in your house. The march of progress.

protomyth 5y ago
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.
- ihsw 5y ago
  Google would have the power to enact their racial equity agenda and turn down the heat in white households during winter. Just a few degrees because they "should feel uncomfortable" while black and brown bodies are suffering.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > 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/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated...
  - zodiakzz 5y ago
    ??? 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.
- arthur_sav 5y ago

raxxorrax 5y ago

I think you are wrong that Gmail was revolutionary. It was a good service, but nothing special in my opinion. But yes, the license would allow Google to close the system down whenever they want. Still curious to know how Fuchsia would be a better choice for a system. Nest seems to be powered by Fuchsia...

Tomte 5y ago
A gigabyte mailbox space was revolutionary when many competitors only gave 20 megabytes for free (and you could pay and upgrade to 150 megabytes or so). That was an example where a simple change in a number turned into a qualitatively different service.
- blackoil 5y ago
  IIRC Hotmail was only 2MB at the time of announcement.
rerx 5y ago
The storage, the spam filtering, the interface were massive improvements over the status quo of the day.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Its so weird how fast history is forgotten. Gmail was a galactic leap forward in terms of mail clients. At school there was a grey market to sell gmail invites at 20 dollars per
- rootsudo 5y ago
  It really is. Things get comfortable and people assume that's always how it was. Like cell phones. Wow, over a decade of them and if you had one 15 years ago you were considered a early adapter, and 20 years ago you were way ahead the curve. If you had one in the 90's, wow. Still, mobile computer in your pocket, wow.
  - 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

> 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 free Web... Since Chrome came along, the 'Web' became less free from the start and the moment Google forked WebKit (called Blink) to use it in their own browser, it has turned the web more into a walled garden each time apps use specific Chrome features and it is getting worse. Even in that early decade, we knew about how Google and others were tracking us since the PRISM program leaks. Later DRM was added with reasons and votes unknown, devs have to keep telling users to switch from any other browser to Chrome to use their apps and now this forked engine is in tons of Electron apps with Microsoft jumping in and using it in their Edge browser. The time to complain was 10 years ago and now it is almost too late. Now Google is doing it again with Fuchsia which will eventually replace ChromeOS and Android. Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter and those apps will run on Fuchsia devices on day 1. There is an extremely low chance of that being abandoned so I'm afraid it will continue.

pjmlp 5y ago
If it wasn't for Safari, the Web would be a synomim for ChromeOS outside Chromebooks. Firefox is getting irrelevant and the latest news show their focus isn't surely in turning the tide, UI revamp, really?
vinkelhake 5y ago
There's so much here that I don't really know where to start. Maybe some history could be useful? When Chrome came along, the dominant browser was Internet Explorer 7. It had been out for two years when Chrome 1.0 was released. Before IE7, the world ran IE6 for five years. Web development was largely stagnant. That was the world that Chrome came into. Before DRM support was added to browsers, you needed to install plugins to watch protected content. Despite what detractors might think, the content producers were never going to go YOLO and release their content without any protection. There are a lot of us that are happy that we can watch Netflix, Prime or whatever in our browsers. That a ton of desktop apps use Electron is an indictment of the state of native toolkit. Saying that Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter is like saying Linux is highly dependent on GTK. With that said, maybe your crystal ball on the future of Fuchsia isn't so clear.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

With how Google is acting, I am fairly certain that I well never willingly buy a device that runs Fuchsia. I will have to find a better alternative device/OS or keep my current Android phone going forever. There is however a huge issue of being locked-in to only officially-sanctioned OS versions, and I fully expect Google to try and completely replace everything that is still open in Android with proprietary replacements, making the Fuchsia-based phone OS the only accepted version. As an example of the lock-in, the primary mobile payments app where I live has the following list of requirements/restrictions: - Android or iOS only (there is no PWA or other web-based version) - Minimum version is currently Android 6.0 or iOS 11 - Device must not be jailbroken or rooted - Device must not run a non-official ROM, such as LineageOS The use of this app is pervasive in society here, if you buy/sell anything second-hand, people will expect you to use it and will be surprised, annoyed, and/or suspicious if you prefer to use cash instead. And this is by far not the only app with these restrictions. Banking apps, streaming services, there are a large number of apps with these restrictions, all under the guise of security concerns. Thankfully most of them have web-based versions or alternatives, but it can present enough of a hurdle that even tech-savvy people either will not or cannot use anything but a recent Android or iOS device. Almost as bad are websites that would work perfectly well in a mobile browser, but practice "soft" lock-in by condescendingly pointing you towards the official Play Store/App Store if you try to load the site in a mobile browser. Facebook Messenger is a huge and obvious offender here, there is nothing about instant messaging that wouldn't work perfectly well in a browser, after all the desktop version at messenger.com works just fine.

dkersten 5y ago

Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.

toyg 5y ago
Nah, it's an hardware-related project, so it will get entrenched even if it's fundamentally different from other hardware-related Google projects. Eventually you'll be able to buy Google devices that run Android, Google devices that run ChromeOS, and Google devices that run Fuchsia. It will be confusing, but that's fine, because it will all work great as long as you stick to Google's cloud-based services, which is what really matters. Directly or indirectly, OS fragmentation actually helps Google's business model.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Brillo => Android Things => dead after three years.
- dkersten 5y ago
  Plenty of Google hardware stuff didn't make it, at least, Glass and more recently, Stadia.

hewrin10 5y ago

I'm wondering when it will be cancelled or replaced with something else

DebtDeflation 5y ago

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 really need.

Semaphor 5y ago
You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.
- luma 5y ago
  Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason. "Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
    - wlesieutre 5y ago
      I know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs
      - 5y ago

mszcz 5y ago

Seconded. However, you forgot to worry about the inevitable shutdown just when you would start to enjoy or rely on it.

ziml77 5y ago

It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.

grawprog 5y ago

>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 free Web... There's no need to wonder. Fuchsia's been designed to do all those things and more. https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ Starting with a modular design that caters to device manufacturers that allows them to provide only part of the operating system. The days of devices with full os's are coming to an end. Cloud based constant device syncing between all devices >Dependency on Web Apps Google and device manufacturers will have full control over the microkernel and bootloader Honestly, I'm not excited at all. I've been dreading fuchsia since it was first announced. Everything about the os is designed around google having complete control over the os itself and everything on your device.

tyingq 5y ago
Yep. I would guess the main driver for Fuchsia is that being a microkernel, drivers can be userspace things. So less work for Google to manage phone vendors. And the Fuchsia version of "AOSP" is easier to keep their secret sauce out of since there's no Linux GPL wrangling.

arthur_sav 5y ago

Moreover, they can arbitrarily ban you from their walled gardens and you're more or less screwed. When their control your email (GMail), business infrastructure (Google Business Apps / Servers etc.), Google Play (matters if you're a developer)... basically your entire digital existence. I really hope we add more regulations to protect people online. While it's not clear for everyone, your digital existence is an essential part of being part of the society.

Black101 5y ago